Are you considering using Metabase for your analytics and data visualization within your business?
This platform is popular across multiple industries and can help users gain valuable insights into their business’s performance.
However, there’s no such thing as a perfect platform or tool. It has tons of benefits, but it also has its downsides.
In this in-depth review, we’ll break down everything you need to know about Metabase, from its core use case to its pros and cons.
Straight Talk Review: Pros and Cons of Metabase
Metabase is a business software suite and open source business intelligence framework. It allows users to store data about their business or a specific aspect of their business for their analytics in a secure data source. This intuitive software is designed to allow users to ask questions about their data and access answers that reduce jargon and code, making it very user-friendly and ideal for professionals who want to visualize their business’s data accurately.
This platform is popular among marketing and business professionals as it makes it quite easy to create tables, graphs, and charts, such as a pie chart based on data compiled by the platform. They can also create a detailed dashboard using the data from the data pipeline or data warehouse.
By making this visualization very easy to achieve, Metabase is often used for pitching ideas and business proposals to stakeholders and other organizational decision-makers. Metabase is also open source, meaning that anyone can download and modify the Metabase code.
To put it simply, Metabase makes data sharing easy. Users can form various differing conclusions from the same analytics within the tool. Without the need for SQL and other types of code, anyone with minimal coding and analytic experience can make data summaries with ease.
There are many benefits to using Metabase, according to reviews of the product from around the world.
Across the board, users have sung Metabase’s praises when it comes to ease of use. Metabase makes it easy for development teams to build reports and collaborate on data-based projects by making it possible to share visualized data with different teams within an organization. In other words, this is a solid data visualization tool with a user interface that is easy to navigate, especially for newbies.
Users can set it up to automate daily and weekly reporting for an even more hands-off approach. With such excellent UX and straightforwardness, it’s clear that Metabase is a great choice for those who need an intuitive tool and might lack a hefty IT department.
When put in the hands of a capable team, Metabase can be very flexible. Flexibility is Metabase’s strongest feature. Manipulating filters is a breeze, whether or not the user has experience using analytics. However, it can be a bit lacking when it comes to formatting flexibility. Regardless, as it continues to evolve and grow, it’s likely that its constant innovations will remedy this issue.
Metabase has an excellent UX interface, but it takes the cake for its learning curve. It is very easy for beginners with no experience with this type of software to create charts and tables. The platform also provides suggestions and guidance on the visualizations being developed as well. And since users can feed data directly into the database, one can create visualizations by simply dragging and dropping. In short, it is also good for beginners and advanced users.
Like any popular brand, Metabase does have its downsides that might make or break one’s specific use case.
With Metabase, users can access a visual dashboard, data analytics, KPIs, and visual analytics. This feature is all well and good, but Metabase lacks quite a bit compared to similar platforms. It also does not offer essential bells and whistles like ad hoc reports, benchmarking, NLG, performance metrics, predictive analytics, or tools for strategic planning and trend or problem indicators. For the hefty cost, one would expect more features. There are also not a lot of widgets.
Reviewers have noted that Metabase tends to crash graphs at random points. Others have noted that the server will fail to load. It may also crash during data upload, making it difficult to transfer data and stay on time with project deadlines.
Metabase’s data governance is limited and scope. Several users have reported that they have needed to use CTEs with SQL to work around this issue, which can cause another host of code problems. There is also no support for things like code versioning and user authentication.
One of the biggest benefits of using Metabase is that it is open-source software on a basic level. However, the enterprise version of Metabase is quite expensive. This is quite a shame, as this software would benefit enterprise-level organizations the most. However, with its lack of features and standing as a relatively new tool, the price point for Metabase doesn’t make much sense. At an absolute minimum, you will be paying $15,000 per year to use Metabase’s Enterprise plan. It’s worth noting that there are several other, less expensive plans available for businesses that have 5-10 users.
Metabase is extremely easy to use and ideal for marketing and business intelligence professionals of all levels. It is also well-known for being quite flexible for more businesses in most industries or niches, as well as overall organization size. Scalability is certainly important.
On the negative side, Metabase lacks many key features that you would expect from a software of this magnitude. It lacks ad hoc reports, benchmarking, and trend or problem indicators, which you can find in most business intelligence servers, or to most business intelligence software, for that matter. It also tends to crash and lacks in the way of data governance.
Overall, the downsides to Metabase should be considered before investing.
When considering a Metabase alternative, there are several key factors that should be taken into consideration. These factors will help determine which business intelligence tool is the best fit for your organization:
By considering these factors, you can make an informed decision on the best Metabase alternative for your organization. Take the time to evaluate each tool’s features, usability, and support to ensure it aligns with your business intelligence needs.
DashboardFox could be the one you are looking for if you want to have the best data visualization tool, both in terms of quality and price.
DashboardFox offers a lot of things that can help you in your search for a dashboard and reporting software journey. Some of these include:
The only way you can ensure that you are choosing the right tool for you is to talk to us for more information. Feel free to contact us, or take it to the next level by booking a free live demo with our experts, the same ones who will work with you once you have made your decision to include us in your team. This is in no way a high-pressured sales call, but more of something to seal the deal even further, because we know you are sold already. We’ll be waiting for you.
