Python Celery Software: Pros & Cons and Reviews
Introduction
Python Celery is an open-source project for implementing asynchronous task queues and job queues. If you’re looking for a good Python Celery overview, check out our article “What is Python Celery?”.
But now that we’ve discussed how Python Celery works, what about the pros and cons of using Python Celery, or what real users have said about it in Python Celery reviews? In this post, we’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Python Celery, so that you can decide whether it’s the right choice for your organization.
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Table of Contents
Python Celery: Pros and Cons
The pros of using Python Celery include:
- Open-source software: Python Celery is free and open-source software. This quality may appeal to organizations who support the open-source ethos, or who want to save money in their IT budget.
- Easy installation: Because it’s so simple and lightweight, installing Python Celery is very easy. In most cases, you can install Celery from the terminal using the command “pip install -U Celery”.
- Broker support: Celery supports multiple message brokers, including RabbitMQ and Redis. Amazon SQS is also supported, but lacks features such as monitoring and remote control (i.e. the ability to inspect workers at runtime). Apache ZooKeeper has only experimental support at this time.
- Web framework integrations: In addition to its message broker support, Celery also integrates with multiple web frameworks, including Pyramid, Pylons, Flask, web2py, Tornado, and Tryton.
The cons of using Python Celery include:
- Lack of user support: Using open-source software like Python Celery has disadvantages as well: in particular, the lack of support plans. If you’re a large enterprise looking for a mature, production-grade solution with guaranteed high availability, Celery may be too risky of a gamble for you. In the next section, we’ll look at some Python Celery reviews that specifically cite lack of user support as an issue.
- User experience: Like many other open-source tools, Python Celery focuses on expanding its feature set rather than providing a simple, pleasant user experience. This can give Celery a steeper learning curve than other alternatives. One Python Celery reviewer writes: “No bells and whistles, pretty old school design—but it just gets the job done, which is what matters.”
- Integration issues: Although Celery supports a wide range of integrations with third-party software, as discussed above, some Python Celery reviews suggest that these integrations can be tricky to get working in practice. Reviewer Ramesh O. writes that he has “issues with task management when working with Redis. Redis is not the best option to work with Python Celery, especially when working with Docker.”
Python Celery Reviews
So far, we’ve discussed the general pros and cons of Python Celery—but what do users have to say about the tool itself in Python Celery reviews?
Python Celery has received an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars on the business software review website G2. Network specialist Evren B. writes:
Python Celery made our work a lot easier. It is a product that allows us to run workflows without requiring a lot of brain activity and helps us solve many of our problems… We can easily do many operations such as sending SMS and e-mail through Celery.
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However, Python Celery reviews also mention that the software comes with a few drawbacks. For example, multiple reviews note that, as an open-source tool, Python Celery’s support and documentation are often lacking in comparison to more mature solutions:
- “This is an open-source piece of software, so support is somewhat limited.”
- “Python Celery sometimes has ambiguous documentation, and that confuses me.”
- “Celery is a tool without the best documentation and support.”
- “The Celery documentation of dynamic programming defined by the user is not good.”
- “Python Celery documents can sometimes be confusing.”
One reviewer, an administrator in the field of computer software, praises Celery’s compatibility with message brokers such as RabbitMQ and Redis:
I specifically like how the Celery architecture is based on task queues and the number of workers we can assign to each task queue. This way, a developer can uniformly distribute the heavier jobs to Celery tasks with a greater number of workers. Its compatibility with RabbitMQ and Redis makes it more convenient to work with.
Unfortunately, the same reviewer also mentions a puzzling technical issue with Celery that causes a recurring inconvenience:
It is sometimes a headache to debug errors in Python Celery. I personally face an issue that Celery sometimes resets itself completely without finishing the pending tasks, thereby wasting the whole iteration of data collection and processing before reset. I couldn't find a dependable solution to this problem yet, so I need to eventually reinstall Celery whenever I face this, once in a blue moon.
Conclusion
While there are both pros and cons to Python Celery, drawbacks such as the lack of user support and other technical issues are definitely not ideal. For this reason, many businesses might be looking for the best Python Celery alternative.
IronWorker is a task management system for background job processing that compensates for many of Celery’s shortcomings. The advantages of IronWorker include:
- Flexibility: IronWorker is compatible with a vast range of IT environments—whether you want to run it in the public cloud, on-premises, on a dedicated server, or with a hybrid model that combines on-premises and the cloud. This flexibility empowers you to make the best choice for your setup and also helps you avoid vendor lock-in, which can be a problem for public cloud solutions such as Amazon Web Services.
- Power and scalability: IronWorker has the sheer power that open-source solutions like Celery might not be able to give you. The world’s most popular websites, such as HotelTonight, Bleacher Report, and Untapped, use IronWorker for lightning-fast, efficient job processing. Harlow Ward, lead developer at HotelTonight, writes that IronWorker “gives us a quick and easy mechanism for deploying and managing all our Ruby workers. They have excellent dashboards for reporting worker status, giving us great visibility over the current state of our pipeline.”
- User support: IronWorker has excellent support and a gentle learning curve for new users. Our development center is packed with useful information, including training videos and code samples. We also offer “white-glove” support for large enterprises who need an extra hand.
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This is really interesting as i am currently testing and using celery,
i have found this really helpful.