Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Pendo VS Looker

Compare Pendo VS Looker and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Pendo logo Pendo

Pendo helps product teams understand and guide users to create product experiences that customers love.

Looker logo Looker

Looker makes it easy for analysts to create and curate custom data experiences—so everyone in the business can explore the data that matters to them, in the context that makes it truly meaningful.
  • Pendo Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-02
  • Looker Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-11

Looker is a business intelligence platform with an analytics-oriented application server that sits on top of relational data stores. The Looker platform includes an end-user interface for exploring data, a reusable development paradigm for creating data discovery experiences, and an extensible API set so the data can exist in other systems. Looker enables anyone to search and explore data, build dashboards and reports, and share everything easily and quickly.

Pendo

Website
pendo.io
Pricing URL
-
Release Date
2013 January
Startup details
Country
United States
City
Raleigh
Founder(s)
Eric Boduch
Employees
500 - 999

Pendo features and specs

  • User Analytics
    Pendo provides in-depth user analytics that help businesses understand how users interact with their product. This can be incredibly useful for identifying features that are popular, as well as areas where users may be experiencing difficulties.
  • In-app Guides
    The platform allows for the creation of in-app guides and walkthroughs, which help onboard new users and assist existing users in navigating new features.
  • Customer Feedback
    Pendo includes tools for capturing user feedback directly within the app, providing valuable insights into what customers like and what they think needs improvement.
  • Integration Capabilities
    Pendo integrates well with other tools such as Slack, Salesforce, and Jira, helping to streamline workflows and ensure that important user data is shared across your organization.
  • Product Engagement
    With features designed to increase product engagement, companies can use Pendo to guide users towards more frequent and more meaningful interactions with their software.

Possible disadvantages of Pendo

  • Cost
    Pendo can be expensive, especially for small businesses and startups. The cost increases with the number of users and advanced features required.
  • Complexity
    The platform's rich feature set can make it complex to set up and use, particularly for users who are not familiar with analytics and customer experience tools.
  • Learning Curve
    Even though Pendo offers extensive functionality, this can come with a steep learning curve for new users, requiring time to fully understand and leverage the tool effectively.
  • Performance Impact
    Embedding Pendo in your application can sometimes impact the performance and speed of your app, especially if not implemented correctly.
  • Limited Customization
    While Pendo offers many features, some users find the customization options for in-app guides and analytics to be somewhat limited compared to other tools.

Looker features and specs

  • Powerful Data Modeling
    Looker uses LookML, a proprietary modeling language, making it possible to transform raw data into meaningful metrics and dimensions, providing deep insights without needing SQL expertise.
  • Ease of Use
    Its intuitive user interface enables non-technical users to create visualizations and reports with relative ease, reducing the workload on data teams.
  • Customization
    Looker offers extensive customization options for data exploration and visualization, allowing dashboards and reports to be tailored to specific user needs.
  • Embedded Analytics
    Provides robust capabilities for embedding analytics into applications or portals, broadening the scope of data-driven decision-making throughout the organization.
  • Real-time Data
    Supports real-time data analytics by querying live data, which ensures up-to-date insights and helps in making timely decisions.
  • Integrations
    Looker integrates seamlessly with a wide range of databases and cloud data warehouses, including Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, and Snowflake.

Possible disadvantages of Looker

  • Learning Curve
    LookML, while powerful, can be complex for beginners who are not already familiar with data modeling or SQL, resulting in a steep learning curve.
  • Cost
    Looker can be expensive, especially for small businesses, as pricing is typically based on the number of users and the data volume processed.
  • Performance
    Query performance can sometimes be slow, especially with complex data models and large data sets, which may impact the user experience.
  • Customization Constraints
    While Looker offers great customization, certain advanced customizations may require significant expertise and time, posing a potential barrier.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    Looker is primarily designed for online use, so it lacks robust offline capabilities, which can be a limitation for users who need access to data in situations without internet connectivity.

Pendo videos

Pendo Bootcamp

More videos:

  • Review - Pendo Pad Review
  • Review - Creating a Walkthrough in Pendo

Looker videos

Looker Review

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How To Use Looker as a Business User
  • Review - Looker Review - Off The Shelf Reviews

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Pendo and Looker)
Analytics
51 51%
49% 49
Data Dashboard
0 0%
100% 100
Web Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Business Intelligence
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Pendo and Looker

Pendo Reviews

10 Best Canny Alternatives and Competitors in 2025
Pendo is a customer experience solution that simplifies how you collect user feedback. Built right into your app or website, users can request key features, report issues with the product, and get the support they need. 🙌
Source: clickup.com
7 best Mixpanel alternatives to understand your users
While both Pendo and Mixpanel offer analytics functionality, their primary purposes and use cases differ. Mixpanel enables you to conduct a granular analysis of user behavior, track users' progression through a funnel, and segment users based on their properties and events. However, it does not provide options for collecting user feedback or executing in-app experiences.
Source: www.hotjar.com
The best Hotjar alternatives & competitors, compared
Customer support and feedback: Users value Pendo as a useful tool for customer support and feedback collection. They use Pendo's feedback features to gather qualitative data and feed that into Pendo's validation and roadmap features.
Source: posthog.com
Top 10 FeatureBase alternatives you should evaluate in 2024
If you own a medium or large scale business and are looking for an alternative to Featurebase, then Pendo.io (opens in new tab) will suit you. Pendo is one of the best alternatives for Featurebase in the market. With all the updated features, Pendo is expensive than other feedback softwares.
Source: featureos.app
15 best user onboarding software you need to try in 2023
Pendo.io is designed to reduce the time taken to onboard new users, and 82% of customers have seen a minimum of 10% reduction in time and effort since implementing it. Guided tours can be built with sophisticated segmentation allowing you to drive users quickly to features they’ll love.

Looker Reviews

Explore 7 Tableau Alternatives for Data Visualization and Analysis
Looker Studio, formerly Google Data Studio, is a user-friendly business intelligence tool that transforms raw data into interactive, customizable dashboards and reports. It integrates seamlessly with Google's ecosystem and supports various data sources, including Google Analytics and BigQuery. Looker Studio offers robust visualization capabilities and real-time collaborative...
Source: www.draxlr.com
Explore 6 Metabase Alternatives for Data Visualization and Analysis
To find the best Metabase alternative for your business, start by listing your specific requirements, such as customer support, data integrations, visualization options, user access controls, and budget. Compare these needs with the features of other BI tools like Draxlr, Tableau, Power BI, Looker, or Holistics. Once you've identified a few suitable options, take advantage...
Source: www.draxlr.com
5 best Looker alternatives
In this blog, we’ll dive into the best 5 Looker alternatives currently dominating the market. Whether you're seeking a Looker alternative with enhanced features, better pricing, or a more tailored fit for your analytics needs, this guide will help you discover BI tool that could be a perfect match for your business.
Source: www.draxlr.com
10 Best Alternatives to Looker in 2024
Exploring alternatives to Looker isn't just about finding a different tool; it's about uncovering solutions that better address your specific business challenges and operational workflows. Here, we highlight five areas where Looker's limitations might lead you to consider other options.
6 Best Looker alternatives
So who are Looker’s competitors? Our top 5 Looker alternatives provide data visualisation and exploration for business intelligence but also offer lower price points, less of a learning curve, and more accessibility for your non-tech team.
Source: trevor.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Looker seems to be a lot more popular than Pendo. While we know about 14 links to Looker, we've tracked only 1 mention of Pendo. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Pendo mentions (1)

  • Recommendations for best product analytics tools?
    Just to clarify - are you looking for something that will gather platform usage data for later analysis, or you have a dataset and want to know how to analyze it? If it's the former - give Pendo a look. My company doesn't use it (because we're 100% on-prem software, so in-product telemetry isn't a thing for us) but I know of companies who are using and loving Pendo for gathering metrics. It's supposed to be the... Source: about 2 years ago

Looker mentions (14)

  • edit home page to add folder section
    Then in the "foldername" you can have 5 folders, each one for each of the groups. This means that when group1 enters looker.com, his default page will be the "foldername", which contains group1folder (he cannot see the rest of the folders if you have set the permissions correctly for each folder). Source: about 2 years ago
  • Stars, tables, and activities: How do we model the real world?
    Even if you want to make Wide Tables, combining fact and dimensions is often the easiest way to create them, so why not make them available? Looker, for example, is well suited to dimensional models because it takes care of the joins that can make Kimball warehouses hard to navigate for business users. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • dbt for Data Quality Testing & Alerting at FINN
    We take daily snapshots of test results, aggregate them, and send Looker dashboards to the appropriate teams. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • I'm a dev ID 10 T please help me
    Dashboard: I like to use Datastudio because it's easy (just like using google sheets), but you can also try out Looker. Source: over 3 years ago
  • The Data Stack Journey: Lessons from Architecting Stacks at Heroku and Mattermost
    For Growth and larger, I would recommend Looker. The only reason I wouldn't recommend it for the smaller company stages is that the cost is much higher than alternatives such as Metabase. With Looker, you define your data model in LookML, which Looker then uses to provide a drag-and-drop interface for end-users that enables them to build their own visualizations without needing to write SQL. This lets your... - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Pendo and Looker, you can also consider the following products

Google Analytics - Improve your website to increase conversions, improve the user experience, and make more money using Google Analytics. Measure, understand and quantify engagement on your site with customized and in-depth reports.

Tableau - Tableau can help anyone see and understand their data. Connect to almost any database, drag and drop to create visualizations, and share with a click.

Adobe Analytics - Adobe Analytics is an industry-leading solution that empowers you to understand your customers as people and steer your business with customer intelligence.

Microsoft Power BI - BI visualization and reporting for desktop, web or mobile

Heap - Analytics for web and iOS. Heap automatically captures every user action in your app and lets you measure it all. Clicks, taps, swipes, form submissions, page views, and more.

Sisense - The BI & Dashboard Software to handle multiple, large data sets.