Google Data Studio Pricing, Features, Reviews & Alternatives

Pros
I love Google Data Studio... it's quite hard to select one feature, cause all the program is great, from the easy to use tables, the charts tables, graphics, the custimizable layout, the connection with your database...

Cons
Sometimes it gets a little bit slow and the tables or charts bugs... but it's understandable

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Extremely user friendly. Setting up the dashboards was simple. You have control over almost every detail, including the layout and design. This is unlike many data platforms I've used in the past. ALMOST everything is totally customizable. This brings in all your Google/Youtube data automatically (including Google Sheets/docs). It also lets your bring in images, links, and other assets. You can change the data range filter easily for all metrics. The dashboard also is easily shareable to all team members and you can export the dashboard to a PDF.

Cons
The connectivity to other platforms is disappointing. In order to automatically bring in your social media data or data from other sources (such as digital advertising or 1st party ecommerce data) you need to purchase a "connector". However, there are ways around this if you export your data from your other sources and just put this in a Google Sheet and connect that sheet to your Google Data Studio.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
It seems that every third party SaaS that collects data online has native synchronization support for Google sheets. And this is how Google Data Studio makes itself the best option for non profits and small businesses in need of automated business intelligence. On top of the plug'n'play integration experience, data studio has a unique approach to interactive chart and dashboard design that lets you position elements as if you were working in Adobe Photoshop. You can add shapes, layer elements on top of each other, add text or objects anywhere. This means you can produce the most beautiful and intuitive dashboards and reports ever (or the least if you're more of a Picasso).

Cons
It really is the poor man's business intelligence automation tool. Some key setbacks for data scientists is that data studio can only do 1 type of join/blend (outter left) and when using blended data to create calculated fields it really feel more like art than science, and not always working out. There is also no way to create unions across all data sources or make a file directory a data source. All this means that you really need to do a lot of data prep in Google sheets and find a way to do some automatic data blending in Google sheets as well in some cases. This will keep the complexity of your needs in Data Studio minimal, which seems to work best.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
I loved the fact that there are templates for interactive web page dashboards that help shortcut visualizations and common display formats for data. Other websites either lock you into a boring template or expect users/devs to reinvent the wheel. This allowed me to build momentum quickly.

Cons
I was not a fan of the additional charges for data connecters. Data from large social media sites or professional websites is often stuck behind a paywall, which is a bit aggravating.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
I would recommend every business used this, from small to large. The ability to combine and view google analytics, google ads and search console data is fantastic and gives you great insights into your business performance. There are also lots of templates available online to get you started for no cost.

Cons
The customisation has to come from someone with a fair bit of knowledge of the product when sharing with others. In the majority of times people will have to only have a view of the report and they won't really be able to amend or see other data within it. It is also a little slow when doing lots of data and changing the views.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10