Google Data Studio Pricing, Features, Reviews and Alternatives

The most impactful features of DataStudio are the wide range of visualizations you have access to in order to present your data in the most engaging and insightful way. Coupled with the wide range of data connectors that are available natively and also third-party connectors, which expands the scope widely. Once you have understood the overall way of working, the tool is very easy to use. There are lots of training videos available and lots of support available over the internet, in case you get stuck. Integration into my business practises was easy because of the flexibility in data input sources. If a specific connector does not exist, then you can always fall back on file imports.

The most important missing feature for me personally is a native (free) data connector to Facebook Ads. One has free access to all the Google platforms and I have a constant struggle to get a decent data connector to Facebook ad platform data. One improvement that I suggest is to add the functionality to do processing on calculated fields to do for instance 7-day moving average calculations on the platform itself. Now I have to do those calculations on a Google Sheet first and then import the results into the DataStudo reports. Or even make that a built-in function?

Once it's build your data sources, it's easy to build your dashboards even they don't have the best data viz options. It's in the Google tech stack, that makes easy to your team keep running. Would like to have Microsoft Power BI? It was my concerto too! But yes, Google Data Studio will deliver all info you need in a beautiful interface - don't worry. Good price, clear and light interface, access from any device. Your data project will meet the needs.

Different from Microsoft Power BI for example, you don't have a on screen calculation, easy to work on. Many times you need to create new fields, build cases with calculations to have the field to use on. You need an administrator/builder with more tech skills. But any doubt that I found, I had case or example in the web to search and use. But once it's build the base, it's easy to build dashboards, deploy, upgrade and so one.

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).

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.

I like that it's basically free and it's easy to create good-looking reports and share them with your colleagues. We're able to basically have another BI tool at our disposal without going through a lengthy procurement and deployment process.

Connecting a database is quite challenging with Google Data Studio. The error messages are not very helpful at its current state. And sometimes it gives you random errors for no clear reason.

Being fully cloud based embedded within GSuite makes it the best and easiest solution for internal dashboards amongst your team. It's quite valuable not having to break your workflow and manage different logins and makes it super easy to share with a subset or whole of your organization

There is no support so you are on your own if things are going wrong. The connectors are also much less stable than other tools with frequent I/O problems or times when things are inexplicably broken for hours or days, and you are in the dark since there is no support.