Looker is pretty good for the price
Overall Satisfaction with Looker
We use Looker across the whole organization. It is used for integrated reporting (known as Looks) for delivery via email or GUI. Our company uses it for its own reports and we also publish customer-facing reports with it, on a daily basis. Essentially, it is a delivery program and some other things for our ETL process.
Pros
- Provides interesting data, provided the databases exist for it to be sliced.
- Delivery system is relatively easy to use.
- Customers can pick up the report creation pretty quickly.
Cons
- API is difficult to use, especially with auth problems.
- The LookMLs can be confusing with referenced objects.
- Maintaining on-prem servers requires a lot of maintenance.
- In the cloud the data writes slowly.
- Positive - Reporting has drawn in more customers and helped us develop deeper relationships.
- Negative - Looker had some bugs in its earlier iterations which caused some serious failures.
- Negative - Upgrading Looker on prem can be tricky.
- Positive - If you start with Looker in the cloud, it is relatively easy to maintain.
Looker is cheaper, by far. Easier to manage. In the end, Looker was a better choice for us, even with its maintenance warts and the headaches with the APIs. Tableau licensing is difficult to manage, at the very least, whereas Looker is not. User management is much easier to manage within Looker.
Do you think Looker delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Looker's feature set?
Yes
Did Looker live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Looker go as expected?
No
Would you buy Looker again?
Yes
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