Qlik Sense Reviews

Qlik Sense is a data visualization tool similar to Google Data Studio, Google Looker Studio, and Power BI. Many people are not yet aware of Qlik Sense as a viable option for creating visualization dashboards. I created a commercial opportunities dashboard related to retail marketing, along with many other dashboards. I worked for a car company, but I cannot disclose that information at this time. The dashboards included marketing-related content, retail information, and sales data from past years along with the locations where sales occurred.

Qlik Sense helps create not only impactful and eye-catching dashboards, but also allows data to be refreshed automatically. There is an SQL query that is already built into Qlik Sense, so I can modify the data or refresh it based on specific requirements so that the data automatically updates and the values of KPIs, bar charts, and other visualizations change accordingly. Retail and sales data typically changes hourly or daily, so daily refreshes are necessary. This is where Qlik Sense proves to be very helpful, and there are several other use cases available as well.

In my opinion, Qlik Sense offers many excellent features. There are many types of charts available, and I can create interactive dashboards while incorporating AI-powered insights. Data integration is easy, and I can use advanced visualization tools like pivot tables in addition to normal table views. Real-time data analysis can be performed, and collaboration with other team members is seamless, as I can share dashboards with other teams so they can review, validate, and understand the work. The tool is very scalable, and I can generate and retain reports.

The feature I find myself using most is AI-powered insights, which is excellent because AI is evolving rapidly. Real-time data refresh is also very valuable because it depends on the use case being worked on, and all features provide particular advantages accordingly.

Qlik Sense impacts my organization positively. Although it is not a free tool and requires payment, my previous organization used Qlik Sense alongside Power BI, Google Looker Studio, and Excel for dashboard creation and data analytics. Because of Qlik Sense, we have improved data visualization quality. I can create complex use cases that are required for business needs and make faster decisions when time constraints exist because Qlik Sense allows dashboards to be created very quickly. I can combine data from multiple sources and create visualizations accordingly. Enhanced collaboration means I can send dashboards to other teams so they have clear visibility. Because AI insights are already incorporated in Qlik Sense, the company reduces time in sending data to clients, creating time-saving benefits for the organization.

Absolutely, nothing is entirely positive, and everything has both advantages and disadvantages. When I worked with Qlik Sense, circular charts were not available, which meant I had to look for alternative solutions that would be reliable or make the functionality work. There are some features that need to be added. Additionally, there is a limit to the number of fields that can be added in Qlik Sense, and I believe it would be beneficial if they increased the count for fields and columns. There might be requirements where an Excel file contains many columns that need to be displayed as visual representations to clients, and in those situations, it becomes very difficult and I have to use alternative approaches. When this problem arose, I used HTML code to write a solution and make it work. Qlik Sense should avoid these types of limitations in future updates.

Another issue is page resolution. If a client wants to view the dashboard on a single page without scrolling, bar charts appear small and the values in KPIs, bar charts, scatter plots, and line graphs cannot be seen very clearly. Adding more extensions to make the job easier would also be beneficial. Improvements to reporting would be helpful as well, because working with large datasets makes reporting very difficult. Additionally, when data is refreshed, it cannot be completed in a short timeframe. Refreshing very large datasets can take one, two, or even three hours, so reducing the refresh time would be very useful for customers.

I have used Qlik Sense for almost eleven months. When I worked in my previous organization as a Data Analyst, that is where I used Qlik Sense extensively. I have experience with both QlikView and Qlik Sense.

Qlik Sense AI capabilities provide advice and analyze data in a very accurate and reliable manner. However, I cannot say that everything given by AI should be followed blindly. I have to cross-check everything to determine whether it is giving proper answers and whether the answer is relevant to my use case. I check whether the data is clean, complete, and well-architected. Qlik Sense even provides predictive analysis, which is very useful because based on past and historical data, it gives great insights that are very accurate and consistent.

My advice to others for using Qlik Sense is that it is a great tool for creating visualization dashboards, similar to Power BI and Google Looker Studio. Although everybody has knowledge of Power BI or Google Looker Studio, most people are not touching Qlik Sense. I feel Qlik Sense should also become one of the most popular tools. While it is costly, it is truly excellent. Master item fields can be used multiple times to get consistency reports, which reduces the time spent creating fields repeatedly. I can use a master item once and incorporate it everywhere. There is the possibility of cleaning and modeling data, and quality reports are generated. If users want to keep the dashboard simple, they can do so. If users make use of AI features like AI Insight Advisor, it will be very helpful.

Qlik Sense is an underrated data visualization tool that is as great as Power BI and Google Looker Studio. It creates insightful dashboards that are very eye-catching and generates reports. I would rate this product seven out of ten.

The best part of Qlik Sense is that you can upload any data and visualize it. You can create a lot of charts and graphs using the data on the fly, and you can visualize data. Qlik Sense also provides support to integrate with many data sources available in the market. The true power is in the ability to connect with any database, get the data, and work with the data.

Qlik Sense comes with a data engine to explore data freely. You can connect with any data store or upload an Excel file and visualize the data in Qlik Sense. Qlik Sense has implemented AI capabilities, although I have not explored many of those capabilities.

The main benefits Qlik Sense provides are quick turnaround time. You can connect to data sources, quickly create reports, and then quickly go online.

Qlik Sense is very easy to use, but sometimes integration is a bit challenging. In our case, we wanted to integrate the cloud version of Qlik Sense, and Qlik Sense is not supporting the on-premises version, so we moved to the cloud version. We had a lot of challenges when integrating Qlik Sense SSO with the reports that we wanted to show on our web app or mobile app. There were a lot of challenges along with that, but eventually, we overcame those challenges, and things are working fine now.

The integration part is one point for improvement; it could be more simple because I found some complexities with it. The single sign-on part is a little tricky and is not straightforward. We have done multiple rounds with their technical team, and although it got resolved later on, I think that it could have been better.

Positive

I do not have suggestions for additional functions they can add to Qlik Sense.

For now, we are satisfied with the functionality of Qlik Sense; whatever we required, it is pretty much there. We are pretty much satisfied with the reports that it is able to generate.

Qlik Sense was purchased directly from the vendor, but I am not involved in the purchase process.

MongoDB is one database that we use. We have PostgreSQL DB that we use for daily activity. For NoSQL, we use MongoDB, and for SQL, we use PostgreSQL DB.

We are mostly using AWS infrastructure right now, but we are exploring some of the AWS products also, and we use some products from Azure, such as Entra for our SSO.

I would give this review an overall rating of eight out of ten.

Qlik Sense is a kind of modern BI tool that allows me to integrate multiple data sources, providing governed access. I can build all my dashboards in Qlik Sense, which are of very high quality and interactive. 

I can easily drill down from one piece of information to another. This is the main purpose of using Qlik Sense, as it's a standard BI tool. A very good point about Qlik Sense is that it is an in-memory data tool. Even if the data volume is quite large, it stores my data in memory, so whenever I need it, it can render it at high speed.

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.

Although it can be improved, it stores all the data in the dashboards and its proprietary QED file system, used internally by Qlik Sense. One area of improvement is that it doesn't offer an API for accessing processed data stored in the QED files. There is no provision for an API to retrieve data from QEDs for third-party applications. Providing an API feature to access data from the dashboard or QEDs could be beneficial.

I have been using it for five to six years.

The solution is very stable.

It is highly scalable. I can perform horizontal and vertical scaling. The software can be installed on a cluster, and nodes can be defined as primary and secondary. All these configurations make it highly scalable.

Customer service is satisfactory. They have a good level of knowledge base on their community sites. Generally, I do not need to contact the tech team, as solutions are available on the community site. If I do not find a solution there, reaching out to them is easy. 

They sell products through partners, who raise tickets on my behalf to get solutions. While tech support is comprehensive, the stability of Qlik Sense means I generally do not need it. I have been using it for more than five to six years.

Positive

I used this tool five years ago but no longer use it. I switched to Qlik Sense and then Looker among other BI tools, moving away from OBI.

The initial setup is straightforward. Qlik Sense stands out with its comprehensive ETL capability. I can write ETL within Qlik Sense and build my entire data warehouse. Compared to OBI, Power BI, Looker, or Tableau, which offer limited data transformation, Qlik Sense allows me to build layers and visualize data. It excels in extract, load, and transformation capabilities.

If my organization is looking for a BI tool to take data-driven decisions, Qlik Sense is among the best. If not using any BI tool, the ROI is very high. In my organization, we moved from OBI to Qlik Sense due to limitations with OBI, resulting in very high ROI.

Costs depend on the deal. They offer various licensing metrics based on our needs. For small or large organizations needing many or few licenses, pricing varies. 

For solutions used by many clients, core-based licensing operates on a subscription mode, allowing unlimited users. If the solution is for internal use by few users, it's better to choose only necessary licenses.

I would rate it more than nine out of ten. I am very happy, and the entire organization is pleased with Qlik. I was responsible for implementing and configuring it, facilitating deployment on the cloud and building applications on top of that. 

Overall, I rate the solution more than nine out of ten.

I am working in data analytics. They are the best solutions in the industry. With Qlik Sense, there is a way to integrate it within the company for sharing. It is good for certain use cases, though there are positives and cons for it as well.

I am working with QlikView mainly, and with Qlik Sense, the whole Qlik environment. It is licensed by the company I work for.

QlikView is highly manipulable, so you can build on top of the environment they already have to create your own solution for the problems you have. That is the positive for it compared to something Power BI.

Everything depends on the use case, but I would prefer Power BI because of how mainstream it is.

There is not much information available. It is not a mainstream tool that many companies use, so if you are doing something that has not been done before, you can find it challenging to get an answer. Unlike Power BI, where there are many examples of what you want to do elsewhere, with QlikView this is not the case.

The support for it could be improved. Growing the support online would be beneficial for Qlik. Having more guides on complex tasks you want to do with Qlik would help. There is support online and a Qlik community that shares solutions for common problems, but for quite niche requirements, it does not have that sort of support.

It has been almost a year now.

When the company I work for was installing the environment, it took them a long time to do it. The company did not have the scale to get it up and running efficiently. It took them a year or two to get everything working properly because the way we use it in the company is very specific to our professional services. It took them a while to get it working the way they wanted it.

Power BI has the edge on scalability. The Microsoft environment has the advantage because of its size. It is easily scalable with Microsoft, with other services Azure and other tools they provide.

I have never contacted Qlik myself.

Positive

It is based on SQL and T-SQL mainly, so if you are experienced with those languages, you would find your way easily.

It is not about performance. It is just about how expensive it is to implement.

For the company I work for, I have heard that Power BI would be a cheaper environment. That is why they are moving forward by integrating Power BI.

I think something Power BI has the edge over Qlik Sense. I am not working directly with certain aspects, so I cannot comment further on those. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution a 7.

The main use cases involve getting data in an analyzable format. Clients should be able to analyze it through a self-service tool, which is why Qlik Sense was the better choice. Self-service is the primary use case they had as clients wanted to perform self-service analysis.

Additionally, they wanted to automate workflows along with the analysis. They aimed to have action-driven analysis, focusing mainly on dashboard analysis and automated workflows depending on the analysis they perform.

The self-service capabilities that Qlik Sense offers are significant. They offer natural language processing, allowing users to ask questions in layman language, and Qlik Sense will create charts and narratives automatically. Users can access any dashboard developed in Qlik Sense from familiar portals such as Okta or other company portals through embedding features.

The integration with chatbots, particularly Microsoft Teams, allows users to access dashboards and ask questions directly within Teams. The collaboration feature enables users to share analysis by taking snapshots and tagging team members within the Qlik Sense interface, eliminating the need for lengthy emails or screenshots.

The storytelling feature allows users to create presentations directly in Qlik Sense using dashboard analysis, making it easier to answer questions during meetings. The subscription feature enables users to receive charts and sheets via email instead of navigating to the dashboard, facilitating monitoring purposes.

Qlik Sense offers alerting capabilities where users can set thresholds for KPIs and receive notifications when these thresholds are reached. The platform also includes AI/ML features for predictive modeling through a no-code component, allowing business users to create and deploy AutoML models without depending on data scientists.

The Qlik Answers component, featuring generative AI capability, enables users to get answers from unstructured data including Excel, HTML documents, or Microsoft Word documents by creating a knowledge base.

The user-friendly interface operates on a drag-and-drop approach, with Qlik Sense suggesting appropriate charts based on selected dimensions and measures. The associative engine capabilities allow data association between tables, implementing selections across related tables. The platform uses a color-coding system (white, gray, and dark gray) to show related, excluded, and unrelated data selections, providing insights beyond traditional BI tools.

The support aspect could be improved, particularly in terms of response time for high-priority issues, especially when dealing with production environment client issues that require immediate attention.

Qlik Sense Cloud pricing is relatively high. While on-premises versions work with user-based licensing effectively, the cloud version's capacity-based pricing needs more clarity. There should be more comprehensive documentation and explanatory videos available to help clients understand and calculate capacity-based pricing, making it easier to predict costs before implementing Qlik Sense Cloud.

I have been working with Qlik Sense for 10 years.

I have not encountered any deployment issues.

It is pretty stable.

Qlik Sense helps analyze data and can handle larger amounts of data compared to other BI tools. Qlik Sense has never had issues related to large data sets. For deployment options, it works in two ways: on-premises and Qlik Sense Cloud. Qlik Sense offers a public cloud where dashboards can be hosted, which is becoming the more feasible option that most organizations are choosing.

Setup has always been straightforward. The Qlik Sense help site provides comprehensive information for setup support.

Most organizations had scattered data across many legacy systems. Qlik Sense has consolidated all the data in one place and provided answers to all their questions, helping to make better decisions and enabling faster collaborations.

If you have a scattered system and want to analyze your data, structured data, along with the unstructured ones, Qlik Sense is the best option where you can collaborate both data formats into one and perform analysis on top of it. This eliminates the need to rely on multiple systems to get answers.

On a scale of 1-10, this solution receives a rating of 9.

In the bank, since 2017, I have found Qlik Sense to be a valuable tool. Our use of it primarily depends on the user release. We use Oracle Analytics Server for a CPU release, and alongside that, we use Qlik Sense for C-level, regional managers, and branch managers. 

I don't use Qlik Sense personally since my bank prefers it for C-level managers. Although I don't use it directly, another department uses it to prepare reports for Qlik Sense, targeting end-users like C-level users.

Qlik Sense provides better visualization. When I look at the reports and dashboards, it has an interactive interface with Qlik graphs, pivot, and interactivity, which makes it easier to use than other tools. C-level managers can easily make decisions about their operations.

Actually, I don't have any specific ideas. The last time I built a report for the IT team to monitor their process was about a year ago. They received requirements and tracked progress, measuring how they processed tasks. Power BI offers better pricing compared to Qlik Sense. Qlik Sense has better performance, particularly in its archival system. However, Power BI has better visualizations and interactions with updates in 2023 that provide ease of use. Power BI is more user-friendly than Qlik Sense.

I have been using it in the bank since 2017.

It is stable. I would rate it ten out of ten for stability.

I believe it is easily scalable. If you buy enough resource licenses, it's okay for you. It is extensible. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Support depends on your consultant firms. In Turkey, the consultant firms are very professional, and they support you. I don't know about other countries, however, in Turkey, consultant firms were very professional. I give them ten points out of ten.

Positive

Among the BI tools and data analytics tools, Qlik is the most expensive.

Power BI is a better tool than other options.

I would rate the overall solution eight out of ten.

The solution offers good performance. In terms of development and everything, it's very effective. Additionally, it is a single product that I can use as an ETL database, BI, and more.

The appearance could be enhanced, especially when compared to Tableau or Power BI. Maybe more AI or real-time analytics could be incorporated.

I have used Qlik Sense for five years.

The stability is very good. I would rate it around seven to eight out of ten.

The scalability is also very good, around seven to eight out of ten. It performs well in terms of performance and load compared to others.

Technical support requires improvement. I would rate it around three out of ten. Basically, I think they lack in the support system.

Negative

I used SAP BO, which is more traditional. Performance-wise, it is not so great.

If it is complex, then it becomes even more time-consuming. Setting up a server should take around one or two hours.

The implementation team consisted of around 20 people.

It's expensive. Compared to Power BI, it is definitely costly. I would estimate the cost at maybe five out of ten.

It's a good product. Performance-wise and scalability-wise, it's good. Overall, it's a solid product. They need to improve their marketing strategy, like Power BI, the Microsoft product, however, they are not selling it in the right manner. I would rate the solution eight out of ten. 

I use the solution in my company for dashboard building and reporting purposes. In my company, we have a lot of dashboards that are live, and we also work with quite a lot of reports.

In our company, we found a few requirements in the tool, which we directly shared with Qlik's team through our account manager.

With the May 2024 release, the tool has covered a lot of products, but I feel there is more to come. I am expecting new updates in the tool.

Qlik Sense requires one to have a lot of technical knowledge. It is an area where improvements can be made.

I have been using Qlik Sense for three to four years.

My company gets support from the service vendor team, so we have not contacted Qlik directly.

Earlier, I used to use QlikView. Every tool has its own set of pros and cons. It is not fair to compare a tool with another product.

If you look at Power BI, there are a few things you can do that would take a bit of time in Qlik Sense. On the knowledge side, people might need to know how to handle Qlik Sense technically. Power BI requires relatively less effort for a person to manage, especially given its exposure to Excel, so it is a reason why people might be already aware of Power BI and not Qlik Sense. Power BI borrows many features or examples from Excel or Access, which are long-standing Microsoft products that people are already aware of in the present.

When used manually, the tool has saved our company a lot of time. For certain projects, we have saved a couple of files for each iteration.

Considering the deal that we have acquired, Qlik Sense is pretty good in terms of price.

The tool's data analysis is useful to help out the teams across the globe and to track their work.

Qlik Sense is linked with our company's SQL servers.

After working with QlikView for a very long time, I felt it did not carry over many of the features to Qlik Sense directly, and it was done over a period of time. Until the tool's MAy 2024 was released, we did not have a hide option for every object, which now they have given, but there is a workaround for it using the layout container. In QlikView, such features were easily available with an expression view. It was much easier in QlikView than it is in Qlik Sense's latest version.

My company is not quite open to AI because of the compliance issues and the data restrictions that we have in place. We are managing AI-related areas in a controlled manner using Python and a few other things, which are being built in-house rather than using open-source platforms.

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

I remember that a pharma company wanted a BI solution to represent or to create their own reports based on the data from Qlik Sense and the customer data.

Qlik Sense is not meant for writing something from the user interface, which is a major challenge because our company wants users to interact with the reports and to input some comments or data that should get stored into some database. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product.

With Qlik Sense, there is a need for it to provide good performance because if there is a large volume of data, then its performance becomes slow. User interaction or user experience is not that great in that case if the data size or reports are huge. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product. Right now, we are trying to follow up with some best practices recommended by Qlik Sense, but to be honest, it is not helping us much because we have very large data in a single application, and we are struggling with it.

The product should have an interactive and friendly user interface.

The use of APIs is not as friendly as it should be in the first place, especially when considering Python scripts and all other scripts, making it an area where improvements are required. There should be some easy way to integrate the product with the aforementioned areas.

I have been using Qlik Sense for four to five years. My company has a partnership with Qlik Sense.

There are no such issues with the stability or performance of the product.

Considering that I have worked with other products like Power BI, I don't see any scalability issues with Qlik Sense.

The user base is quite huge. For a single application, we have different dashboards or applications where the user base for applications or dashboards is different. In any case, the larger user base for a particular application consists of 200 or 300 users.

The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have experience with Microsoft Power BI. Microsoft Power BI's self-service analytical capabilities are quite easy, which is a great addition to the product. For the data modeling part, I don't need a script, but with some drag and drop options, one can do it, but that is not the case with Qlik Sense since a user needs to have knowledge related to scripts.

It is not very easy to implement the product since you require some technical skills.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The time taken to deploy the solution depends on how complex the requirements are. For some use cases, considering the requirements, it may take six months to implement. If the requirements are easy, the tool can be implemented in a few weeks.

My company plans to switch from Qlik Sense to another solution.

Mainly, my company wants a product with writeback capabilities.

In terms of the areas that have proven to be the most useful in data analysis needs, I would say that I am currently looking for the writeback extensions now because something our company wants to input a few things from the reports and that should get stored either into the QVD files or either into the database directly.

The product is easy to use in our company, and it is used widely in our customer base. In my company, we don't see any issues with the product.

Trying to integrate Qlik Sense with other third-party solutions has been an issue for my company because the APIs that we use to integrate the tool with other solutions are not easy to use. In terms of APIs, the tool has become complex, and now our company is finding it difficult to integrate Qlik Sense with third-party tools, that has become quite complex for us because it requires the use of APIs, and it is not easy, especially when considering that we have limited knowledge of APIs.

I am not aware of the administrative side of the product since I mostly work on the technical part associated with it.

Whether I would recommend Qlik Sense to others or not depends on their use cases. If the data size and all those things are not the concern, I think Qlik Sense is a good solution. In some other cases, other solutions apart from Qlik Sense may be a good fit. I am not aware of the product from a functional point of view, but technically, if the user base and data size are huge, Qlik Sense can become problematic.

Speaking about how Qlik Sense supports our company's AI-driven decision-making processes, I can say that the tool currently serves our company's purpose, and we are currently looking deeper into the product since we want it to be easy to use and we also want the data size issues associated with the tool to the resolved so that it is able to fit into our needs.

My company did not exactly want the product to be integrated with other tools, but we did want to create and go for a mash-up, which can be accessed by other users, and I felt it was something that was difficult.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

We have a lot of customer types, but many work with ERPs. We use Qlik to connect to the ERP, analyze data within it, and build dashboards. Sales analysis is usually the first project because sales are crucial for every business. 

However, we also analyze production, manufacturing, and even public administration data depending on the customer's needs. So, our main areas are manufacturing, finance, and the public sector.

It's the "ease of use," like the self-service aspect. My customers appreciate being able to analyze data on their own, without relying on IT for every query.

Additionally, the associative experience of the database and its intuitive data exploration capabilities are key features for users.

The reporting solution recently added to the latest Cloud version, since December or January, is not fully developed. The ability to use tabular reporting, like in dashboards, would be a great feature. 

So, tabular reporting needs development.

Since the product's origin - that was 2016.

Qlik Sense is very stable. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. Even for rare issues, we receive good support from Qlik. It's a very stable solution.

I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. You can start with one user and easily scale up to even a thousand without limitations.

We mainly have medium and enterprise, though we also have some small clients. But in the Italian market, "small" and "medium" have different meanings than other markets. A typical Italian medium company might only have 10-15 users, while in other markets, this would be considered small.

The customer service and support are responsive, not so fast, not always fast because there are some problems.

A little improvement is needed because there's a large first level of support with people who have no experience, and you need to escalate to get the right answer. So, the first level needs to be improved.

Positive

The initial setup is very easy. So, I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

The deployment model depends on the customers, like cloud, hybrid, on-premises private cloud, or Qlik Cloud.

Some prefer on-premises only, some hybrid, and some directly on the Cloud. So, all options.

From the initial setup until the tool is ready for production use, the process takes about one month. Longer, some may even ask for more.

There are different phases for on-premises and SaaS deployments. On-premises requires infrastructure configuration and direct installation on customer machines. 

For SaaS, it's very quick, and you can have your instance ready in five minutes. 

The first phase is installation, followed by the analysis, specification, and system requirements definition. Then, we define the initial project to develop.

It is a little expensive for the Italian market. In particular, it's not easy. Right now, other products have more aggressive pricing, making it tough to sell Qlik Sense. 

We sell differently, but it's not easy. A cheaper price would be better for us. Normally, Qlik Sense has two types and costs. The medium cost is around 700 euros per year.

One license costs 840 euros per year, and the other is 400 euros per year. Medium is around 700 or 600 euros.

My recommendation is to use it. It's a unique product in the market due to the technical reason of the associative experience. This is a unique experience for BI products. 

If you want a tool or a system for business intelligence, Qlik should be one of the candidates. It could be perfect option.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.