Some of the best Metabase alternatives for flawless KPI dashboard creation are Datapad, Looker, Microsoft Power BI, Domo, Grafana, Redash, Holistics, Swydo, and Cluvio.
In this guide, you will find a full comparison between these Metabase alternatives and know which one’s right for your business.
Although Metabase has an interactive user interface, it lacks some key features to entice users. Such as, the platform lacks drag-and-drop functionality, a feature that can be easily found on any dashboarding platform.
Moreover, the graphs and reports are repetitive and limited, which leaves you with just a handful of data visualization elements.
When it comes to the learning trajectory, Metabase’s learning curve is steep, like the Alps. It can take a while before you and your team can master the platform's functionalities.
Besides, it can be tricky for a person to create dashboards or datasets with no experience in SQL.
Metabase suffers during team collaboration. In many cases, it slows down when multiple business users are accessing the dashboard.
Not only during collaboration but in general, the results load way slowly.
Now that you know why you need to switch from Metabase to another dashboard software let's look at some of the choices you've got.
Datapad helps you track all essential metrics from stunning dashboards.
The beauty of Datapad lies in its simplicity and ease of use. With our tool, anyone in your team with zero technical knowledge can start building reports in mere seconds.
As a go-to solution for Agencies, Datapad makes it easy to onboard new customers with 1-click templates and share performance reports with read-only links.
Datapad also makes it easy to collaborate as a team with the ability to drop comments on KPI cards.
The AI insights tool lets anyone detect anomalies in their data and provides actionable to-do items to increase performance.
Creating reports for your business is no easy task. You have to determine a lot, from which metrics to choose to design the right charts.
If you are an agency and want to create the same reports for multiple clients, then this hassle becomes even more burdensome.
Guess what? Datapad lets you do all this with just a few clicks.
With Datapad's templating features, you can:
Tracking KPIs isn't a one-person job when you have a lot of them; you need a team. But not all KPI dashboard tools let you bring your team on board.
Guess what? Datapad lets you do it quickly and easily.
Moreover, you can assign individual team members tasks to handle, goals to achieve, and metrics to measure.
With Datapad's team collaboration feature, you can:
Wouldn't it be great if you could check your business KPIs first thing in the morning, straight from your inbox?
With our dashboard software, you can subscribe to any dashboard and receive daily email updates.
All you have to do is build a dashboard, click the subscribe button, and set your email preferences.
The best part is you can share reports with anyone, even emails outside of your organization or workspace.
With Datapad’s report and scorecard automation, you can:
Datapad has a free tier that includes 1 dashboard. If you want more, you can upgrade to the $30 Standard Plan, which includes 3 dashboards and scales with your usage. Datapad also offers a Business Plan tailored for agencies and includes dedicated customer support.
We are now offering an earlybird discount to all users, so it's a great time to sign up and give Datapad a spin.
Datapad is meant for founders and managers who just want to keep an eye on all the KPIs and not dig further. In case there’s something off, they can ask their team to take care of it.
If you’re an individual tracking all the KPIs in-depth and want to know why each KPI is performing the way it is, we’d suggest you go ahead with Metabase or some other KPI dashboarding tool.
But if you just want a managerial view of your KPIs fast and frequently, Datapad will prove to be a great choice.
If you're a desktop-ridden person, our tool isn't the right choice. Our tool does not support desktop dashboarding (it's something being worked upon). Besides, Datapad has an amazing mobile version that has all the features you expect from a desktop-dashboarding tool.
We’re being honest here! If you are the owner of a large organization or someone who needs tons of integrations to extract data from multiple data points, Datapad will limit your needs.
Although we are consistently working on adding more and more integrations to our platform, as of now, it’s limited to some popular integrations.
Maybe down the line, Datapad would be an excellent choice for sourcing data from multiple data sources, but for now, it isn't.
✅ Has a dedicated mobile app
✅ Supports real-time collaboration
✅ A no-code platform; even beginners can learn how to use it in minutes
❌ No desktop version (coming soon)
❌ Has selective integrations
Looker is an enterprise-grade business intelligence tool that empowers data-driven teams to make better decisions and support business growth.
Looker is a modern dashboarding platform used by over 160 companies, including PayPal, Square, 9GAG, and more. It's best for market researchers and data-driven enterprises who want to explore data and make decisions based on data and data only.
Looker doesn't have any pricing plans mentioned on their official website. However, you can request a demo and discuss the pricing later on.
✅ Real-time customer chat support
✅ Integrations to GitHub
✅ Ease of sharing reports and dashboards
❌ Custom queries are limited to 5,000 rows
❌ Often lags when processing hefty and complex data
Power BI is a dynamic data visualization and data analytics tool by Microsoft that allows big and small business owners to quickly monitor, analyze, and visualize data.
Microsoft Power BI is a self-service platform used by the likes of P&G, Toyota, KPMG, and T-Mobile. The tool is suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries.
Microsoft Power BI offers a 60-day free trial. After which, the tool has two premium plans:
Note: Power BI also offers an enterprise-grade plan starting from $6,858.10. You can contact their sales rep to get yourself the best deal.
✅ Novice users can create robust and interactive dashboards effortlessly
✅ Excellent number of connectors and integrations
❌ It gets slow and clunky when running complex datasets
❌ Poor user interface leading to a steep learning curve
Domo is a cloud-based low-code BI and analytics platform that empowers businesses with AI and machine learning capabilities to create interactive reports.
With 2,000+ customers, Domo's services are trusted by top companies and organizations like NBA, Unilever, eBay, and more. Its best-used cases are from the IT, SaaS, marketing, and advertising industries.
Domo offers a 30-day fully-featured free trial. After the end of the trial, you can connect with a Domo pricing expert and get the best quote for your business.
✅ Has dedicated mobile apps for iOS and Android
✅ Excellent customer support and setup guides
❌ Doesn’t let you do an in-depth analysis
❌ Poor UI/UX design
Grafana is an open-source analytical and dashboarding platform. It uses a unique 'single-pane-of-glass' approach to unify all your data into a unified dashboard with interactive visual elements.
Grafana is used by the likes of Salesforce, Tripadvisor, JPMorgan, and more. It's a versatile tool that can fit any industry and company size.
Grafana offers a free forever plan that supports 10K metrics, 50GB logs, and up to 3 active users. It also has a pro plan starting at $8/user; it includes a 14-day free trial.
Apart from this, Grafana has an advanced plan with custom users and pricing. You can connect with their sales rep to get a quote.
✅ Gives real-time alerts and notifications
✅ Good graphical representation with portable graphs and dashboards ( Graph-as-a-code)
❌ Lacks automation; hard to handle complex and hefty databases
❌ Dashboards and charts are rigid in terms of customization
Redash is an easy-to-use BI tool that empowers novice and tech-savvy teams to leverage data and create stunning dashboards.
It allows you to create, monitor, analyze and share unified dashboards with peers effortlessly.
Redash helps you make sense of your data and make structural business use of it across your company. It is for startups and mid-sized companies who want simple data visualizations without needing complex functionality.
Redash doesn't have any pricing available on its official website. You can connect to their sales rep to get a suitable quote for your business.
✅ Effortless way to connect to a data source or detach any sources
✅ It makes it easier to run standard SQL queries than any public cloud-based data source
❌ Lack of version control across the system, leading to less traceability
❌ Meant for smaller organizations with less data appetite and lacks scalability features
Holistics is a robust self-service platform that allows people to generate their own solutions using complicated data without needing to seek help from the data or engineering teams.
Holistics is for people with zero knowledge of coding. It's a self-service BI, meaning you can leverage a drag-and-drop builder to create dashboards and reports.
Holistic offers a free trial for 14 days but has a paid plan of $120 per month for entry-level features, $300 for standard features, and professional for $600 at a flat pricing model.
✅ Report scheduling is easy as it can be
✅ Easy SQL support for advanced dashboards and visualizations
✅ Responsive and resolution-oriented customer service
❌ Lack of visualization options
❌ Can experience UI glitches that might impact dashboard performance
Swydo helps businesses automate reporting of KPIs and create dashboards to track them flawlessly. It's trusted by more than 20,000 companies in 80 different countries.
Swydo is built for entrepreneurs and founders who are short on time yet need a tool that gives them an in-depth understanding of the KPIs. It's also built for an agency to track every client's KPIs and generate reports automatically and send them over weekly or monthly.
You can try Sydow out for 14 days for free (no credit card required), but after that, you will have to select a plan depending on the number of data sources you want to import data from.
The pricing starts at $39/month for 10 data sources and goes all the way up to $3,359/month for 2000 data sources.
✅ A comprehensive tool for KPI report creation that’s comparatively easy to use
✅ You can connect up to 2,000 data sources with Swydo without any hassle
✅ While-labeling options available
❌ Sometimes, users face difficulty in editing text that’s on the dashboard
❌ Has limited design options
Cluvio leverages SQL and R to analyze data, after which you can use it to create interactive dashboards. It's trusted by the likes of Amazon, Netlify, Doctor.com, and many more brands across the globe.
Cluvio is for teams and businesses who are into a little bit of coding and know the basics of SQL and R. The tool is also great if you want to track multiple KPIs daily, as it’s capable of giving real-time data to you and your team.
Cluvio has four plans to choose from:
✅ Great filter functionality and report creation
✅ Feature-rich and easy-to-use Metabase alternative
✅ Run custom queries and code KPIs on the dashboard
❌ Steep learning curve for non-coders
❌ A little bit expensive compared to other dashboarding tools
When it comes to simplicity, Metabase is an excellent tool; there’s no doubt about it. But simplicity isn’t the only thing businesses and founders look for in a KPI dashboarding tool.
Luckily for you, we have an excellent Metabase alternative already built - Datapad.
Datapad lets you track all your KPIs via your mobile phone on the go; all you need is a stable internet connection, and you’re ready to rock.
So sign up for our free mobile app (available for both iOS and Android) and track your business KPIs like a pro.
Read more:
12 Best Dashboard Tools in 2022 [In Depth Guide]