Looker Studio vs. SAS Visual Analytics

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Looker Studio
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Looker Studio is a data visualization platform that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.N/A
SAS Visual Analytics
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
SAS Visual Analytics provides a complete platform for analytics visualization, enabling users to identify patterns and relationships in data that weren't initially evident. Interactive, self-service BI and reporting capabilities are combined with out-of-the-box advanced analytics so everyone can discover insights from any size and type of data, including text.
$0
Annual By Users: 5, 10, 20
Pricing
Looker StudioSAS Visual Analytics
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
SAS Visual Analytics for SAS Cloud
Annual By Users: 5, 10, 20
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Looker StudioSAS Visual Analytics
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details—SAS Visual Statistics and SAS Office Analytics are also available as add-ons.
More Pricing Information
Features
Looker StudioSAS Visual Analytics
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.6
51 Ratings
10% below category average
SAS Visual Analytics
8.3
12 Ratings
1% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.335 Ratings8.012 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.250 Ratings8.012 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates5.249 Ratings9.011 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
6.3
50 Ratings
24% below category average
SAS Visual Analytics
8.8
13 Ratings
8% above category average
Drill-down analysis7.442 Ratings9.013 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.346 Ratings8.013 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages3.123 Ratings8.011 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration6.650 Ratings10.012 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.6
50 Ratings
9% below category average
SAS Visual Analytics
9.2
13 Ratings
10% above category average
Publish to Web9.244 Ratings9.012 Ratings
Publish to PDF7.043 Ratings9.013 Ratings
Report Versioning8.131 Ratings9.010 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling4.834 Ratings10.012 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.718 Ratings9.07 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
8.9
49 Ratings
8% above category average
SAS Visual Analytics
9.7
11 Ratings
18% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.349 Ratings10.010 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization9.446 Ratings10.011 Ratings
Predictive Analytics7.924 Ratings9.010 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
SAS Visual Analytics
8.3
12 Ratings
4% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings9.012 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.011 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.012 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.08 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
SAS Visual Analytics
8.3
10 Ratings
4% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings9.08 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings9.09 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
-
Ratings
SAS Visual Analytics
9.2
6 Ratings
15% above category average
REST API00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings9.05 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings9.05 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings9.05 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings9.05 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
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Looker StudioSAS Visual Analytics
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User Ratings
Looker StudioSAS Visual Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(51 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(3 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
6.7
(10 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Looker StudioSAS Visual Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Does great at open canvas editing and letting you fully customize without the need for a grid. It is democratizing self-service no-code analytics. You do not need to be a data or analytics engineer to get started, and you can go very far based on how intuitive and straightforward the UI is. Some of the biggest challenges with Looker Studio relate to user management/security, embedding options, and issue support. For a long time, every user needed to have a Gmail to invite them to view a dashboard via login, not sure if that has been improved yet. You can let any user view without logging in, but that is not always recommended due to security reasons. In terms of embedding, you can only iframe dashboards. More sophisticated BI tools let you embed elements via API or Javascript. Iframing dashboards also make drill downs and dashboard to dashboard navigation tricky/near impossible. There is also no ability to contact Google for support when bugs or outages happen. They point everyone to the Data Studio community. There is some ability to get in contact with Google if you have an enterprise-level contract with Google Cloud, but the path for support is very ad hoc and not always fruitful.
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SAS
I was in a meeting with the client and there I have to show them some analytic data to them. But I was confused about how I will manage to show big data to clients with accuracy. But then the SAS Visual Analytics software helps me in presenting accurate data at the moment and it was very presentable and through that, I got the deal for that business.
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Pros
Google
  • Self-service
  • Easy to use, point and click
  • Little to no training required
  • Easy to share internally and externally
  • Rich visualizations
  • Canned reports
  • Easy to copy/paste/dupe existing reports
  • Ability to join data sets
  • Easy integration with various data sources
  • Flexible data integrations, including lowest common denominator (CSV, XLS, G-Sheets)
  • Wide range of APIs
  • Secure / authentication via Google SSO
  • Easy to share / re-assign ownership of reports and data sources
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SAS
  • Provides the flexibility to the end user to slice and dice the data.
  • Anyone can make predictive models with the help of in-built algorithms without the need to write a single line of code or knowledge of what's under the hood of algorithms.
  • The feature to simply ask a question related to data and getting a response in form of text, chart or graph is amazing.
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Cons
Google
  • Few functionalities are very exclusive only for data studio.
  • It's time taking to load data and at the same time only single Data source can be connected.
  • When editing the reports you have to switch between Edit and View mode to see how does the change looks like.
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SAS
  • SAS is relatively expensive when compared to other BI tools and requires a large amount of upfront fee which becomes an issue for smaller organizations.
  • UI for the dashboards looks a little date in comparison to competitors like Tableau and Microstrategy.
  • Integration with other open source software like Python needs to be built in.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
It is the simplest and least expensive way for us to automate our reporting at this time. I like the ability to customize literally everything about each report, and the ability to send out reports automatically in emails. The only issue we have been having recently is a technical glitch in the automatic email report. Sadly, there is almost no support for this tool from Google, but is also free, so that is important to take into consideration
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SAS
SAS really is the cutting edge in Business Intelligence. That is all they do! They are constantly coming out with new products, product upgrades, and their tech support is second to none. In addition, their support of Education has made our ability to acquire their product possible.
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Usability
Google
Google Data Studio has a clean interface that follows a lot of UX best practices. It is fairly easy to pick up the first time you use it, and there is a lot of documentation on line to help troubleshoot, if needed
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SAS
SAS BI is good for creating reports and dashboards and then sharing it with the users. It also has ability to manage access to the reports and dashboards but somehow with most of the world moving to open source languages R, Python and Julia, SAS BI feels to be archaic in terms of feature set and integrations it allow[s]. Also, comparing it with other Business Intelligence tools like Tableau and Microsoft BI, the functionality of SAS BI is very limited and doesn't justify the pricing.
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Support Rating
Google
I give it a lower support rating because it seems like our Dev team hasn't gotten the support they need to set up our database to connect. Seems like we hit a roadblock and the project got put on pause for dev. That sucks for me because it is harder to get the dev team to focus on it if they don't get the help they need to set it up.
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SAS
When you call tech support, you are immediately routed to a person who can answer your question. Often they can answer on the spot. However, if they cannot, you are given a track number and then followed up with. There have been times when I have had multiple track numbers open and they will actually TRACK YOU DOWN to ensure that your problem has been resolved. Issues do not fall into black holes with SAS. They are also willing to do a WebEx with you to diagnose the problem by seeing your environment, which is always helpful.
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Alternatives Considered
Google
Google Data Studio provides a great feature set considering its price point, especially when compared to commercial options from Microsoft and Tableau. While it may not be as versatile when it comes to working with and developing complex datasets, there is enough charm in its simple, easy-to-use UI to allow not-so-complex analytics to be conducted without having to hire a data analyst.
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SAS
SAS Business Intelligence is not the cream of the crop for business intelligence applications, but it is not far behind. The software is generally easier to apply than most other business intelligence software. Additionally, SAS Business Intelligence runs smoothly in the background when making real-time updates. With that said, the software is not as efficient of many of the other business intelligence software applications that have been on the market for longer than this one.
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Return on Investment
Google
  • Free, so the only investment is time
  • Because it doesn't have native support of non-Google sources, it can cost more money than Tableau
  • The time spent formatting the templates or building connectors can have a negative impact on ROI
  • As a agency, charging for the reporting service is profitable after the first month or two after building the dashboard.
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SAS
  • SAS Visual Analytics licensing cost should be reduced to enable users to use it in mass scale.
  • More statistical and mathematical equations and theories should be converted into SAS functions for reusing.
  • Because of enriched ETL and reporting capabilities SAS Visual Analytics is most preferred by business users.
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ScreenShots

SAS Visual Analytics Screenshots

Screenshot of Explore your data using analytics and interactive data visualizations.