As a marketing professional, you know your reporting tool can shape business outcomes – for better or worse. The right reporting tool simplifies tasks, boosts team efficiency, and enhances client satisfaction. Conversely, if you choose the wrong tool, you risk wasting resources and frustrating clients. Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio), promising free data visualization and seamless integration with Google’s ecosystem, looks like an easy winner. Yet as your agency expands and evolves, you might require more sophisticated features. Will Looker Studio deliver, and at what price?
This guide breaks down Looker Studio’s true costs, key features, and scalability potential to help you decide if it meets your agency’s needs.
What is Looker Studio?
Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is a free data visualization and business intelligence platform developed by Google. Launched in 2016 as Google Data Studio, it was rebranded to Looker Studio in 2022 after Google’s acquisition of Looker, a business intelligence software company.
At its core, Looker Studio is a cloud-based tool that enables users to:
- Transform raw data into visual reports and dashboards: Users can create interactive charts, graphs, tables, and other visualizations to make data more understandable and actionable.
- Connect to various data sources: The platform can integrate with Google services (like Google Analytics, Google Ads, YouTube Analytics) and third-party platforms through connectors.
- Share insights across teams and with clients: Reports can be shared with specific individuals, embedded on websites, or exported as PDFs for distribution.
Looker Studio positions itself as a bridge between data analysts and business users, allowing technical and non-technical team members to collaborate on data analysis and reporting. For marketing agencies specifically, it serves as a powerful tool to showcase campaign performance and ROI to clients through customizable, branded dashboards.
The platform operates on a freemium model, with the basic version (Looker Studio) available at no cost and an enhanced version (Looker Studio Pro) offering additional features for a subscription fee. This tiered approach makes it accessible to small businesses and individual users while providing scaling options for enterprises and agencies with more complex needs.
As part of Google’s broader analytics ecosystem, Looker Studio has gained significant traction in the marketing industry, where data-driven decision making and transparent client reporting are increasingly essential for success.
Why Marketing Agencies Consider Looker Studio
Marketing agencies live by the reports they deliver to clients. A clear, insightful report can demonstrate the value of your services and secure long-term partnerships; a poorly produced report can send clients running.
This is where Looker Studio shines. The platform collects information from different places and organizes it in customizable reports. Imagine collecting data from Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and your CRM system, into a single branded dashboard – that is the power of Looker Studio. It easily integrates with your work processes, making it easier to produce reports and monitor performance across multiple channels.
Key Features of Looker Studio for Marketing Agencies
Agencies leverage multiple platforms to run successful campaigns. The challenge? Consolidating data from these disparate sources into a unified report. Looker Studio tackles this head-on with its data connectors, eliminating the need for manual data exports.
Here are the most important Looker Studio features marketers should know:
Data Connectors
The ability to connect data from various channels is why thousands of marketing agencies consider Looker Studio the best choice. These connectors bridge Looker Studio and different data sources, allowing agencies to pull in and track data from multiple platforms seamlessly.
Looker Studio gives you 20 free data connectors (mostly within Google’s ecosystem) and also offers 1,000+ sources requiring paid or third-party integrations. Agencies select the desired connector from the integration marketplace, then authenticate their account and import the chosen data.
Among the free connectors, the Google Sheets integration is particularly valuable for marketing agencies. This powerful connection allows you to import custom data, blend information from multiple sources, or create workarounds for platforms without native connectors. Check out our detailed guide to learn how to maximize the Looker Studio and Google Sheets integration for your reporting workflow,
Automated data-source connection eliminates manual data aggregation, saving hours of work each week and providing a bigger picture of marketing performance across channels.
Customizable Templates
Customizable templates from Looker Studio are a major advantage for marketing agencies looking to streamline report creation. Agencies can start with pre-made templates from Looker’s report gallery. They can also start fresh and customize layouts and data visualizations tailored to their requirements.
Looker Studio’s report gallery
Customizable templates ensure consistent service for all clients and swift adaptation to varied reporting needs. This enhances an agency’s professional image and expedites onboarding of new clients with ready-to-use templates.
Adjustable Data Freshness
Looker Studio’s customizable data-refresh feature regularly updates agencies and clients with the latest performance measures. After setting up the data connectors, Looker Studio refreshes the data automatically at set intervals, from 15 minutes up to 12 hours. With this feature, agencies can quickly adjust to performance changes as they appear.
Advanced Analytics and Visualization
Looker Studio offers a range of advanced analytics and visualization options. Agencies can use built-in widgets to perform complex calculations, design custom metrics, and apply filters to all data connections. The platform’s different types of charts, from simple bar graphs to more complex scatter diagrams and heat maps, are also useful for discerning patterns.
Agencies can present appealing data visualizations that help clients understand complex performance measures. They can deliver deeper insights beyond surface-level metrics and customize KPIs for individual clients’ goals.
Data blending is another powerful feature that allows agencies to combine data from multiple sources into a single visualization. This capability is essential when you need to compare metrics across different platforms or create comprehensive views of campaign performance. While Looker Studio offers this functionality, mastering effective data blending techniques requires some expertise. Check out our comprehensive guide for a detailed walkthrough on how to properly blend data in Looker Studio.
Theory vs. Practice: Is Looker Studio Free for Marketing Agencies?
Looker Studio’s free version offers a strong starting point for marketing agencies, especially startups or those on a tight budget. However, whether the free tier serves as a complete, future-proofed solution depends on your individual needs and those of your clients.
As an agency grows, the scalability of software tools becomes important. A larger agency may find that Looker Studio Pro, with features like team collaboration, enterprise-grade security, and expanded data limits, better meets its evolving data needs.
Viable Choice for Smaller Agencies
For smaller marketing agencies or those with limited reporting needs, the free version of Looker Studio offers several advantages:
- Cost-effectiveness – As a free tool, it provides a budget-friendly solution for agencies looking to visualize and share data without incurring high expenses.
- Integration with Google services – The free version of Looker Studio offers advanced integration with Google products, like Google Analytics, Google Ads, and Google Sheets, giving you easy access to data from these platforms.
- User-friendly interface – The platform’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface is easy to use, even for users with minimal technical experience.
Limitations of the Free Version
Looker Studio’s free version has certain limitations that may impact the quality and comprehensiveness of your agency’s reports:
- Restricted data connectors – Looker Studio offers over a thousand data connectors, but only 20 are free, primarily for Google platforms. Accessing data from non-Google sources often requires third-party connectors, which come with additional costs.
- Performance issues with large datasets – Expect slow loading times and data-integration challenges when you use large datasets in Looker Studio.
- Limited advanced features – The free version lacks certain advanced features, such as scheduled report delivery, as well as real-time dashboard updates and built-in data-blending capabilities, which may limit the depth of your analysis.
- Steep learning curve – Users report that mastering Looker Studio is challenging, which could slow down report creation and increase troubleshooting.
The limitations of the free version can also affect the quality of client reports:
- Additional costs – The need for third-party connectors to access non-Google data sources can lead to unforeseen expenses, which can impact the agency’s budget or require charging clients additionally for performance reporting.
- Time-consuming report creation – The steep learning curve and potential performance issues may result in longer report-processing times.
- Potential data-integration challenges – Limited data blending capabilities can make it difficult to render a unified view of data from multiple sources.
Is Looker Studio Pro Faster?
Users often complain about Looker Studio’s performance, especially when handling large datasets. In a previous article, we explained why Looker Studio slows down in certain situations, and provided steps to optimize its performance.
Slow report-loading times often frustrate users, especially when using sophisticated dashboards pulling data from multiple sources. This performance problem is a key pain point for many agencies that rely on the free tier for their reporting needs.
Looker Studio Pro is marketed as a solution to these performance issues, promising faster speeds and improved efficiency. It offers these improvements:
- Optimized infrastructure – Looker Studio Pro’s optimized infrastructure boosts query processing and the overall responsiveness of your reports
- Enhanced data handling – Users report that the Pro version can handle larger datasets more efficiently, resulting in quicker load times for complex reports.
- Inconsistent gains – Despite these improvements, the performance gains with Looker Studio Pro aren’t always guaranteed. Some users in the community forums report only marginal speed improvements compared to the free version.
- Underlying factors – The complexity of data sources and report design significantly affect performance, regardless of whether you’re using the free or Pro version. Poorly optimized reports or inefficient data connections can still slow down performance, even with Pro.
- User experience – Smaller agencies find the free version, when properly optimized, delivers satisfactory performance for most use cases. For them, the modest speed gains of the Pro version seem unnecessary.
To truly improve Looker Studio’s speed, regardless of version, agencies should:
- Reduce dashboard complexity.
- Limit the use of complex calculations.
- Minimize data blending.
- Use data extracts where possible.
- Split large, multi-channel reports into multiple pages.
These optimization steps often yield more significant performance improvements than simply upgrading to Pro.
Looker Studio Pro vs Free: What’s Best for Your Agency?
The burning question – is the free version of Looker Studio enough, or do you need the Pro version? Here’s a complete breakdown of key features in both the free and Pro versions:
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Data Sources | Limited free connectors, sufficient for basic Google integrations. | Expanded connector options, including advanced integrations and partner connectors. |
| Collaboration | Single-user report editing features. | Ability to assign roles for each client, team workspaces, automated report delivery, real-time editing, and complete ownership of the organization’s content. |
| Report Delivery | Share report via links and Google Drive, export as PDF. | Automated report delivery, ability to embed reports in another site. |
| Customer Support | Community forum. | Google tech support. |
| Mobile App | Ability to view reports. | Access to all advanced features and report editing. |
| Security | Basic security. | Enterprise-grade security, including data encryption. |
| Pricing | Free with limitations. | From $9/month per user. Final cost depends on usage and selected features. |
| Best Match for | Small agencies or freelancers with basic reporting needs and a limited client base. | Growing agencies with multiple clients, complex reporting requirements, and the need for advanced collaboration and support. |
Additional Costs To Consider
Looker Studio’s free version offers significant cost savings, though premium features and third-party connectors can bring the total cost closer to that of competitors like Swydo and Power BI.
Some add-on expenses that can increase the total cost of Looker Studio Pro include:
- Data connector costs – Some third-party data connectors require a subscription fee. Factor these costs in when calculating the per-client expense. These costs are specific to the connector and can range from $20 to $350 per month, and if you need a connector that merges the data before importing it to Looker Studio, the price can reach up to $2000 for a single source.
- Potential infrastructure costs – For large datasets or complex reporting needs, you might need additional infrastructure like BigQuery (Google’s data warehouse) or cloud storage solutions like AWS (more on this later).
- Development and consulting costs – Custom-built templates, advanced integrations, or troubleshooting might require hiring a Looker Studio consultant or developer, ranging from $30 to $200+ per hour.
Calculating Cost per Client:
Let’s say your marketing agency subscribes to Looker Studio Pro for $90/month (ten users for $9/month) and you also want to use a premium data connector that costs $100/month, bringing your monthly fee to $190. If we also assume you have ten clients, this translates to $19 per client per month.
Keep in mind – this is a simplified example. The actual cost per client will depend on your specific data sources, reporting complexity, customization required, and number of users.
Bottom line: costs add up quickly, and small agencies might struggle to dedicate a large budget just to a reporting platform, possibly needing to raise client fees to cover the expence.
Need a Better Reporting Tool?
While Looker Studio is a powerful tool that integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics and other Google services, it has competitors. Let’s compare it to other reporting tools currently on the market.
| Tool | Pricing | Key Features | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Looker Studio | Free (basic) and Paid (Pro) from $9/user/month. | Data connectors, customizable templates, interactive dashboards. | Free option available, integrates seamlessly with Google ecosystem. | Performance issues with large datasets, limited advanced features in the free version, steep learning curve. |
| Swydo | Subscription-based, from $49/month. | Specifically designed for marketing agencies, automated reporting, pre-made report templates, drag-and-drop interface, live support. | Streamlined reporting process, client-friendly interface, built-in integrations with marketing platforms. | More expensive than Looker Studio, features like white-labeling are add-ons. |
| Power BI | Free (basic) and subscription-based from $10.99/user/month. | Data connectors, interactive dashboards, natural language queries. | Integrates well with Microsoft products, strong data modeling capabilities, relatively affordable. | Can be complex to use, limited customization options. |
| Tableau | Subscription-based from $70/user/month. | Advanced data visualization, data blending and cleaning, predictive analytics. | Powerful data analysis capabilities, ‘Story’ feature for data-based narratives. | Less flexible than Looker Studio, limited data visualization options. |
For a deeper dive into Looker Studio alternatives that might better suit your agency’s specific needs, check out our comprehensive comparison guide [link above].
Is Looker Studio a Good Investment?
Investing in Looker Studio is a strategic decision that marketing agencies should consider before committing to this reporting platform. Looker Studio presents both long-term costs and benefits. The question is: do its strengths outweigh its costs, limited support, and steep learning curve?
Looker Studio may seem cost-effective initially, but agencies should consider the additional costs they might face with the growing usage of the platform, including:
- Subscription costs – Monthly fees per user can accumulate, especially as agencies scale their teams.
- Training costs – New team members may require training to effectively use Looker Studio, which incurs time and potential monetary expenses.
- Customization costs – Agencies requiring highly customized reports may need to hire external consultants or developers, which will increase the overall cost.
- Third-party connectors – While Looker Studio offers a range of native connectors within Google’s ecosystem, integration with third-party platforms requires purchasing third-party connectors, often with subscription fees.
Despite the possible costs, Looker Studio offers several long-term benefits that can provide a solid return on investment for marketing agencies. They include:
- Scalability – Looker Studio allows agencies to add new users and data sources as needed.
- Centralized reporting – With the right setup, consolidating data from multiple sources into a single report streamlines the whole performance reporting process, reducing the time and effort required to generate client reports.
- Ongoing feature updates – Google regularly updates Looker Studio with new features and performance enhancements, allowing agencies to leverage the latest reporting technologies.
Extra Tools You Might Need When Using Looker Studio
Is Looker Studio the only reporting tool your agency will ever need, as long as you pay the increasing fees? Not exactly. Once in growth mode, you might to need to add the following tools:
BigQuery
A data warehousing solution like BigQuery is often essential for agencies handling large datasets. It offers scalable storage and fast query processing, which can significantly improve Looker Studio reporting.
| BigQuery Feature | Pricing |
|---|---|
| Storage (active) | $0.2/GB/month |
| Query processing | $6/TB data processing/month |
| Storage (free tier) | 10 GB/month |
| Query processing (free tier) | 1 TB data processing/month |
BigQuery also offers a free tier with 10 GB of storage and 1 TB of query processing per month.
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
While Looker Studio helps with data visualization and reporting, marketing agencies with advanced needs may find that AWS offers valuable add-ons, particularly related to data storage, processing, and security. AWS provides a full suite of cloud-based services that can enhance Looker Studio’s capabilities.
| AWS Tool | How Agencies Use It | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon S3 | Stores large datasets that are not actively queried | From $0.02/GB/month |
| Amazon EC2 | Pre-processes data before loading it into Looker Studio. | From $0.005/hour |
| Amazon Redshift | Serves as data warehouse for complex or large-scale datasets. | From $0.25/hour |
| AWS Lambda | Automates data validation and enrichment processes. | From $0.008/hour |
All of these AWS tools offer low entry points, and agencies can scale with custom pricing as their usage grows.
ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) Tools
ETL tools automate data-extraction from various sources, transforming it into a readable format and loading it into a data warehouse. These tools are crucial for agencies managing data from multiple client platforms that want to cut costs on Looker’s third-party connectors.
Here are a few popular ETL tools and starting price points:
| Tools | Pricing |
|---|---|
| Fivetran | From $500/million monthly model runs |
| Hivo | From $299/million monthly events |
| Stitch Data | From $100/million rows |
All of these tools offer free trials, so you can try them out and connect different data sources to see how each performs.
Data Quality Tools
While these tools are not a must-have for every marketing agency, and can cost thousands of dollars, they can help identify and correct errors in source data before it’s used in reports. Such tools automatically highlight possible errors, eliminating the need to validate the accuracy of performance data point-by-point.
Here are a couple of popular data quality tools and how much they might cost your marketing agency:
| Tools | Pricing |
|---|---|
| Ataccama ONE | From $90,000/year |
| Informatica Data Quality | From $10,000/year |
Remember that the prices can vary depending on your usage, and you can get a quote based on your needs by chatting with sales staff. Still, these tools’ costs are only justifiable if your marketing agency handles hundreds of clients with multiple data sources and you charge clients for extensive performance reports.
Bottom Line
Looker Studio is a powerful reporting tool, especially if you’re already integrated within the Google ecosystem. The free version is a solid starting point for small agencies with basic needs. For agencies managing multiple clients and complex datasets, Looker Studio Pro and supplementary tools like ETLs, data warehouses, and data quality software can be a worthwhile investment.
However, scaling agencies may not want to upgrade to Looker Studio Pro for needed features or purchase third-party connectors. Doing so introduces greater complexity and higher costs, which can make an all-in-one, purpose-built reporting tool look like an attractive alternative.
Test both versions of Looker Studio, but also try Swydo, an automated reporting tool designed for marketing agencies. Start your 14-day free trial to see how Swydo can transform client reporting and boost your agency’s efficiency and productivity.