Looker vs. Sisense

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Looker
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Looker is a BI application with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. It includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for data discovery, and an API for supporting data in other systems.N/A
Sisense
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Sisense is a BI software and analytics platform. With what the vendor calls their In-Chip™ and Single Stack™ technologies, users have access to a comprehensive tool to analyze and visualize large, disparate data sets without IT resources.N/A
Pricing
LookerSisense
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LookerSisense
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.Must contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LookerSisense
Features
LookerSisense
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.4
Ratings
3% above category average
Sisense
9.7
Ratings
17% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.30 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.5
Ratings
5% above category average
Sisense
8.8
Ratings
9% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.80 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.80 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.20 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.8
Ratings
6% above category average
Sisense
10.0
Ratings
18% above category average
Publish to Web8.30 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Report Versioning8.60 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker
7.0
Ratings
13% below category average
Sisense
9.5
Ratings
17% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.10 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics4.60 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.3
Ratings
2% below category average
Sisense
10.0
Ratings
16% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.70 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.20 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.20 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.2
Ratings
23% below category average
Sisense
9.7
Ratings
22% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access7.50 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Mobile Application5.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.40 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LookerSisense
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
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Score 9.1 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Score 9.9 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Score 9.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
LookerSisense
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
7.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
LookerSisense
Likelihood to Recommend
When you need to create a centralised dashboard for multiple stakeholders that blends cross-channel reporting. As an SEO agency reporting for clients - Looker is a great solution. It's less appropriate depending on the intended users. For instance, in my experience Looker reports have been under-utilised because they're not accessed regularly, provide too much noise or often simple PDF reports are preferred
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I believe Sisense is perfectly suited for any organization of any size that have access to the proper resources, as the tool is very expensive. The data connectors come in all shapes and sizes out of the box, which allows a great deal of data control within the ElastiCubes. Additionally, while the platform only runs on Windows platforms, the web application can be accessed on any client: mobile, Apple, Windows, etc. This allows a much more flexible user experience, resulting in data and dashboards reaching further than any other tool.
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Pros
  • It is very easy to start a new dashboard and configure what you want to display by just selecting/dragging from the list of available columns.
  • It is intuitive, mainly if you use other Google services like Google Sheets.
  • The look and feel is modern and nice.
  • It it very useful to have an immediate visual overview of the data in a spreadsheet.
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  • The biggest pro I found with Sisense is that you do not need a DBA in order to manage the system. This makes the learning curve really easy, which helps lots when thinking of implementation across a whole organization. This reflects well for the tool, since it is powerful, but easy to use.
  • ALL-IN-ONE! Sisense answered all of my customers and our company's requirements, to include data modelling and complex calculations.
  • Sisense is as accurate as your data, and best of all, it is real time. After using other visualization tools, I learned that when using multiple sources, errors occur. Sisense prevents this risk by allowing all of the resources to be managed at their engine, maintains connections, and as a developer, the EliastiCube allows you to source large volumes of data with an easy click.
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Cons
  • I wish I could get more granular in the Google ad data, such as down to the campaign type, instead of having to see only all campaigns.
  • The setup can be time-consuming if you're not using the product regularly.
  • Editing the dashboard requires a few logins; I wish it was more seamless.
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  • Some functionality is missing as built-in functionality, and can only be added by using Javascript, which requires technical knowledge of JS from the dashboard designer to implement. So although almost anything is possible to implement, some things which should be basic require high-level skills.
  • Viewers of dashboards have very limited customization options, almost any customization requires the dashboards designer to implement.
  • Particularly, viewers are unable to select conditional formatting, rename fields, change the order of items, etc.
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Likelihood to Renew
We are very haooy with Looker, it provides us with all the funciomalities we need for both the day to day oerformance tracking and longer periods reporting. It is easy to use for account managers, configurable and customizable for soecialists and what is most imoortant, our clinets generally really love it
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I think the business and myself as a user has come to rely on SiSense as a dashboarding and quick ad-hoc reporting tool. I am hoping to integrate SiSense dashboards into more parts of the business in the future. We have reduced our report turn-around time for the most part from hours/days to minutes and in some cases almost the speed of thought. Reports are also easier on the eye and more easily distributed. I would also like to say that the support and professionalism from the SiSense team has been excellent.
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Usability
Looker is relatively easy to use, even as it is set up. The customers for the front-end only have issues with the initial setup for looker ml creations. Other "looks" are relatively easy to set up, depending on the ETL and the data which is coming into Looker on a regular basis.
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There is no doubt it is easy to use solution. It always equips me with authentic reporting, I can have the detailed analysis of the operations. This tool has helped me to collect every bit of the data and it would be just to say that it has influenced my lead generation and helped to build strong customer relations.
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Reliability and Availability
No objections
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There are very few situations when there is unexpected downtime. Mostly during development, new dashboard implementation and during upgrades. other then that there were very few crashes.
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Performance
Somehow resources heavy, both on server and client. I recommned at least 50Mbs data rate and high performance desktop comouter to be abke to run comolex tasks and configure larger amount of data. On the other hand, the client does not need to worry when viewing, the performance is usually ok
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SiSense is usually performing better then other solutions even if going for complex reports/dashboards(of course within reasonable frames). I haven't noticed any bad influence on other systems, usually if something happens it stays within SiSense.
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Support Rating
Never had to work with support for issues. Any questions we had, they would respond promptly and clearly. The one-time setup was easy, by reading documentation. If the feature is not supported, they will add a feature request. In this case, LDAP support was requested over OKTA. They are looking into it.
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SiSense's support ninjas are very knowledgeable and are exceptionally responsive. So far, all of the issues we ran into were resolved within minimum time. My sense of dealing with the support staff at SiSense is that they are very focused on not just answering your immediate question, but also to delve into the cause of the matter.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
Easy and free training that allowed us quickly understand basics in SiSense and start using them. More advanced features requires some browsing through SiSense forums, but there is always support to help, and SiSense support is one of the best whith which I worked so far.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
Many examples, videos and scenarios which you try on your own right away. This combined with in-person training gives you enough to utilize most of SiSense's power.
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Implementation Rating
Very satisfied, easy to implement
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Would like to have more information about configuration of dev to production deployments architectures.
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Alternatives Considered
In my opinion, Looker is no Power BI. It is good, but I think Power BI is amazing. That said, in my experience, Power BI is nowhere near as easy to setup and report on Google services as Looker is. We plan to continue using Power BI for c-suite and corporate reporting, especially for internal databases, but will gladly use Looker for our marketing information for AdWords, Analytics, Search Console, and YouTube.
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Sisense was chosen as our BI platform for a few key reasons. Excellent customer support is a key reason why. Additionally, continuing innovation in new product features and the ability to embed reports and do quite a bit in terms of customization.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
Product is quite easily scalable. The whole installation can be easily moved to stronger machine if needed.
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Return on Investment
  • Other than some people not liking the numbers, I don't see any negative impacts; we haven't experienced that.
  • The reports help us unravel the story of our users and how they are sifting through our pages.
  • Our clients enjoy seeing the numbers to understand better what stands out on their sites.
  • The reports have helped us see what campaigns are working and where we need to tweak things.
  • The reports have enabled us to have better conversations with stakeholders about how their web pages should be modified, edited, etc., to reflect the data.
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  • Report development time is reduced from 2~3 days to 2~3 hours.
  • Report querying time is improved from 0.5~10 mins to 2~30 seconds.
  • A 2-staff team delivers 10 times the BI output that we did on the old system.
  • We were able to deliver BI and data analysis for all business functions instead of a very limited group of users
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ScreenShots

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.