Looker Studio vs. Microsoft Access

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Looker Studio
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Looker Studio is a data visualization platform that transforms data into meaningful presentations and dashboards with customized reporting tools.
$9
per month per user per project
Microsoft Access
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Access is a database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools.
$139.99
per PC
Pricing
Looker StudioMicrosoft Access
Editions & Modules
Looker Studio Pro
$9
per month per user per project
Looker Studio
No charge
Microsoft Access
$139.99
per PC
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Looker StudioMicrosoft Access
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Looker StudioMicrosoft Access
Considered Both Products
Looker Studio

No answer on this topic

Microsoft Access
Chose Microsoft Access
It is a program that is compatible with many others, which is an excellent advantage considering that the most used package in the company is Microsoft Office. thus a savings for the company.

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Looker StudioMicrosoft Access
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.7
53 Ratings
9% below category average
Microsoft Access
-
Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports7.337 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.952 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.051 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.0
52 Ratings
13% below category average
Microsoft Access
-
Ratings
Drill-down analysis9.444 Ratings00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.348 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages3.224 Ratings00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration7.351 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
8.0
52 Ratings
5% below category average
Microsoft Access
-
Ratings
Publish to Web8.246 Ratings00 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.545 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Versioning8.033 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling6.336 Ratings00 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.818 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker Studio
7.2
51 Ratings
11% below category average
Microsoft Access
-
Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.651 Ratings00 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization9.348 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics5.126 Ratings00 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining5.02 Ratings00 Ratings
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Looker StudioMicrosoft Access
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Mathematica
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Score 8.2 out of 10
Snowflake
Snowflake
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Sigma
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Score 9.4 out of 10
SAP IQ
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Looker StudioMicrosoft Access
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(54 ratings)
8.0
(98 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(15 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(5 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
6.7
(10 ratings)
6.4
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Looker StudioMicrosoft Access
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Looker Studio is well-suited for those wanting to analyze web/site data and performance quickly. It is simple enough to learn/use for quick report-building or drilling into data. Looker Studio is easier to use/understand than the GA4 console and thus has a better UI/UX. It is an efficient tool for fast, simple data needs—especially for team members with limited analytical capabilities and knowledge.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Access can be easily implemented with training. It doesn't require expert level skill for basic reporting functions - but can be scaled to a complex database with sophisticated users. Its appropriate to consider if excel needs to be used to create reports, or if there are data entry needs - with corresponding reports.
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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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Microsoft
  • Very easy to create entity-relationship diagrams for various tables and designing mock layouts.
  • Really easy to navigate as it hold[s] the classic Microsoft UI. Another good thing is that it comes with the complete MS Office Suite.
  • It is really fast when joining multiple tables no matter what type of join.
  • Works on pretty much same SQL scripts so no need to learn a new language!
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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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Microsoft
  • Microsoft Access has not really changed at all for several years. It might be nice to see some upgrades and changes.
  • The help info is often not helpful. Need more tutorials for Microsoft Access to show how to do specific things.
  • Be careful naming objects such as tables, forms, etc. Names that are too long can get cut off in dialog boxes to choose a table, form, report, etc. So, I wish they would have resizable dialog boxes to allow you to see objects with long names.
  • I wish it could show me objects that are not in use in the database for current queries, tables, reports, forms, and macros. That way unused objects can be deleted without worrying about losing a report or query because you deleted the underlying object.
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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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Microsoft
I and the rest of my team will renew our Microsoft Access in the future because we use and maintain many different applications and databases created using Microsoft Access so we will need to maintain them in the future. Additionally, it is a standard at our place of work so it is at $0 cost to us to use. Another reason for renewing Microsoft Access is that we just don' t have the resources needed to extend into a network of users so we need to remain a single-desktop application at this time.
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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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Microsoft
Microsoft Access is easy to use. It is compatible with spreadsheets. It is a very good data management tool. There is scope to save a large amount of data in one place. For using this database, one does not need much training, can be shared among multiple users. This database has to sort and filtering features which seem to be very useful.
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Reliability and Availability
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
I don't think the program has ever failed me. It is one of those programs where there is always a solution if you know where to look.
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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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Microsoft
While I have never contacted Microsoft directly for product support, for some reason there's a real prejudice against MS Access among most IT support professionals. They are usually discouraging when it comes to using MS Access. Most of this is due to their lack of understanding of MS Access and how it can improve one's productivity. If Microsoft invested more resources towards enhancing and promoting the use of MS Access then maybe things would be different.
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Implementation Rating
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
there is no key idea, since it is easy to implement Microsoft Access
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Alternatives Considered
Google
The free version of Looker Studio is still better than the leading enterprise-embedded BI tools, despite its weaknesses. The leading embedded BI platforms have terrible visualizations that can be spotted a mile away. They are also primarily locked to a grid, making it very hard to fully customize. The price point is also a major deterrent, since users end up paying for lots of features they might never use. Looker Studio has weaknesses on the blending and modeling side, but we've been able to get by via connection to GBQ and transformation done in dbt.
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Microsoft
Crystal is easier for report writing, but isn't a database solution. Salesforce is lovely, but much more expensive than an old copy of Microsoft Office. For a small budget, [Microsoft] Access was really the only viable option. I only wish it was easier to write complex reports.
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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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Microsoft
  • Not having to recreate queries or reports every time you want to use them.
  • Once an item is created and saved as part of the database, you save manpower by not having to recreate them.
  • ROI from a usability standpoint is great. Solid product with great functionality that requires low maintenance usually.
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ScreenShots