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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

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.
Shoury Priyanshu - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal
Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.
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 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."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility, how many ways you can interrogate the data, and the the graphical visualization."
"Microsoft B's beneficial features are that it is a Microsoft product and it is well known by the staff here in the company. It suited the available skills."
"Many of my customers already use Microsoft products like Office 365, so I often propose Microsoft Power BI because it integrates well with all the standard Microsoft business tools. And it's the quickest tool to implement and start using daily."
"Microsoft BI is easy to use and to design. I found Microsoft BI a lot easier than Tableau."
"Helped identify bad data, enabling the corrections needed to the data for management."
"The scalability is good. We have 20 people in my organization using this solution and plan to increase usage."
"It provides easy integration with Office tools."
"What I liked most about the tool is that we can use text queries to create projects and modify columns according to our needs. There are hundreds of YouTube courses on how to use it."
"The solution offers good performance."
"Qlik Sense is much more user-friendly and easier to read then QlikView."
"It connects very simply​ to data sources."
"All the necessary information is available to everyone in real time."
"The product has many great features like easy and fast implementation, flexible data loading, and in-memory processing, but the Set Analysis is what I think is the most valuable. It makes the product very powerful."
"The flexibility of a non-IT developed solution allows for fast to market solutions."
"It is extremely clean to view, easy to use, and intuitive to develop with. There are a host of online resources to provide assistance to new users."
"The most valuable feature is the user experience."
 

Cons

"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"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."
"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"I would like to see a change in the premium capacity."
"The real-time data refresh capabilities is one of the things I had issues with"
"The product’s on-premise reporting servers could support real-time data refreshing capabilities like its on-cloud version."
"It would be nice to use other connectors to link with the data."
"There is room for improvement in terms of pricing for the solution."
"The orchestration module for refreshing data flows is something that is missing and we have to do it manually."
"In an upcoming release, the solution could be simplified and have a more complete product package rather than a suite of products that we have to put together."
"We would like it if they added more Python libraries in the Power BI service. For Power BI service right now, you can use Python, but it is limited to a few libraries or a few packages from Python."
"Reload failure alerts on the application within the Qlik Management Console without any use of extensions. QlikView is able to handle these alerts directly through the QlikView Management Console. We would appreciate a similar solution that is easy to set up and use. Simple formatting options in the pivot and straight tables such as adjusting line thickness and font selection and size."
"More focus needs to be on data streaming/real-time data reporting."
"I would like to see more native features from QlikView integrated into Qlik Sense."
"Right now, it is complex and you have to understand the data model prior to analyzing it, so basically I would like to see an integration with Excel in the future."
"They need to keep it as simple as possible but include as much advanced functionality as possible by positioning all the objects on the page, changing colors for all the objects, improving sheets actions, etc."
"Possibly offering some more basic, simpler templates."
"I would like to more easily themed environments."
"Technical support requires improvement. I would rate it around three out of ten. Basically, I think they lack in the support system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"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."
"I would advise that Microsoft BI products are rightly priced and the licensing is easy to follow and to fulfill."
"The premium licensing is approximately $5,000 per month which is pretty expensive."
"If it has to be applied on the cloud, then it costs around $10 per month per user. For a pro license and for a premium license it's around $20 per month per user. If it has to be applied on-premises then, depending on the course of your server, you have to buy a software assurance version of the database."
"No comment on pricing."
"The solution's costs are quite reasonable given the range of features provided."
"Microsoft BI is very cost-effective and this is why we use it."
"The cost of this product is very low, at approximately $8 or $9 per month for a developer."
"I'm unsure about the exact cost, but the Pro license comes out to around $10 per user. There are also additional costs for custom visuals that you can pay for."
"You need to pay 5,000 Norwegian kroner per user. Microsoft Power BI is slightly more expensive than Qlik Sense."
"The license mechanism of Qlik is quite complicated and not exchangeable. Such as 2016, they charge licenses by token, 1500$ 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."
"I would rate Qlik's pricing four out of five."
"Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average."
"Qlik Sense is pretty good in terms of price."
"I'm not able to reveal the licensing cost for Qlik Sense, but because it was a huge deal, the cost was less than the usual cost. The license wasn't that costly. It was the infrastructure that was very costly."
"Qlik Sense pricing and licensing is like that of QlikView. It's on the high side for a small company, but it’s competitive among its peers. Use of licenses (referred to as tokens) is a bit confusing. There is a login access pass for infrequent or anonymous access."
"You will spend more time on educating your staff than licensing the product."
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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
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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?
From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization opti...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
We use Looker and Looker Studio, as Looker licenses Looker Studio for data presentation and reporting. With GCP, we u...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

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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