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Google Sheets vs. Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Google Sheets

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AGoogle Sheets is the spreadsheet app available on Google Workspace, or standalone, with a free plan for personal use and accessible via mobile apps for iOS and Android.N/A

    Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/APower BI for Office 365 allowed users to model and analyze data, and query large datasets with complex natural language queries. It has been discontinued in favor of other editions of Power BI going forward.N/A
    Pricing
    Google SheetsPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google SheetsPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Google SheetsPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Considered Both Products
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    90 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    86 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    89 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    49 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    60 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Google SheetsPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Google Sheets and Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Feature
    Google Sheets
    -
    Ratings
    Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    9.0
    11 Ratings
    10% above category average
    Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings9.010 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards00 Ratings8.011 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings10.08 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Google Sheets and Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Feature
    Google Sheets
    -
    Ratings
    Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    9.5
    11 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Drill-down analysis00 Ratings9.011 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities00 Ratings9.011 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings10.06 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Google Sheets and Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Feature
    Google Sheets
    -
    Ratings
    Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    9.5
    11 Ratings
    15% above category average
    Publish to Web00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
    Publish to PDF00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
    Report Versioning00 Ratings9.06 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings9.64 Ratings
    Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.73 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Google Sheets and Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Feature
    Google Sheets
    -
    Ratings
    Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    10.0
    11 Ratings
    22% above category average
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics00 Ratings10.08 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Google Sheets and Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Feature
    Google Sheets
    -
    Ratings
    Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    9.8
    10 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings9.08 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings10.09 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Google Sheets and Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Feature
    Google Sheets
    -
    Ratings
    Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    9.5
    10 Ratings
    21% above category average
    Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
    Mobile Application00 Ratings9.09 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings10.09 Ratings
    Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
    Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Google Sheets and Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Feature
    Google Sheets
    -
    Ratings
    Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    7.8
    3 Ratings
    1% above category average
    REST API00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
    Javascript API00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
    iFrames00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Java API00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.02 Ratings
    Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings7.02 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Google SheetsPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
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    Stackby
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Microsoft Excel
    Score9 out of 10
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Microsoft Excel
    Score9 out of 10
    Jaspersoft Community Edition
    Score7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Google SheetsPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (93 ratings)
    8.0
    (15 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    9.2
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    8.7
    (55 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (10 ratings)
    Data Sources
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.9
    (9 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Google SheetsPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Google
    Google Sheets is well suited in two main areas: is free to use and you don't need to buy a license to use it, comparing to the most direct competitors ; collaboration is in my opinion the best advantage, with multiple people working together and seeing others working in real time. It's less appropriate in low connectivity environments (offline capabilities)
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    If you're already using Office 365, Power BI for O365 is an easy choice. Start playing around with the free version and then easily add individual Pro licenses with little risk. However, if you anticipate using this with many users, it can get expensive quickly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Google
    • Collaborative planning : In the initial phase of project, Team leads and architects create a permission matrix along with the naming convention simultaneously, seeing who is editing / adding the details in real-time.
    • Cost tracking : We use this tool to track cloud resource usage monthly costs, so that we can analyse it and send out comms for high cost based resources. By storing cost data here, it's easy for use to store data of last couple of years.
    • Flexible documentation : For change logging of different scenarios we would need different / ad-hoc columns to be added on the fly, which makes using this tool much simpler then reputed third party tools.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Easy to make visual dashboards from SQL queries. Previously we had to use a third party application that had to run on a web server that was so complex to setup and run. PowerBI removes all that.
    • Ability to control who/which group has access to each dashboard or report. Ties in well with the rest of the Office 365 ecosystem.
    • Has many connectors to allow pulling data from various systems, both onsite (via gateway) or external (via APIs), and join the data to create a report/dashboard.
    • Ability to show data but also export the data, if permitted.
    • Easy to show PowerBI dashboards on SharePoint or on other websites via embedded code.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Google
    • Ease of use - I collaborate with a lot of folks on these and a lot of them have trouble using it.
    • Would love more live features; for example, being able to have cells react to other inputs (checkboxes, etc) with reactive formatting
    • More cross-usability with other Google products; it's hard to think of drawbacks honestly, this is a pretty seamless software.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Licensing: Currently, Microsoft has a fixed pricing model for Office 365 users, regardless of role/function of the user. Most organizations have a small number of "power users" that create usable content and many more "consumers" that simply view/run reports created by power users. Microsoft does not differentiate between these users, and thus the pricing limits organizations from large deployments of the software.
    • Version incompatibility: Excel 2010 and 2013 workbooks are compatible with each other. However, workbooks created in 2010 that include PowerPivot databases must be upgraded to 2013 format to run in 2013. Subsequently, you cannot open these upgraded PowerPivot workbooks in 2010. This requires ALL users to be on the same version.
    • Visualization: Excel charting with PowerPivot workbooks is adequate for many users. Power View also contains a number of GREAT visualizations, including animated bubble charts and a very flexible dashboard/report design canvas. However, compared to some of the other self-service BI solutions, it is still limited in its visualization capabilities.
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Google
    I am not involved in the purchase/selection process, but my organization is a Google shop, and Sheets meets most of our spreadsheet needs and works seamlessly with our other tools. I don't anticipate our switching anytime soon.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    I will continue to recommend this suite to folks looking for a reporting and analytics solution, as I find in MOST cases, it's great at meeting almost every requirement I've been given by a multitude of clients across a range of industries. I've built Capacity Planning solutions that allowed end user input which was then submitted to SharePoint, Executive Dashboards, custom applications, simple analytical tools for teams to easily slice and dice data, and super simple reports as well as some very complicated ones. If you haven't seen the demos online, do a search, and see for yourself - this is a great BI suite! (I do not work for Microsoft, although I do consult out there from time to time. I do occasionally make a recommendation for a different BI reporting tool, but in general, find Excel can accomplish quite a bit for less money and in less time.)
    Read full review
    Usability
    Google
    It can easily handle most uses and functions. It is only for very large datasets or advanced analysis that it either lacks the proper functions or performance begins to slow. Most employees who continue to use competitors' products do so out of preference, familiarity with the user interface, or other surface-level reasons.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    We are satisfied with the functionality and capabilities of Power BI. Product is cost effective and full-fill the reporting requirements of the organization. You can perform most of the report level complex analysis with the help of DAX which makes Power BI very powerful analytic tool. Power BI for Office 365 has gone away and Power BI is the next evolution of it. Power BI comes with your Office 365 E5 subscription or you can purchase licensing for it separately.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Google
    Like most Google products, Google Sheets rarely has outages or slowness, and when it does, connection is always momentarily restored. I can't recall a time when I've been unable to access Google Sheets but able to access other sites just fine. That said, errors aren't uncommon when handling large data volume. You know what they say about using spreadsheets as databases, but sometimes it's just the most convenient option, especially for smaller or one-off projects, and not being able to store large amounts of data hampers our ability to move quickly with scrappy prototypes or full solutions. It would be great if we could better integrate our data manipulation (Apps Script) with big data in the sheet.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Google
    Again, Google Sheets is no exception to Google's general high speed and reliability, but load times can be slow for larger amounts of data. I've used Sheets with Zapier and have used the Python API, and speed has never been an issue.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Google
    I have never contacted Google Sheets support, but Google Sheets makes it very easy to report an issue or suggest a feature from Sheets itself (Help > Help Sheets improve), and I've had mostly good experiences with support for other Google products.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    as of now there is strong community for Power BI, you can get solution for most of your problems from there. Also you can send your error to Microsoft as well. After every 15 days they release updates to overcome all the issues of defects.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Google
    I have found that I can do almost everything I could have done in Microsoft Excel faster and easier in Google Sheets. We recommend Google Sheets in 99.9% of our use cases and feel it meets the needs of our workers very well. I am sure there are other spreadsheet creation programs out there, but because we are already in the Google environment, adopting Google Sheets in very easy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Oracle was nice, super expensive to implement if it's not in use already. JobDiva is choppy and heavy on the system while does not give great reports. Salesforce is good; remote access is good however their support is terrible
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Google
    I'm not involved with the purchase, but I assume everything goes smoothly and that the pricing structure is predictable and reasonable. We do not get surprise fees.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Google
    Google Sheets works very well with multiple users. It's convenient to see in real-time who is collaborating in a sheet, down to the specific cell that they're viewing/editing. Linking Sheets across departments is convenient with the IMPORTRANGE function.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Google
    • Don't need to pay for windows 365 license as it is free
    • Has a positive impact since I am not cursing excel for annoying problems(I don't want the new Pivot table format, I want to use Classic and I don't want to expand/collapse arrows. "x$#%")
    • [Haven't] looked at return on investment on work, but has "simplified" for basic and medium spreadsheets.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • As a Microsoft Partner implementing Business Intelligence solutions, Power BI has removed the barrier for our clients to begin the "BI journey". So often, projects get hung up in that early phase of procuring and installing/configuring expensive hardware and software. Just simply getting started and designing a beginning solution has allowed our clients to see results in 1-2 weeks using their data that might have taken months to achieve otherwise.
    • One significant ROI example is process improvement. In many cases, individuals or teams are spending days each month gathering data from multiple sources for reporting to their constituents. We are reducing these times to minutes by automating many of the data collection and integration processes that were previously manual.
    Read full review
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