Looker vs. MicroStrategy Analytics

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Looker
Score 8.2 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
MicroStrategy Analytics
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
MicroStrategy Analytics is an enterprise business analytics and mobility platform. Key features include automatic big data analysis and reporting, data discovery and visualization, digital security credentials, and support for mobile devices.N/A
Pricing
LookerMicroStrategy Analytics
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
LookerMicroStrategy Analytics
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.Must contact sales team for pricing information.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
LookerMicroStrategy Analytics
Considered Both Products
Looker
Chose Looker
Tableau has an adoption issue of having to upgrade to the most recent Tableau reader. In my experience it was very difficult to get the sales team to do this. microstrategy was the most overly complicated reporting software I have ever used. You need a consultant to do …
Chose Looker
I evaluated everything under the Gartner BI quadrant (i.e., Tableau, Birst, MS SSRS, MicroStrategy, etc.) — from the niche players, all the way through the powerhouse (supposed) "leaders" in BI. Looker was a nice fit for my company, because all though we are quite large (in …
MicroStrategy Analytics
Chose MicroStrategy Analytics
  • Standardized & optimized data repository resulting in better pricing strategy and increase in revenue & profitability
  • Better decision making capability and efficient on-boarding of end users through a near real-time reporting platform
  • Four major investor segmentation reports for …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
LookerMicroStrategy Analytics
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.0
114 Ratings
2% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
26 Ratings
21% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.493 Ratings10.023 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.7113 Ratings10.023 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.997 Ratings10.024 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.0
114 Ratings
1% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
24 Ratings
22% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.1110 Ratings10.022 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.4112 Ratings10.024 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.947 Ratings10.016 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.7114 Ratings10.023 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.5
110 Ratings
2% above category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
23 Ratings
19% above category average
Publish to Web8.292 Ratings10.022 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.798 Ratings10.023 Ratings
Report Versioning8.173 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.895 Ratings10.022 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Looker
6.7
111 Ratings
17% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
22 Ratings
23% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.9107 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.596 Ratings10.019 Ratings
Predictive Analytics4.66 Ratings10.018 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Looker
8.2
110 Ratings
4% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
21 Ratings
16% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.8104 Ratings10.019 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model7.992 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.2104 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control8.043 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings10.09 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Looker
5.7
83 Ratings
33% below category average
MicroStrategy Analytics
9.7
19 Ratings
20% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access6.680 Ratings10.019 Ratings
Mobile Application5.01 Ratings10.015 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile6.374 Ratings10.019 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Looker
-
Ratings
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
8 Ratings
24% above category average
REST API00 Ratings10.06 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings10.07 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings10.06 Ratings
Best Alternatives
LookerMicroStrategy Analytics
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Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
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Score 10.0 out of 10
Reveal
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Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Jaspersoft Community Edition
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Score 9.7 out of 10
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Score 9.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
LookerMicroStrategy Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(115 ratings)
10.0
(47 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(6 ratings)
9.9
(27 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(12 ratings)
3.2
(5 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(14 ratings)
2.2
(5 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(4 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Professional Services
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
LookerMicroStrategy Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
It's great for clients who don't have a huge reporting budget and/or want to add voiceover insight and analysis to the report. I love Looker for weekly updates. The client gets a general overview and can compare data against any time period that works for them. Plus, it's a free tool - who doesn't love that?
Read full review
MicroStrategy
MSTR is great for any organization that is looking for a way to deliver complicated data in an uncomplicated way. From business teams to marketing and finance, several departments benefit from using MSTR to keep track of KPIs enabling teams to make optimizations along the way. MSTR provides great visual representations of data enabling team members to distill thousands of data points into easily digestible charts and graphs
Read full review
Pros
Google
  • Show visited pages - sessions, pageviews - which programs are viewed the most.
  • Displays session source/medium views to see where users are coming from.
  • It shows the video titles, URLs, and event counts so we can monitor the performance of our videos.
  • It gives a graphic face to the numbers, such as using bar charts, pie graphs, and other charts to show user trends or which channels are driving engagement.
  • Our clients like to see the top pages visited for a month.
  • I like the drop-and-drag approach, and building charts is a little easier than it was before.
Read full review
MicroStrategy
  • They sell the product well, and make promises you will actually believe
  • "checks the box" for most features a company would need. Doesn't actually deliver them though
  • They answer the phone in a timely manner. Can't answer your questions or provide support, but the queue time isn't bad
  • They have online documentation. It's not up to date, and likely doesn't reflect the version of software you are using, but hey... they can point to it.
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • I’d like a bit more personalization, particularly in the “Style” section (e.g., fonts, paragraph settings, the ability to map the axis labels to shorter names…).
  • Performance can be quite slow when there are many graphs on one page, even making the page unresponsive sometimes.
  • I’d love to be able to easily embed a dashboard in the Google Sheets it comes from (without injecting code to embed the HTML).
Read full review
MicroStrategy
  • The graph options are not as robust as an Excel user might want.
  • The metadata layer can sometimes be slower, and it takes a long time for reports to run.
  • Viewing the data feed entered can be cumbersome at times, in terms of validation with reports.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Google
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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MicroStrategy
I would always choose to renew MicroStrategy as long as they lead the market in features, functionality and price. The support of MicroStrategy is timely and professional, I frequently get answers to my questions within 24 hours and normally have solutions within 48 hours. Training available for MicroStrategy completely covers everything required to be able to expertly use MicroStrategy and understand data warehousing.
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Usability
Google
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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MicroStrategy
The standard grid reporting could look more like the styling and object used for the Import and Visual Insight products. In addition, object properties almost seem to be hidden when first using the product. It's as if they are asking the engineers to only use the presets we make available...and, these presets are 10+ years old. On the positive side, Microstrategy seems to be the only product, not named Cognos, which can scale to Big Data. The product is "hackable" via the SDK or tricking the Intelligence Server to do uncommon things. The Microstrategy development team also seems to be very involved with their OEM partners; especially when it comes to features and enhancements. A large majority of the improvements we suggested have made it into the product or on the roadmap for future enhancements. Only suckas fall for the shiny objects from most other vendors; Microstrategy is really the only choice for Enterprise BI.
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Reliability and Availability
Google
No objections
Read full review
MicroStrategy
I've never had an issue with MicroStrategy not being available due to MicroStrategy application malfunction. It is very robust and only failures I've seen were due to user error or the platform the machine running the service failed some how.
Read full review
Performance
Google
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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MicroStrategy
Being able to customize the performance based on the business need is extremely powerful. Proper configuration and understanding of the usage pattern is key, if the technical ability of the architect is not at top level, then the product will not be configured correctly which will lead to poor performance.
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Support Rating
Google
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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MicroStrategy
Good user community. Support team is available if you are under AMC. You get decent support after raising the support ticket. If it is product bug they will inform you and let you know which patch will resolve the same.
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Online Training
Google
No answers on this topic
MicroStrategy
I have attended many trainings offered by MicroStrategy; both distance and in-person training. I earned my CRD (Certified Report Developer) certification via the online training. I found the training to be well organized and concise. Overall I will definitely continue to increase my knowledge with MicroStrategy via the online training offering.
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Implementation Rating
Google
Very satisfied, easy to implement
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MicroStrategy
We measured following KPI for the success
  • Increase in Business Feeds Loads
  • Reduction in Controllers Manual Work.
  • Conversion of Manual Work into Systematic Workflows.
  • Increase in Customer Spend
  • Reduction in Service costs
  • Reduction in time-to-market for new campaigns
  • Increase in cross sell and Up sell
  • Error reduction in customer Identification
  • Existing client retained
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Alternatives Considered
Google
Looker gives you options to integrate external APIs with great ease. Our data analytics team is able to easily use multiple data sources as input to the Looker dashboard, and everything is consolidated in one single Dashboard. You also have an option for Shared folders to be accessed by multiple people. The reporting system is perfect and has a wide range of options/reporting options that can be implemented.
Read full review
MicroStrategy
Tableau is probably MicroStrategy Analytic's biggest competitor I've noticed over time, and I'm not sure why. Tableau only covers visualizations independently for each business user, which then creates the issues of every employee creating their own version of the data, and then you have 20 versions of the truth. A enterprise data warehouse and MicroStrategy's Visual Insight is a better method.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Google
Perfect price to performance
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MicroStrategy
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Google
No answers on this topic
MicroStrategy
This software is extremely scaleable, one can add more core servers which performs as a load balancing. The configurations available to manage usage patterns and daily activity are as high a caliber as any other enterprise level software. This product can be installed on both a windows and unix platform allow for integration on a budget.
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Return on Investment
Google
  • Looker has a poignant impact on our business's ROI objectives. As an advertising exchange we have specific goals for daily requests and fill, and having premade Looks to monitor this is an integral piece of our operational capability
  • To facilitate an efficient monthly billing cycle in our organization, Looker is essential to track estimated revenue and impression delivery by publisher. Without the Looks we have set up, we would spend considerably more time and effort segmenting revenue by vertical.
  • Looker's unique value proposition is making analytical tools more digestible to people without conventional analytical experience. Other competing tools like Tableau require considerably more training and context to successfully use, and the ability to easily plot different visualizations is one of its greatest selling points.
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MicroStrategy
  • MicroStrategy was helpful for reducing the amount of time we needed to spend number crunching large data sets, and in doing so, allowed me as the primary users to spend more time gleaning insights from the data that in turn informed our leadership team to make strategic decisions.
  • By creating numerous canned reports available to all members of the team through email distribution or basic access to the platform, we were able to reduce the time I spent showing people how to pull the data in Microsoft Excel by nearly 40% .
  • We ended up needing to make many changes to the way our DMP was feeding data into MicroStrategy due to incorrect reporting that caused complications in accounting and finance.
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ScreenShots

Looker Screenshots

Screenshot of a Looker dashboard with a geo chart.