Great model for rapidly evolving analytics

Sigma is the fastest and easiest BI tool to deploy. Iteration on the semantic layer is a cinch. Sigma is a delight to work with as a vendor. Their support is superbly responsive (during business hours - they don't have global timezone coverage yet). Sigma's pricing model is reasonable and very friendly to orgs where 80+% of the employees need live data access.

Pros

Sigma has the right model. From the user perspective, the columnar formula editing feels familiar enough, and the learning curve is friendly to anyone with spreadsheet experience. From an architect perspective, the semantic layer is lightweight and easy to adapt to ever-changing schemas. The UI covers most of the functionality you'll want, and for everything else you can fall back on writing your own code, like cron strings or SQL queries. I let Sigma do probably 95% of my querying, leaving the gnarliest 5% for me to write in their SQL runner. I do a significant amount of lightweight ELT work in Sigma as well. I like being able to write massive views that I know I'm going to have to update often, and just like Snowflake / Sigma materialize them for me. When I use Sigma to query S3 directly in the SQL runner - usually to POC some new data that hasn't made its way out to the business teams yet - this functionality is really convenient because those queries are not efficient. I just need to get new data in front of the business as quickly as possible.

Cons

Visual discovery is lacking when compared to mature tools like Tableau. Sigma needs to continue chipping away at the Tableau features around dashboarding and charting.

Incredible power and flexibility

I am obsessed with Sigma, by far my favorite BI tool I've used. It let me do calculations myself that would usually require whole cycles of data requests, and affords me much more flexibility.

Pros

* Ability to pull any data I need or want * Complexity of calculations possible while being easy to use * Seriously those grouping levels are VERY powerful

Cons

* Pivot tables are the one thing they haven't aced yet - you can make them but then to calculate cased on them you need to make a new dataset and then a new sheet. You can do pretty much all the same work with just levels though so I don't miss them too often. * I wish my default permissions could be "public" - I'm never doing anything private, so why is that the default? * Maps could use some work. I want to color-map countries, not just display dots

positively mixed feelings

Overall I have access to more than our previous reporting system, which is a positive. However, as self serve as it is I wish connecting tables and validating was more straightforward as a user.

Pros

I like how customizable it is. From a good basic report I can move things around to suit my needs. In addition it has many options for how to export, which is great as I use excel for more complex files & google sheets for collaborating & sharing findings.

Cons

Load times to get to a report or filter can be killer for some reports that pull from many data sources, and have large amounts of information. The permissions are a bit annoying when a report is created for me by an admin, but I am the report owner (as it was made for my department), but I can't make my own changes (w/o admin privlidges) and archive the main one. In these cases, I have to request the admin to make the changes, or make a copy and publish my own report and again contact the admin to delete or move the report so that mine is the one the team goes to first.

Sigma plus Snowflake is a revelation!

It has exceeded my expectations in ease of use and the productivity my team has been able to achieve.

Pros

I love the secure cloud hosting, the ease of connecting to data sources, the fact that it queries the data directly, but most I like the grid based view of data that is always at hand. Being able to view, sort, filter, and create calculations on the data in a familiar spreadsheet-like interface is genius. The “Column Details” feature allows me to quickly understand the range of values in the system.

Cons

I’ve generated several feature requests for areas we’d like to see more detail.

The BI tool of the future

Love it. We previously had Looker as our BI tool and this is a HUGE improvement over that tool. Ease of use, clarity of features, flexibility of the system are all significantly improved. Couldn't be happier with our switch, I know my whole team would say the same thing.

Pros

Ease of use, especially the ability to write custom SQL queries to build datasets and reports. The visualization builder is also very user friendly and has made throwing together dashboards for internal or external use significantly easier. Saves me and my colleagues a ton of time!

Cons

There have been some features identified by the team that we need for Enterprise-level software that were missing, many have been addressed though. A major bugbear of mine is that the filters don't seem to react to each other if there are multiple on a dashboard, they filter independently of other inputs.

Using Sigma as a Software developer

I think is a nice tool, is easy to use and it's fast. You can load your data and start analyzing it very fast, also, it's a nice tool for non technical users, but when I need more features or power I rather to use Data Studio

Pros

Is an easy to use software, I liked that it's very fast, I don't have to wait to start seeing the data

Cons

It needs more features, specially to migrate the worksheets to different environments, also it has a very limited number of functions. Sometimes the error messages are not very descriptives, so we can't know what's happening or how to solve it (we had a worksheet with an error like: "the joins are not efficient", something like that, so that message was kind of useless)

Quick route to collaborative BI (especially for Excel users)

Sigma got my business to the point of insightful, collaborative BI in a couple of weeks, and it instantly was our most critical performance monitoring tool.

Pros

Love the dataset -> spreadsheet -> dashboard usage model Seamless integration with Snowflake

Cons

User admin/roles functionality is not as easy and consistent to administer as it should be

Powerful data visualization tool

As a data analyst, I've have had a lot of fun building dashboards and reports with Sigma. It's very flexible and has great usability

Pros

- You can easily add data sources, and then create datasets with the columns you need - It also lets you format the columns and process the data by using formulas, very similar to what you would do in a spreadsheet, but more streamlined - You can easily join different datasets and filter data - The new dashboards are very easy to use, with a clear interface to add widgets, filters and views - They also have quick and effective customer support

Cons

- It can be a little intimidating if you are not familiar with spreadsheets

Good price, needs more features

This has been a net positive for our org.

Pros

Sigma allows viewers for free, even viewers from outside your organization.

Cons

The dashboard feature is not fully built out - many features seem to be missing. For example, I can't put percents on a pie chart.

Decent features, need to cater to code-less users

Pros

the customer service chat button was nice

Cons

the way of drag and drop report building is not intuitive

Incredibly Useful Tool for data analysis and workflow

Pros

The speed with which I'm able to pull together disparate data and generate some useful insights. The Dashboard functionality has been particularly useful in creating reporting our teams can use with customers and prospects.

Cons

Version management and permissions. It's hard to keep everyone looking at the same version of a document, to view data, a document is created and generically named, so our folder system is getting very full and hard to navigate. Additionally, there's no way to tell if another user will be able to see a given document without asking them to try viewing it, and there's no way for them to request view access to that document.

Sigma - making SQL a visual effort

It has been great. The tool fit very naturally into my companies data flow and getting _explorable_ data into stakeholders hands. We also have a more static dashboarding tool that excels at that, but is weak for exploration. Sigma also makes my job as an analyst easier by making data sets explorable using point-n-click tools vs code

Pros

Makes 'easy' queries very easy to work on and see results visually immediately. Natural way to think about grouping objects but still showing the 'row' level data is amazing and a huge selling point on getting non data people to use the sheets shared with them. Makes the mental structuring of large undertakings choppable into smaller to-do's and then joining sheets together

Cons

Expanding on my point in my pro's about chunking down large undertakings to smaller conceptual efforts per sheet.... this is not very performant. I have two projects where I create a base sheet and then have 2-6 sheets built off of it before potentially joining them back together to combine the aspects I've added. This however, results in the base sheet/query being run numerous times and is often times a time consuming query to begin with. In a code based environment this could be made more performant by using a WITH statement so it only has to execute once and can then be used multiple times Joins have to be exact matches (no date comparison) and can only be on original columns from the data source. Therefore, if a column must be switched from integer to string, you have to create a reference to the sheet before being able to join to other tables.

Turns non-technical business users into data power users

Stellar overall experience. The Sigma team makes a massive effort to truly understand and design around customer needs and use cases, as well as to provide hands-down the best customer support and training I have ever received from a B2B vendor, period.

Pros

The ability to connect to any data number of data sources across our enterprise data warehouse to extract useful insights for my team. Without a line of coding I can report, analyze, and visualize data from our CRM, IoT data streams, 3rd party APIs, and now .csv uploads. The full access is balanced by perfect row-level security controls so I can use the same system to power data dashboards and portals for internal teams as I do for external clients.

Cons

The upside of being able to access ALL data streams leads to a downside -- it can take a long time to process and load information. However I look forward to data materialization features in the works which will eliminate this problem.

Great product and better value

Pros

Compared to competitors I found Sigma to be much more straightforward with regard to database connections and dashboard building. No complex data warehousing layer, or reporting databases to instrument / sync, it simply reads from whatever db you assign and syncs in real time. While there is still a learning curve, the excel-like functions make it friendlier to business users who are not familiar with SQL to enable them to build custom reports rather than only viewing. While there isn't a "team" assigned to you for onboarding like other tools offer, I have found adhoc email and chat support to be good enough, and certainly worth the $ saved compared to other 'implementation costs' that often come with or are built in to the pricing of competitive products.

Cons

The team/user permissioning and management could be more straightforward.

Revolutionary Data Tool

The most significant impact of Sigma has been exposing data to so many people around the business who would otherwise have had to go through the data team bottleneck, both slowing their access to data and limiting the explorability and agility of the results. However, this can be accomplished in a controlled manner with Sigma, ensuring that stakeholders only have access to vetted sources of truth procured by the data team.

Pros

- ability to explore and inspect the source data and perform sophisticated SQL functions via GUI (group, join, aggregate, etc.) - ability to create single source of truth worksheets and build all related content off of that, instead of reinventing the wheel with every new query - unlimited reader accounts allows usage to really take off and flourish instead of hamstringing itself

Cons

- pricing still unclear as to what constitutes an author vs a reader - based on recent conversations with Sigma I'm afraid that we are going to be upcharged on items that were never made clear to us (I am still unclear) - new software still has its share of bugs

Sigma shaved 5 hours off my monthly reporting

While Sigma could be great for a lot of use cases, there is one in particular that I use it for. Every month I have a summary report that I have to put together. I used to run multiple database queries, dump the data out into Excel, do some manual sorting and manipulation of the data, and then build out pivot tables so that I could see trends month over month. Sigma takes care of all of the data fetching, formatting, and styling for me (and lets me do it in a way that turns out better than I had in Excel). Doing the reports this way, now saves me about 5 hours a month off of that monthly report that I was doing, which means that I have more time for data exploration, and spend less time with data garbage collection.

Pros

I love the ability to build out extra columns in my data visually, which lets me build pivot tables that I cannot even replicate in Excel. Having built out tables once, I can reuse them again and again with fresh data without having to pull and manually re-translate everything like I used to do. Having the ability to change the type of data in a column to a new structure saves me a lot of time. Extracting JSON from my tables is a snap!

Cons

While the documentation is good, I wish there was a little better messaging around error handling. Sigma formatting is slightly different from the PostgreSQL that I am used to. I wish that there was a little more visual punch to the charts I can make.

Excel for your data warehouse

I help B2B SaaS startup founders and CMOs with their customer data platforms and reporting. The ability to create additional columns on your data containing custom formulas and the ability to sort and filter on multiple columns is great. One of my clients uses Sigma and I’ve been extremely impressed at how easy and quickly it is to build reports on multiple tables of data without writing any complex SQL. For example, sessionization of page view and event time series data is a complex SQL query which can be performed within a few minutes in Sigma without any knowledge of SQL. It’s a great tool for business users.

Pros

I’ m very impressed at Sigma’s ease of use for building reports from my clients data warehouse running on Snowflake. If you can use Excel, and understand the data in your database you can be up and running extremely quickly without having to write SQL queries or any code to describe your database. The ability to create additional columns on your data containing custom formulas and the ability to sort and filter on multiple columns is great.

Cons

As with any tool there is a learning curve to the interface, but since it’s similar to a spreadsheet, it’s quick to learn. Theres no feature yet to save custom formulas to be used across worksheets so you’ll have to copy and paste them for now.

Good product, becoming better every quarter

I was using Sigma increasingly over the last year or so. One thing that I am most pleased with is how in the new releases I can see the issues raised by me and my coworkers addressed and solved. It is becoming more and more usable with time.

Pros

Sigma is a quick and easy way to map from a SQL query through intermediate exploration to customer-ready visualization

Cons

No way to save the complete project as code, which can be edited, version-controlled, ported, etc

Two month review

So far, I have loved it. For a month of experience, I feel very empowered to create the reports necessary to drive the business.

Pros

Love the simplicity of creating reoccurring reports and setting them up for automated delivery.

Cons

Some of the more complex formulas can be difficult to create, however the support has helped immensely. Only other con would be some of the output formats. one of the largest issues I still have is to output to a format that includes the entire list of (pick a column)

Sigma is a powerful tool

I have been able to expand my personal skillset with sigma and work towards better data insights.

Pros

Sigma offers a great way for me to explore tables in our database and visualize those insights. Building worksheets and converting those sheets into dashboards have been very valuable for me.

Cons

There is a learning curve here. It may take a while to get completely comfortable using the product. Once you do, the possibilities for data analytics expand.

Highly recommended!

Excellent! I use it on the daily.

Pros

It's easy to use and straight forward. I'm not not only handling reports for my team but for multiple departments as well.

Cons

I'm still learning the depths but it's one of the best programs that I've had the opportunity to use. I would say the only thing that can be annoying, is the load speed. Sometimes my tables and dashboards time out.

Integration Pipeline

Best email marketing pipeline integration when it comes to metrics and conversion goals

Pros

It's very effective on the email marketing and CRM.

Cons

pricing can be lower but totally works.

A useful tool for specific problems

Monthly compliance reporting handoff to non-technical individuals.

Pros

For someone who is not particularly tech savvy, Sigma is a great way to take SQL queries written by someone who is, and then be able to modify the data in real time using the sort of functionality we're all used to via Excel. Sigma also is easy to export data from, and the scheduling functionality is quite useful for recurring reports.

Cons

Because Sigma has to re-pull data every time you open a sheet, it is incredibly slow. Certain reports can take multiple minutes to load, and once any filters are applies, it has to re-pull the report, causing those minutes to be lost again. Because of this, it's often easier to just download all the data and then do the filtering/etc in excel/google sheets.

Simple Yet Powerful

Pros

Sigma presents data in a format users already understand... a spreadsheet. The result is a BI tool that is much less intimidating than alternatives because it doesn't force users to learn a new query language.

Cons

While the basic functionality is actually pretty easy to use, some of the features are hard to find, or not that intuitive especially around formulas or more advanced features.

Great Product

Pros

Ease of use and visibility is great! Love the data that we are able to pull and how easy the interface is to use.

Cons

There are a few features that I would love to see added. Mainly that when you are working with large data sets, it can be hard on the system and lead to slow processing time.

It works!

I use Sigma to manage inventory company wide across the country and it's easy to see where things are and when.

Pros

easy to see all info in one place, for multiple needs

Cons

I have no complaints about anything sigma. but we also have someone who was able to walk me through how to create different reports at my workplace

Review

Pros

Great charts, filters and databases, easy to use and learn

Cons

Layout and colors, not nice or fancy first experience

Great analytics product, easy to set up and use

Pros

Awesome team behind the product, always responsive and helpful. They've taught me a lot not only about their tool but also about data analytics.

Cons

Some UI elements could be improved, but once you know where to find certain things you'll pick it up.

Excellent alternative to pivot tables and spreadsheets

So far, we've managed to simplify our business metrics visualization and enabled querying that information to non-technical users which is a big win.

Pros

I like that it's easy to create customized views of Data without having to expose unnecesary information as noise. I love the simple UI to build new reports and the smart filters.

Cons

Getting the data into Sigma can be daunting at first, but it's worth it in the end. If you're struggling I recommend to keep trying.

Sigma Daily Use

Pros

It was easy to store data and share with partners.

Cons

The user dash is a bit basic. It would be great to see a wider variety of tools and functions.

Sigma - Ease of use

Sigma is a great way to share smaller sets of data. It allows me to prepare for my clients by pulling together reports quickly in an easy format.

Pros

The software is pretty easy and intuitive, except for the UI, at first. You don't really need much training on instruction, making it easy for you to play around with until you get the idea.

Cons

Sometimes when I have put things into the CSV filter they end up in the wrong place. Also the UI is kind of weird if you've never used it, but I was able to get used to it fairly quickly.

Good BI for basic data visualization

Pros

1. excel like so it's easy to pick up 2. can connect to the live database and without writing SQL query 3. can share the worksheet and schedule to send out the worksheet via email

Cons

1. it's not easy to use if you want to do a complicated report: once you aggregate multiple worksheets / refer other worksheet and apply multiple filters, it's hard to verify your result and make it in the correct format. 2. the articles to discuss the Sigma features or best practice are not comprehensive.

Good platform with potential

I like the trajectory the company is heading, and would recommend depending on fit to objective.

Pros

Sigma is a dynamic and agile system, helping us remove the use of Excel for day-to-day calculations. Their team is supportive and hands-on, which is probably the best part of the company.

Cons

Still very basic and could stand to invest further into UI.

Lots of functionality

Pros

Great UI and incredible functionality! Been very happy with the product so far.

Cons

Definitely a learning curve at first -- lots to learn.

Great software that's easy to use and visualizes data in an easy-to-digest way

Pros

Visualizations, charts, tables, filters for columns

Cons

Understanding how to add certain columns, the different layers within the data

Sigma helps

Pros

I really like how easily Sigma connects with our snowflake databases, and facilitates analysis. We are growing our data and analytics practice, and Sigma helps me to respond to the innumerable ad hoc questions from the business, while allowing our team to advance our capabilities.

Cons

Currently, I write SQL to execute the LIKE function when filtering on field values. It would be great to have this feature available with wild cards in the filter part of the software.

Solid BI Tool to use for Enterprise Analytics

The customer support has been very nice and prompt. The product has even evolved with ideas that we have asked for. The overall product and development team is very receptive and responsive to customer needs.

Pros

The ease of hook up to my database. Ease of report building. Use of functions and how it can interpret dates.

Cons

Dashboard to dashboard they cannot communicate and dashboards have a little different functionality than worksheets. Sigma is still very young in age and I am sure things will change.

Great tool for non-IT users

Pros

Sigma makes non-IT users' access and manipulation of big data super convenient and intuitive. Works great.

Cons

I think some of the self-learning features of the tool can be improved. I had to relay on in-house experts for learning some of the features of the tool.

Sigma Review

I use sigma multiple times a day, 5 days a week and with the exception of a few internal tweaks, I am generally happy with the program.

Pros

Easy exporting into excel, formula customization, overall data customization, saving personal reports

Cons

Dragging and dropping columns in the sidebar isn't the most efficient. Also, the loading time when changing filters is so long! I find myself exporting the data dump into excel for easier and faster use. Also the constant formula adjusting to achieve the correct data - I've been using the program for about 6 months and reporting isn't 100% yet.

Increase the visibility of your data across teams and find your own answer to data questions

I am slowly getting up to speed with Sigma but can see already that as I commit to it we will greatly increase the speed at which my team can answer questions we have regarding all of the data we are collecting. There will be a day where I will no longer have a need for Excel and Google Sheets.

Pros

Really like the ease of being able to expose our data across teams and allow each individual user to be able to answer the questions they have with the tools supplied, grouping and filters being two of the easiest and most useful for me.

Cons

Up to the this point the visualizations aka charts have been difficult for me to create, but I will admit I haven't committed to taking a deep dive into learning. Also would like to be able to annotate from within a report (eg. cell) rather than at the top level within the description.

Customized Reporting

Allows independent reporting and analysis to meet recurring business needs.

Pros

Enjoy the ability to customize reports and drill down data to your specific needs. Can update and refresh data month after month without starting from scratch.

Cons

A little overwhelming for first time users and requires a lot of hands on practice to establish a comfort level. Download time increases as more data is being manipulated.

Great for comprehensive reporting

Pros

As a marketer, Sigma is an incredibly valuable tool that allows my team to aggregate data to inform our decisions and scale up. I like the ability to drill app activity down to the user level in order to identify trends and specific user behaviors.

Cons

It can be very overwhelming! Not instantly intuitive but not hard to learn either. My biggest complaint is that it was often very slow.

Sigma for Usage Reports

We are using sigma to pull usage data from our customer base. We rely heavily on this data in order to measure the value that the customers are getting from Yesware, identify churn risks and areas for adoption. Without Sigma, I would not be able to do my job to the best of my ability.

Pros

Access directly from the browser, quickly pulls the results I need

Cons

Sometimes it is difficult to sift through the different dashboards - this could be an internal issue

Good software to organize your KPIs

Good enough to push SIGMA as an organizational tool. We are currently active using it, and it has helped give our [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] enough visibility on where our challenges are.

Pros

I like the flexibility on displaying the information that makes sense the most on our organization.

Cons

There were some restrictions when showing text alongside graphs, and the toolbars didn’t allow for enough flexibility to our liking. Other than that, pretty good experience overall

Sigma

Very positive in my daily work.

Pros

Sigma allows us to have instant access to the data that are ingested into snowflake. It allows me to access all the raw data, which is what I need, rather than concise dashboard data.

Cons

Data tables can be a little difficult to learn at first, but just like anything, you can learn it over time with enough familiarity with the product.

Up and Coming Software

[SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] have been great to work with and always ready to help us. Support is not an issue :-)

Pros

Integration with Snowflake, Ability to load data files, Ability to analyze large data sets, Excel like functions

Cons

Dashboards are a little quirky and limited on drill down capabilities; heat maps are missing; and other features expected in a BI tool; need more training options

Unintuitive

I can easily see high-level insights, like how many users of a certain type are utilizing our software, some usage trends, etc. However, when trying to do a deep dive to understand user health aspects over time, I don't have the skill or patience to create a report to track this type of usage in Sigma.

Pros

Some of the charts are nice for visuals and I can create high-level reports.

Cons

I dislike the process in trying to to create reports. I have some development experience and I much prefer running searches with SQL - I find it much more intuitive than Sigma's interface. Due to this and my limited time, I haven't taken much time to learn Sigma and get comfortable with it, especially when I'm familiar with SQL. It creates a bit of a bottleneck for our company in that our data analysts are the only ones who seem to really be able to create reports with Sigma. I want a tool where I can easily create a report as well.

Great tool without sql requirements

We use this tool to send dashboards and reports to external clients.

Pros

This tool is very easy to set up and very intuitive for end users. Sql knowledge is not necessary, but Sigma offers the option of writing SQL statement to generate data set. The queries is sent back to cloud to execute which make Sigma allow you to quickly query vast amounts of data. The row level data security allows us to distribute the same dashboards to different clients and each client only can see their own data.

Cons

I only use this product in a short time period and have not found anything I dislike.

A vast improvement over our previous product

Using Sigma as a tool to prioritize asset service and inspection has been a game changer. Much better visualization tools than the competitor's product we previously used.

Pros

It is much faster and easier to read than our old reporting software

Cons

I would like the ability to modify the sort on the fly. Currently an admin has to adjust it, if it is needed

Great tool our needs - fast and easy navigation of snowflake data, quick reporting, data validation

Pros

Easy and intuitive user interface. Licensing is for creators, viewer usage unlimited. Visual designer for lookups and joins. Fast learning curve for non technical users. Team is super responsive. Works very well with snowflake.

Cons

Not a tableau/power bi replacement, some features still immature