Google Data Studio reviews

The most impactful features of DataStudio are the wide range of visualizations you have access to in order to present your data in the most engaging and insightful way. Coupled with the wide range of data connectors that are available natively and also third-party connectors, which expands the scope widely.
Once you have understood the overall way of working, the tool is very easy to use. There are lots of training videos available and lots of support available over the internet, in case you get stuck.
Integration into my business practises was easy because of the flexibility in data input sources. If a specific connector does not exist, then you can always fall back on file imports.

The most important missing feature for me personally is a native (free) data connector to Facebook Ads. One has free access to all the Google platforms and I have a constant struggle to get a decent data connector to Facebook ad platform data.
One improvement that I suggest is to add the functionality to do processing on calculated fields to do for instance 7-day moving average calculations on the platform itself. Now I have to do those calculations on a Google Sheet first and then import the results into the DataStudo reports. Or even make that a built-in function?

Google Data Studio provides a great option for creating dashboards that present your basic data, particularly if that data resides in a Google tool (Analytics, Analytics360, even Google Sheets, etc.) The learning curve for this tool is not extensive before you are ready to build dashboards and reports. The template library is useful to learn what ways you can style your data.

With any data tool there is a learning curve, and the documentation provided by Google is not extensive. Fortunately there is a large offering of YouTube user generated content that covers almost every possible question you may have to get the desired result out of the platform, making it one of easiest Data Visualization tools to learn and get current information.

I love the integration with bigquery, as I already mentioned our data warehouse is there, we can build dashboards, reports, corrections, validations in minutes

it has a limited number of graphs, and deploying it is quite slow, also share it, I would like there to be more possibilities to filter by data

I really like the personalisation and the integration of other tools that you can use along side Google data studio.

We actually switched from Google data studio because we'd frequently get errors when changing our data and it would take ages to fix it.

Once it's build your data sources, it's easy to build your dashboards even they don't have the best data viz options. It's in the Google tech stack, that makes easy to your team keep running. Would like to have Microsoft Power BI? It was my concerto too! But yes, Google Data Studio will deliver all info you need in a beautiful interface - don't worry. Good price, clear and light interface, access from any device. Your data project will meet the needs.

Different from Microsoft Power BI for example, you don't have a on screen calculation, easy to work on. Many times you need to create new fields, build cases with calculations to have the field to use on. You need an administrator/builder with more tech skills. But any doubt that I found, I had case or example in the web to search and use. But once it's build the base, it's easy to build dashboards, deploy, upgrade and so one.

I like how everything is customizable so that you can easily analyze and visualize data.

I wish there was a similar official integration with TikTok ads. There are third-party integrations, but I would feel safer using an official one.

I like this tool very much because of few advanced feature like- data add on from multiple resources like google analytics, adwords, search console, Google Sheet, Big Query, MySql, Google Survey, Youtube Analytics, Custom File Upload and etc. Few more other to create custom dashboard as per requirement. Do automation share report on email. It's very useful to create advance data visualization report. Also the filtration of record as per date we select is a global feature to add in report always on a same URL.

there's nothing to dislike or less like. There's possibility to add more add on related to example worksheet for marketing templates, sales and project analysis.

I like the many possibilities of integrations with the data studio. It helps when you have multiple advertising campaigns to report on

It is a little difficult to create your own custom reporting charts.

This capacity to change dates, scope and variables, saving us hours to data preparation with an incredible visual presentation

Difficult to prepare data and tables in order to have our desired presentation

Data Studio no tiene rival en lo que informes de campaña, cliente y estado de cuenta se refiere. Es una herramienta gratuita de Google que sirve para completar informes personalizados sobre todo si tienes que personalizar con datos de distintos entornos. Es la forma mas sencilla de englobar analiticas web, anuncios de google y con integraciones o excel otros datos. Me arriesgaría a decir que es muy improvable que trabajes en Marketing y no utilices Data Studio para realizar los informes profesionales.

A menudo el programa funciona lento, algunas veces los datos se desconfiguran y el soporte solo es por email o faqs

Being fully cloud based embedded within GSuite makes it the best and easiest solution for internal dashboards amongst your team. It's quite valuable not having to break your workflow and manage different logins and makes it super easy to share with a subset or whole of your organization

There is no support so you are on your own if things are going wrong. The connectors are also much less stable than other tools with frequent I/O problems or times when things are inexplicably broken for hours or days, and you are in the dark since there is no support.

I love that it's a tool directly from the same company where I get most of my data already. I use Google Analytics and Google Ads heavily in my business, so it's awesome to have a data analysis and reporting tool that has stable connections to both of these. Being able to integrate both, and other integrations into the same dashboard is a big plus.

And the depth of features has really gotten pretty large over the last couple of years. Unless you need extremely advanced calculations and reporting, Data Studio will probably suit your needs. The ability to sort your data and fine-tune exactly how metrics are displayed is cool.

It doesn't hurt that Data Studio is free! These kinds of tools are often very expensive, but Data Studio allows smaller studios like mine to get in the game for little to no investment.

It's a bit of a pain to get set up, and to fully integrate. The documentation, while large, is not easy to follow in my opinion.

Adding a data source and then creating a dashboard using a specific source can be a little hit and miss. It shouldn't take 3 or 4 screens of options to tell my dashboard that I want to get data from a specific source. Once you get past it, it's fine. But setting up a new dashboard, and organizing dashboards, is cumbersome.

I like how Google Data Studio takes marketing data and visualizes it through a user-friendly interface, in addition to offering free tools that are paid on other platforms, it can work with a large amount of data. The advantage is that it connects natively with all Google products such as analytics, this is very useful when working with the integration of all these platforms since they are compatible. I like the interactive way you present the reports. An advantage of using Google products is that there is a large community that contributes with tutorials and experiences.

so far I am satisfied with GDS, but would like to see more integrations with other platforms and not be limited to just google services.

I like that it's basically free and it's easy to create good-looking reports and share them with your colleagues. We're able to basically have another BI tool at our disposal without going through a lengthy procurement and deployment process.

Connecting a database is quite challenging with Google Data Studio. The error messages are not very helpful at its current state. And sometimes it gives you random errors for no clear reason.

It is free. It connects natively with all Google products (Google Analytics, Google BigQuery, Optimize, Google Ads, Google Sheets). It has connectors for most data sources (some are for free, others come at a reasonable price). It lets you develop and draw your own data visualization simply using Javascript. Being a Google free product, you can find a lot of documentation, both proprietary and from end users.

It is slow (especially when sourcing data from Google Analytics: then you add the slowness of data studio to the slowness of Analytics, Merchant Center, ...). You can create nifty dashboards, but it is not as flexible as other commercial tools (Tableau has many more features and data viz templates, and an analytical & data preparation engine that have nothing to do with the simple architecture of Data Studio)

To have a tool that give to you the opportunity to develop a complete dashboard is amazing, and the fact that that tool is free, is awesome.
I really enjoy that GDS is really easy to use, I learn by myself and seeking videos on the internet. It is a very intuitive application, so you might not know anything about data visualization and you could still use it without problem.
I really like that the Google apps have very similar edit pages, so if you have ever used Google Forms, you are going to find GDS very familiar.

I find this software very useful, but there is one thing that I want they to improve, if there is the possibility. The connection with Microsoft Office, for example: Microsoft Excel. If you want to make a dashboard on GDS, you have to pass your data to google sheets, and you lost a lot of features that Excel gives to you. There is a way to do it by using python, but, if you want to preserve the fact that this software is really easy to use, so, it is not a solution to this problem.

Google Data Studio offers a robust set of features and visualization options, all of which come together to form a powerful data visualization platform to accommodate all your needs. With ready-to-use templates and an easy drag & drop system, Google Data Studio makes it easy to link to your data - featuring numerous connections to google apps (like sheets, ads, search console, youtube, bigquery, mysql, etc), third-party apps, and custom connections - if they don't already support the app you are looking for. On top of that, Google Data studio offers numerous types of charts (pivot tables, regular tables, scorecards, graphs of every kind), and further customization with their third-party visualization options. The platform also offers custom formulas for data, allowing you to customize your data on the front-end vs in your database. However the best part of Google Data Studio is the ability to add data controls & filters - giving the ability to add a date selector, or a drop-down list based on a column of data; or even to set each chart individually to pull data from a specific time frame.

Overall, Google Data Studio offers many features which compounded together, create a powerful system for data analysis.

Despite Google Data Studio's prowess, unfortunately it can easily become overwhelming and unwieldy to manage. The learning curve for the program can be quite extreme; especially when you start to dive into custom formulas for data. While custom formulas seem to line up with formulas you might be familiar with in Excel, they don't - some formulas match, while others don't exist, and yet others do different things than their name-sake in excel. Furthermore, creating custom reports can become a time-consuming process - as you try to figure out how to display the data you want, while working around some of the limitations of Google Data Studio. This includes simple things like being able to modify the title of a specific chart - in some charts, this is an easy function; while in others, it is impossible, forcing you to use a custom title.

Furthermore, Google Data Studio has a list of pre-defined date ranges (such as "Last Week starting Sunday/Monday, Month To Date, Last Month, Last Year, Last Quarter, This Month, This Year, This Quarter") which operate perfectly - however if none of their predefined options work, you have to figure out their "Advanced" date range system, which can be quite complicated to manage if you are working with a dynamic range (such as wanting to see first quarter data but you are halfway through the second quarter)

This software can link up with your Google Analytics account and retrieve data from there. So instead of using the slopping reporting function inside Google Analytics, you can make use of the power offered by Google Data Studio.

It can make simple, but sophisticated table-based data using columns (or calculated columns), to present your data in many ways.

OR, you can choose to use one of the many types of graphics / charts offered in this software.

Last but not least, there are tons of community and native reporting templates, you can simply just download and start using.

I used to pay Megalytics for really crappy and limited reports. By migrating my deployments over to Google Data Studio, things are free, and does more than ever before.

Delivering website / web application reports to my clients is no longer a luxurious thing.

User identifyiable information cannot be reported when linking up with Google Analytics. This includes things like email address.

Extremely user friendly. Setting up the dashboards was simple. You have control over almost every detail, including the layout and design. This is unlike many data platforms I've used in the past. ALMOST everything is totally customizable. This brings in all your Google/Youtube data automatically (including Google Sheets/docs). It also lets your bring in images, links, and other assets. You can change the data range filter easily for all metrics. The dashboard also is easily shareable to all team members and you can export the dashboard to a PDF.

The connectivity to other platforms is disappointing. In order to automatically bring in your social media data or data from other sources (such as digital advertising or 1st party ecommerce data) you need to purchase a "connector". However, there are ways around this if you export your data from your other sources and just put this in a Google Sheet and connect that sheet to your Google Data Studio.

I love Google Data Studio... it's quite hard to select one feature, cause all the program is great, from the easy to use tables, the charts tables, graphics, the custimizable layout, the connection with your database...

Sometimes it gets a little bit slow and the tables or charts bugs... but it's understandable

I would recommend every business used this, from small to large. The ability to combine and view google analytics, google ads and search console data is fantastic and gives you great insights into your business performance. There are also lots of templates available online to get you started for no cost.

The customisation has to come from someone with a fair bit of knowledge of the product when sharing with others. In the majority of times people will have to only have a view of the report and they won't really be able to amend or see other data within it. It is also a little slow when doing lots of data and changing the views.

One of the best platforms p to visualize the data. It's very easy to set up and analyze them.

Customer support is not available. We need some tech-friendly people to set this up.

I loved the fact that there are templates for interactive web page dashboards that help shortcut visualizations and common display formats for data. Other websites either lock you into a boring template or expect users/devs to reinvent the wheel. This allowed me to build momentum quickly.

I was not a fan of the additional charges for data connecters. Data from large social media sites or professional websites is often stuck behind a paywall, which is a bit aggravating.

What I like most about Google Data Studio is that it's free. Honestly, that's the main reason I use it, because I consult as a part-time gig with one-off projects and I simply cannot afford to buy into anyone else's "business analytics," "business intelligence," or "reporting" software tools. The fact that it works, is customizable, and is fairly easy to figure out if you've ever worked with web-based, data-driven visualizations are just icing on the cake.

Getting started with it can be a challenge, especially if you've never worked with "connectors" for database-driven projects before. The initial walk-through provided by Google is just enough to get you completely lost. I think more companies would use this tool if they provided a better introduction to how to properly set up your projects.

I love how easy it is to put the data points into different graphs and visualizations. The UI is typical of Google. Super intuitive and user-friendly and most aspects of the product behave exactly as a user would expect (which isn't the case in my experience for softwares like Tableau). Ease of use is by far what makes Google Data Studio stand out among the crowd.

Can be hard to integrate data with certain platforms if they aren't Google owned platforms. There's also minor functionality gaps around not having all of the relevant google ads dimensions and labels accessible within data studio.