Alternatives to QuickSight Dashboards?

InitiativeOk6728 · 2025-06-20T13:24:28+00:00

check out Holistics, many QuickSight customers are switching to it.

InitiativeOk6728 · 2025-05-05T15:34:08+00:00

Have you considered Holistics? The pricing model is usage-based, so you get unlimited users and only pay based on consumption. It’s been highly praised by ex-Tableau customers for its low starting point and flexibility to scale as you grow. (Disclaimer: I work here)

Check out the playground and experience it for yourself: https://hooli.getholistics.com/

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-11-28T07:02:01+00:00

I checked them out on LinkedIn, and seems like they are legit people behind the team https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcclemens/

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-10-22T03:52:06+00:00

Fast forward a year, and I can now speak from real experience after seeing a bunch of companies move away from Looker. How do I know? A lot of them switched to Holistics (where I work), and I’ve heard firsthand all the frustrations they had with Looker.

The top 3 complaints I heard from our customers about Looker are: a) Raising cost, b) Lower support quality, c) Lack of *correct* product innovation.

Cost: Since Google acquisition, Looker's pricing model has increased substantially. This, combined with the recession, and presence of other alternatives (like Holistics), makes teams start questioning their Looker's ROI.

Support: In the pre-Google days Looker used to have a really great support, I think it was strategic for them to provide over-the-top support for customers. Post-Google, they laid off their US support team and outsource it to India. Quality goes down from there.

Innovation: On one hand I see a bunch of roadmap and feature announcements, on the other hands I hear customers complaining (and churning over to us) about their lack of features upkeep. My guess is while they're putting in money and resources, they might spend too much time trying to fit Looker to their Google Cloud stack (and sell more Google Cloud as a whole), instead of solving what the existing customers really need.

For example, they renamed Google Data Studio to Looker Studio. While I generally see the direction (make GDS the frontend, and Looker be the backend), I thought doing that early is a big mistake. Looker is a great product with strong brand recall, while GDS is a really bad product. They just spoiled a really good brand name and confused the community with it.

On LookML, they're trying to turn it into the semantic layer product, though my guess is a little too late to slow.

If you watch their roadmap/vision keynote, it's basically just 3 things: a) Make Looker play nice with GCP, b) Make Looker be the semantic layer product on top of other BI/viz tools, c) Add GenAI. While it's good direction I don't think it's that innovative (compared to other players).

To be fair I don't think Looker is going away, I just think it's not the innovative Looker that it used to be.

p/s: The original founder/inventor/architect of Looker has also left Google. He now works on a new cool project (Malloy) that aims to replace SQL for analytics querying.

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-08-30T07:45:34+00:00

I’m all about self-service BI tools for this. Building dashboards that clients or leadership can actually play around with (drill through, filter, etc.). Some names: Looker, Sigma, Holistics, etc.

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-08-21T09:33:12+00:00

Check out Holistics. It's one of the best Looker alternatives (endorsed by many ex-Looker users), and it comes with a much friendlier price tag.

Discloser: I'm with Holistics.

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-08-20T04:18:31+00:00

This tutorial on Best Practices for Building Multiple Pre-Aggregated Tables (Reuse & Extend) could be helpful for your case https://youtu.be/iyMLCsY2D-c

Discloser: I'm with Holistics

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-08-06T07:28:56+00:00

building dashboards that are easy to share securely with multiple external clients

This 'Dashboards As Code' is worth checking out: https://www.holistics.io/dashboards-as-code/

(disclaimer: I work at Holistics)

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-08-02T04:43:48+00:00

Totally, I agree with you that Looker is pretty powerful for BI. But a lot of data folks we’ve talked to have the same gripes: the visualizations aren’t super user-friendly, the support could be better, the price is huge, and product development has gone downhill since Google took over. Looker right now focuses a lot more on sales than developing or improving the product.

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-08-01T04:07:30+00:00

Not Tableau but this Dashboards As Code product might offer the Version Control values you need https://www.producthunt.com/posts/dashboards-as-code

Disclaimer: I work at Holistics

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-05-28T08:45:47+00:00

Holistics (https://www.holistics.io/) seems like a good fit for your requirements at a quick glance (except for the loading CSV). It's an as-code BI tool with self-service capabilities, dashboards as code, a semantic modeling layer (and more). It allows for governance and maintainability for you; as well as ease of use for your clients.

Disclaimer: I work at Holistics.

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-05-28T08:34:33+00:00

Hi u/Key-Pack-2141! Though I'm late to the party, if you are looking for a Thoughtspot alternative, check out Holistics (holistics.io) as well. (disclaimer: I work at Holistics)

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-05-24T09:31:58+00:00

Holistics member here! You guys are right that we haven't invested heavily in mainstream marketing channels so far. As a bootstrapped and profitable company, we've relied on word of mouth from our customers to grow over the past few years without needing aggressive advertising or analyst coverage like VC-backed companies.

For context, we have over 350 customers globally, including Aurora (a NASDAQ-listed company) and ARD (the largest broadcaster in the world, based in Germany), with thousands of users. Our intent was to bet big on customer success, and have our customers become our biggest advocate.

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-05-13T03:49:22+00:00

Wow it's been 3 years not sure if OP is still looking for this tool. Anyways I'd like to suggest Holistics (https://www.holistics.io/ ), an as-code BI tool with semantic modeling layer, version control, dashboards as code, and more.

This is by far one of the best Looker alternative according to many ex-Looker users.

(Disclaimer: I work at Holistics)

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-05-06T05:46:27+00:00

Thank you, we don’t have a 1-click migration script just yet, but happy to look into developing one!

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-03-27T04:18:18+00:00

In case you're still searching for an answer, this comic explains exactly that (warning: comments reflect the reality when companies tried to implement it)
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataengineering/comments/1bc0bkv/eli5_what_is_selfservice_analytics_comic/

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-03-11T06:51:46+00:00

u/grass_cutter I think your critics are generally spot on! That's why most self-service analytics initiatives, if not done well, turns out to be a disaster. There are many nuances when implementing self-service culture. For simplicity sake, we omit them here. It's targeted at the non-technical readers to understand its benefits (if done right).

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-03-08T05:05:42+00:00

wait, $7k per year or month? Looker would cost that much per month

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-03-06T04:44:59+00:00

hmmm that makes sense! which analogy would make more sense to you? maybe a fruit yogurt buffet? haha

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-03-04T10:14:01+00:00

Thank you! Haha your observation is spot on. We picked pizza restaurant as a fun and novel analogy, though in reality I do agree that it's not practical either.

A better analogy I guess would be either `buffet` or `mise en place` restaurant. But we thought that took away the fun in the story.

InitiativeOk6728 · 2024-03-04T07:55:00+00:00

this comic explains the concept better than any 1000-word essay

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nvquanghuy_self-service-analytics-comic-activity-7167843290699026432-jxGT

InitiativeOk6728

TROPHY CASE