When we worked with Snowflake, they did slip this in (a contract renewal is required to retain credits) without much emphasis. However they did disclose it and it informed how big our initial contract would be. Generally the economics favor a smaller contract to start.
Do not sign a contract with Snowflake
21–30 of 44 posts
Re: Do not sign a contract with Snowflake
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
You only pay for what you use, but you must purchase their virtual currency Snowbux, at least 10,000 units per year.
Their marketing copy is still accurate. It sounds like the OP wanted to get 15% discount, which required them to prepay for 10,000 usage credits that expire after a year. It's not Snowflake fault if you didn't use the prepaid amount that allowed OP to gain the 15% discount. Only prepay for things you know you'll entirely use
We knew we weren't going to use the entire prepaid amount and said to the sales rep we didn't think it was worth doing it because our usage was low and we would have amounts left over and the rep insisted the roll-over process would be perfect for our use case (he can see our prior months of on demand) and said literally it is just paperwork (I guess that is technically true, paperwork is involved, so lesson learned!). That said, from what he wrote it seems these "policies" may be new to 2020 because he told me that even newer customers have the renew at the original contract amount or more to roll-over so maybe it was easy paperwork any roll-over back in 2019 when we signed and that has since changed. The contract is so vague that it only protects them, not the customer, if they decide on changing their internal policies. Obviously, if they just stated the policy, we wouldn't have signed any contracts.
We purchase because without contract, you can't access their support engineer which we thought we would need but turned out not needed at all (also, I am starting to doubt if the support engineer part is even true, you can probably submit a ticket anyway).15% is not a significant enough saving to sacrifice the flexibility, given AWS can offer like 75% off at reserve. I wrote this post so others who may be considering it should know their rep may not be transparent about everything or might not be able to live up to their promises. I feel like for their long term, this is counter productive for their business strategy, shrug.
Re: Do not sign a contract with Snowflake
#23I don't have any experience with them but I went to the pricing section on their website[0] and was greeted with very large all-caps text: PRICING: WHY PAY FOR WHAT YOU DON’T USE? PAY FOR THE COMPUTE AND STORAGE YOU ACTUALLY USE. I found that pretty funny given the problem you're running in to. [0] https://www.snowflake.com/pricing/
Only if you stay on demand, which is why I say, use Snowflake if it works for you (not knocking the product), just stay on demand.
Edit to add that for those who don't believe the sales process was as misleading as I portrayed, just look at their investor earnings release from today! They really try to paint a picture that it is trivial to rollover your credits beyond your contract term and you wouldn't be anything you don't want to buy/need/use. I mean gotta laugh considering their newest policy is you have to buy new contracts at the same or greater price point as last year to rollover.
"Product revenue is a key metric for us because we recognize revenue based on platform consumption, which is inherently variable at our customers’ discretion, and not based on the amount and duration of contract terms. Product revenue includes compute, storage, and data transfer resources, which are consumed by customers on our platform as a single, integrated offering. Customers have the flexibility to consume more than their contracted capacity during the contract term and may have the ability to roll over unused capacity to future periods, generally on the purchase of additional capacity at renewal. Our consumption-based business model distinguishes us from subscription-based software companies that generally recognize revenue ratably over the contract term and may not permit rollover. Because customers have flexibility in the timing of their consumption, which can exceed their contracted capacity or extend beyond the original contract term in many cases, the amount of product revenue recognized in a given period is an important indicator of customer satisfaction and the value derived from our platform. Product revenue excludes our professional services and other revenue"
https://investors.snowflake.com/news/news-details/2020/Snowf...
Re: Do not sign a contract with Snowflake
#24Counterpoint: just read the contract before you sign it.
Salesmen are full of shit and everybody knows it. The contract you sign is what matters. Read it first.
Re: Do not sign a contract with Snowflake
#25So we've had the same deal pushed towards us. It did take some questioning to really lay out the nitty gritty for what happens (as any sales conv shouod go) when but I didn't feel it was misrepresented.
We are currently rolling on pay as you go with them, and have successfully worked out what deals they'll offer when so we can sign if our traffic makes it make sense for that kind of commitment. We keep making our system more efficient and pushing that day away.
There are a few things that have less than impressed me with Snowflake, but having worked a bit with some of their competition I'm not bothered.
Re: Do not sign a contract with Snowflake
#26Your complaint is that they require you to purchase a new annual contract after your first one ends? This really shouldn't come as a surprise. And they'll let you roll over $9000 worth of unused credits by purchasing just $1000 new ones? This actually sounds like a pretty good deal. I think your problem is that you purchased more than you needed via a contract you didn't understand.
We did expect to use more but covid changed that, that said, the problem I am warning others about is the the sales conversation was not accurate, but none of what was promised was in the contract in writing. Definitely my fault though for trusting that the roll over process is as simple as issuing new paperwork as portrayed by a guy who is just looking to close the deal. I have not had such a problem with other comp…
I'm confused. What are you are asking for them to do?
You pre-paid for $10k of usage, with an agreement to roll-over unused credits into next year's contract. The plain definition of roll-over includes the fact that you'd have an active future account. Otherwise, they'd just say "prepay credits never expire". Imagine trying to use roll-over minutes on a phone plan where you cancelled the phone.
$1k/yr seems like a very low minimum which will serve as basis to roll your $9k of existing credits into.
Sounds to me like you just didn't think about or budget for this. Doesn't sound like any misrepresentation to me.
Re: Do not sign a contract with Snowflake
#27The only thing I care about here is what it said on the paper you signed up front and how carefully you analyzed it. I learned this lesson when making a $XM multi-year contract with AWS. They said "customer will be signed up for enterprise support", which we read as "customer gets enterprise support for free". Then we started getting bills for enterprise support ($1K/month). The contract said that, but was a bit vagu…
Yep same lesson. As I wrote above, we knew we could not finish the min. contract amount based on prior usage which the rep said the roll-over is great for our use case and would be fine for us to continue using them for the next year they would just issue new paperwork (I should have pushed harder on clarifying all the ins and outs of roll-over and get it into the contract). The contract is only 1 page and the only roll over clause is vague and so yes I guess they can basically decide to change what new contract polices they have internally and the customer would be subject to that whim, which from the rep it sounds they have because newer customers than us on a different policy (not sure how/when they decided to create these customer buckets) where contract can only roll-over by paying the same amount each year or more.
"Rollover of Capacity. If Customer purchases additional capacity under a separate order form before the end of the Subscription Term hereunder, any unconsumed Capacity will roll over into the immediately succeeding subscription term of such order form. Otherwise, purchased Capacity expires and becomes void automatically at the end of the Subscription Term."
Re: Do not sign a contract with Snowflake
#28People in sales are not people worthy of your trust. If at all possible, I refuse to deal with humans when acquiring products.
lol, I normally am very empathetic to sales people, I feel like they do a difficult, soul sucking job. But in this case, I agree and wish I just told the rep to bugger off.
Re: Do not sign a contract with Snowflake
#29Your complaint is that they require you to purchase a new annual contract after your first one ends? This really shouldn't come as a surprise. And they'll let you roll over $9000 worth of unused credits by purchasing just $1000 new ones? This actually sounds like a pretty good deal. I think your problem is that you purchased more than you needed via a contract you didn't understand.
It's disingenuous for the company to try to get you into a contract by promising that your "credits" can be rolled over without being up-front about the conditions. Obviously OP made a mistake here, and it seems that they're admitting that, but if what they said was true, this company was being deceptive about the contract.
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Re: Do not sign a contract with Snowflake
#30Your complaint is that they require you to purchase a new annual contract after your first one ends? This really shouldn't come as a surprise. And they'll let you roll over $9000 worth of unused credits by purchasing just $1000 new ones? This actually sounds like a pretty good deal. I think your problem is that you purchased more than you needed via a contract you didn't understand.
It's disingenuous for the company to try to get you into a contract by promising that your "credits" can be rolled over without being up-front about the conditions. Obviously OP made a mistake here, and it seems that they're admitting that, but if what they said was true, this company was being deceptive about the contract.
Do rollovers of credits, minutes, etc typically persist after the subscription has ended? If I cancel my AT&T account I can't keep using my saved up rollover minutes.