Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Looker Studio vs MicroStrategy 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Looker Studio
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (8th)
MicroStrategy
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th), Embedded BI (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Looker Studio is designed for Reporting and holds a mindshare of 3.0%, up 2.4% compared to last year.
MicroStrategy, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 2.1% mindshare, down 3.5% since last year.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Looker Studio3.0%
Microsoft Power BI24.3%
Tableau Enterprise20.6%
Other52.099999999999994%
Reporting
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
MicroStrategy2.1%
Microsoft Power BI14.5%
Tableau Enterprise11.0%
Other72.4%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Vijay Subramanyam - PeerSpot reviewer
The ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing
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.
AJIN S L - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience has shown effective features for analysis, but needs interface improvements
The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis are those that cater to user needs. However, I find Power BI to be more useful when comparing some features, but my company does not choose Power BI due to certain code restrictions. The MicroStrategy interface is not as good as Power BI, especially concerning the user-friendly aspects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"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."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"We have ramped up user adoption."
"The most important feature is the way it handles ad hoc queries and provides formatted reports."
"Technical support has sent us to rapid response before, when we really needed them."
"With all the APIs it's very scalable."
"​Visual Insight gives you the capability of doing self-service analytics. This has been the most powerful and valuable feature.​"
"The platform can be easily monitored. You have quite a good overview of tasks which are being run."
"Has a great semantic layer."
"This solution is the most scalable BI platform in the world."
 

Cons

"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"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."
"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."
"We would like access to more storage and access to more metadata to build the right programs that can construct all the stuff for us instead of us having to type it in all the time."
"The web developer tool for documents creation does not have all the features of the client version"
"This solution is missing enhanced features in the dashboards."
"One of the things that I want to see MicroStrategy do is become more cloud native. Right now, the deployment on cloud is very easy to ruin, it is very much like spinning up separate VMs."
"The In-Memory Capability (cubes) needs a lot of improvement."
"Training would be an area that they could improve upon."
"It crashes multiple times for even small changes that I make on the fly in the dashboard. After doing all the necessary changes, the MicroStrategy desktop or even the web version kicks the users out, and all the changes are lost. This functionality is buggy in MicroStrategy. It is hard to keep track of all the changes that I have done before. I don't want to make copies of each change that I have made because I would end up creating a hundred dashboards. It is not feasible in a real environment. I haven't worked on integrating MicroStrategy with the cloud. I am not sure how it behaves in the cloud, but I have heard from a few of my friends that there are some hiccups when you kind of sync to the cloud through MicroStrategy."
"The learning curve is quite steep."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is available for free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"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."
"The tool is free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"Now, the price is high."
"We are waiting to switch to Microsoft Power BI because MicroStrategy is too costly."
"We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us.​"
"There is no subscription, I am using the free version."
"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."
"They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools."
"They need to work on their license structure. They are not competitive against somebody like SAP BusinessObjects. We had a quote that was almost a third the price, coming from SAP BusinessObjects, and it's not a better platform. It's not cheaper. They do concurrent user licensing, while MicroStrategy does named user licensing, and that was literally the only difference. But it made a $500,000 difference. They've got to do something to make themselves more competitive. Maybe it's assessing your business users and what you really expect them to use, and maybe giving a reduced price on that. But they are already giving us a 60% discount and they were still a million or so above, over a three-year time period. That doesn't account for synergies as we get from on-site resources that are already available, but I thought that that was a big, big deficit for them."
"The pricing list itself is not publicly accessible, so it's a bit opaque."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise99
 

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. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
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 u...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
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 techni...
What do you like most about MicroStrategy?
The stability of the product is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?
For larger businesses, I think the pricing is logical, but for smaller companies, it can be a bit costly.
What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?
Areas of MicroStrategy that have room for improvement include pricing because it is costly. Organizations that are well-established and have more money can afford MicroStrategy, but startups and mi...
 

Also Known As

Data Studio
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha
Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. MicroStrategy and other solutions. Updated: February 2023.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.