Google Data Studio reviews

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.

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)

I was able to use and share the program through work. It gives a clear overview of all the information I find necessary without causing chaos.

In the beginning it takes time and energy to understand everything. You also have to spend a lot of time yourself to start everything up.

Data Studio is an extremely powerful tool for reporting and has allowed our team to share out extremely in-depth reports with our clients. It's suite of features is vast and allows our teams to provide highly valued insights into data we previously never had access to. The software is extremely flexible when it comes to customization to fit the needs of our client on a case-by-case basis, which is extremely important since each client has different preferences, nuances, and objectives and Data Studio makes that customization super simple.

Since Data Studio has so many in-depth reporting features, the software itself can be confusing to adapt to and the learning curve for reporting is quite steep if you have no prior experience. It took our team a long time to learn and adapt the software and collaboration on one report was often difficult, which resulted in one member being delegated to handle reporting responsibilities. It would be nice if the Data Studio was able to incorporate task management and campaign tracking alongside its powerful reporting abilities; I think that would really push Data Studio above the competition from software such as Domo and Tableau.

INEXPENSIVE. Great for prototyping our dashboards, BI reports.

Non-persisting filters (particularly with date ranges), Options for visualizations (in the more expensive software) is missing.

FREE - solid quality - adeptness and agility with visualizing marketing & integral data

Like all free things - there are some limitations - so they are now offering Looker Pro (and Looker Enterprise - of course)

With the platform there is ease data manipulation. One can easily view real time data on the sales funnel hence prioritizing on some main issues. One can easily visualize it with any other logins. Great platform one can use for prototyping our dashboards.

Options for visualising are missing. That is in the expensive software.

- You can build dashboards easily and quickly- You can integrate data of many different tools - Also non-experts can use it

- no option for notifications- especially the performance with many visualizations or large amounts of data could be better

Many different chart options. Works with lots of data source imports. Easy to duplicate any reports or dashboards created and use them with different sources of data.

Not all data sources can be integrated. Some need third party apps to link to the software. It takes a bit of time to learn how to use it, particularly when using multiple data sources and blending them.

In general, everything helps me in checking my project in more details

what didn't i like it's like at first it's a little harder to use until you get used to the given program, in general it's ok

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.

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.

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.

Creating reports can be a task which requires a lot of steps and gathering of data from all sort of sources in different formats. Putting the data together in a way that is understadable for client or basically anyone else is a task where Google Data Studio comes in and does just that. Without any hassle - data gets inside the studio and can be vizualised, cross-referenced and presented to anyone without technical knowledge.

Sometimes you need a special data from an exotic service which means either going back to basics and side-loading some exported data or writing own connector or buying access to a connector. And the system can get slow.

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?

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.

Google Data Studio's greatest asset is the fact that it is completely free to use. It's a no-brainer to use Google Data Studio if you only need to aggregate and visualize data from numerous Google products and platforms (such as Google Ads, Analytics, Search Console, etc.). You don't have to pay per connection or result for any of these products because they can all connect to Google Data Studio for free.

As a result of Data Studio's extensive reporting capabilities, the program itself can be difficult for new users to grasp, and the learning curve for reporting is rather high. With the new program, we had to spend a lot of time learning it before we could start using it, which meant that we had one person of our team responsible for reporting.

Part of doing good quality agency work in the digital marketing realm is taking your clients on a journey and keeping them up to date with their campaigns and digital performance. Data Studio helps integrate data from their search and social accounts in really visual dashboards. We cannot imagine our agency to function without these dashboards that take data in from Search Console, Facebook, Moz, Analytics, Google Ads, SEM Rush - you name it!

Sometimes third part integration with Supermetrics etc. can cause connectors to break randomly. Data fields being deprecated without notice also causes reports to break which is less than ideal. Finally, when you duplicate a report, the data sources are copied over which is a HUGE issue! So be careful there!

Besides the FREE price point, it's fairly easy to get started using pre-made data templates. Templates are customizable or you can build your own dashboards to filter and see the exact information you'd like. It connects natively with all of Google's products (Analytics, BigQuery, Optimize, Ads, Sheets) making it easy to get data from multiple sources.

Dashboards can sometimes be slow to load since data is pulled in real-time. If you're new to DS, it can take some searching to get the data into the dashboard that you want. Once you understand where and how to find things, it's fairly simple to build off of that.

It's the easiest and the most affordable data visualization tool on the market. It's quite easy to learn, just enough to jump in and create your first dashboards in a short time. Despite that, it's used by professionals in many corporate companies to visualize data and create interactive dashboards - so why not use it?

There are things that are hard to accomplish in Data Studio, like specific types of charts; some of them are confusing, like data blending; and some of them are limited, like free connectors.

Once you upload any data to GDS it is really fun to explore and make dashboards that can help you in any way. We have connected our internal system to Google Data Studio and visualising graphs and tables is very easy to do. Use custom dimensions and metrics, also lots of adjusments for dashboards.

You can easily make a dashboard within an our that can save you and your team a lot of time and money. Automatic reporting trough gmail is also a cool feature that we use

Sometimes Google Data Studio struggles with large XML files and loading can take some time.

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.

An easy to use application. You can edit your KPIs and visualizations as you wish. Very effective and price performance product

There isn't any feature that I don't like. Users will see it when they start using it.

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.

The best thing about Google Data Studio is that it is free. If all you need to do is combine and visual data from various Google platforms and products (i.e., Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, etc.), then Google Data Studio is an excellent choice. All these products can connect for free to Google Data Studio, so you don't have to pay per connector or per result.

Google Data Studio definitely isn't the prettiest or easiest reporting platform to use. At times it can feel clunky and very intense to set up. This isn't an easy plug-and-play platform for reporting. So while it is free, you will definitely have to spend some time setting up and connecting everything you want to use. You can save some time by looking for templates that others have created that you should be able to duplicate and set up.