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Postgres -> Metabase I believe this is the best combination of cheap/powerful for early-stage startups. My very non-technical cofounder is able to use metabase

Postgres -> Metabase I believe this is the best combination of cheap/powerful for early-stage startups. My very non-technical cofounder is able to use metabase's simple GUI interface to create graphs/insights (even joining and aggregating across tables!), and for anything complex I can step in a give a helper SQL query. We have around 10M records we aggregate around for daily insights. Metabase can also be run as a pseudo-desktop/web application to save additional cash (we don't do this though).

alexfromapex 7y ago
Wow Metabase is free and open source?! Awesome, thank you!
- seektable 7y ago
  it is licensed under AGPL. For white-label embedding it requires a commercial license: https://www.metabase.com/enterprise/pricing.html https://www.metabase.com/enterprise/pricing.html Pricing for variant with row-level security is not cheap as you might expect, so if you plan to embed reports in your web app it might be better to consider another alternatives.
beckingz 7y ago
Metabase has been serving our startup well. Not as good as Tableau, but the minimalist approach is really good and SQL is better than Tableau's LOD expressions.
mazameli 7y ago
UX guy from Metabase here. Glad to hear it's working well for you. Happy to answer any questions folks might have.
- Dwolb 7y ago
  Wow great to see you in the thread. No questions from me but great job on the latest update.
  - mazameli 7y ago
    Many thanks!
  - salsakran 7y ago
    Thanks! -Another Metabase team member
- cornell_io 7y ago
  nice job
- exabrial 7y ago
  Great Product. And you guys are great stewards on Github.
- johnx123-up 7y ago
  Can you please compare it with Superset?
  - sails 7y ago
    Worlds apart, superset provides powerful visualisation capabilities, but is very difficult to use/setup/maintain (although they just launched as a company [0], so perhaps that will change). Metabase is a very easy to use data exploration, data vis and reporting tool designed to give insights into data in an easy/self service way for mostly non-technical users. I've POC'd both, and would recommend Metabase or redash unless you really know what you need out of superset [0] https://preset.io/blog/2019-10-09-series-a-announcement/ https://preset.io/blog/2019-10-09-series-a-announcement/
    - johnx123-up 7y ago
      Thank you! Any idea how does it compare with redash then?
      - sails 7y ago
        Pretty similar feature wise and intended use, I did a direct comparison and went for Metabase because it allows you to schedule reports delivered to email/slack (only allows you to schedule individual queries, not entire dashboards). I didn't demo redash so can't comment on the actual use comparison.
- dmistrio 7y ago
  Sorry not a question, just to say again that your UI rocks. After I came to this post, I stopped everything I was doing to install metabase for my company (and then used it for a project :) ). I have spotted some issues with the installation instructions where do I post them? Issue at Github?
- soobrosa 7y ago
  Oh, yeah, thanks for asking! Reasons I had to cancel Metabase deployments. https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/4387 https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/4387 opened this issue on Feb 15, 2017 https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/2052 https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/2052 opened this issue on Feb 29, 2016 https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/6741 https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/6741 opened this issue on Jan 22, 2018
pcarolan 7y ago
Agreed. I helped setup a company on this last year and they're very happy. There's a 'Deploy to Heroku' push button install that was incredibly easy to setup. Great job Metabase folks.: https://www.metabase.com/start/heroku https://www.metabase.com/start/heroku
hundredwatt 7y ago
+1 for Metabase For our team, using an ELT architecture (as opposed to ETL) [1] for managing our data warehouse has greatly reduced the complexity of our data processes. Instead of creating ETLs for every table we want to load into the data warehouse, we create the minimum necessary setup to copy the table into our data warehouse. Then, we write transforms, which are simply SQL statements, to generate wide-column tables that our non-technical users can use to explore data without worrying about joins or having to learn esoteric naming conventions. Custom EL Scripts -> Redshift -> Transform Statements -> Redshift -> Metabase supports the data needs of all our departments with no dedicated data team members. [1] https://www.dataliftoff.com/elt-with-amazon-redshift-an-overview/ https://www.dataliftoff.com/elt-with-amazon-redshift-an-over...
apinstein 7y ago
+1 for metabase. I’ve deployed it at 2 companies. The latest version allows you to compose “questions” you create in the system which is really powerful for organizing layers of data reporting. Also, their API conforms 100% to Zapier’s polling feed structure, and I managed to build an integration that syncs our customer base to Pipedrive in a few hours. A bit more time and I have it automatically moving deals along in the pipeline as users progress with using the product. That alone was game changing for our customer success team. Thanks, team Metabase!
- masonhensley 7y ago
  Interesting, kinda like this? https://blog.synq.fm/how-we-optimized-our-crm-workflow-using-metabase-zapier-and-hubspot https://blog.synq.fm/how-we-optimized-our-crm-workflow-using... P.S. I'm another Metabase + Postgres + Bigquery fan. Thanks Team!
mxxx 7y ago
We've also been using Metabase lately. It doesn't have some of the querying power of a Tableau/Data Studio, but in terms of being able to just click through and "discover" trends in your data, it's really nice. Super quick and easy to get started even for non-technical folks, and best of all it's OSS! Really impressive project.
pknerd 7y ago
Looks interesting but I would like to know how is it different than Apache Superset. What is the concept of "Question" here? Is it about some "official terminology" for a "SELECT" query? Any video demo?
- sails 7y ago
  I replied to that question here based on my experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523076
- exabrial 7y ago
  Have you ever tried to install/setup Superset? The chances of you completing this task fall somewhere between "Next to impossible" and "Not going to happen".
  - pknerd 7y ago
    What's difficult to install it? I have installed both local and Docker Version. The docker one takes more memory though.
    - exabrial 7y ago
      You're not installing it when you're using Docker. However that send to be on the only possible way to run it.

alexfromapex 7y ago

Wow Metabase is free and open source?! Awesome, thank you!

seektable 7y ago
it is licensed under AGPL. For white-label embedding it requires a commercial license: https://www.metabase.com/enterprise/pricing.html https://www.metabase.com/enterprise/pricing.html Pricing for variant with row-level security is not cheap as you might expect, so if you plan to embed reports in your web app it might be better to consider another alternatives.

beckingz 7y ago

Metabase has been serving our startup well. Not as good as Tableau, but the minimalist approach is really good and SQL is better than Tableau's LOD expressions.

mazameli 7y ago

UX guy from Metabase here. Glad to hear it's working well for you. Happy to answer any questions folks might have.

Dwolb 7y ago
Wow great to see you in the thread. No questions from me but great job on the latest update.
- mazameli 7y ago
  Many thanks!
- salsakran 7y ago
  Thanks! -Another Metabase team member
cornell_io 7y ago
nice job
exabrial 7y ago
Great Product. And you guys are great stewards on Github.
johnx123-up 7y ago
Can you please compare it with Superset?
- sails 7y ago
  Worlds apart, superset provides powerful visualisation capabilities, but is very difficult to use/setup/maintain (although they just launched as a company [0], so perhaps that will change). Metabase is a very easy to use data exploration, data vis and reporting tool designed to give insights into data in an easy/self service way for mostly non-technical users. I've POC'd both, and would recommend Metabase or redash unless you really know what you need out of superset [0] https://preset.io/blog/2019-10-09-series-a-announcement/ https://preset.io/blog/2019-10-09-series-a-announcement/
  - johnx123-up 7y ago
    Thank you! Any idea how does it compare with redash then?
    - sails 7y ago
      Pretty similar feature wise and intended use, I did a direct comparison and went for Metabase because it allows you to schedule reports delivered to email/slack (only allows you to schedule individual queries, not entire dashboards). I didn't demo redash so can't comment on the actual use comparison.
dmistrio 7y ago
Sorry not a question, just to say again that your UI rocks. After I came to this post, I stopped everything I was doing to install metabase for my company (and then used it for a project :) ). I have spotted some issues with the installation instructions where do I post them? Issue at Github?
soobrosa 7y ago
Oh, yeah, thanks for asking! Reasons I had to cancel Metabase deployments. https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/4387 https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/4387 opened this issue on Feb 15, 2017 https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/2052 https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/2052 opened this issue on Feb 29, 2016 https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/6741 https://github.com/metabase/metabase/issues/6741 opened this issue on Jan 22, 2018

pcarolan 7y ago

Agreed. I helped setup a company on this last year and they're very happy. There's a 'Deploy to Heroku' push button install that was incredibly easy to setup. Great job Metabase folks.: https://www.metabase.com/start/heroku https://www.metabase.com/start/heroku

hundredwatt 7y ago

+1 for Metabase For our team, using an ELT architecture (as opposed to ETL) [1] for managing our data warehouse has greatly reduced the complexity of our data processes. Instead of creating ETLs for every table we want to load into the data warehouse, we create the minimum necessary setup to copy the table into our data warehouse. Then, we write transforms, which are simply SQL statements, to generate wide-column tables that our non-technical users can use to explore data without worrying about joins or having to learn esoteric naming conventions. Custom EL Scripts -> Redshift -> Transform Statements -> Redshift -> Metabase supports the data needs of all our departments with no dedicated data team members. [1] https://www.dataliftoff.com/elt-with-amazon-redshift-an-overview/ https://www.dataliftoff.com/elt-with-amazon-redshift-an-over...

apinstein 7y ago

+1 for metabase. I’ve deployed it at 2 companies. The latest version allows you to compose “questions” you create in the system which is really powerful for organizing layers of data reporting. Also, their API conforms 100% to Zapier’s polling feed structure, and I managed to build an integration that syncs our customer base to Pipedrive in a few hours. A bit more time and I have it automatically moving deals along in the pipeline as users progress with using the product. That alone was game changing for our customer success team. Thanks, team Metabase!

masonhensley 7y ago
Interesting, kinda like this? https://blog.synq.fm/how-we-optimized-our-crm-workflow-using-metabase-zapier-and-hubspot https://blog.synq.fm/how-we-optimized-our-crm-workflow-using... P.S. I'm another Metabase + Postgres + Bigquery fan. Thanks Team!

mxxx 7y ago

We've also been using Metabase lately. It doesn't have some of the querying power of a Tableau/Data Studio, but in terms of being able to just click through and "discover" trends in your data, it's really nice. Super quick and easy to get started even for non-technical folks, and best of all it's OSS! Really impressive project.

pknerd 7y ago

Looks interesting but I would like to know how is it different than Apache Superset. What is the concept of "Question" here? Is it about some "official terminology" for a "SELECT" query? Any video demo?

sails 7y ago
I replied to that question here based on my experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21523076
exabrial 7y ago
Have you ever tried to install/setup Superset? The chances of you completing this task fall somewhere between "Next to impossible" and "Not going to happen".
- pknerd 7y ago
  What's difficult to install it? I have installed both local and Docker Version. The docker one takes more memory though.
  - exabrial 7y ago
    You're not installing it when you're using Docker. However that send to be on the only possible way to run it.