Ask HN: Looking for a cheap hosted BI tool like Metabase for my startup
What's the tool you recommend for this? I need something preferably free since my volume is so tiny since we're just starting out.
While I'm at it, here's a killer Metabase feature that I haven't seen in other reporting tools I've used:
While you can save a report to folders and have pretty URLs (your.domain.com/sales-report), whenever you build a report or change an existing report, it gets its own unique URL. (It's long and ugly, but I don't mind.)
Here's how I use it and why it's cool:
- If you're building a report and make a mistake or want to try something else, the back button actually works!
- If you have an existing report (your.domain.com/sales-report) and just need to filter it quickly to (like show all sales above $10K closed by Sam this year) and send it to someone else for some quick troubleshooting, you just filter the base report and grab the unique URL and send it around! No need to save it to a folder.
- I have a library of SQL queries for specific things and I can quickly pop that into Metabase (rather than using the report builder) and send the URL to someone. Again, just not having to go through the motions of saving and naming everything that may only be short-lived is nice.
- Just generally love not having to save every little iteration or filtered version of a report as I often just need it for some quick troubleshooting or discussion. No need to have a junk folder of reports with stuff like ("Sam deals over $10K 2024").
Hopefully I'm explaining this clearly!