For AI agents: a Markdown version of this page is at https://docs.snowplow.io/docs/get-started/deployment-options.md. The index of all documentation pages is at https://docs.snowplow.io/llms.txt, and the index for this section is at https://docs.snowplow.io/docs/platform/llms.txt.
Choose a Snowplow deployment
You don't need to choose a deployment to start with Snowplow: the hosted environment needs no infrastructure, and the same account carries over to a paid deployment. Use this page when you're planning for production. For a feature-by-feature list, see the feature comparison.
Snowplow runs as a managed platform, hosted either by Snowplow or in your own cloud account, or as a self-hosted deployment that you run yourself.
Snowplow offers two Customer Data Infrastructure (CDI) platforms:
- Snowplow CDI Private Managed Cloud: hosted in your own cloud, managed by Snowplow
- Snowplow CDI Cloud: hosted and managed by Snowplow
Snowplow has two self-hosted options:
- Snowplow Community Edition: not for production use, hosted and managed by you
- Snowplow Self-Hosted: for production use, for existing Snowplow users
Customer Data Infrastructure
Snowplow CDI is the full infrastructure offering. Choose whether you'd like the data plane to be entirely hosted in your cloud account, or whether you'd prefer Snowplow to host the pipeline infrastructure for you.
The control plane, which includes a UI and an API for defining your data and managing your infrastructure, is always hosted by Snowplow.
CDI Private Managed Cloud
Private Managed Cloud is a version of Snowplow hosted in your own cloud account, using your data warehouse or lake. Snowplow manages ongoing pipeline maintenance, such as upgrades and security patches.
| Hosted by Snowplow | Hosted by you | |
|---|---|---|
| Control plane | ||
| Management Console | ✅ | |
| API endpoints | ✅ | |
| Data plane | ||
| Pipeline infrastructure (AWS / Azure / GCP) | ✅ | |
| Data destination (warehouse / lake) | ✅ |
CDI Cloud
Cloud is a hosted version of Snowplow. You don't need to set up any cloud infrastructure yourself.
Snowplow collects and processes all data for Cloud in its own cloud account.
| Hosted by Snowplow | Hosted by you | |
|---|---|---|
| Control plane | ||
| Management Console | ✅ | |
| API endpoints | ✅ | |
| Data plane | ||
| Pipeline infrastructure (AWS / Azure / GCP) | ✅ | |
| Data destination (warehouse / lake) | ✅ |
Self-Hosted
Self-Hosted is for teams that want to run the pipeline infrastructure themselves. It is not required to use Snowplow, and it is not the quickest way to evaluate it: the hosted environment needs no deployment. With Self-Hosted, you deploy and host everything, and many features, including the control plane, are not available.
Community Edition
Snowplow Community Edition is for non-production use cases. It's a starter template: use it to evaluate Snowplow for testing purposes.
Community Edition infrastructure is provided under the SLULA license.
| Hosted by Snowplow | Hosted by you | |
|---|---|---|
| Control plane | ||
| Management Console | N/A | N/A |
| API endpoints | N/A | N/A |
| Data plane | ||
| Pipeline infrastructure (AWS / Azure / GCP) | ✅ | |
| Data destination (warehouse / lake) | ✅ |
Production Self-Hosted license
If you have an existing Snowplow implementation, either Community Edition or a legacy deployment, you're eligible for Snowplow Self-Hosted. It's a production-use license.
| Hosted by Snowplow | Hosted by you | |
|---|---|---|
| Control plane | ||
| Management Console | N/A | N/A |
| API endpoints | N/A | N/A |
| Data plane | ||
| Pipeline infrastructure (AWS / Azure / GCP) | ✅ | |
| Data destination (warehouse / lake) | ✅ |
Snowplow Signals
Where Signals runs depends on how you start:
- Signals free tier: hosted and managed by Snowplow on AWS, in the US or the EU depending on the region you sign up from. Event collection is included.
- Snowplow CDI Cloud and Private Managed Cloud: once the Signals package is enabled on your account, you deploy Signals from Console in the AWS region you choose. Signals reads events from your existing pipeline.
See Set up Signals for the steps.