Very strong analytics tool with intuitive design aspects and quick time-to-value
What do you like best about the product?
Sigma has enabled us to build intuitive dashboards which can be used by colleagues and customers alike. Having complete access control rights on a row or column basis makes this very easy to implement, and with the embedding framework available, it’s really easy to modify frames to appear exactly as intended, to allow coherent designs across our own company portal. The AI enhancements available in the tool are very impressive – from helping to write succinct formulae for data manipulation, to explaining aspects of the visualizations, having Ask Sigma on hand is really a game-changer for our users. We have also really enjoyed using the inbuilt tagging and versioning control, which allows powerful cross-team collaboration and transparency when building out our systems. The versatility of the tagging approach allowed us to put together a framework which complements our own versioning control methods using other software.
Sigma’s attentiveness and customer service generally has set them apart from many companies we have worked with – they have a multitude of different options for getting help and are available for quick calls to collaborate on best ways to approach problems. A particularly strong offer is the live chat, which I’ve used a few times.
Finally, the initial learning curve of Sigma is relatively shallow – the “quickstart” options are presented at a very good level to add value from dashboards within just a few days – and any additional features are easily found in the documentation when required. Our team were able to build a complete set of embedded analytics dashboards within just a few weeks.
What do you dislike about the product?
Although most of our experience with Sigma has been positive, there has been some limitations.
1) Working with larger datasets can sometimes be very slow; of course, this can be remedied by pushing complex calculations further upstream, but where that is not an option, the latency can be cumbersome. Some more transparency on how to utilise any cache functionality would be good.
2) Some visualisations which are standard in other BI software are not present in Sigma, for example axis breaks are not present and can limit the use of visualisations where outliers are both present and important.
3) Font sizing options can be a bit clunky. Even when selecting “auto” as the font size, when moving to different screen sizes, element sizes can be skewed and upset the design of the dashboard. Thus, care has to be taken to build dashboards which are not impacted by this.
4) Switches to control hiding or showing a given graph based on the underlying data (aside from permissions) is a feature which we would welcome. In our use-case, it’s imperative to show only the important information to our clients and not cloud our output with redundant information.
5) When exporting dashboards (for example, via PDF), there doesn’t seem to be a clear way to enforce all information to be present on the page. For example, where a table has a “scroll” feature, it would be preferable to show all of the information upfront so the PDF pages can be printed without losing any information.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Sigma is providing us with the ability to build solutions (internal and external facing) which allow users to self-serve and investigate data for themselves, while retaining enough governance on our end to ensure the information available is kept entirely within our control. They are enabling our non-technical teams to utilize AI to ask technical questions, making our processes and cross-team collaboration much more efficient.
Potentializing the Way of Working
What do you like best about the product?
Ever since we began to use Sigma software in our firm we have realized that there is a great shift in our way of doing things. I like Sigma mostly because of its usability. It is so simple to use and we were able to deploy the tool in no time at all and there is no hours of training required. All the members of the team, including the most junior and the most experienced have found an easy fit to change. I like one of the features which is customization capabilities. The software is customisable to our workflow and every feature feels customised. This has enabled us to adopt adequate remedies that have streamlined our routines and increased our productivity.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nevertheless, I believe that there are certain elements which could be enhanced. In spite of the software being very comprehensive, I have at times realized that some of the updates or new features sometimes take a period of time to ensure that they are fine-tuned and this is rather frustrating. Responsive customer support would be also nice; in some cases we have had to wait longer than would be our preference to get a problem resolved.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The small disadvantages notwithstanding, Sigma has proved to be an extremely helpful tool in the problem-solving process of our company. E.g. we introduced the project management module, which allowed us to have a better picture on the current development of our tasks. Not only did this assist in us meeting our deadlines but also greater communication amongst the team members as the team is on view of what is being done by each one.
Seamless KPI Tracking and Sales Analytics with Sigma
What do you like best about the product?
Sigma makes it incredibly easy to keep all my analytics in one place. I use it daily to track KPIs, monitor sales progress month over month, and quickly identify trends. The integration with HubSpot was fast and painless, making the implementation process straightforward. Their customer support team has also been excellent — quick to respond, helpful, and knowledgeable whenever I’ve had questions. The interface is intuitive, so I can easily access the insights I need without wasting time navigating complex menus.
What do you dislike about the product?
There’s very little I dislike, but occasionally I wish there were more customization options for visualizing data directly in the dashboard without exporting. Some advanced visualization tweaks require a bit of extra setup, but overall it hasn’t slowed me down.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Sigma is helping me centralize all of my sales and KPI analytics in one place, eliminating the need to manually pull data from multiple sources. It allows me to quickly see if I’m on track with my monthly goals, identify trends, and take action faster. By integrating seamlessly with HubSpot, I can view real-time performance without extra data entry. This has improved my ability to make informed decisions, track progress over time, and keep our sales strategy aligned with company objectives.
Great collaboration with intuitive interface and dynamic visualization capabilities
What is our primary use case?
The project I worked on with Sigma involved creating a migration assessment tracker. We fetch all the data from the Tableau server and the cloud through the metadata API or the REST API. Then our data engineering team puts that particular data through the Alteryx workflow, refines all the components, and pushes the data into Snowflake. We then connect Snowflake with Sigma. With that report, you can compute how much time it will take to migrate a particular site, how many workbooks exist, how many tabs are in Tableau, the duration required, and the complexity of the workbook based on the calculations.
The report also shows if any workbook is associated with upstream workflows or how many published data sources exist. We brought this information onto Sigma and created our report accordingly to estimate the migration time.
It serves the marketing team by ensuring that when receiving a project involving migration from Tableau to Sigma, they can estimate the time required. It estimates all efforts based on these complexities, the size of the Tableau server, and the number of users involved.
What is most valuable?
Compared to other BI tools, each tool has its own capabilities. Sigma has excellent features, such as lookup tables where you can easily bring data that are not interrelated or at different granularity. Because in Tableau, you can see various LODs. To create those same functionalities in Sigma, we generally use lookup tables and replicate that functionality there. It has multiple good controls such as segmented controls. It also provides tab options with the inbuilt feature in the interface itself. If you need to create a similar thing in Tableau, you need to create separate sheets or buttons. Sigma provides several cool features. You can create multiple visuals, and the maps functionality is very good in Sigma. We explored all the charts that Sigma has provided in its interface. Although Sigma is introducing some AI capabilities, that has yet to be explored from our side. We have explored the interface part, creating dashboards, and managing data sources with joins and relationships.
What needs improvement?
As we are exploring multiple features in Sigma, I think Sigma can add more functionality. As Power BI gives multiple modeling options in its interface with the query editor, those features can be added in Sigma for intuitiveness or for making the data very clean. From the dashboarding perspective, it performs well. However, from the modeling perspective, it requires more capabilities that can be added in Sigma.
The main improvement needed is in data modeling capabilities. If they add those features in the near future, it would be very helpful for us to implement the same or do the data cleansing part in the Sigma tool itself.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have almost eight years of experience working with Tableau and Power BI. For Sigma, I have been working for the past two years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
I am not sure if my company purchased Sigma through the AWS Marketplace.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We did not face typical errors during our project with Sigma. In the near future, if we receive support from Sigma, that would be more helpful. There are multiple teams in my organization working on Sigma projects. We have not connected with Sigma support yet. In the future, I can provide more detailed reviews.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
If data is substantial, in Sigma's case, the data is always live. It is not a kind of extract, whereas Tableau provides both live and extract functionality.
How are customer service and support?
On the scale of 1 to 10, I rate Sigma an 8.5 because there are multiple tools whose setup needs to be done, and the servers are also on physical machines such as Tableau server for maintaining all those components. As Sigma is a cloud platform, you do not need to do all that maintenance work. Regarding visualization and data modeling, as mentioned earlier, they can improve on those aspects. The functionality and interface have improved significantly with their latest versions. Previously, all options were on the left-hand side, and now there are floating themes at the bottom where you can easily select all options and create a good dashboard.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In Tableau, you have filter actions where you can select any particular sheet, click on that particular button, and the data is filtered accordingly. You can do a similar thing with the help of actions in Sigma. You can even change the dynamic axis. If you want to change the X-axis and Y-axis, you can do it with the help of controls, the segmented controls, and with the help of actions.
How was the initial setup?
Setting up Sigma is not complex. If you know all the components through their documentation, you can easily implement it as the documentation they created is comprehensive and contains all the necessary information.
What about the implementation team?
As we are a hybrid team, operating from India as well as the US side, we do the development part and our US team connects with the clients and deploys all components in the environment. We are primarily developers, but we can also manage the publishing and other tasks.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Regarding the differences between Sigma and Tableau, for visualization, Tableau is the best tool I have worked with because you can change the visualization accordingly by creating different calculated fields. Sigma could add more visualizations. In Tableau, you can do forecasting with the help of the analytics tab. If Sigma also adds these features, it would be beneficial. In Tableau, there is a smoothing model you can select to do forecasting, create good trend lines, and add effective reference lines while creating trends.
What other advice do I have?
I prefer to remain anonymous. Based on my experience with Sigma, I would rate it 8.5 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Awesome summary of stats
What do you like best about the product?
I love that there are a lot of options and many different stats to pull. It helps us pull information that gives us a story of what we are looking at, so we know how to proceed.
What do you dislike about the product?
I wish the dashboard was easier to navigate. Sometimes it doesn't load when I want to select group names, or if I select all, it puts Null as well, which shows no results.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I think it helps me gather an entire story for my team of operators and knowing where they excelling and where they can improve.
Sigma for embedding and deployment across multiple customers
What do you like best about the product?
Sigma is awesome at making data accessible and editable for non-technical users, requiring minimal tech background to use effectively. If the data is modeled optimally for Sigma, this creates a great user experience, for fast performance as well as ease of editing for those non-technical users. As with any tool though, technical users can focus more on driving business value than spending too much time improving query durations.
Their writeback feature is very helpful. It's something that other BI tools should take note of, in my experience, no one does writeback better than Sigma. We can have a functional application like experience, where users can input values, tweak assumptions and scenario plan, without ever leaving the report.
Ai functionality is very cool and intuitive. While Ask Sigma has room for improvement, I do appreciate where this is headed. Things like Explain this Chart is a wow factor, and is actually useful.
Their support chat is great. We used it heavily at the beginning of our implementation.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sigma takes a very literal approach to data handling, in contrast to Power BI's more abstract methodology. This fundamental difference has significant implications for performance and cost management.
Cost and Performance Considerations
Cloud Warehouse Costs:
Sigma's literal data handling approach can lead to substantially higher cloud warehouse costs if not managed carefully. The platform requires more compute resources to execute operations compared to alternatives.
Data Preparation Requirements:
Success with Sigma depends heavily on proper data optimization and preparation. Organizations that invest in optimizing their data structure for Sigma's architecture can achieve good results. However, performing joins and on-the-fly data combinations creates a poor user experience for report consumers.
Visualization Limitations
Sigma struggles with complex visualizations, a problem that's becoming more pronounced with the introduction of input tables and linked input tables. These features drive extensive downstream calculations, but Sigma's handling of dependent visualizations remains inefficient.
Performance Issues:
Downstream visuals that utilize input table results suffer from slow interaction speeds. The platform needs to improve how it materializes results to address this fundamental performance bottleneck.
Materialization Problems
Sigma's materialization feature remains in beta status despite being available for an extended period. Even when functional, materializations are slow to execute—a significant issue given that data operations should be nearly instantaneous when occurring within the same data warehouse environment.
Technical Solutions Needed:
Sigma should implement more efficient use of temporary or transient tables for complex calculations. Downstream elements should access stored calculation results without triggering full refreshes, which currently cause compilation delays and poor user experience.
Performance per type of fact table
Strengths: Sigma excels with regular fact tables, particularly transaction data that requires simple aggregations like column sums.
Weaknesses: The platform struggles significantly with snapshot data like account balances. Visualizing balance-type data at scale requires extensive backend data preparation to achieve acceptable performance and user experience.
Bottom Line
While Sigma can be effective with proper data architecture and preparation, its literal approach to data handling creates performance challenges that require careful management to avoid cost overruns and user experience issues. We made the decision that the pros for accessible data outweighed the cons. Because if end users couldn't understand how to access and interact with the data, they wouldn't use it at all.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Sigma gives us the ability to easily give our customers simple access to their data in a way that they can understand. It also is good at the deployment of reports to our customers without complex pipelines to literally bring each report to each individual customer.
Powerful tool to visualize and consolidate data
What do you like best about the product?
I like how customizable the reports are to be able to filter in and view the specific data that I need, based on the various reports I consistently use on a daily basis, I can easily find what I'm looking for. I like how easy collaboration is as well when I can view what reports are endorsed, the date of things last being access/updated, and more.
What do you dislike about the product?
I don't love how complicated it can be to customize and create visuals of the the data - bar charts, graphs, font, colors, etc. I feel like it also is a little slow and downloading reports / waiting for the data to load can take a long time. I also wish some of the filters were more dynamic in the sense that I don't have to select a drop down everytime.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Understanding how my clients are using the SaaS platform - I can see everything from what their invoiced amount was, things like utilization, users, and see the data on a line by line basis to help my customer make informed decisions moving forward.
Useful and Impactful
What do you like best about the product?
Sigma is great for our FP&A team to get access to data that's in places like big query which would previously have required folks to write sql.
It's easy to use, and required little to no training to get started since it has so many similarities to other programs like excel.
What do you dislike about the product?
We still struggle to eliminate manual processes with Sigma when presenting to execs. They are not going to hop into a sigma dashboard, so we end up either having to painstakingly create all presentation materials within sigma and then screenshot them into a presentation, or paste data organized for a chart from sigma into a spreadsheet which leaves room for error.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
To pivot raw bookings and ARR data, create simple charts that we look at on a monthly basis, and investigate one-off anomalies.
BestComprehensive tool for Data Warehousing!!
What do you like best about the product?
Best part about Sigma is its ability to connect directly to our cloud data warehouse without moving data. Given interface makes it easy for business users to analyze large datasets in real time, without relying on any engineers or writing complex SQL quesries.
What do you dislike about the product?
No dislikes about it. But, Performance wise it heavily relies on the existing data warehouse. Large queries are sometimes slow if data warehouse is not optimized correctly.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Data analytics
A good reporting software to use with Snowflake
What do you like best about the product?
A user-friendly interface
Very intuitive to use
What do you dislike about the product?
Very few data sources that can be used with Sigma
The data model functionality needs to be enhanced
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Since we can leverage the computing power of Snowflake, Sigma allows us to analyze large amounts of data and create visualizations quickly.
