Machine learning might be expensive for customers. Customers take advantage of Elastic being open source, but machine learning is not available in the open source version. If a customer is using the open source version without paying licenses to Elastic, they will not enjoy the machine learning features. That is why machine learning does not have the same popularity as Kibana and the other components in Elastic, because only those who pay for Elastic can experience it. Regarding additional features I would appreciate seeing in the next release of Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service), Elastic acquired Gena AI, and I would appreciate seeing more AI models embedded in the upcoming new versions of Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service). This is what I will be waiting for.
Data Scientist at a educational organization with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Top 10
Dec 12, 2025
Because I am pursuing a PhD and work under the university, my university has an agreement with AWS, which makes it essentially free and easier to use. In the AWS ecosystem, everything is connected and I can control everything without uncertainty about what is happening behind the scenes. However, when using Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service), I connected it to Google Cloud but I am paying separate receipts. Over the last two months in October and November, I paid two separate invoices that are not connected to Google Cloud, which I did not appreciate. Google Cloud has a nice interface that gives me full control of pricing and billing. I can see daily, weekly, and monthly breakdowns with bar charts, and I can track exactly how much I spent during any period. Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service) does not have such a tool for billing visibility. Since I am handling significant amounts of money and am responsible for this task within my company, I have high expectations for pricing and billing transparency. I would appreciate the ability to set a spending limit, such as uploading 200 euros, and receive notifications when reaching 50% of that limit. These notifications could appear on the dashboard, in the application, or via email. It would be valuable to see a timeline of my spending. I would characterize the pricing as somewhat expensive. I did not use competitors extensively, so I may have a bias about this. The pricing of large language models is not expensive—I use Anthropic's Claude or Google's Gemini, which are state-of-the-art models. However, I am uncertain whether I have a bias about Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service) pricing. It is not extraordinarily expensive, but when I compare it with the cost of using large language models or Google Cloud storage, it is quite expensive. A couple of days ago, the Elastic team reached out to me. We have been regularly using the service since April, and 10 days ago at the beginning of December, I deleted my hosted deployments because I did not like the idea of paying when I am not actively using Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service). They informed me that there is a serverless option available. Before Christmas, I want to try it to see how it works, as I am uncertain about the serverless concept and whether it will provide the same functionality that I use with the hosted deployment.
I don't think Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service) has any sort of disadvantages per se; most of the features are pretty good and up to date. We have some cost-effective indexing as searches with Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service), and there could be other ways where we can probably improve in terms of the design of documentation. Sometimes it gets tricky to navigate through the user manuals because there are different forms of links. For example, we are speaking about ECE 3.x and ECE 4.x, and there are different sets of documentation for 3.x and 4.x. Sometimes it gets tricky to navigate through the documents, and the links can be difficult to catch upon. The content is fantastic, but if there is a better way to navigate through the documentation, that would be really great. Mostly it's related to some sort of sloppy documentation at times, and we also have operational complexity. For example, we have some cases where the resource consumption due to the JVM could be pretty high; these are design-level issues and have also been discussed in technical topics, and if these could be improved, overall, that would be great.
VP Engineering Services & Sercurity at Jitterbit, Inc
Real User
Top 10
Sep 29, 2025
The logging feature of Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service) itself is pretty valuable, but we tried the observability module and some of the AI features. Those need improvement. Observability is not on par with feature and ease of use with some of the leading providers out there. The same applies to some of the AI features within Elastic Cloud.
Learn what your peers think about Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.
Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service) provides a managed platform for Elasticsearch, offering flexibility and scalability to handle search, logging, and analytics use cases efficiently, enhancing data-driven decision-making processes.As a managed service, Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service) simplifies running and scaling Elasticsearch by automating setup and management tasks, reducing the overhead related to infrastructure maintenance. It supports a variety of use cases such as real-time...
Machine learning might be expensive for customers. Customers take advantage of Elastic being open source, but machine learning is not available in the open source version. If a customer is using the open source version without paying licenses to Elastic, they will not enjoy the machine learning features. That is why machine learning does not have the same popularity as Kibana and the other components in Elastic, because only those who pay for Elastic can experience it. Regarding additional features I would appreciate seeing in the next release of Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service), Elastic acquired Gena AI, and I would appreciate seeing more AI models embedded in the upcoming new versions of Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service). This is what I will be waiting for.
Because I am pursuing a PhD and work under the university, my university has an agreement with AWS, which makes it essentially free and easier to use. In the AWS ecosystem, everything is connected and I can control everything without uncertainty about what is happening behind the scenes. However, when using Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service), I connected it to Google Cloud but I am paying separate receipts. Over the last two months in October and November, I paid two separate invoices that are not connected to Google Cloud, which I did not appreciate. Google Cloud has a nice interface that gives me full control of pricing and billing. I can see daily, weekly, and monthly breakdowns with bar charts, and I can track exactly how much I spent during any period. Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service) does not have such a tool for billing visibility. Since I am handling significant amounts of money and am responsible for this task within my company, I have high expectations for pricing and billing transparency. I would appreciate the ability to set a spending limit, such as uploading 200 euros, and receive notifications when reaching 50% of that limit. These notifications could appear on the dashboard, in the application, or via email. It would be valuable to see a timeline of my spending. I would characterize the pricing as somewhat expensive. I did not use competitors extensively, so I may have a bias about this. The pricing of large language models is not expensive—I use Anthropic's Claude or Google's Gemini, which are state-of-the-art models. However, I am uncertain whether I have a bias about Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service) pricing. It is not extraordinarily expensive, but when I compare it with the cost of using large language models or Google Cloud storage, it is quite expensive. A couple of days ago, the Elastic team reached out to me. We have been regularly using the service since April, and 10 days ago at the beginning of December, I deleted my hosted deployments because I did not like the idea of paying when I am not actively using Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service). They informed me that there is a serverless option available. Before Christmas, I want to try it to see how it works, as I am uncertain about the serverless concept and whether it will provide the same functionality that I use with the hosted deployment.
I don't think Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service) has any sort of disadvantages per se; most of the features are pretty good and up to date. We have some cost-effective indexing as searches with Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service), and there could be other ways where we can probably improve in terms of the design of documentation. Sometimes it gets tricky to navigate through the user manuals because there are different forms of links. For example, we are speaking about ECE 3.x and ECE 4.x, and there are different sets of documentation for 3.x and 4.x. Sometimes it gets tricky to navigate through the documents, and the links can be difficult to catch upon. The content is fantastic, but if there is a better way to navigate through the documentation, that would be really great. Mostly it's related to some sort of sloppy documentation at times, and we also have operational complexity. For example, we have some cases where the resource consumption due to the JVM could be pretty high; these are design-level issues and have also been discussed in technical topics, and if these could be improved, overall, that would be great.
The logging feature of Elastic Cloud (Elasticsearch Service) itself is pretty valuable, but we tried the observability module and some of the AI features. Those need improvement. Observability is not on par with feature and ease of use with some of the leading providers out there. The same applies to some of the AI features within Elastic Cloud.