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Looker

Looker

Reviews from AWS customer

1 AWS reviews
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4-star reviews ( Show all reviews )

    Abhishek Swain

A highly stable and scalable tool that is easy to deploy and easy to use

  • November 07, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution since 2021.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, we have worked on Power BI and Tableau.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud


    Adedayo Iyanda

Helps to secure our operational environment and streamline account management

  • November 01, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

Stability needs improvement. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Looker for the last four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and support?

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. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

It is easy to use.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is cheap. 

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud


    Anton Nenov

A BI tool to analyze data from multiple sources with an easy initial setup phase

  • October 31, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

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

How are customer service and support?

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.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What was our ROI?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Google


    Pavan-Reddy

An open-source cloud solution for visualizing the data with Google Sheets integration

  • October 23, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

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.

What is most valuable?

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

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

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.

What about the implementation team?

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.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Google


    Luiz Cesar Gosi

An intuitive and stable solution that enables users to centralize data models and databases

  • October 19, 2023
  • Review from a verified AWS customer

What is our primary use case?

I have been using Looker to help the data team create some models. I have also created views for reports and dashboards.

What is most valuable?

We can centralize all our data models. I can bring data from different products and use it. It's easy because I can create views using SQL. I can make the reports available to different teams and create dashboards. I like that we can centralize different databases.

What needs improvement?

The response time can be a little bit better. I know that it depends on my data ingestion and the kind of database I am using. The integration with different databases must be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for the last three years. I am using the latest version of the solution.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate the tool’s stability a nine out of ten. We did not have any problems.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate the tool’s scalability an eight out of ten. I'm constantly working and learning with it. It's a powerful tool. Around 300 people from the product and business intelligence teams use the solution in our organization.

How are customer service and support?

I never had to contact the support team, but I know that they are available to us. It was never necessary in the last three years.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty hard. Now, I know how to do it. When I face some issues, I can work around them. Now, it is pretty easy for me. The solution has good documentation. We can use the documentation to solve the different issues we face. We use CI/CD. We open a branch there and collect reviews. Normally, the deployment takes one day because we have to wait for the reviews to ensure everything is fine.

What other advice do I have?

I have a good experience with the solution. I tell my friends from other companies to migrate to Looker. People who want to use the solution must get a demo and play around with it. It is very intuitive. We must have some technical skills and knowledge of the data and architecture. When we bring data from different teams, we must know how they are using it. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)


    Dmitri Solodovnik

Provides a holistic vision for advanced analytics, efficient documentation and suitable for enterprise businesses

  • October 18, 2023
  • Review provided by PeerSpot

What is our primary use case?

We use it mainly for embedding dashboards, data governance, and handling complex solutions. 

For current projects, we have four Looker instances, including dev staging, two productions for external users, one for internal, with CI/CD pipelines and automated tests. It's a comprehensive solution, not just one instance.

What is most valuable?

Features like Symantec layer, LookML, and Looker API are significant. The semantic layer and LookML provide powerful capabilities. Embedding API is also useful. 

The documentation is efficient. So far, it's effective. Also, support for different database dialects and the holistic vision is good for advanced analytics; it's not only numbers but also being able to program something. 

It supports advanced analytics beyond just numerical data.

What needs improvement?

Integrations with other BI tools could be better. Big companies are using different tools and different stacks. 

Also, the plan and roadmap should be more transparent. This would allow end users to correlate or plan company features and align them with Looker's plans and features.  

Support is generally good, particularly the online support where you can quickly chat with an engineer to resolve questions. However, for more complicated issues, like a cache issue we encountered for embedded networks, the resolution can lag. Issues can remain unsolved for a while. The process of raising a product feature can also be lengthy.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for five years. I use the latest version. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. I didn't face any issues with stability. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. We have around 4,000 viewers, and around 200 internal admins and developers.

How are customer service and support?

Support is pretty good. They provide online support, so we can quickly hop on a call.  However, for more complicated issues, like a cache issue we encountered for embedded networks, the resolution can lag. Issues can remain unsolved for a while.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used Data Studio, which is also on the Google Stack, but that was four or five years ago.

It was the company's choice, primarily because of Symantec Wear and their plans for the gateway, but it wasn't so good.

The company chose Looker over another data analytics platform because of Looker's significant awareness feature. However, the significant awareness feature is not yet perfect, and we had to do some workarounds to be able to use it.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup depends on the company. If they have appropriate specialists, it's straightforward. But it can be challenging for different departments within the same company that haven't used Looker before.

The initial deployment was fast, especially for an MVP version. However, the overall deployment time depends on the company's roadmap. For instance, just to roll out the instance, it's pretty fast.

What was our ROI?

There is a return on investment for big companies. For smaller companies and startups, it is not worth to consider.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's not cheap, but it's not expensive for big companies.

So, for small businesses, it might not be a good choice, but for medium and larger businesses, it's okay.

What other advice do I have?

Be ready to face a learning curve. For companies, understand it's not a one-week or one-month setup like Data Studio, Tableau, or Power BI. Invest in long-term projects, and management should understand the time commitment. 

It's worth it for big companies, but smaller ones should carefully consider their needs.

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud


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