Looker Studio vs. Sisense for Cloud Data Teams

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Looker Studio
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Looker Studio is a data visualization platform that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.
$9
per month per user per project
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
Score 6.5 out of 10
N/A
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams (formerly Periscope Data) is a data visualization tool that allows users to connect to their SQL databases to create sharable, interactive dashboards. In addition to SQL, its analytics integrate with R and Python, allowing users to prep datasets, perform analysis, and create their own visualizations. Sisense acquired Periscope Data in mid-2019.N/A
Pricing
Looker StudioSisense for Cloud Data Teams
Editions & Modules
Looker Studio Pro
$9
per month per user per project
Looker Studio
No charge
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Looker StudioSisense for Cloud Data Teams
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Looker StudioSisense for Cloud Data Teams
Features
Looker StudioSisense for Cloud Data Teams
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
8.0
Ratings
5% below category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
9.2
Ratings
9% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.50 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.40 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.6
Ratings
5% below category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
8.8
Ratings
10% above category average
Drill-down analysis9.50 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages3.90 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.90 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
8.2
Ratings
3% below category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
9.6
Ratings
13% above category average
Publish to Web7.50 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.40 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Report Versioning8.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling7.40 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.80 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.1
Ratings
14% below category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
8.7
Ratings
7% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.50 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization9.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Predictive Analytics5.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
User Ratings
Looker StudioSisense for Cloud Data Teams
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.7
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Looker StudioSisense for Cloud Data Teams
Likelihood to Recommend
Does great at open canvas editing and letting you fully customize without the need for a grid. It is democratizing self-service no-code analytics. You do not need to be a data or analytics engineer to get started, and you can go very far based on how intuitive and straightforward the UI is. Some of the biggest challenges with Looker Studio relate to user management/security, embedding options, and issue support. For a long time, every user needed to have a Gmail to invite them to view a dashboard via login, not sure if that has been improved yet. You can let any user view without logging in, but that is not always recommended due to security reasons. In terms of embedding, you can only iframe dashboards. More sophisticated BI tools let you embed elements via API or Javascript. Iframing dashboards also make drill downs and dashboard to dashboard navigation tricky/near impossible. There is also no ability to contact Google for support when bugs or outages happen. They point everyone to the Data Studio community. There is some ability to get in contact with Google if you have an enterprise-level contract with Google Cloud, but the path for support is very ad hoc and not always fruitful.
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Sisense for Cloud Data Teams is suited so well for our project that works with lots of data and needs some ways to share data internally or externally with our clients. It's very easy to pull out the data from the sense in best and in a suitable format and moreover a huge number of options are available there to represent the data. All features of this Sisense for cloud data teams software can be taken advantage of if you have a team who are well versed in data analytics, data management, and programming.
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Pros
  • Self-service
  • Easy to use, point and click
  • Little to no training required
  • Easy to share internally and externally
  • Rich visualizations
  • Canned reports
  • Easy to copy/paste/dupe existing reports
  • Ability to join data sets
  • Easy integration with various data sources
  • Flexible data integrations, including lowest common denominator (CSV, XLS, G-Sheets)
  • Wide range of APIs
  • Secure / authentication via Google SSO
  • Easy to share / re-assign ownership of reports and data sources
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  • Rapid deployment of polished T-SQL-based data visualization charts and dashboards. Periscope supports a variety of database technologies, and allows users to write custom queries to display data.
  • Included caching to reduce server load.
  • Outstanding customer service/support, with expert advice as needed.
  • Constant updates and new features.
  • Built-in SQL formatters take the pain out of manipulating date/time objects.
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Cons
  • Few functionalities are very exclusive only for data studio.
  • It's time taking to load data and at the same time only single Data source can be connected.
  • When editing the reports you have to switch between Edit and View mode to see how does the change looks like.
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  • Some of the dashboards can be slow to load; especially when they have lots of features and widgets.
  • The software could be made a little easier for people that don't have a data or programming background.
  • It is pricey so not a great option for small companies or research/home projects.
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Likelihood to Renew
It is the simplest and least expensive way for us to automate our reporting at this time. I like the ability to customize literally everything about each report, and the ability to send out reports automatically in emails. The only issue we have been having recently is a technical glitch in the automatic email report. Sadly, there is almost no support for this tool from Google, but is also free, so that is important to take into consideration
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No answers on this topic
Usability
It is not ideal and requires time and dedication to understand how to work with it. Also, it has a lot of limitations around data it can accept. But in most cases, this tool is sufficient for everyday tasks of product and marketing departments. I wouldn't say that the interface is very user-friendly, but for people who regularly work with analytical tools, it must be ok.
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My company has had Periscope for various use cases in the past and I think that this program opens up complex data reports to non-technical people in a really accessible way (even though the learning curve is a big one). We are now integrating Sisense for Cloud Data Teams at a larger level both for internal data exploration and for customer facing dashboards and reports.
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Support Rating
I give it a lower support rating because it seems like our Dev team hasn't gotten the support they need to set up our database to connect. Seems like we hit a roadblock and the project got put on pause for dev. That sucks for me because it is harder to get the dev team to focus on it if they don't get the help they need to set it up.
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The user interface is just amazing and it's really very easy to use and navigate, even for a newbie. Mostly it provides us the accurate data.
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Alternatives Considered
Looker Studio is far easier to implement, stand up, and learn. The interface is simpler and user-friendly for various levels of data visualization/analysis knowledge and experience. The biggest benefit of Looker Studio, however, is its ease of connection to GA data and speed. Furthermore, since it is an online program/tool, it requires less CPU/battery/storage on the user's device.
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Periscope is far more robust than these two similar products. For a start up just getting going they are fine alternatives, but as your business scales Google Charts becomes a hassle to manage and Keap becomes too much of a generalized product. While your business increases it is generally best to get multiple specialized pieces of technology to help you maintain integrity in your data, and Periscope Data allows. Worth the money.
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Return on Investment
  • Free, so the only investment is time
  • Because it doesn't have native support of non-Google sources, it can cost more money than Tableau
  • The time spent formatting the templates or building connectors can have a negative impact on ROI
  • As a agency, charging for the reporting service is profitable after the first month or two after building the dashboard.
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  • Very positive - has allowed us to glean insights quickly and in real time.
  • Definitely helpful for evaluating performance of accounts and employees.
  • Versatile - we even use it with recruiting metrics, our software team uses it to test feature deployment.
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ScreenShots