Looker

I use Looker to deal mostly with simple visuals because it doesn't have much capability to clean data. I use Looker to manage simple visualization once I finish cleaning the data.

With Looker, I have experienced benefits in terms of usability and shareability.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a user-friendly tool that is easy to integrate. I can easily share Looker with somebody who has a Google email address. Those who don't have a Google email address can easily see what I have been working on since I can share it easily with them.

The visualization capability of the product is limited. From an improvement perspective, the product should have more visualization capability. I can't clean data in Looker, and if I try to do it, then it is a really big process, which contributes to the tool's limiting factors related to the area of pre-processing of data. The tool should offer more visualization capabilities and processing abilities.

I have been using Looker for a year.

It is a stable solution most of the time.

I have not used the solution's scalability part.

I have experience with Tableau and Power BI. With Looker, it is easy to sign up, and its onboarding process is straightforward. There is no need for me to download any app for Looker if I use it online, but for the other tools, most of the time, I have to download the app if I want to access more features or capabilities, and at times, I may have no idea about it. The spread of features and how much Looker offers is much less compared to what the other BI tools offer, which I feel are more advanced.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward.

The product requires a PnP deployment. I already had a Google account, so I had to just sign up with my Google email address, and I was able to access the features of Looker.

I do not have to make any payments to use the solution. In the beginning, Looker may work fine for its users. If advanced users who have experience with BI tools use Looker, then they may find it to be a product with a few limitations.

I am a student who uses Looker for certain projects, but I use another solution at work. In short, I choose Looker for my personal use.

I do not need to do anything to keep the product up and running.

I rate the overall tool a six out of ten.

I have used the solution for real estate and customer behavior analytics. Currently, I am working on a tax project.

The product is better than any other BI tool. It is really helpful. If my data model is strong and I can code most of it in Google BigQuery, it's much easier to play around and perform a little data science in LookML. The product is easy to use.

Looker just shows whatever we have in SQL databases. It would be helpful if the product could retrieve user data and store it in Google BigQuery. The product does not have documented material. It does not have any active live projects that users could work through.

I have been using the solution since 2021.

The tool’s stability is the best. I haven't encountered any issues where we had to roll back.

The code works pretty fine. I haven't encountered issues with scalability. I rate the scalability a four out of ten. We have more than 250 users in the tax project, 25 to 60 in the real estate and mortgage project, and more than 300 in the financial projects.

Previously, we have worked on Power BI and Tableau.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. I rate the ease of setup a three out of ten. The solution is deployed on the cloud. The deployment takes place under sprints. The sprints are two to three weeks long, depending on the project.

We are using a legacy mode. My manager helped me learn the solution. I learned it in two weeks. If we have a real-time project within the company, it makes sense for new users to start working on the tool. Overall, I rate the tool an eight and a half out of ten.

At our work, we deploy services, especially for payments, and get feedback on the integrated percentage of these deployments. These services are scattered across different locations, so I also handle administrative tasks, integrating AI for subscription management and addressing globalization concerns. We're focused on securing our operational environment and streamlining account management. There seem to be some challenges in the process, and I utilize Looker for analysis and resolution.

Recently, I've found more value in what I'm currently exploring. It's quite effortless to navigate through various applications and review their updated data in real-time. While using Looker, I encountered a hitch in the application setup process; it took a bit of time and effort to configure, but once it was up and running, the results were remarkably impressive.

Stability needs improvement. 

I have been using Looker for the last four years.

My experience over the past six and a half months has been quite intense. The challenges I faced were with Looker, which was crucial for the app we were developing. Initially, there were some issues in setting it up, and without resolving these, we wouldn't have been able to proceed. It was necessary to break down and address these hurdles to move forward.

I would rate the scalability an eight and a half out of ten. 

I've only had a single encounter with it. The folks handling it did respond. I assured them that I hadn't faced many challenges. If I did encounter any, I'd go back and check. 

The accessibility concerns are significant. We have approximately forty-five users, which makes the cost of licensing quite expensive. This aspect holds paramount importance for us. There are some specific reports we need to share. We use Power Desktop within our domain and intend to explore other options. That's why we use Looker—it provides easier and seamless access for individuals outside the licensing sphere.

It is easy to use.

It is cheap. 

Our data usage is in Google, using SQL. However, the dataset size varies significantly. While some sets are not extensive, others fall into the category of large enterprise-level data, impacting costs. It's not a singular size; it varies. We're considering transitioning to Looker due to performance issues, specifically in this context. 

I would rate the solution an eight. We have various pros and cons to consider. Right now, the key advantage is the easy access and availability. Sharing information is seamless, and it facilitates quick comparisons with near-immediate updates—it's almost live. We don't need instances for file logs; reports are accessible right there. Visualizing data is also straightforward. In terms of drawbacks, the experience is similar to Looker, functioning as an IPaaS.

I use Looker in my company to analyze the data from Google Analytics and also the data from our internal source.

The most valuable feature of Looker is that it is very quick with Google Data Studio. The solution offers good integration between Google Data Studio and Looker's visualization part.

I can say many things about the parts that need to be improved in Looker. The main area of concern in Looker is probably related to blending the data from the different sources, including the data present internally in the company and on the cloud. Blending data from different sources is not something that can be done easily.

I have been using Looker for six years. I don't remember the version of the solution. I am unsure if the last release of the solution happened in 2022 or 2023. My company has a partnership with Looker.

It is a pretty stable solution because it is a cloud-based product. Compared to other cloud-based products on the market, Looker is pretty much stable.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Five or six people in my company, including the manager, use Looker.

I have contacted the technical team of Looker several times in the past, but I have never been very satisfied with their support. Looker's technical team takes too much time to respond to my queries. I usually found the solutions to my issues on forums or through other communication channels.

I rate the technical support a five out of ten.

Neutral

In my company, we use other products apart from Looker. In my previous company, we usually used to combine reports with the help of Looker and other BI tools because it's pretty much easy to integrate with Google.

The product's initial setup phase is very easy compared to other BI tools like Tableau, PowerBI, and BusinessObjects.

The product's installation deployment phase

The solution is deployed on the cloud services provided by Google.

Small companies can experience return and investment from the use of Looker as it offers easy and good integration capabilities, and the time needed for the adoption of the tool in a company is very short, making it one of the best things about Looker. With other tools apart from Looker, it takes too much time to adapt and to start sharing the reports. From the beginning, I have known Google Data Studio and Looker.

The price of Looker usually depends on the solution's provider, but it is usually cheaper than the other products in the market. Looker is offered at different prices for different companies.

I recommend Looker over other BI tools to those planning to use them in their company. The leaders and management in an organization have various reasons to choose other tools apart from Looker. You can manage a lot of reports with Looker. Looker is also easy to use and share with others in a company, while certain factors like the levels of authorizations and so on are helpful in the product when considering elements like security issues.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

We use the solution to visualize the data differently. Sisense can directly query large data and visualize them in real-time. In Looker, You have to write preexisting scripts to fetch consolidated data from external sources and store it in Google Sheets. If your data is stored in a Google database, you can query it in real-time. Otherwise, you have to integrate your data with Google Sheets or other supported sources. Looker can handle more than a few thousand rows of data, but it may be slow to query large datasets.

You can divide visualization into sections, drill down, and filter inside a table. These features are not available in Sisense.

The solution could have more integrations with different data sources and support real-time querying. Currently, it has integration with Google Sheets.

Looker's visualization capabilities are not yet ready to be shared with clients. The current visualizations are basic and only intended for internal users. The styling and design aspects of the visualizations are still under development. The Visualization could be customized.

I have been using Looker as an end user for two months.

The product has some stability issues. Looker has problems reading data formats that change due to changes to the underlying dataset. It can struggle to cope with these changes.

I rate the solution’s stability a six out of ten.

The solution is not scalable because the dashboard will resume daily, and there is no automated way of duplicating the dashboard.

60-70 users are using this solution in our organization.

I rate the solution’s scalability a four out of ten.

We were using Google Sheets mainly. Sisense was much easier to migrate to Looker. Superset do not allow you to query the data on dashboards. Looker was more technical than the different solutions and has robust data visualization and querying capabilities.

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment was very fast, taking less than a month. It was straightforward because everyone could access it directly, and there was no data onboarding. We already knew how to use it effectively and were able to start using it within the first week after we decided to deploy it.

For deployment, we have decided on a format in which we want to visualize the data according to different clients with customizations. We have developed a set of rules that define the structure of the visualization of the dashboard. Once we have finalized the format, we will roll it out to the larger team, and everyone can build their dashboard within a few days.

I rate the solution’s setup an eight out of ten.

We deployed in-house with a large team effort. The initial onboard deployment and upload were successful. We took help from 20-30 people for the larger onboarding, but it was relatively faster and took only 3-4 days.

The solution is open-source. It is free for all.

Everybody maintains their dashboard. There is very minimal maintenance required to be handled. Maintenance is almost nothing.

The solution is quite intuitive. There is nothing to do. There are demos available on YouTube.

They take considerable effort to scale Looker. For any company that wants to visualize its data in Google Sheets, I recommend moving to Looker Studio. It's much easier to keep updating the data visualizations and be more organized with your visualizations. Google Sheets is good for storing raw data, but anytime someone is using Google Sheets or Excel to visualize data, I recommend that they go to the cloud. It's a very intuitive, very natural process. There's almost no extra effort involved. It is a worthwhile investment.

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