Excellent BI tool for customers looking for a Looker alternative. Coming from a Looker background, I was very familiar with its concepts of analytics-as-code, and we have achieved everything we needed for reporting.
Alex H
Head of Data, Pinter
Why Holistics over PowerBI?
Get the analytics-as-code power without Microsoft lock-in. Holistics delivers strong analytics as code, cross-platform web-native experience, and exceptional customer support.
Built for any OS, no Microsoft lock-in
Works across all operating systems instead of being tied to Windows or Azure AD.
Collaborative workflow for multiple developers
Developers work in parallel without conflicts. Review and merge changes safely.
Collaborative workflow between analysts and business users
Business users create dashboards; analysts review and promote them into reusable metrics.
Modern, fully web-native developer experience
Build dashboards entirely in the browser - no desktop installs or PBIX files.
First-class, human support
Direct access to engineers and dedicated Success team, not third-party vendors.
We have 600 SSRS reports and we don't want to have 600 Power BI reports. And as we bring in more data, it's just going to get more and more complicated.
We tried to use Power BI as a self-service, and it was an epic fail. That was before my time and it failed because it was too complicated for regular users. So when we were looking for a solution, we were looking for tools that needed to be very user-friendly and less technical than Power BI.
We tried to use Power BI as a self-service, and it was an epic fail. That was before my time and it failed because it was too complicated for regular users. So when we were looking for a solution, we were looking for tools that needed to be very user-friendly and less technical than Power BI.
Why Holistics Is A Good Alternative To PowerBI Cloud: A Breakdown
Holistics
PowerBI
End user experience
Holistics gives teams true self-service analytics powered by a flexible semantic layer and a unified web-native experience - without the steep learning curve.
Power BI, while popular, ties development to a desktop tool, depends heavily on DAX, and lacks a central semantic layer, which often leads to inconsistent metrics and bottlenecks for business users.
Anyone can explore and visualize data, regardless of proficiency. Users can conduct analyses using drag and drop UI, SQL, or AI - all in the same interface.
Business users depend on the data team. Becoming effective in Power BI requires learning DAX, which creates a skill barrier for most non-technical users.
Holistics' governed semantic layer ensures every team uses the same definitions and metrics across dashboards and AI queries.
Power BI doesn't have a truly central semantic layer, making it difficult to ensure consistent metrics and AI results across analyses.
Collaboration across the entire data workflow
Holistics enables superior collaboration across the entire data workflow - from multiple developers working together in a shared cloud workspace, to business users contributing insights that analysts can refine and promote into the semantic layer.
Power BI forces teams into fragmented workflows (desktop PBIX files, isolated semantic models) that make collaboration difficult and slow.
Multiple developers work together in a shared cloud workspace. Developers can work in parallel using Holistics' branching mechanism, then review and merge changes easily through Holistics' PR workflow, keeping models and metrics consistent.
PBIX files make collaboration difficult. Developers must pass files around, creating conflicts, duplication, and inconsistent logic.
Business users and developers collaborate smoothly. Business users can build dashboards and create ad-hoc fields; developers can review and promote valuable ones into reusable metrics.
Business users cannot create new metrics - not even ad-hoc ones. Any logic they need must be built by analysts in Power BI Desktop, creating a slow, fragmented workflow that makes developer–business user collaboration difficult.
Customer support
Holistics gives your team hands-on, human support from the people who actually build the product - no ticket queues, no forum hunting.
PowerBI relies heavily on third-party vendors and self-serve documentation, offering limited direct support from Microsoft.
Get direct support from the vendor. Troubleshoot faster. Talk to the actual product team instead of going through resellers or outsourced support.
Rely on third-party vendors for support, with no direct line to Microsoft for day-to-day troubleshooting.
Onboard smoothly with a dedicated Success team guiding setup, training, and adoption.
Receive no onboarding or Success team support, leaving teams to figure things out on their own.
Collaborate in shared Slack channels for real-time help, debugging, and faster iteration.
Work without shared chat channels, meaning slower communication and fragmented troubleshooting.
What our customers said about Holistics
Don't Just Take Our Words For It
The metrics dataset component is really critical for companies that don't have a real data team to build everything all the time. In the work I do, I recommend Holistics to people all the time.
Pedram Navid
Consultant/Founder, West Marine Data
The ability for everyone to explore: Massive win. The one feedback we've had over and over again from the whole company is “Man, how did you guys go through your process? Because you choose such a great tool.”
Guido Stark
Head of Data, Optimal Workshop
Holistics is the next big BI Tool. It took me 2 hours to build the same report in Holistics that I took 16 hours to build in Tableau.
Stephen Motherwell
Chief of Product, Ordo
Holistics became an excellent choice to get us going in BI without the typical huge annual expense. We have built visualizations in Holistics that took it way beyond the 'out-of-the-box' tools.
Seth L
Chief of Product, Oxbridge Health
As an analytics engineer, I was looking for a tool that allowed me a lot of data modeling flexibility and reusability. With Analytics as code, Holistics does a great job of being able to define data models and relationships using code.
Sterling P
Chief of Product, Mainspring Energy
Frequently asked questions
How do I extract my report definitions data out of Holistics in the future?
As users of a lot of softwares ourselves, we hate vendor lock-in. If you ever decide that Holistics is not the right tool for you and want to migrate, you can do that easily with our upcoming Business Intelligence as code. Your entire BI project will be represented as text and checked in to your Git repository.
Is Holistics EU-compliant? Do you guys have GDPR?
Yes. Read more about our GDPR Statement.
We also have a standard Data Privacy Agreement provided upon request, please email [email protected] for more information.
We also have a standard Data Privacy Agreement provided upon request, please email [email protected] for more information.
Is Holistics SOC2 compliant?
Yes, Holistics is SOC2 Type II Compliant. If you'd like to see our SOC 2 Type II Attestation, Contact Us.
How easy is it to learn Holistics? Does it require advanced training or can users pick it up quickly within few hours?
Holistics is intuitive, both technical and non-technical people can pick it up pretty fast.
For Data Consumers: zero learning curve. They can create their own charts and dashboards without writing SQL, using a drag-and-drop interface.
For Data/technical teams: just SQL knowledge is needed in terms of skills.
For Data Consumers: zero learning curve. They can create their own charts and dashboards without writing SQL, using a drag-and-drop interface.
For Data/technical teams: just SQL knowledge is needed in terms of skills.
What SQL data sources do you support?
We support most popular SQL databases and data warehouses: Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, Presto, ClickHouse, AWS Athena, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server. See full list.
I'm based in the US/Europe. Will customer support be a problem?
Although we're based in Singapore (Asia), the majority of our customers are in US and Europe. Despite the time zone difference, Customer Support has been among our most praised qualities from our customers.