12 ms·

Datawrapper: Create charts, maps, and tables

330 points by Garbage 5y ago

jenthoven 5y ago
I really like the "Connect to Google Sheet" option. Did you have to implement a Google Workspace plugin for that functionality?
- dkyc 5y ago
  No, it’s purely based on the Google Sheets/Drive API. Doesn’t require you to install a plugin, just share your sheet with data@datawrapper.de or set it to public and you’re good to go.
MisterBiggs 5y ago
One of the best SaaS websites I've seen. Lets you play with the tool as much as you want without signing up and the business model is totally aimed at businesses with a very generous free tier. Chart tools seem very powerful as well.
- sgt 5y ago
  Pretty steep from free to $5990 per year. That's a lot of money for startups etc, but they can stick to the free tier. I'd be worried if the free tier suddenly changed though, but I doubt they'd do that to their potential customers. All in all I'd be willing to try this out.
  - dan-robertson 5y ago
    That’s $50/seat/month if you have 10 seats and marginal seats are $21/month. Feels fine if lots of people will use it. Perhaps they are trying to avoid doing support for tiny customers.
  - pisipisipisi 5y ago
    Less than one FTE per month?
- davnn 5y ago
  It's a really great experience to get started. By the way, the 404 page is great as well ;) https://www.datawrapper.de/nonexistant https://www.datawrapper.de/nonexistant
  - jackosdev 5y ago
    Damn that's the best 404 I ever seen
koshergweilo 5y ago
Is this just a form builder for D3?
huqedato 5y ago
Custom plan: $599/mo. Really ? Eject! There are thousands of open source apps that do this things free and better (D3, Datavis etc.). Just needed a little effort.
- icelancer 5y ago
  And rsync is a replacement for GDrive, Dropbox, etc. But hmm...
- yosamino 5y ago
  This complaint is a bit strange given that they have an entire free tier for you to use and that their custom package includes them doing actual design work for you, not just more and better hosting options. Every service can be replicated by just doing it yourself - the proposition here is that it might be - or might not, depending on your needs - more cost-effective than hiring a designer yourself do apply your branding to your data visualizations.
- schnebbau 5y ago
  This isn't for you, it's for enterprises that don't want to spend human resources setting this up manually and supporting it.
  - cududa 5y ago
    Exactly. Had 0 intention working today, came across this, played with it. Will literally collapse days of work into minutes for our use case, once we connect to the API and integrate it into our workflow
    - dkyc 5y ago
      Awesome! Sounds super interesting, would be curious to learn more about your workflow (and maybe we can help somehow). Email in my profile if you’re interested!
a1371 5y ago
A relatively simple tech that everyone can build for a very generic use; yet, once you actually see it, you realize none of the chart making tools you have worked with are as straightforward. I wish I could think simple like this.
ketzu 5y ago
I discovered datawrapper 2 months ago while looking at internet speeds vs age due to an unconvincing reddit debate [1] : I really liked it. Data presentation on the internet always frustrates me, because it usually is just a picture, or worse, a video. No interaction, no mouseover to check details. Datawrapper covered all of that, I really like that. [1] If you are interested: The argument was that older populations are the main factor of slow internet. No data was provided during the discussion. As I found that unconvincing I investigated based on easily accessible but skewed data. The result: OECD countries only (english): https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/YTBQ2/1/ https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/YTBQ2/1/ World (german, as it was the german subreddit): https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Ps2UG/1/ https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Ps2UG/1/
- kqr 5y ago
  Wow, talk about stumbling over the mother of all confounded relationships!
  - emn13 5y ago
    It's those pirates suppressing global warming once again ;-)
  - ketzu 5y ago
    Definitly. For me it was enough to see no obvious negative correlation(as was claimed) even though the data is not great and no analysis for other variables was done. The best result of that discussion was finding the tool and presentation.
    - kqr 5y ago
      Sorry, I don't follow. How is it enough to see no obvious negative correlation? This diagram says literally nothing since many of the important causal pathways involved are not sufficiently controlled for. Before and after seeing this diagram, you ought to have effectively no change in your belief.
      - 5y ago
dkyc 5y ago
Awesome to see this here! I’m one of the co-founders, open for any questions. We’re also always looking for developers to join our team (Berlin-based, remote welcome, 4d week possible) - email me david@datawrapper for details.
- rexreed 5y ago
  Is there an API to get charts to/from a site without having to go through the Datawrapper site to generate? Especially on Google Sheets-linked charts. Would be nice to one-click generate new charts through an embedded API on our site.
  - dkyc 5y ago
    Yes, there’s a REST API that lets you do that, documented here: https://developer.datawrapper.de/ https://developer.datawrapper.de/ Available on the free plan as well!
- mritchie712 5y ago
  Have you had many requests for the ability to add data to a narrative from datasets? We built this for seekwell (https://doc.seekwell.io/stories https://doc.seekwell.io/stories) and people really like it for daily or weekly text based business updates. I'd think this would be useful in media for a story they want to keep the numbers live in.
  - dkyc 5y ago
    Definitely - all Datawrapper visualisations can also be used with live data sources (https://academy.datawrapper.de/article/317-live-updates-overview# https://academy.datawrapper.de/article/317-live-updates-over...). It used to be a bit of a fringe feature for things like elections or sports events, but since Covid reporting started it became a very dominant use case. The ‚narrative‘ concept looks super interesting!
- mellifluousbox 5y ago
  Congrats on building such a great product! Do you support waterfall charts?
easytiger 5y ago
This is what they used for The Spectator's (UK Political Magazine) excellent Covid Dashboards, where i first heard of it https://data.spectator.co.uk/ https://data.spectator.co.uk/
Mandatum 5y ago
I've tried it with a relatively simple CSV but it's struggling to parse dates, generating meaningful reports, etc. The UX for choosing which columns to include is cumbersome when you have more than a handful. I've cut down the CSV from 50MB+ to 6MB and it's still so slow.
jkic47 5y ago
Being able to try it without signup is such an underrated feature. Thank you for that!
robwwilliams 5y ago
Can someone summarize how this compares to Plotly and ChartStudio? Also flexible and easy for non-programmers to master. And open sourse.
polycaster 5y ago
Very appealing. Heavy price tag though for small and medium projects that are not focused solely on charting. Can someone recommend a product or service somewhere in between Datawrapper and D3 convenience wise? Edit: I realize there’s a very generous free plan, but for real client projects white label is unfortunately often a must.
- dkyc 5y ago
  (Disclaimer: I work at Datawrapper) For most projects, our free plan might suffice: https://blog.datawrapper.de/create-data-visualization-for-free/ https://blog.datawrapper.de/create-data-visualization-for-fr... It’s fully usable for commercial use as well. In terms of in-between projects, if comfortable with a bit of programming I would probably look at Vega Lite [0] or Observable Plot [1]. For GUI tools, there’s also the excellent RAW Graphs [2] to consider! [0] https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/ https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/ [1] https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/plot https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/plot [2] https://rawgraphs.io/ https://rawgraphs.io/
danso 5y ago
I know d3 and ggplot2, but Datawrapper is my goto when I want Excel-like convenience for bespoke, detailed viz. It’s completely free for individual use, and I’m happy to see that the charts and maps I made while teaching students about interactive data viz work just as well as they did the 5+ years ago. The variety of built-in shapefiles (international, US counties) — with the ability to upload your own custom shapefiles to quickly create interactive maps — is a killer feature on its own
- Mezzie 5y ago
  I work for a company that's related to politics and we use DW and the maps are so good for us. It's also great for non-tech savvy people; everybody at the company can use it, which frees up tech staff's time for other stuff.
icelancer 5y ago
Finally checked this out - really, REALLY great site. I put it aside for so long because I rarely have use for these things over Excel, ggplot, or GSheets, but this is a great product with a solid niche. We'll definitely be using the free version and eyeing the premium tier later this year. Hats off to you.

330 points by Garbage 5y ago

I really like the "Connect to Google Sheet" option. Did you have to implement a Google Workspace plugin for that functionality?

dkyc 5y ago
No, it’s purely based on the Google Sheets/Drive API. Doesn’t require you to install a plugin, just share your sheet with data@datawrapper.de or set it to public and you’re good to go.

MisterBiggs 5y ago

One of the best SaaS websites I've seen. Lets you play with the tool as much as you want without signing up and the business model is totally aimed at businesses with a very generous free tier. Chart tools seem very powerful as well.

sgt 5y ago
Pretty steep from free to $5990 per year. That's a lot of money for startups etc, but they can stick to the free tier. I'd be worried if the free tier suddenly changed though, but I doubt they'd do that to their potential customers. All in all I'd be willing to try this out.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  That’s $50/seat/month if you have 10 seats and marginal seats are $21/month. Feels fine if lots of people will use it. Perhaps they are trying to avoid doing support for tiny customers.
- pisipisipisi 5y ago
  Less than one FTE per month?
davnn 5y ago
It's a really great experience to get started. By the way, the 404 page is great as well ;) https://www.datawrapper.de/nonexistant https://www.datawrapper.de/nonexistant
- jackosdev 5y ago
  Damn that's the best 404 I ever seen

koshergweilo 5y ago

Is this just a form builder for D3?

huqedato 5y ago

Custom plan: $599/mo. Really ? Eject! There are thousands of open source apps that do this things free and better (D3, Datavis etc.). Just needed a little effort.

icelancer 5y ago
And rsync is a replacement for GDrive, Dropbox, etc. But hmm...
yosamino 5y ago
This complaint is a bit strange given that they have an entire free tier for you to use and that their custom package includes them doing actual design work for you, not just more and better hosting options. Every service can be replicated by just doing it yourself - the proposition here is that it might be - or might not, depending on your needs - more cost-effective than hiring a designer yourself do apply your branding to your data visualizations.
schnebbau 5y ago
This isn't for you, it's for enterprises that don't want to spend human resources setting this up manually and supporting it.
- cududa 5y ago
  Exactly. Had 0 intention working today, came across this, played with it. Will literally collapse days of work into minutes for our use case, once we connect to the API and integrate it into our workflow
  - dkyc 5y ago
    Awesome! Sounds super interesting, would be curious to learn more about your workflow (and maybe we can help somehow). Email in my profile if you’re interested!

a1371 5y ago

A relatively simple tech that everyone can build for a very generic use; yet, once you actually see it, you realize none of the chart making tools you have worked with are as straightforward. I wish I could think simple like this.

ketzu 5y ago

I discovered datawrapper 2 months ago while looking at internet speeds vs age due to an unconvincing reddit debate [1] : I really liked it. Data presentation on the internet always frustrates me, because it usually is just a picture, or worse, a video. No interaction, no mouseover to check details. Datawrapper covered all of that, I really like that. [1] If you are interested: The argument was that older populations are the main factor of slow internet. No data was provided during the discussion. As I found that unconvincing I investigated based on easily accessible but skewed data. The result: OECD countries only (english): https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/YTBQ2/1/ https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/YTBQ2/1/ World (german, as it was the german subreddit): https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Ps2UG/1/ https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Ps2UG/1/

kqr 5y ago
Wow, talk about stumbling over the mother of all confounded relationships!
- emn13 5y ago
  It's those pirates suppressing global warming once again ;-)
- ketzu 5y ago
  Definitly. For me it was enough to see no obvious negative correlation(as was claimed) even though the data is not great and no analysis for other variables was done. The best result of that discussion was finding the tool and presentation.
  - kqr 5y ago
    Sorry, I don't follow. How is it enough to see no obvious negative correlation? This diagram says literally nothing since many of the important causal pathways involved are not sufficiently controlled for. Before and after seeing this diagram, you ought to have effectively no change in your belief.
    - 5y ago

dkyc 5y ago

Awesome to see this here! I’m one of the co-founders, open for any questions. We’re also always looking for developers to join our team (Berlin-based, remote welcome, 4d week possible) - email me david@datawrapper for details.

rexreed 5y ago
Is there an API to get charts to/from a site without having to go through the Datawrapper site to generate? Especially on Google Sheets-linked charts. Would be nice to one-click generate new charts through an embedded API on our site.
- dkyc 5y ago
  Yes, there’s a REST API that lets you do that, documented here: https://developer.datawrapper.de/ https://developer.datawrapper.de/ Available on the free plan as well!
mritchie712 5y ago
Have you had many requests for the ability to add data to a narrative from datasets? We built this for seekwell (https://doc.seekwell.io/stories https://doc.seekwell.io/stories) and people really like it for daily or weekly text based business updates. I'd think this would be useful in media for a story they want to keep the numbers live in.
- dkyc 5y ago
  Definitely - all Datawrapper visualisations can also be used with live data sources (https://academy.datawrapper.de/article/317-live-updates-overview# https://academy.datawrapper.de/article/317-live-updates-over...). It used to be a bit of a fringe feature for things like elections or sports events, but since Covid reporting started it became a very dominant use case. The ‚narrative‘ concept looks super interesting!
mellifluousbox 5y ago
Congrats on building such a great product! Do you support waterfall charts?

easytiger 5y ago

This is what they used for The Spectator's (UK Political Magazine) excellent Covid Dashboards, where i first heard of it https://data.spectator.co.uk/ https://data.spectator.co.uk/

Mandatum 5y ago

I've tried it with a relatively simple CSV but it's struggling to parse dates, generating meaningful reports, etc. The UX for choosing which columns to include is cumbersome when you have more than a handful. I've cut down the CSV from 50MB+ to 6MB and it's still so slow.

jkic47 5y ago

Being able to try it without signup is such an underrated feature. Thank you for that!

robwwilliams 5y ago

Can someone summarize how this compares to Plotly and ChartStudio? Also flexible and easy for non-programmers to master. And open sourse.

polycaster 5y ago

Very appealing. Heavy price tag though for small and medium projects that are not focused solely on charting. Can someone recommend a product or service somewhere in between Datawrapper and D3 convenience wise? Edit: I realize there’s a very generous free plan, but for real client projects white label is unfortunately often a must.

dkyc 5y ago
(Disclaimer: I work at Datawrapper) For most projects, our free plan might suffice: https://blog.datawrapper.de/create-data-visualization-for-free/ https://blog.datawrapper.de/create-data-visualization-for-fr... It’s fully usable for commercial use as well. In terms of in-between projects, if comfortable with a bit of programming I would probably look at Vega Lite [0] or Observable Plot [1]. For GUI tools, there’s also the excellent RAW Graphs [2] to consider! [0] https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/ https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/ [1] https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/plot https://observablehq.com/@observablehq/plot [2] https://rawgraphs.io/ https://rawgraphs.io/

danso 5y ago

I know d3 and ggplot2, but Datawrapper is my goto when I want Excel-like convenience for bespoke, detailed viz. It’s completely free for individual use, and I’m happy to see that the charts and maps I made while teaching students about interactive data viz work just as well as they did the 5+ years ago. The variety of built-in shapefiles (international, US counties) — with the ability to upload your own custom shapefiles to quickly create interactive maps — is a killer feature on its own

Mezzie 5y ago
I work for a company that's related to politics and we use DW and the maps are so good for us. It's also great for non-tech savvy people; everybody at the company can use it, which frees up tech staff's time for other stuff.

icelancer 5y ago

Finally checked this out - really, REALLY great site. I put it aside for so long because I rarely have use for these things over Excel, ggplot, or GSheets, but this is a great product with a solid niche. We'll definitely be using the free version and eyeing the premium tier later this year. Hats off to you.