Adam Kinniburgh
VP Innovation, SquaredUp
Top 10 Grafana alternatives: The ultimate guide [2024]
Grafana has long been a popular choice for dashboarding, loved by the open source community, and with notable strength for Prometheus, Loki, and Tempo. However, as organizational needs evolve and the volume of data increases, it’s clear that not all dashboarding solutions can keep up.
In this post, we’ll delve into the top 10 alternatives to Grafana for dashboarding.
Spoiler alert: there’s only one real alternative...
1. SquaredUp
Dashboards redefined for the observability era
SquaredUp is not just another dashboarding tool; it’s a complete overhaul of what dashboarding should be. It addresses the critical pain points of data ingestion, dashboard sprawl, and self-service analytics that plague tools like Grafana.
Key Features
- Effortless Setup: Connect to a wide variety of data sources without complex setup, with notably great coverage for Microsoft products.
- Sharing & Notifications: Enable simple sharing with one click, and get real-time updates sent to the tools you use every day.
- Eliminate Sprawl: Flexible structure, data exploration, and powerful health roll-up features reduce dashboard duplication and break down silos.
- Built for Enterprise Scale: Easy to deploy, built for security, and cost-effective at any scale.
- User-Friendly: Designed with the whole company in mind, making it accessible for every member of the team.
Pricing
- An awesome free plan: get started straight away
- Flexible and transparent paid plans: check out our pricing page
The rest...
2. Kibana
Kibana is a popular choice for those using Elasticsearch or Logstash from the Elastic Stack, but it inherits the same challenges as Grafana when it comes to managing large volumes of data and maintaining streamlined dashboards.
Key Features
- Solid integrations with Elasticsearch and Logstash
- Configurable role-based access control
- Customisable dashboards with sharing
3. Tableau
Tableau is a powerful data visualization tool, but its complexity and steep learning curve make it tricky for teams seeking a straightforward solution.
Key Features
- Powerful analytics
- Flexible, and scalable
- Enterprise-grade security
4. Power BI
Microsoft Power BI offers robust integration with other Microsoft products, but its performance can lag with large datasets, and its dashboards can quickly become cluttered. If you need real-time, keep looking.
Key Features
- Excellent native Microsoft integrations
- Licensed through existing agreements
- Leverages existing security groups for sharing
5. Google Data Studio
Google Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) is great for those in the Google ecosystem, but it often struggles with integrating non-Google data sources efficiently.
Key Features
- Solid Google integrations, including BigQuery
- Visual query builder
- Clean interface, and simple sharing
6. Redash
Redash is a solid open-source tool, yet it requires significant setup and maintenance, which can be a barrier for many organizations.
Key Features
- Popular open-source choice
- Large library of database integrations
- Leverages the existing query syntax of the data source
7. Domo
Domo provides a comprehensive suite of business intelligence tools, but it comes with a high price tag and complexity that can deter smaller teams.
Key Features
- Built to serve the entire business
- Strong analytics features to deliver insights
- Data processing features, such as ETL
8. Looker
Looker offers advanced analytics capabilities (compared to Google Data Studio) but requires a deep understanding of its proprietary LookML language, making it less accessible to a wider audience. At scale, it's also very expensive.
Key Features
- Powerful analytics engine
- Native LookML query syntax
- Easy to integrate into other business tools
9. Metabase
Metabase is user-friendly and open-source, but it often lacks the advanced features needed for large-scale data environments.
Key Features
- Beginner friendly user experience
- Flexible, in the right hands
- Easy to automate regular reports
10. Qlik Sense
Qlik Sense is a robust, AI-powered platform designed to help users interact with and learn from data, offering a variety of self-service tools. It's flexible, and relatively affordable, though the price per seat and additional costs for plugins may be an issue for some teams. Performance can suffer when working with large datasets.
Key Features
- Available as a cloud, on-prem, or hybrid solution
- Visual and conversational analytics
- Mature features for automation, alerting, and reporting
Conclusion
While there are many tools that serve as alternatives to Grafana for your dashboard needs, they all fall into the same category of last generation, legacy solutions. They struggle with the same issues of complexity, costly data ingestion, a steep learning curve, or dashboard sprawl. None of these options solve the real problem... that our needs as users have changed, and the old solutions just haven't kept up.
SquaredUp is reinventing dashboards. It really is the only next generation alternative. Its ability to seamlessly integrate data, eliminate dashboard sprawl, enable powerful roll-up, and provide real-time operational intelligence makes it the standout choice for any organization looking to advance their dashboarding capabilities. When considering your options, make sure you're trying to solve the real problem... is it just Grafana that isn't working out, or has the entire market fallen behind?
So, why settle for more of the same when you can elevate your dashboarding experience with SquaredUp?
Adam Kinniburgh
VP Innovation, SquaredUp
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