Chartio, Neighborino!
Updated November 04, 2014

Chartio, Neighborino!

Devin Knight | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Google Analytics
  • MySQL

Overall Satisfaction with Chartio

At Workiva, we are currently using Chartio to display KPIs and other research metrics in a dashboard format. The dashboard format makes information easier to consume on a regular basis, as well as, presenting during sprint reviews. The product is currently being used by our Product Management and User Experience teams, other departments are considering the tool for their own purposes.
  • Constantly updating: many of the BI tools we looked at were slow to iterate on their product. This was a main selling point for us.
  • Ease of Use: We have many users that are new to BIs tools and database management in general. BI software as a whole has a pretty steep learning curve for most people, but Chartio does a good job of making things easier all around.
  • Database Support: It seems as though every department insists on storing their information using different databases. Chartio had support for everyone one we needed which was very helpful.
  • Limited in-depth functionality: In speaking with our Data Science team, it seems Chartio is limited when it comes to more in-depth BI features. An example is the lack of ability to have complete control over queries: how often they fire, when they fire, which charts can refresh when, etc. Chartio has been improving on this, however.
  • Limited Google Analytics control: In my speaking with the Chartio CSMs, this seems to be more on Google's end. Examples: The API doesn't fully pull in custom dimension names and query limits seem to still be imposed even though we have GA premium. Chartio does attempt to give workarounds like letting you rename the custom dimensions until they roll out a permanent fix.
I kind of hit on this earlier, but simply put: Usability. We were given tutorials by our Data Science team using Birst, and even they encountered a few hiccups explaining things: they use this everyday! We trialed Chartio with people having zero BI software experience and they took less than an hour to go off creating their own charts. Tableau was more expensive than we were looking to spend as this was a whole new undertaking.
Great customer support: You will receive an answer by email usually within 20-30 minutes. Not only that but our CSMs for Chartio go out of their way to help, they have even created charts for some of the less experienced users that wanted an example to work from. We have had nothing but great experiences with this team.
Our Data Science team currently uses Birst due to it's micro level control. If you're in a situation where you want inexperienced users taking a larger part in managing their dashboards, I would highly recommend this product. The usability of this product and their frequent updates to improve problem areas are just leaps and bounds above everything else we looked at. Birst did release a beta "wiziwig" type interface that was easier to use than the original interface, but it was still pretty far behind Chartio in terms of performance and appearance.