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Power BI Pro VS Premium-1

Power BI Pro vs Premium – Understand The Differences In Licensing

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Power BI is a data analysis and visualization tool that helps businesses make better-informed decisions by getting insights from the data. Microsoft offers Pro and Premium are paid licensing options for Power BI. There is usually some confusion about Power BI Pro vs Premium licensing and which one to choose.

Companies are sometimes unsure about which paid option to go for when using Power BI. We have explained the differences, advantages, and what each licensing version of Power BI offers below. You can get a clear understanding of Power BI Pro and Premium versions; this will help you decide your business’s perfect option.

What Does Power BI Pro Offers?

It is essential to know what each plan offers individually before knowing Power BI Pro vs Premium differences.

The Power BI Pro is for individual users. In simple terms, if you have ten users in your organization, you will have to buy ten different Power BI Pro licenses. The users with Pro license can create, share and consume the reports. It gives you access to the full functionality and capabilities of Power BI.

With Power BI Pro licensing, the users can access all the supported data sources that are available on the cloud and on-premises. The maximum storage allowed is 10 GB per user. You can perform ad-hoc analysis, share dashboards, and do other report related tasks with Power BI Pro.

What Does Power BI Premium Offer?

The Power BI Premium is not for individual users; instead, it is a licensing for the organization’s content, including dashboards, datasets, and reports. All the organization users with Power BI Premium can view the reports but cannot create one. There is no per-user cost once the business takes Power BI Premium licensing.

The users in your organization can view reports on the dashboard, mobile apps, or embedded in the organization’s portal. The maximum storage capacity allowed is 100 TB. There is a Power BI Report Server available with Premium licensing.

You can deploy and share the reports within the organization’s firewall with the help on-premises server known as Power BI Report Server.

Power BI Pro vs Premium

Both the licensing plans offered by Microsoft are very different from each other, making them suitable for all types of businesses. The Power BI Pro is for individual users, while the Premium is for content related to the organization.

The organization that opted for Premium licensing may also need Pro to create reports and access dashboards for a specific set of users. Even the pricing of both is quite different.

 

power bi pro vs premium

Power BI Premium vs Pro Pricing

Power BI Pro is available for USD 9.99/user per month, and Power BI Premium is available for USD 4995/month.

The Premium version has larger storage sizes, higher refresh rates, and other features like the pin to memory, geo-distribution, and read-only replicas. If you are looking for Power BI licensing where more users just view the reports rather than creating them, you need Power BI Premium.

However, if you are looking for a situation that is another way around, where more users are accessing datasets and creating reports, you need a Pro plan.

The choice of Power BI Pro vs Premium depends on the organization’s strength, needs, and usage of the Power BI tool.

Advantages And Limitation Of Power BI Pro And Premium

The Pro and Premium versions have some advantages and limitations that can help any organization choose the licensing that suits their business needs.

Advantages of Power BI Pro

  • Can embed Power BI reports into Apps.
  • Integration with Azure Data Services and other Microsoft solutions
  • Allows one to create an App workspace
  • Easy to share datasets, reports, and dashboards with other Pro users

Limitations of Power BI Pro

  • Need to purchase individual licensing for every user in the same organization

Advantages of Power BI Premium

  • A larger storage capacity is available.
  • Has Power BI Report Server
  • Maximum performance
  • Easy to view/consumer reports through mobile apps, dashboards, and company’s portal

Limitation of Power BI Premium

  • You cannot create reports or manage dashboards using this licensing.
  • Need to purchase Pro user licenses separately for the users who create reports for the organization

Now, you know the strengths and weaknesses of each of Microsoft’s licenses for Power BI.

Power BI Pro vs Premium: Which One Is For Your Organization?

Power BI Pro and Premium

The final call about licensing depends on the decision-makers of your organization. We can help you pick one depending on the different scenarios. You can go through the scenarios given below and know which plan goes where.

Scenario 1: If there are ten employees in your company, out of which seven employees need to create reports and access data sets. You should opt for Power BI Pro licensing for all ten users because the Premium license here won’t be useful and can become costly too.

Scenario 2: If there are 3000 employees in the organization and around 1000 users need a Pro license for report creation. You can purchase a combination of Pro and Premium licenses. The Premium license can be useful for other 2000 employees to view the reports.

You can check out the calculator provided by Microsoft to give you an estimation about licensing required in your company.

Final Thoughts

The Power BI Pro vs Premium licensing debate ends on the needs and requirements of the organization. Each business has different sets of operations their employees perform, which, in turn, decides their licensing option. The Power BI Pro license gives you the full Power BI capabilities, but this license needs to be purchased for individual users separately.

On the other hand, Power BI Premium can be purchased for the entire organization, with many users consuming the reports, but it does not allow you to create reports. There are pros and cons for both the licensing option of Power BI; you need to opt for the one that fits your business.

Power BI Gateway

Power BI Gateway – Everything You Need To Know

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Power BI lets you connect to a variety of data sources, irrespective of where they are stored. You can have data sources on the cloud or office premises, and still Power BI can connect to it without putting much effort and money on infrastructure.

It is always easy to connect to the data source stored in the cloud. However, when it comes to on-premises data sources, the Microsoft cloud services, like Power BI, require a Power BI gateway to get connected.

With the help of a gateway, Power BI can access data from locally stored databases quickly and securely.

What is the Power BI Gateway?

Power BI gateway is a software that can connect and access the data sources stored locally on-premises. It can help the businesses who keep the data in the local databases behind the firewall but wish to use Microsoft cloud services.

With the help of an on-premises gateway, you can not only connect Power BI to local databases but can also connect other Microsoft services like PowerApps, Azure Analysis Services, Power Automate, and Azure Logic Apps.

Power BI gateway acts as a bridge between Power BI and the local databases of the company. However, you need the right credentials to bypass this gateway and access the database.

Types of Gateway

Microsoft offers two types of gateway, but there is a difference between them. One gateway type is the standard mode, and another is the personal mode.

On-premises data gateway (Standard Mode)

With standard mode gateway, multiple people are allowed to access multiple local databases. If you have multiple developer environments that need to access the databases, the standard mode is recommended.

You can install a single gateway and connect Power BI, Azure Logic Apps, Azure Analysis Services, Microsoft Flow, and PowerApps to on-premises databases.

The standard mode is for complex environments where you have multiple users working on multiple on-premises data stores.

On-premises data gateway (Personal Mode)

With personal mode Power BI gateway, only one user can access the local databases. You can only connect Power BI to on-premises data sources with this mode of the gateway.

If you have an environment where only a single person accesses the data source to analyze the data and generate reports, the personal mode is recommended.

Installing and configuring on-premises data gateway personal mode is easier than standard mode because of its single user allowance. The privileges cannot be shared among multiple users in personal mode, hence the name.

Standard Mode vs. Personal Mode

There is not only the difference in the number of users allowed in both the mode, but few more things make them different from each other.

 

Standard Mode Personal Mode
Can work with Power BI, Azure Logic Apps, Power Apps, Azure Analysis Services, Power Automate, Dataflows Can work with only Power BI
Can allow multiple users to access local data sources Can allow only one user to access local data sources
Supports DirectQuery Doesn’t support DirectQuery
Cannot run as an app for users who do not have administrator privileges Can run as an app for users who do not have administrator privileges

Caption: Table of difference between standard mode and personal mode on-premises data gateway

Power BI Gateway Architecture

The Power BI data gateway works in a particular flow whenever there is a request to access on-premises data sources from the cloud services and web apps.

Power BI gateway

Power BI gateway architecture (Image Source)

The entire flow is divided into six steps.

Step 1: Power BI creates a query that requires access to the local data source. This query, along with encrypted credentials, is sent to Gateway Cloud Service.

Step 2: The Gateway Cloud Service analyzes and processes the request and forwards it to Azure Service Bus.

Step 3: Azure Service Bus, then sends the request to the on-premises data gateway.

Step 4: When the on-premises data gateway gets the request, it decrypts the credentials and connects to the required data sources depending on the query.

Step 5: The Power BI gateway forwards the query to the connected data sources so that it can be executed there.

Step 6: The results given by data sources are forwarded to the gateway. The on-premises gateway then sends the results back to Power BI.

If there is a large amount of data to be returned from data sources, it is temporarily saved on the gateway machine. Once all the result is collected from the data source, it is forwarded to the cloud service (Power BI in our case).

How to Use Power BI Gateway?

It is very easy to get started with using Power BI data gateway in your setup by following the below steps.

Step 1: Download the Power BI gateway, depending on the type you want, and install it on your computer.

Step 2: Once you installed the gateway, configure it depending on your business environment.

Step 3: Add gateway admins to administer and manage the data sources along with network requirements.

Step 4: Refresh the local data source by using the on-premises gateway and keep the Power BI report up-to-date.

You can troubleshoot the gateway if there are any issues in connecting local data sources via the gateway.

Conclusion

Power BI gateway makes it easy to connect Microsoft cloud services to a local database behind the firewall in your organization. As every business doesn’t store their data on the cloud, it is necessary to have software like the on-premises gateway to help connect to the local data repositories.

Microsoft provides two types of gateways. You can opt for any one depending on the needs of the business. The article explains many things about the Power BI gateway, which can help you understand the gateway concept and know how it works with Microsoft services and data sources.

 

Power BI Data Sources

Supported Power BI Data Sources And How To Connect Them

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Power BI is a powerful business analytics and visualization tool that can collect data from various sources and give you business insights by generating reports. With Power BI data sources, you can connect to different data sources like files, Azure groups, databases, and data sources from many more categories.

You can get connected to all of the categories of data sources in one click and get the reports ready to analyze them.

All the Power BI Data Sources

Power BI data sources

Power BI has built-in connectors that can be used to connect a variety of data sources with one click. Microsoft is continuously developing Power BI and adding many more features to it, but as of now, the data sources are classified into the following categories.

  • File
  • Database
  • Power Platform
  • Azure
  • Online Services
  • Other

You can also connect to one or more data sources to generate a Power BI report according to your business needs. The above categories support some of the popular and amazing data sources; we have listed them below.

File

Excel, XML, Text/CSV, JSON, PDF, Folder, SharePoint folder

Database

SQL, IBM, SAP HANA, Access, MySQL, Google BigQuery, Actian (Beta), Oracle, Denodo, Dremio, Exasol, Snowflake, SQL Server Analysis Services database, and many more popular databases

Power Platform

Power BI datasets, Power BI dataflows, Power Platform dataflows (Beta), Microsoft Dataverse

Azure

Azure SQL Database, Azure Synapse Analytics (SQL DW), Azure Analysis Services database, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Table Storage, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Data Explorer (Kusto), Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1, Azure HDInsight (HDFS), Azure HDInsight Spark, HDInsight Interactive Query, Azure Cost Management, Azure Databricks, Azure Time Series Insights (Beta)

Online Services

SharePoint, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Github (Beta), LinkedIn Sales Navigator (Beta), QuickBase, and many more

Other

Web, Solver, Paxata, Python and R script, Active Directory, Solver, Blank Query, and much more

As you can see above, there is an option to connect to various popular databases without much effort. All the possible data sources of the business are covered by Power BI, which makes the data analysis work much more manageable.

Once the data is gathered, you can work on it with ETL functionality provided by Power BI.

How to Connect to the Data Source in Power BI Desktop?

It is easy to connect to Power BI data sources. All you need to do is click on the Get data option in the Home ribbon.

Get data in Power BI from the different sources  (Image source)  

Click on More if you don’t wish to use the common data sources. You can then select the data source you want. You may need to add link or account credentials, depending on which source you select.

Once Power BI connects to the data source, you can see it in the Navigator. From here, you can load the data in Power BI or transform it before use.

Data Updates in Power BI

If the data source is a local file or local database, you need to manually connect it to Power BI every time you need an updated report. However, suppose you store the data in the cloud, for example, on OneDrive or SharePoint. In that case, Power BI can connect to it directly and update your report according to the recent updates in the database.

This can help if you wish to have updated insights without doing it manually now and then. Power BI checks for updates in the database every one hour so that no update is missed.

Limitations of Power BI Data Sources

There are a few limitations when it comes to Power BI data sources. Well, the limitations are based on the proper size for data sets in Power BI Service and Power BI Desktop.

Dataset size limit

The Shared capacities in Power BI Service allow only 1 GB of datasets to be stored. If you want larger data sets, you need to go for Power BI Premium.

Column Limit

The datasets can have a maximum of 16,000 columns across all the tables that are present. Well, this limit is for datasets in Power BI Service as well as Power BI Desktop.

Limit on Query Results

The query can fail and give errors if it is returning one million rows from the data source. However, the underlying data can contain more rows than the limit.

Conclusion

Every business uses different data repositories, and therefore Power BI brings much convenience by supporting various categories of data sources. You can collect, analyze, and generate reports from different data sources at once with Power BI.

This powerful tool brings much more ease when it comes to loading datasets from different sources; all is done with few clicks unless it is a personally created database. The article explains Power BI data sources in detail and its limitations and process to connect to a data source.

 

 

Power Pivot and Power BI - Similarities and Differences

Power Pivot And Power BI – Perfect Guide To Differences And Similarities

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Whenever it comes to getting business insights by processing large chunks of data, Excel is not enough. Two popular tools can help you do so, Power Pivot and Power BI. Although both the tools are offered by Microsoft and can be used for data analysis, they share differences.

We compare the Power BI vs. Power Pivot to help you understand what they have in common and yet what makes them different from each other.

Comparison of Power Pivot and Power BI

Power Pivot is the Excel add-in that helps users perform complex calculations and import large amounts of data from different sources. In contrast, Power BI is a data visualization tool that helps users tell the story by representing the analyzed data in a visual form.

You can get business insights using both these tools, but the way they represent the insights is quite different. Let’s check the comparison of Power Pivot and Power BI.

Features Power Pivot Power BI
Software Type Add-in for Excel SaaS (Software as a Service)
Uses Used as data analysis and calculation tool Used as a data visualization tool
Can work on raw data Yes Yes
Connectivity with SaaS services No Yes
Collect data from various sources for processing Yes Yes
Visualization Can create charts, pivot charts, and other basic analytical models Can create complex models that are difficult or impossible to create in Excel
Sharing of Reports The person needs to have Excel to view the reports. You can still view them in a browser if they are shared through SharePoint. Anyone can view the reports without having to install any specific app or software. The sender and recipient need to have a Power BI Pro license if they are not on the Premium List. You can embed reports into websites and blogs for public viewing, but here there is no control over who is viewing your report.
Learning curve and training If you know Excel, you can get started with Power Pivot without any special training. You need to learn and understand the tool thoroughly before using it.
Formula Language DAX DAX and M
User Interface It is not visually appealing and intuitive. It is intuitive and can be understood easily.
Automatic Reports Refresh No Yes, you can schedule the reports to get them generated automatically in specific durations.
Components Power Pivot is a unified tool, and there are no differentiable components. There are three main parts of Power BI, where each part does different tasks:

Power BI Desktop, Service, and Mobile apps
Dashboard customization option No Yes
Reports in tabular form Yes No
Pricing Comes with Excel and Office products; no need to purchase separately. Power BI Pro starts at USD 9.99 per month.

Caption: Comparison table for Power Pivot and Power BI

Now you know the differences and similarities between both of these tools. If you are already in the Microsoft ecosystem, you can choose which one to adopt from these two tools for your use case.

However, if you are not already in the Microsoft ecosystem and are looking for the best data visualization service to pick, you might also want to consider Google Data Studio. Our comparison of Power BI vs Google Data Studio may help with that.

Conclusion

It is easy to get confused between various tools available for processing and analyzing data because they all perform similar tasks. Both Power Pivot and Power BI can collect data from multiple sources, process it, and generate reports. However, there is a significant difference in the way they do these tasks.

Power BI is primarily a data visualization tool, and therefore it can represent data in a form that can impress your investors and clients. On the other hand, if you only want to perform complex calculations and don’t care about the presentation technique, you can opt for Power Pivot, which comes in free with Excel.

The final decision of which tool to opt for, be it Power Pivot and Power BI, depends on your business needs, types of clients, and data to be processed.

 

 

what is powerapps

What Is PowerApps And How You Can Use It For Your Business?

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PowerApps is a Microsoft product, and its public preview was launched in April 2016. Over the years, Microsoft has improved the tool in such a way that any business can make the most of it. At present, if you are thinking, ‘what is PowerApps?’, the simple answer to this is ‘an app development tool.’

However, there is much more to this app development tool that Microsoft offers. You can leverage PowerApps features and functionalities to build powerful internal applications, and automate and simplify processes and services. Let’s dive into more details.

What is PowerApps?

what is powerapps

Image Source

PowerApps is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that allows one to create apps for Windows, Android, and iOS, along with web applications. The templates and drag-drop functionality can help non-developers to create useful custom apps for their business. Azure Cloud is used to build the capabilities of PowerApps.

You can transform the manual business work to automation without more coding by using the apps created by PowerApps. Running a single app on multiple platforms is taken care of by the PowerApps platform by handling the requirements of the underlying operating system. All you need to do is create an app, and the rest all is handled.

How Can You Make the Most Out Of PowerApps?

Why are more businesses relying on PowerApps to build applications? This is a question on the mind of every person looking for business tools. PowerApps offers a range of features that can help businesses increase productivity, Return on Investment (ROI) and decrease app development costs, time, and efforts.

Here’s how you can make the best of the PowerApps platform for your business.

1. Easily Integrate Microsoft and Third-party Applications

You can easily connect to Microsoft services like Office 365 Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, Excel, and much more. The PowerApps also supports third-party connectors like Google Calendar, Google Drive, Dropbox, Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP.

2. Leverage Common Data Service (CDS)

The Common Data Service (CDS) can help you access, manage, and store data from different sources of business applications. CDS stores the data in the entity format and in a secured way. You can control the access to the database by setting permissions and levels based on your business workflow.

3. Cost and Time Effective Development

When it comes to app development, all businesses think of lots of time and cost involved. However, with PowerApps, you can save both of them. You can make a single app at 10 USD with the help of this app development tool.

The ready-made templates, no coding, and drag-drop can help non-tech users develop applications. It is also perfect for businesses who don’t have a development team on board but wish to automate parts of their business through apps.

4. Make Canvas and Model-Driven Applications

The Canvas apps are simple and use case-specific. They are created using a no-code interface and drag and drop functionality offered by PowerApps to carry out specific tasks like submitting a report or creating a record. You can integrate it to Microsoft and non-Microsoft services.

The Model-Driven apps are a bit complex and are built using Dynamics 365 framework. You can carry out more multiple tasks using this kind of application. In this type of application, you can only connect to CDS for the data source.

5. Easily Share Created Applications

Sharing the created apps among the coworkers is very easy with PowerApps.

All the above points can help you make the most of the PowerApps for your businesses. You can build apps without compromising with the help of this powerful tool provided by Microsoft. And if you are already a developer, you can add more value to your application by enhancing it using PowerApps.

Pros and Cons of PowerApps

There are some pros and cons of PowerApps experienced by a range of users while using it for app development.

Pros

  • Integration with PowerBI and Flow makes it easy to analyze, act, and automate the business process
  • Data can be connected with a variety of data sources
  • Can be integrated with most of Microsoft services as well as some third-party applications
  • Clutterless user interface
  • Does not require coding knowledge to build apps
  • Model driver PowerApps can be implemented quickly with the help of pre-packed forms and views
  • Makes it easy to automate business processes, especially the areas like accounting and sales

Cons

  • The learning curve for users from non-technical backgrounds
  • Makes it difficult to share applications outside the business
  • Cannot publish applications on any stores; Apple, Play Store, and Microsoft Store
  • Cannot create applications for consumer consumptions
  • Limited opportunities to edit code, which can be an issue for more advanced users

Why Should You Use PowerApps?

With all the above features, you will be already interested in using PowerApps to design apps for your business automation. However, there is one more reason that makes it necessary to use PowerApps – using PowerApps with SharePoint.

The InfoPath forms services in SharePoint will be discontinued after April 2023. You will have to use PowerApps instead of InfoPath, post that to work with SharePoint. Also, there are no updates to InfoPath after the 2013 version release, so you have to use whatever features currently available. With PowerApps, you get a new product which Microsoft is pushing to its audience.

You can expect evolving features and bug-fixes with each new version. This makes PowerApps the right tool to adopt when it comes to web and mobile app development for multiple platforms and browsers.

Conclusion

PowerApps itself is quite powerful, and it also works well with other tools from Microsoft. With the integration of PowerBI, Flow, and cloud-based services like Azure and Dropbox, you can easily get more work done via the app created by PowerApps.

Now that you know what is PowerApps and how it can help you in your business to increase overall productivity, let’s look at some stats.

When apps are created using PowerApps, as per Microsoft, there is 188% ROI over three years and 74% reduction in app development cost. These are excellent numbers for businesses of any size, and a reason why you should consider using PowerApps.

Power BI vs Google Data Studio. Which One Will Fulfill Your Business Needs?

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Microsoft Power Bi vs Google Data studio – Which one is better? This has been a raging debate since the release of Google data analysis tool. Before we look into which one is right for your business, we should understand how they can be immensely useful for your business decisions, once set up correctly.

Data analysis takes into account the historical and present information and provides future growth predictions for the business based on the available data. Business Intelligence (BI) as a speciality comprises of tools and expertise to carry out such data analysis. BI can help you filter out useful data from stored unprocessed data in your organization’s backend. The analyzed data can be used to make informed business decisions.

There are several tools that can help you with Business Intelligence (BI). There is Microsoft Power BI, Google Data Studio and Tableau to name a few. The main work of BI tools is to present the raw and unprocessed data in the readable form that is visually understandable. Hence, these tools are also known as data visualization tools.

These data visualization tools add more importance to numeric data, which makes it easier to take operational or strategic decisions related to any business. The options between two giants like Google and Microsoft makes it difficult to choose one tool for our business. So, to help you make a choice, we have compared Power BI and Google Data Studio.

Acquiscent specializes in Power BI Data Processing. Get in touch to know more about our services.

Microsoft Power BI vs Google Data Studio

There are many similarities and differences between these two analysis tools. Both of these are used to prepare reports and display them in an easy to assimilate format. Now, let’s see what makes them different from each other.

What is Microsoft Power BI?

power BI vs google data studio

Power BI is a data visualization tool. It comprises services, applications, data connectors, and API that comes together to form reports from different forms of data. The reports are in the form of charts and graphs, which makes it readable and visually pleasing. This readable data can be shared across organizations and can also be embedded in websites and apps.

MS Power BI lets you give an insight into the business to clients. Power BI consists of 3 main parts.

  • Power BI Desktop – used to create reports and customize dashboards
  • Power BI Service – used to view created reports and dashboards
  • Power BI mobile apps – used to view by sales employee or concerned person to view the progress of specific reports

With Power BI, you can schedule a specific time to generate reports and also have a time set to get the email about refreshed data. You can use Power BI APIs to embed reports, data, and dashboards in custom applications.

If your organization doesn’t have a cloud to store and share the reports, then you can use Power BI Report Server. The Power BI Report Server is deployed behind the company’s firewall. You can share and view the reports from there. It also gives you an option to migrate to the cloud because of its compatibility with Power BI in the cloud whenever you wish.

Available Data Sources in Power BI

Power BI supports the majority of data sets from different sources. The main data sources for Power BI include-

  • Flat Files (unstructured/unrelated data)
  • SQL Database
  • Azure Cloud platform
  • OData Feed
  • Blank Query
  • Online Services
  • Other data sources such as Hadoop, Exchange, or Active Directory

Pros

  • Can process more than 5 excel sheets at once and give you a piece of understandable information from it
  • Can work on unstructured data as well
  • Can schedule reports refresh and get an email for the same at the scheduled time
  • Collect data from different data sources
  • Provides better data visualization
  • Have a mobile app to access the records from anywhere
  • Easy to use for people familiar with the Microsoft Office environment, especially Power Query and Excel users

Cons

  • High learning curve
  • Difficult to pull data from Google Suite data sources like Google ads (need connectors like SuperMetrics)

Microsoft Power BI Pricing:

It comes with a 60 day trial.

Power BI Pro is priced at USD 9.99/month for single user and Power BI Premium is USD 4995/month for dedicated cloud computing, and is aimed towards enterprises. 

Who Should Use Microsoft Power BI?

The businesses which have a ton of raw data to process and do not primarily work with Google Suite should opt for Power BI. If you have people who are power users of Microsoft Excel, then incorporating Power BI in your business will be relatively easy.

Power BI also gives the company an option to store up to 10 TB of data with its premium version. So, the organizations which require to process and store such large data can opt for Power BI. Power BI is the best option when it comes to visualizing the correlation between unrelated data and get it in the simplified form of visuals.

What is the Google Data Studio?

Google Data Studio is a similar data visualization tool which is a part of Google Analytics Solutions. It has a web interface to pull in your data and make it readable with charts and reports. You can easily pull data from Google Suite like Google Adwords, and Sheets. Making any report in Google Data Studio is fairly straightforward, especially if the data source is Google Suite.

Google Data Studio allows you to schedule a time to create a report and download it in a PDF form. One can easily get on board with this data visualization tool if he/she is familiar with products from Google Suite. With Google Data Studio, you don’t get a mobile or desktop application. You need to use its Web interface to make reports and charts.

Pulling the data from other data sources except Google Suite requires data connectors, which comes with a price. The data visualization is not as good as Power BI; hence the complicated or unrelated data cannot be visualized in a better way.

The dashboard is simple to use; however, it cannot be customized. As Google Data Studio is new and free, it lacks some of the functionality present in Power BI.

If a business has a ton of data to process, you might need to make use of Google BigQuery, which again needs specific expertise.

Available Data Sources in Google Data Studio

You can use external connectors to import data from third-party sources. There are many data sources available in the Google Data Studio. The most famous once are-

  • Google Analytics
  • Google Ads
  • Google Search Console
  • BigQuery
  • YouTube Analytics
  • PostgreSQL
  • Google Fit
  • Stack Overflow
  • Github
  • Search Ads 360
  • Display & Video 360

Pros

  • Easy to use and understand
  • Low learning curve
  • Completely free
  • Can easily import data from Google Suite
  • Schedule the reports at the required time

Cons

  • No desktop or mobile app available
  • Cannot create reports and charts of unrelated data
  • Pulling data from third-party data sources can create issues
  • Large data processing and connectors cost money

Google Data Studio Pricing – Free

Who Should Use Google Data Studio?

The startup business who don’t wish to spend on reports and data analysis can opt for Google Data Studio. The company that needs to analyze data from Google Suite services like Google Ads and Sheets can also use Google Data Studio.

Google Data Studio can also be used by people who want hands-on experience in data analysis and visualization tools.

Table of Comparison

Note: I have added table for simple points (they are covered in the above sections as well), it can be removed if not required

Android – yesWindows – yesNo

Property Power BI Google Data Studio
Price Starts with USD 9.99 Free
Trial Period 60 days Not required
Learning Curve High learning curve Low learning curve
Ease of use Difficult to use Easy to use compared to Power BI
Customizable Dashboard Yes No
Data Visualization Best data visualization to correlate unclean and unrelated data Does not provide data visualization that can show the relationship between unrelated data
Mobile App Android – Yes, iOS – Yes, Windows – Yes No
Scheduling Possible Possible

In Conclusion

Based on our comparison of PowerBi vs Google Data Studio we can easily conclude that the choice of the data visualization tool is a company or organization specific choice. If your business is inclined towards Google Suite, then you need to opt for Google Data Studio. The data present in Google ads, sheets, and other Google Suite are structured and clean. This makes it possible to visualize it using Google Data Studio.

On the other hand, if you are a big enterprise that has the countless number of Excel sheets with raw, unorganized, and unprocessed data, then you need to go for Microsoft Power BI. You can correlate and visualize the unrelated data with Power BI in a better way.

Acquiscent specializes in Power BI Development. Get in touch to know more about our services.