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Google Sheets vs. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

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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

    SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer

    Score5.6 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) enables deep visibility into database performance and expert advice for performance optimization and tuning. What can you monitor with DPA? Oracle Oracle Exadata Oracle EBS Microsoft SQL Server Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Database Managed Instance MySQL DB2 SAP ASE Aurora MariaDB DPA monitors physical, virtual,…N/A
    Pricing
    Google SheetsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google SheetsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Google SheetsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Considered Both Products
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    90 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    13 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    86 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    89 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    49 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    60 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Google SheetsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Small Businesses
    Stackby
    Score8.8 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Microsoft Excel
    Score9 out of 10
    Redgate Monitor
    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Microsoft Excel
    Score9 out of 10
    Foglight
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Google SheetsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (93 ratings)
    9.1
    (114 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    8.7
    (55 ratings)
    8.2
    (7 ratings)
    Availability
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.3
    (6 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Google SheetsSolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer
    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
    SolarWinds
    This is an easy 10 because I actually have recommended this product to multiple clients and colleagues! Any shop that writes its own SQL queries will benefit from the insight provided by SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer, so they know which of their queries is causing a bottleneck. Small shops or databases with only a few tables likely will see far fewer opportunities for optimization.
    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
    SolarWinds
    • Maintains historical SQL execution data, enabling forensic analysis
    • Has the ability to slice and dice the data so that you can drill down to the execution of a single SQL statement being executed by a stored procedure
    • Alerts to when the consumption pattern changes
    • Shows historical average run times against the current, illustrating problems when they arise
    • Provides tuning advice based on best practices
    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
    SolarWinds
    • Alerts seem to be lacking in DPA compared to competitor's tools. They can be setup but are not quite as easy or as helpful as some other tools I have used.
    • Grooming/pruning the repository database isn't very easy. We don't manage a lot of instances but our repo DB has grown pretty significantly.
    • At times when I am drilled-down to a chart, it can be difficult to navigate around from that point to another time range/query/metric.
    Incentivized
    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
    SolarWinds
    We have relied on this product for a very long time and it continues to exceed expectations. The product is a vital part of our organization at this point, it would not be very ideal for us to abandon it. We use it almost every day and depend on its alerts for critical parts of our business
    Incentivized
    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
    SolarWinds
    I don't want to think about managing clusters of SQL servers in the future without this tool. We have demoed other tools and SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer is the gold standard for usability and insight into what your servers are doing. The UI is a bit dated, but everything is laid out in a logical manner and drilling down into queries or timeslices is extremely intuitive.
    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
    SolarWinds
    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
    SolarWinds
    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
    SolarWinds
    I have had to use their support on a few occasions, for reasons that I am not clear about until recently I have always had problems upgrading the software (although the last 2 updates have gone without issue which I am very pleased to say). On those unfortunate occasions, the support has been brilliant with either excellently documented guides on how to resolve the issue by myself or have been hands-on with calls and screen sharing to remotely fix the issue. Every time the problem was sorted and more importantly, nothing was lost (apart from a bit of time). And as I stated above whatever the problem was that was causing my upgrade issues appears to have been resolved in the last 2 updates.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    SolarWinds
    Follow the guidelines for the capacity of the servers. We found that the DPA databases were getting rather large and also that there are ways to reduce their size built into some of the options.
    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
    SolarWinds
    At the time, we found SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to be easier to setup and to have a richer feature set than Redgate SQL Monitor, plus, from what I remember, the DPA pricing worked better for us over the course of a year. We're very happy with all the features DPA has to offer.
    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
    SolarWinds
    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
    SolarWinds
    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
    SolarWinds
    • It has allowed us to progress as an organization with much less reliance on a direct DBA than would traditionally be required
    • Allowed us to be much more proactive in our performance monitoring and responding to issues that would affect users.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer Screenshots

    Screenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Alerts and reportsScreenshot of Application-centric view of DPAScreenshot of Blocking deadlock analysisScreenshot of Collaboration across teamsScreenshot of Intuitive performance monitoring