Faced challenges with metadata filtering but have achieved reliable long-term memory for chat applications
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Pinecone involves storage of chat data, specifically chat transcripts, and retrieval of matched chat messages.
We store chat transcripts as vectors in Pinecone. When we have a new chat message, we utilize a retrieval mechanism to match and find the last five messages so that it can act as a memory. Essentially, Pinecone serves as a long-term memory for our application, while we use Redis for our short-term memory.
What is most valuable?
We were looking at multiple options for a vector database, and we found Pinecone to be the easiest to integrate into our solution. Plus, it has a very generous free tier, which helps us as a startup.
The best features Pinecone offers are quick setup and good indexing for us. The retrieval mechanisms are fast, and the integration with Python as with JavaScript and TypeScript libraries that Pinecone provides are very robust. Authentication is also very good.
The namespaces feature allows us to break down or store data for each user separately, reducing interference and maintaining privacy as an important feature.
Pinecone has positively impacted our organization by enhancing efficiency for the team, and the long-term effect has been that the chats have become much more personalized due to the memory added through a vector database. We are seeing that the trainees getting trained on the platform are more satisfied with the results or messages generated by AI.
What needs improvement?
One major issue I have noticed with Pinecone is that it does not allow me to search based on metadata. This can cause problems because while vector indexing or vector search is good, if you populate certain categories of messages or metadata into a vector database, searching through the data using the filter of metadata is not possible.
For our requirements, Pinecone is more than enough. If improvements are required, I would suggest taking a look at the embeddings and possibly improving the embedding sizes.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Pinecone with code for one and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Pinecone's scalability is pretty decent for us, as we have not encountered issues. We are storing close to around 600K items or entries in the database, and our indexing and retrievals are within seconds, often in microseconds.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support of Pinecone is very good; you send an email and receive a response within a few hours, typically four to five hours. Additionally, you can set up a call if needed.
Since we are on the minimal plan, I would rate the customer support around 8 out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously tried setting up with Weaviate and another solution. During my research, we checked out a couple of options, including an on-prem solution that I tried to set up on my machine, but it was very painful, so we went with the cloud service provider because the setup was nearly nonexistent.
How was the initial setup?
The setup cost for us is nil, and the licensing and pricing are pretty decent. Pinecone works on the storage amount, so our bills are pretty low, and we are good.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The setup cost for us is nil, and the licensing and pricing are pretty decent. Pinecone works on the storage amount, so our bills are pretty low, and we are good.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Pinecone, I evaluated a few options, including Weaviate.
What other advice do I have?
I would suggest that Pinecone is one of the best options available. I would rank it in the top three for vector databases and qualify it as number one in the market. There are many others such as Weaviate and Milvus, but they come with certain issues such as lacking a free tier or having a very low one.
Moreover, solutions like Milvus and FAISS are on-prem, which makes setup and stability a pain, primarily catering to big enterprises. For startups, Pinecone is indeed the best.
We are just a client of Pinecone; we do not have any other business relationship.
Rating: 4/5
Nice vector db easy to use
What do you like best about the product?
its provide various of features and great vector db support
What do you dislike about the product?
may be it is close source and needed some features which are not there yet.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The latency is very minimal and provide large search/retrieval with fully managed serverless infrastructure
ideal for machine learning, AI applications and similarity search
What do you like best about the product?
It is specialised in AI driven use cases with real time and low latency search giving seamless integration into machine learning workflows with scalable infrastruture optimized for unstructured and semi-structured data in AI applications.
What do you dislike about the product?
It has limited focus that is related only with the vector data with no major focus on Business intelligence in data transformation tool.
Also it's use case is little complex with lack of ecosystem integration.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It is solving the issue related with AI vector data generated from the app.
God of creating embeddings
What do you like best about the product?
when iam creating embeddings,compared to other products,it feels hassle free& cheap.
What do you dislike about the product?
I am the beta tester of pinecone AI assiatant,it is not production ready so it feels like only for testing,i am expecting for the production ready version.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
hassle free functions and embeddings data sets
Pinecone assistant beta user
What do you like best about the product?
I have been using pinecone for embeddings and it is cheaper and reliable compared to other embedding services.
What do you dislike about the product?
I dislike the overall feel which feels lightweighed for the product service documentation.
I love to see pinecone assistant in deployable version because it is powerful yet it is in the beta version only for testing not for production
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Creating embeddings at ease without any big pricing.
Good support from team.
Solid option for vector DB
What do you like best about the product?
Easy to use. very reliable and fast. Competitive price
What do you dislike about the product?
Maybe some extra features would be nice, and some more clarity into its AKNN algo, which is hidden from the user
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Finding scientific documents in very large volumes of Data.
Pinecone: The Backbone of Efficient Vector Search and Retrieval
What do you like best about the product?
Pinecone excels in providing a seamless, high-performance vector search experience. Its ease of use, combined with powerful features like real-time updates and scalability, makes it a go-to solution for managing complex vector data. The ability to effortlessly integrate with existing workflows and its top-notch customer support are definite highlights.
What do you dislike about the product?
While Pinecone is robust, the pricing can be a bit steep for smaller projects or startups. Additionally, more granular control over indexing options would enhance customization for advanced users. However, the benefits far outweigh these minor drawbacks.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Pinecone is solving the complex challenge of efficient and scalable vector search. In an era where managing large volumes of high-dimensional data is critical, Pinecone's ability to index, search, and retrieve vectors quickly and accurately is a game-changer. For us, this means faster query responses, enhanced data retrieval accuracy, and the ability to focus on building better products rather than managing infrastructure. Pinecone's solution has drastically reduced the time and effort required to manage and search vector data, allowing our team to be more productive and innovative.
Using Pinecone on production - 1 year later
What do you like best about the product?
Pinecone was our primary choice and we have not considered changing since.
- High performance (upsert and search in the ms)
- Simple integration via API and deployment and now after their recent release of serverless indexes it's very simple to maintain and scale (it's autoscaling).
- Low price (relative to the number of vectors) and free limited indexes. Free indexes are great to run development environment data. For a while it was impossible to upgrade a free index to a paying one, but this is now addressed.
- Incredible support (we had an issue and was not expecting getting this quality of support without paying the usual business support fees of an AWS for example)
- The ability to assign metadata is very useful (we still maintain a traditional db to keep track of the vectors)
- The single stage query vector/metadata is very useful and saves the headache of over-querying
- One feature we have meant to use is the use of sparse vectors in combination with the dense vectors. So, can't really comment yet
What do you dislike about the product?
Love most of it as is
- The documentation using metadata and single stage queries is a bit light
- They have a smart bot to help answer support questions. On the great side, it seems they use their own technology for RAG type of application, but on the other it often misses the mark. ChatGPT or Perplexity are surprisingly more effective.
- There has been a few down times, but they are very communicative about them and maintain a server health page for each endpoint. It's usually related to a specific infrastructure (AWS or GCP) they run on.
- They have been growing and improving the technology, and like with other player, sometimes to update their python library or the way to reference to the indexes. But each time it's been toward simplification, and I suspect it will stabilize.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Semantic matching
A great serverless DBaaS for vectors
What do you like best about the product?
Pinecode offers a simple API and lean management interface for a completely low maintenance vector storage and query solution.
What do you dislike about the product?
I started using Pinecone when it was new and had some rough edges. But support was proactive and smart. In the last year I can say there is nothing to not like. It has been awesome.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use Pinecone's serverless platform (on AWS) for vector search. Our vector dimension is 3072. Part of our use is user queries. The performance has been excellent and scalability is automatic. We also use the query capability in other parts of our stack where performance is not so important but reliability is a factor.
Provides a private local host feature and is easy for new users to learn
What is our primary use case?
I've used Pinecone to streamline token generation for my chatbot's functionality. Specifically, I used it for the OpenNeeam Building.
What is most valuable?
The best thing about Pinecone is its private local host feature. It displays all the maintenance parameters and lets us view the data sent to the database. We can also see the status of the CD and which application it corresponds to.
What needs improvement?
I want to suggest that Pinecone requires a login and API key, but I would prefer not to have a login system and to use the environment directly.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Pinecone for the past three months.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Pinecone, I used Corner DB.
How was the initial setup?
The installation of Pinecone was straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I think Pinecone is cheaper to use than other options I've explored. However, I also remember that they offer a paid version.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I decided to use Pinecone after researching and finding it the best option for our project.
What other advice do I have?
Pinecone is easy for new users to learn, and I would rate it around eight out of ten. This is because other databases do not have a login system and are not as user-friendly.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
