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Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI vs Qlik Sense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

Reporting
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
Available for free and can help businesses resolve their data migration problems
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.
James Balbach - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements
Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.
Vishal_Goyal - PeerSpot reviewer
In-memory data storage boosts performance
The advantages compared to other BI tools show architectural differences. The main feature is that it keeps all the data in memory. It doesn't retrieve the data from data sources when I need it on the dashboard; instead, it quickly provides the desired data, making it very fast compared to other BI tools. The ROI is very high using Qlik Sense. It offers many benefits of BI. It is flexible from a developer's point of view, allowing me to accomplish many tasks compared to other BI tools. From an end-user perspective, it's convenient and performance-oriented, providing something meaningful from all the organization's data.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The ability to design complex data models and equations."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"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 solution is easy to use and flexible."
"The most valuable feature is integration with Python."
"The capability to add custom visuals and create Power BI apps. You can package datasets, synchronization details, and dashboards into a single app."
"It is stable enough. It has a lot of powerful functions. It can also be customized with the DAX language. It is also intuitive enough and incremental. You can start with something simple, and then step-by-step, you can increase the reports and dashboards according to your needs."
"Power BI is more powerful than other tools because it is new for us. Each new version has more capabilities, and we're expecting AI and ML features in the next version."
"We like the drag and drop interactability visualization. We really like that. It's user-friendly."
"PowerBi is used to import our production data and generate dashboards, then integrates other Excel sheets to provide managers dashboards. This helps them get insights to make better OEE improvement decisions, mainly where to focus resources. We became able to see indicators from any time frame (day, week, month, or year), then could make better decisions."
"Provides good data flow related to the container and control flow."
"The data is incredibly easy to share with colleagues."
"The ability to access data from multiple sources in one application. This has been invaluable."
"Qlik Sense provides better visualization."
"Qlik DataMarket"
"It automates recurring processes to save time and money."
"The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies."
"The associative searching and filtering capability is a unique feature among other BI tools, and one does not need to deeply understand the underlying data."
"This tool not only allows for consumption of the data in a visual way, but also allows the user to modify the question to get new answers."
 

Cons

"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"When there are large amounts of data being processed there are additional tools needed to handle it."
"The limitations within Microsoft Power BI include the volume of data it can handle, as there's a cap on the number of rows you can keep. When you pull your data and build your models, you're restricted by this row limit. Additionally, certain SSRS features are deprecated, which can be a drawback for users who rely on those capabilities."
"It needs a wizard that covers all its options."
"The reporting part of Microsoft BI is rather limited compared to other reporting tools."
"There could be an integrated AI that can automatically analyze some of your data and highlight or provide suggestions. For example, when you are looking at a data set, it can suggest putting it into a certain type of chart so that you gain different insights or a trend line. You would almost have templates that it would recommend for you."
"They asked you to pay if you want to synchronize more than eight times, you would have to go to a Power BI enterprise license, which is much more costly."
"The dashboards lack a user-friendly appearance."
"In my opinion, the software is a little bit limited in terms of the flexibility it offers, with regard to the design of the visualization."
"The one thing I would probably try to add is some kind of tutorial since the tool has a lot of options to work with, and for someone who is just starting and does not have any prior experience, it can be a little overwhelming."
"I would like to more easily themed environments."
"The QMC needs more work. Some of the features should be available directly from the hub. Too many duplicates/publish. Intelli-sense when loading a stored qvd would help so much with remembering column names. The pop-up windows are too small when working in the QMC."
"The SaaS offering is being enriched quickly in order to attract new customers to that space and encouraging existing customers to make the switch. The Enterprise solution is therefore lagging behind SaaS in features."
"There is no downside."
"Error handling is an area that needs to be improved."
"It would be nice to have more native features from QlikView built into Qlik Sense."
"I would like to see more types of visual elements and better configuration options for additional flexibility when developing charts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is available for free."
"The tool is free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"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."
"Pricing is a big advantage that Power BI has over Tableau. Power BI is three or four times cheaper than Tableau. For my personal use, I will definitely prefer a $20 monthly fee of Power BI rather than a $70 monthly fee of Tableau. If you pay altogether for Power BI, they give you a discount, whereas, with Tableau, there is no discount. There are three versions of Power BI: Free, Pro, and Premium. The Premium version comes with a lot of things. There is no extra or hidden fee. You pay every month, and the software is with you. If you upgrade, there will be some extra charges."
"I believe that the price is reasonable, at least for an enterprise solution."
"It is free."
"Costs less than most competing solutions."
"Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."
"While Power BI is generally a paid product, particularly for enterprise features and scalability, you can start with the free version and still achieve significant functionality."
"Microsoft BI requires licenses."
"We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair."
"Currently, our ROI is clear and concise decision-making. This timely addition will easily add $15 million to our bottom line in 2017."
"It is a little expensive for the Italian market. Normally, Qlik Sense has two types and costs. The medium cost is around 700 euros per year."
"The solution is worth it."
"The costs can initially become quite high. Make sure you have a clear understanding of who will truly use the product as opposed to someone that will simply receive the end report."
"Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average."
"The license mechanism of Qlik is quite complicated and not exchangeable. Such as 2016, they charge licenses by token, 1500$ for a token / 1 user. 2018: they change to 2 kinds of licenses: professional 1500$ / user, analyzer 800$ / user. 2019: they support subscription with 70$ Monthly for professional, 40$ monthly for analyzers, but for those you’re using perpetual licenses, they don't support acquiring more subscription licenses. The maintenance fee yearly are also high, 20% of the perpetual license."
"Start small with tokens. You can always buy more."
"Qlik Sense and its pricing model can follow any scalability."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Retailer
8%
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
Educational Organization
60%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?
The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. W...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection. Currently, changes in Google Sheets tak...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
I use Looker Studio primarily for dashboard creation and data analytics. I have integrated it with Google Sheets, and...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
What do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qlik Sense?
Costs depend on the deal. They offer various licensing metrics based on our needs. For small or large organizations n...
 

Also Known As

Data Studio
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
QlikSense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
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