Looker Studio Reviews

I was using Looker Studio for dashboarding for a project at work; that is the use case.

The fact that Looker Studio is free and has a free tier was probably the biggest benefit. It is very accessible and not too difficult to use. It was pretty simple, easy to use, and easy to learn.

It took me a day or two to get the ropes with Looker Studio.

I utilized the data visualization tools.

It was beneficial in that it improved my decision-making processes and benefited many aspects.

I used the collaboration features, and they helped enhance teamwork because I shared a dashboard with another person.

We integrated Looker Studio with other platforms in our data ecosystem; we tried integrating with Sheets, and that went okay, but it could have been better.

It could have been better because it needed a very specific format to read the data, so we had to reformat the sheet file.

Looker Studio was mostly just helpful in that it provided live updating charts for tracking performance indicators in the organization.

Integrating with a database was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of feedback for what was going wrong with the connection.

I don't remember if we reached out to support. I didn't personally reach out, but my boss may have.

I didn't reach out to support, so I do not have experience with it to rate it.

We worked with the free version of Looker Studio initially, and we upgraded at some point to the pro version; I don't remember if we actually paid for it or if it was just a free trial. The pricing was reasonable. I remember doing a price comparison, and it was pretty reasonable, but it did have fewer features than a lot of other software, which was okay for a comparable price but a little cheaper.

I first used Looker Studio approximately three months ago.

Looker Studio automatically updates, so there are no updates we need to implement on our end.

I would rate the stability of Looker Studio at eight or nine; it was very good, and we didn't experience downtime, bugs, glitches, or errors.

Looker Studio did not fit our needs for scalability.

I would rate it at four regarding scalability.

We were looking into making different versions of the same general dashboard for different buildings within a school district or different schools within a school district. This was very challenging for multiple reasons because each dashboard had to be made individually, had no connection, and the artifacts had to be manually updated for each one of them. There was not a good way to do any of that on a large scale.

We also used Zoho Analytics, which I personally thought was better; it was definitely more visually appealing and had more robust support, with more options for navigation. They had AI options for forecasting, which were interesting to me.

I would recommend Looker Studio to other users, more so to small businesses and small users, especially individuals just starting out with dashboarding.

I would rate Looker Studio overall at seven out of ten.

We are just a customer; we are just an end-user and not a partner or a reseller.

I would absolutely be interested in being a reference for the vendor and would be happy to work with them further.

It is totally fine if the vendor reaches out to me about my review or any comments.

I used Looker Studio mainly for reporting, where I created multiple dashboards on it. I wouldn't say I made the most of the usage of the connections because all the connections were based on flat files and Excel sheets. I did some joining and data modeling, but it wasn't much from the data perspective; mostly it was the reporting.

I mostly used Looker Studio for visualizing sales dashboards, such as the whole sales funnel, starting from leads, conversion to opportunities, opportunities metrics, touched, untouched, follow-up cadence, and then moving forward to how many were closed won, how many were closed lost, and closed lost reasons. This was essentially reporting on the sales funnel.

What I appreciate about Looker Studio is mostly the clean visuals, which is good, as I prefer a dashboard with a clean aesthetic rather than feeling sort of an old Windows type of dashboard. I think the best part about it is the pages and how you structure things. It's very different than Power BI; Power BI is more about providing a dashboard, whereas Looker Studio made me feel you're providing a website or a user interface.

Looker Studio specifically shows me where the areas of improvements are, who the top performers are, who the low performers are, and what pattern they're following to be where they are right now.

I think Looker Studio is efficient, especially because the whole Google Workspace is much more efficient, fast, and takes way less processing time and operating time than Microsoft, for example, and this applies to Looker Studio as well.

I would appreciate improvements in the data modeling features, as it's not straightforward, and it's not what people in analytics are used to. Specifically, most people using this visualization tool will be modeling the data relationally, and it gets quite hard to model it relationally, such as finding where to add the relationships or how the joins work or the multiple join feature; it gets really confusing.

I don't remember specific missing features in Looker Studio that I would want to see included in the next releases, but I remember I needed some additional functionality while using it. If I open the old project within the next week, I'll remember and share those details on LinkedIn if possible.

I have been working with Looker Studio for maybe two or three months.

I haven't used the real-time analytics in Looker Studio. Everything was fine with Looker Studio.

I escalated questions to Google, but not regarding Looker Studio. I did escalate multiple times regarding Google Sheets, and we got a response.

Neutral

In comparison to Zoho Analytics, Power BI takes a considerable amount of time, but Power BI is very solid in terms of the data modeling part. I use Power BI currently, and I have the most experience with it out of the three visualization tools. It's very solid; the data modeling and dimensional modeling features in Power BI are very solid, and the bookmarks part in Power BI gives you the flexibility of making or trying to make the dashboard more user-friendly.

The initial setup of Looker Studio was very straightforward.

I confirm that we have a call regarding my experience with Zoho.

Looker Studio is a good visualization tool, but I wouldn't say there's a specific feature that stands out in terms of tracking metrics.

I don't know anything about the pricing or cost of Looker Studio, as I was using an organization account.

I think anyone working with Google Workspace should definitely use Looker Studio, as many people using Google Workspace either export the files to a more well-known visualization tool, especially if there are mixed environments within the organization, or they just use the charts on Google Sheets, which I do not recommend. Google Sheets will always be Google Sheets, so every organization needs a good visualization tool to communicate data in a simpler way, so decision making could be done easily.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate Looker Studio a 7.

We use Looker and Looker Studio, as Looker licenses Looker Studio for data presentation and reporting.

With GCP, we use Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Kubernetes, and we utilize BigQuery extensively.

We embed Looker Studio views in our web apps to present the visuals from analytics to our customers. We also use Tableau and Flexmonster for that purpose, and our flagship product launching this year heavily depends on Looker Studio for the visuals.

Google Transfer Appliance is something I'm aware of.

We have some use of Vertex AI from our data science team for forecasting and processing.

We received a very aggressive deal with Looker Studio prices, which is a major point that allows access to all our customer base. Some people may be divided on Looker Studio's capabilities for visuals compared to Tableau, but Looker Studio has a strong point in data integration, especially with BigQuery, to provide developers with ways to deliver complex visuals and extraction into applications.

I hope the Gemini integration with Looker Studio will be beneficial, but I don't have clear information about it yet.

While Tableau has pre-built boards, Looker Studio is making that gap shorter over time and provides developers enough tools and templates for easy use. We're starting to use Looker Studio for internal analytics information to build monitoring in-house portals around Looker Studio for presenting dashboards related to monitoring we do over the platform. It's very flexible and integrates seamlessly with BigQuery and other data sources.

From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio. I can ask our designers how they feel since they have experience with different products such as Tableau and Flexmonster.

Looker Studio and Tableau are head to head. However, tools such as Mondrian or Flexmonster target those who cannot afford other tools. The richness of options in visuals and analytics designs with Tableau or Looker Studio cannot be compared to those. Looker Studio has a high point in the data integration layer compared to others.

I have one year of experience working with GCP, which includes working with Google solutions and a year with the Transfer Appliance.

We have very good support from Google; we go through a local partner in Chile, and we have monthly meetings with Google people that help us improve the use of their services.

I would rate Google support as exceptional because they provide very good support.

Positive

We are not using anything similar to Google Transfer Appliance for data migration. We move heavy databases we had running on AWS, such as Vertica from OpenText, by ourselves without any migration services for the data transfers from one cloud to the other.

The pricing depends on the deal you manage; the strategy of all cloud providers is to offer discounts in the first years. Beyond the vendor lock-in threshold, you can still get good deals, but they may not be exceptional. I experienced moving things from AWS to GCP, and prices cost the same once discount options are applied; the difference may be in the services themselves.

We license Tableau directly from a local provider in Mexico, not through AWS or GCP. Our policy is bring your own license, or BYOL, since we buy our licenses from a local provider mainly used by the Mexico branch.

We didn't buy Tableau through the AWS Marketplace and weren't aware that we could purchase it that way.

We have been using Tableau already when I joined the company and had a local provider for licenses, so we were accustomed to renewing them over the years without looking at the Marketplace.

I wouldn't dare to give an opinion on valuable features with Vertex AI because I have no direct experience, but I can connect you with some of the data science team members who work with that.

My team has more experience with Looker Studio and BigQuery.

Since I am in Spain and work on the Latin American schedule, I currently have plenty of time to talk even outside of working hours. I appreciate your patience in reaching out to me until I had the time to speak.

We are customers and do not resell any Google product.

I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten.

Regarding the product, I was doing research for a client in the LMS industry. I was seeing what else was out there and why certain things were pulling for certain reasons. I wouldn't say I'm technically an expert in LMS solutions.

Typically, Looker Studio is used to put together reports in terms of traffic to the site, conversions, and similar metrics.

The best features of Looker Studio are the fact that it's a Google tool, so it plugs into the Google suite of products such as Analytics, Tag Manager, and different tools. This makes it an all-in-one solution.

Looker Studio tools do a good job in benefiting my decision-making process. I wish it was more intuitive and not so glitchy.

User engagement metrics from Looker Studio have been the most valuable for tracking performance indicators, including sessions, users, bounce rates, engagement rates, time on site, event tracking for clicking behavior, conversion tracking, and acquisition and channel performance to see which channels are performing best.

We are aware that there are areas in Looker Studio that could be improved. Out of the box, if you don't utilize a template or create a template, which can take significant time, it's not the most user-friendly from an interface perspective. You have to do substantial doctoring to make it easy for people who aren't using it daily to understand.

While Looker Studio has different APIs which are beneficial, there are some limitations with advertising systems integration. You have to download spreadsheets and it's not as real-time as desired.

I would rate Google's support or their customer service about a six. It appears Google has numerous priorities at present.

Areas where Google could improve their customer support include the difficulty in getting in touch with them, and when contact is made, it's not always with the appropriate person. There are many hoops to jump through, which can lead to frustration, causing people to either try solving issues independently or switch to different systems.

Neutral

The initial setup of Looker Studio isn't difficult, but it requires significant time as everything needs manual configuration. When working with a creative team, ensuring style guidelines are met can be time-consuming.

The deployment of Looker Studio involves an analytics team, a creative team, a UX team, and a strategy team.

Many of our clients prefer Looker Studio, so we've definitely been able to recover our investments. It's more of a time versus money situation. We need to communicate extensively with our clients about the effort required for setting up these systems.

As part of the Google Suite, much of Looker Studio is free, but we have invested in templates and integrations. The costs are relatively low, though to get a better experience, some investment is necessary.

We frequently use the collaboration features in Looker Studio via sharing capabilities.

A small team is sufficient to deploy Looker Studio.

On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates a 6.

We are using Looker primarily for visualization to analyze e-commerce industry's analytic reports. We use it to track orders per ZIP code and sales based on quantity, stocks, and revenue. The tool also helps with marketing analysis and capturing metrics during promotional sales.

Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing. The seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets and custom filter creation features facilitate detailed trend reports and analysis. Looker has significantly improved productivity by reducing the time spent on creating summary reports from weeks to a day.

The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users. The initial report loading takes time and affects user's perception of the tool's efficiency.

I have been working with Looker for three years now.

Looker is stable as it doesn't throw HTTP errors or have database connection issues. However, it takes a bit of time when applying new filters, which impacts response time.

Currently, with about forty to fifty concurrent users, we haven't faced any performance issues. However, I cannot rate scalability for 3,000 to 4,000 users due to lack of experience. For our usage, I would rate it as a six out of ten.

We used an in-house tool similar to Redash, running on a Postgres database before Looker. It lacked the intuitive interface and visualization capabilities needed, which prompted the switch.

The initial setup was relatively easy, with a nontechnical user capable of navigating and creating reports. It's simple. I would rate it eight out of ten. It was designed in a user-friendly manner.

A team of four people is responsible for maintaining Looker. There are multiple developers and users involved in developing and using reports.

Although not quantified in cost savings, Looker has improved our productivity significantly by reducing report preparation time through easy summarization and visualization capability.

As I'm part of the technical team, I have no involvement with pricing decisions or licensing information.

We considered solutions like Apache Superset and other visualization tools. Looker's ease of use and its ability to become an enterprise tool influenced the decision.

I would give Looker Studio an overall rating of eight out of ten. 

Its ease of use and visualization features are commendable, although Google should focus on improving performance.

The solution is a visualization tool that helps to make dashboards. 

The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn.

The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted.

I have been using the product for five years. 

The tool has some bugs and doesn't always work properly. Sometimes, your dashboard doesn't update, or errors and bugs occur. This doesn't happen often, but it does happen occasionally.

In my company, we use it just for our team, which is about 10-20 people. It's helpful when part of your team works remotely because you can create a dashboard and share it among your team members.

Support directs you to a forum dedicated to this topic. You post your issue there, and after some time, someone might answer. It's similar to GitHub, where you post your issues and await a response.

You don't need to install or deploy Google Data Studio because it runs on Google Cloud. You connect to your data source using this tool, similar to accessing a website. Once you sign in, you can connect to various sources like Google Analytics, BigQuery, and other cloud-based solutions. However, your connections need to be internet-based. You can't use this tool if you have a database without an internet connection or limited internet access.

I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues.

If you want to use Google Data Studio for the first time, my recommendation is simple: don't consider it a professional tool. It is a good solution for making something easy and fast. I rate the overall product a six out of ten. If you want data easily with your team but don't need sophisticated analysis, then it is a good solution. 

Azure is a competitor of Google. My company has software from SAP running on an Azure infrastructure. SAP's data is stored in Azure DB. The infrastructure runs on Azure, and the data is stored in Azure DB. Then, my company bought a reporting solution from Google. Google's reporting solution connects to Azure DB, extracts the data, and does the visualization on Looker Studio, which is why I am familiar with GCP and Azure's cloud services.

Google uses two products for analytics. I am not talking about Google Analytics, which is an absolutely different tool, and it is used to do something with the calculations on websites. I use Google's tools for data analytics.

Google Data Studio is an excellent product and is doing very well in the market. I like Google Data Studio. When you buy Google Data Studio and see that it provides excellent features, there is no scope to complain about anything. I have come across no other products in the market that offer a tool like Google Data Studio.

The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required.

I have been using Google Data Studio for six months.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Google Data Studio is a cloud-based tool. With cloud-based tools, there can be two challenges, the first one being associated with the bandwidth of your data strength. If I run a report from my home because of the wi-fi connection, it may give an excellent response. When I run the reports, Google Data Studio develops reports from my home, and because of wi-fi, it works in an excellent manner. When I am on the road or at the wheel, if I use the internet data from my mobile to browse my reports, the performance may not be good, and this issue is not because of the product but because of the bandwidth. The second issue arises when you connect Google Data Studio to a source system to extract the data to do the visualization. If the source system is not responding as quickly as expected, it could be the reason why the report may be printed slowly. Considering the aforementioned aspects, the problem may not be because of Google Data Studio but because of the source system.

Google Data Studio is a cloud-based product, so there is no limitation when it comes to the scalability option. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Google Data Studio is a cloud-based product, so there are no limitations when it comes to the scalability option. The challenges associated with the product are related to the source system. It is not possible to improve the source system. With the source system, if you upload an Excel file, the refreshment part takes ten minutes between the previous one and the new one that is uploaded, and then your report takes ten minutes to print.

Google Data Studio is used by only two or three people in my company to design the reports, but at least one thousand people consume the reports.

The solution's technical support team is available when you buy the software. Without buying the software, the technical support team is not available.

The product's initial setup phase is very simple.

The product is available for free.

I am not familiar with whether the product can enhance our company's data security and management. All I do is do data analytics from Google's side, which connects to Azure DB.

The analytics capabilities impacted our company's data-driven decisions in an amazing way.

When it comes to analytics, Google offers products such as Google Data Studio, Looker Studio, and LookML. Google Data Studio is the one used to design products and is available to users for free, so anybody can use it. LookML is a licensed tool and is quite expensive, but it is still good for organizations. LookML connects to any platform, no matter how complex it is, and it includes tools like Azure or SAP. LookML connects nicely with other platforms, and it allows you to join multiple tables, extract the data, and then do the modeling aggregation.

Google offers a very big version to users. Google's analytic tools have two products, Google Data Studio and LookML, where ML stands for machine learning, and both are two different products. Google Data Studio is Google's in-house product. LookML is a Looker tool, a successful analytics tool in the market. Google bought Looker Studio and rebranded it as Google LookML. Google Data Studio is a product that interacts with LookML, and it is a free tool. You and I can access Google Data Studio free of cost, but for LookML, you need to pay some money.

In terms of integration capabilities, Google Data Studio comes out with hundreds of connectors, but if you are a free user, then you may not get the benefit of using all the connectors. When you buy LookML, you may get a lot more connectors.

Though I recommend that others use the product, I suggest that they pay attention to the tool's security.

In terms of the support offered by the product in areas like AI and machine learning projects, I would say that Google Data Studio plans to come out with GenAI by December. If you enable the GenAI, then the system will do the visualization as per your questions. The aforementioned plan was included in the Google Data Studio roadmap, but I haven't seen it implemented yet.

I tried to use the product with three people, and whenever they made any report, I collaborated with them online, and I helped them build it.

The benefits derived by my company from using the solution revolve around the fact that the tool changed how the data migration was working because earlier, there were no proper error alerts in there. Using Google Data Studio, my company changed the way people were working with data migration. Okay. I would say this way. Yeah. Earlier, there was only one step in data migration. When someone used to run the data migration, they figured out that there were around 200 errors. When our company introduced Google Data Studio, it was able to identify the number of errors in the data before it went to the real system.

I rate the tool an eight to nine out of ten.

My company detects scams and fraud, and we use Google Data Studio for data visualization. Several areas of the company use Data Studio, including finance, operations, and sales.

Data Studio's cloud environment makes it easier to use large volumes of data and collaborate with coworkers. Of course, Microsoft Office 365 has online versions of its tools, but Google Cloud is better for collaboration. People can develop the views in the tools and share data faster.

Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like.

When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements. 

I've been using Google Data Studio for two months. My company is in the middle of switching its products from from Microsoft to Google, so we've only begun using this product.

Data Studio is reliable. We've never had any problems with stability.

Data Studio is easy to scale. I work for a massive company with more than 12,000 workers there. I go to some meetings with different areas of the company and everybody is doing showcases with the tool. It's easy to work with various amounts of data, and we are looking forward to using it for a long time.

We previously used Microsoft Power BI, but Google is better. Microsoft is losing its grip on the market, and now Google is the best solution. With the pandemic, more people are working from home, and Google has an advantage in online solutions.

I rate Data Studio six out of 10 for ease of setup. I'm a user, not a developer, but it took one or two months because of the migration the company did. 

We deployed Data Studio with an in-house team.

We looked at Tableau, but It's more complex and confusing. You need to buy some courses from them, and it's costly. It's closed, so it's challenging to find some solutions online that can help you to understand the tool. 

I rate Google Data Studio eight out of 10. I recommend it.

We use Google Data Studio to track company KPIs, create the company dashboard, and generate sales reports to compare sales over time.

The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, allowing us to compare revenues. Additionally, we use other relevant APIs

Google Data Studio allows you to set up notifications for dashboard changes, so you don't have to adjust the fields each time manually there's a modification.

We connected it to BigQuery tables. However, sometimes, it was slow, mainly when the tables contained a large amount of data. We constantly refreshed it every 3 hours to provide real-time data.

I have been using Google Data Studio for 2 years.

The product is stable.

Eighteen users are using this solution.

I rate the solution’s scalability a five out of ten.

Sometimes, we faced issues and contacted them via email, but their response time wasn't very good. The customer service was not particularly fast. Most of the time, the agents could resolve any issues we had.

Neutral

Google Data Studio offers a variety of features, making it much more flexible. It's not as limited as some other platforms. You can create complex visualizations and add custom elements easily. However, compared to alternatives like Tableau, it may have more restrictions regarding data series. Tableau is less user-friendly for business. Both tools have their pros and cons.

The initial setup is straightforward for the business people.

It is easy to learn and become proficient in Google Data Studio. I had prior experience with Tableau, so I watched a few YouTube tutorials to familiarize myself with Data Studio. Transitioning from one BI tool to another was relatively easy.

I recommend Google Data Studio primarily because it's free. It's a great starting point for creating visualizations and exploring data without cost. Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base. Google Data Studio is free, making it accessible for anyone to start using and experimenting with.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

By integrating Data Studio into our services, we not only provide added value to our existing customers but also ensure stability in traffic and minimize the cost of sales. This strategic move allows us to capitalize on the opportunities presented by an installed base of customers, offering them an easily accessible and robust business intelligence solution. This proves advantageous, especially for smaller and medium-sized businesses within our clientele.

I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility. For instance, it allows you to click on a bar chart and refresh the connected pivot table or data table. This functionality is quite convenient compared to other handcrafted solutions where you might need to implement it manually.

The potential challenge, especially when considering a larger user base, is that the expenses can significantly add up. There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size. It could potentially incorporate more functions in the future. Another point worth mentioning is related to graphing. When you have a large dataset, say a thousand customers, the bar chart might display only the first fifty or a hundred entries, making it less user-friendly for horizontal scrolling. Ideally, it would be more intuitive to scroll all the way to the right to view the last entries.

I have been using it for two weeks.

In terms of stability, I find it to be quite solid.

I believe it should be highly scalable. I don't see any limitations on usage from that perspective. Of course, you need to set up individual dashboards for each user or ensure that all users are appropriately configured with authentication and related settings. The goal is to scale up to a few hundred to potentially one thousand users.

I find it valuable, but there is a significant difference in the level of detail and assistance provided locally, especially in Italy. The observation is that Amazon's local technical support is more hands-on and detailed in configuring solutions, possibly due to the historical lack of IT professionals in Italy.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Deployment has been straightforward, and I think anyone with basic skills can use it effectively within half an hour by following examples. I've had no major issues, and it serves as a central visualization tool. It can be completed in ten minutes.

The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis.

I would recommend spending around a week exploring and familiarizing yourself with the various data types and templates available. A half-day of hands-on experience should give you a good understanding of the platform. Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.