--- title: Base SAS Reviews meta_title: 'Base SAS Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 148 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Base SAS works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.4 review_count: 148 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-17' parent_category: name: Analytics Tools & Software url: https://www.g2.com/categories/analytics-tools-software --- # Base SAS Reviews **Vendor:** SAS Institute Inc. **Category:** [Statistical Analysis Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/statistical-analysis) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 148 ## About Base SAS Base SAS is a comprehensive software suite that provides a flexible and extensible fourth-generation programming language (4GL) designed for data access, transformation, analysis, and reporting. It serves as the foundation of the SAS System, enabling users to manage and analyze data efficiently across various platforms. With its intuitive syntax and extensive library of prewritten procedures, Base SAS simplifies complex data tasks, making it an essential tool for data professionals. Key Features and Functionality: - Intuitive 4GL Programming Language: Offers an easy-to-learn syntax with hundreds of language elements and functions, supporting tasks from data extraction and cleansing to reporting and information delivery. - Rich Library of Integrated Procedures: Provides prewritten procedures for data manipulation, management, information storage, retrieval, and report writing, enhancing productivity by reducing the need for extensive coding. - Powerful Data Analysis Tools: Capable of performing a wide range of analyses, from simple descriptive statistics to advanced data correlation and distribution analysis. - Cross-Platform Support: Runs on all major computing platforms, allowing seamless integration into any computing environment and ensuring code portability across different systems. - Web-Based Interface: Includes SAS Studio, a web-based developer interface that enables access to data files, libraries, and existing programs from any device with a web browser, facilitating coding and data management tasks. Primary Value and Solutions Provided: Base SAS significantly reduces programming and maintenance time by offering an intuitive programming language and a comprehensive set of tools for data management and analysis. It enables organizations to integrate data across diverse environments, ensuring a unified view of information. The software simplifies the creation and distribution of visually appealing reports in various formats, including Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and HTML, catering to the preferred platforms of decision-makers. By providing a robust and scalable solution, Base SAS addresses the challenges of complex data manipulation and reporting, empowering users to derive meaningful insights and make informed decisions. ## Base SAS Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users find Base SAS **easy to use** , appreciating its simple coding and user-friendly functions for data manipulation. (16 reviews) - Users appreciate the **coding simplification** in Base SAS, finding it reliable and consistent over the years. (12 reviews) - Users find **learning Base SAS easy** , particularly appreciating its user-friendly interface and effective data management capabilities. (8 reviews) - Users value the **strong data management capabilities** of Base SAS, ensuring efficient handling and analysis of large datasets. (7 reviews) - Users highlight the **performance efficiency** of Base SAS, enabling effective management and analysis of large datasets. (6 reviews) - Flexibility (5 reviews) - Users value the **robust data analysis capabilities** of Base SAS, noting its reliability and powerful processing features. (4 reviews) - Ease of Learning (4 reviews) - Useful (3 reviews) - Data Import (2 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **complex setup and rigid syntax** of Base SAS challenging, especially for newcomers and dashboard creation. (5 reviews) - Users find **poor visualization** in Base SAS, with challenges in generating graphs and requiring user expertise. (5 reviews) - Users experience **slow performance** with Base SAS, making iteration and testing cumbersome, especially with large datasets. (5 reviews) - Users find the **learning difficulty** notable, requiring research and experience to effectively use Base SAS. (4 reviews) - Users find Base SAS **not user-friendly** , stating it requires extensive research and is challenging for beginners. (3 reviews) - Expensive (2 reviews) - Users find the **limited features** of Base SAS burdensome, often requiring additional tools for advanced visualization. (2 reviews) - Complex Configuration (1 reviews) - Data Management (1 reviews) - Error Clarity (1 reviews) ## Base SAS Reviews ### 1. Simple for new users, powerful for experienced users **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Pharmaceuticals | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** In SAS, there can be multiple ways to accomplish the same outcome. Different programmers can use their own preferred techniques to accomplish the same thing. It's relatively straight forward so that even new programmers can come from a non-programming background and quickly pick up the basics. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Sometimes it's difficult to find the exact syntax to solve an advanced program and the SAS documentation does not go far enough with examples. I mostly turn to user conference papers and presentations to help solve thorny scenarios. The other primary issue I face when searching for solutions is that it's difficult to search for a a particular version. Sometimes I find an answer (found by searching the SAS documentation on their website) and then realize the solution provided only applies to a particular version and not the version of SAS I'm currently using. But it's not immediately evident how to limit searches to the version I want. If there's a way to do that, it's not obvious to me and so I haven't employed it in my searches. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Since I work in Pharma, using SAS is de facto required for our FDA submissions. We use SAS to analyze and present clinical trial data, as well as an integral part of our e-submissions. ### 2. Review of SAS Base **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Outsourcing/Offshoring | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2019 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** It is a very helpful tool in analytics field which helps in advanced analysis of the data. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** I have never experienced any dislikes of SAS. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** It is a very helpful tool and the best tools to start in analytics. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It makes my analysis more efficient and help in data management as well. ### 3. Expensive and Getting Outdated **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 21, 2019 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Powerful computing tools, many packages and macros that can perform powerful computations in a few lines of code. Online documentation is thorough. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Coding seems rigid, syntax isn't always predictable. SAS is incredibly expensive, so it is quickly losing users who elect to learn open source software. Code sharing difficulty -- cannot read code in .sas files if you don't have SAS access. Output is difficult to regulate. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** Data analytics as a field is moving to other software products that are cheaper -- you're better off investing your time in learning them (R, Python). **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** used for linear and logistic regression models, longitudinal models with proc mixed. ### 4. It is awesome product to analyze datasets. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Syamali R. | Summer School Teacher, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Arrays configuration, merging two or more than two data sets,reports. using ODS . **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Lack of learning files directly without creating datasets in SAS Base.in differnt clinical trials. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Patient data using drug vs.placebo in different ways. ### 5. SAS Base review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 25, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I like the SAS documentation the most. I feel the coding makes it easy to manipulate the data. Since it is not an open-source tool, the standardization used across the tool makes it easy to remember the codes and follow best practice. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** SAS support forum is not that helpful. Installation steps could be reduced. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** I recommend this product for data analysis. Go and use the SAS documentation for any help. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it for reporting, data manipulations, and other ad-hoc analysis. ### 6. SAS is excellent for data management and analyses **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 19, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** As a scientist working in a research environment, I really appreciate SAS and its capabilities to manipulate and analyze large, complex datasets. I have used SAS to efficiently analyze all kinds of data obtained from experimental, observation, and survival studies. It does not require a lot of coding experience, and once you understand the basics you can quickly write your own syntax. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Like learning any new software, it can be overwhelming at first. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use SAS to examine longitudinal relationships between various exposures and health outcomes. ### 7. Analytic Workhorse **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2019 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Lots of documentation available online, active community **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** clunky, old and often takes many steps where R and other programs take fewer **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** User analysis, program planning ### 8. A very thorough and flexible statistical platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Having to use SAS on a daily basis, I appreciate the consistent care put into creating each and every function usable. The logical flow of the processes laid out is amazing, and I find the need to pull up other statistical packages for small issues very infrequent. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** There are certain features that are not included, but SAS gives you an outdated way of looking at the problem. For example, missing data patterns, SAS does a fine job for 20 years ago, but there is more work to expand on here. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** Consider having vague knowledge of SAS and other statistical packages, for instances where SAS may be lacking. You will get out of SAS what you put into it, so it is well worth your investment to put your time in. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being more of a sandbox environment, it's rather easy to iterate and rewrite entire programs rather seamlessly. ### 9. Very useful for data cleaning and creating tables and quickly running statistical models **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Data cleaning is very easy to learn and very readable with good enough documentation. PROC SQL is very useful for joining and merging data. Can easily clean data then export it into a spreadsheet for use in a visualization software like Tableau. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Making data visualizations is much more difficult than it is in Tableau or R. Data visualizations are pretty ugly when you do make them. Writing functions and using functions is not as readable as it is in a language like R. R and Tableau have better documentation. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** Great for data cleaning and making tables and running statistical models, but Tableau and R are way better for actually getting the data into a more interpretable visualized form . **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data cleaning, running predictive and explanatory models for public health research/epidemiology ### 10. SAS - best tool for data analysis (in my opinion) **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 02, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I love that the coding language for SAS is consistent across similar types of functions, as well as that SAS has amazing documentation to look up any function or procedure, including examples. I learned SAS first in college, which does make me biased to liking the tool more, but there is so much more I can do in SAS than most other data analysis tools. R being open source makes it difficult for me to remember code across different functions (& you have to download packages that are already built in functions in SAS). Stata provides both the ability to write in the coding language & some drop-down functionality, but the user interface is not my favorite. SPSS is pretty much all drop-down/drag & drop, which winds up taking more time than necessary. Python I know is a favorite of many, but I like my old-school SAS. I can run SQL functions on data I have pulled from our database, & actually be able to see tables along the way in re-formatting & working with data, as well as create visual tools, which I can't do in the database with straight SQL. Overall, SAS for me is the most comprehensive data analysis tool out there. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** It can eat up memory & space on your laptop if running directly on the computer, but if it is connected with a server, you can schedule code to run (even using a pass through to your database) to run data while not even in the office! **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** Go online & use the examples & help others have posted, as well as SAS' own documentation **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** In all of my daily work I do & ad-hoc analyses, I find myself using SAS. I use it for reports, working more visually with data across many tables I have pulled from the database, modelling. & creating visuals. ### 11. Great application for large datasets **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nisant P. | International Ops Analyst, Government Administration, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 06, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I use base SAS regularly when working with large datasets that Excel can't handle. I'd prefer the base version over Enterprise due it it's capability of handling raw code easier. The easy way it can integrate/output to excel is extremely helpful when working with people who don't use SAS. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Occasionally I wish it offered debug help like Enterprise SAS but I can work without that aspect. The licensing issues at work are the only major gripes. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Analyzing large data flat files in a timely manner and being able to sift thru it all make it worth using the application. More often then not I'm tasked with making large datasets easy to open and look at (summarized) for my coworkers and superiors. SAS is a God send. ### 12. Essential tool for all analytical professionals **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Arthur T. | CEO, Information Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 25, 2016 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** The wide range of capabilities and, even though it has always been able to do what I need, its increased functionality each year. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Cost and the fact that I would like to see it contain some additional features that are currently only available with extra modules (specifically, SAS/Access, IML and Graph). **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** SAS Base is the essential base tool needed in order to use the more advanced capabilities that offered by other SAS modules, but its own capabilities are so substantial that I have seldom needed any other software to prepare data for analysis. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** SAS Base is the principal tool I've used for solving all business problems over the past 40+ years, ### 13. Great Product for Users of Different Types of Data Sources **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeremy D. | Senior BI and Reporting Analyst, Banking, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 21, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** The best aspect of SAS in general is it ability to connect to different types of data sources. This allows me to combine different processes into a single process. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** When running I am not able to copy the code and there are times when it will lockup and I have to close the SAS application. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have been able to combine multiple processes into a single process. ### 14. Great for working with large data sets **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 01, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Its quick, you can run code faster and its universal. Lots o forums to find help. ITs easy to pull form many different large data sets. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Some errors are odd, and not easy to understand what needs to be fixed. Luckily the forums help, but its still a pain. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** Take time to learn the language and find resources to help navigate the tool. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We can create clean data sets to use in excel or power bi, even Tableau. You do have to know coding, so not everyone can use this tool. ### 15. Clunky but useful **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I have found SAS to be capable of producing good output and useful results. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** The language is clunky, and the documentation is often difficult to decipher to get the results you need. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have used SAS Base to write papers and perform small-scale data analysis. ### 16. The swiss army knife of analytics **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** What I like best about this software is the ease of writing code. It is very easy to program in it and very easy for others to understand the code. The community is vast and really help us improve. I always learn new tricks. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** there are so many different ways of doing tasks that sometimes beginners tend to pick the wrong one. Performance is an issue at times with the proc sql procedure. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** All risks models are developped with SAS at one of my client's location. It is easier to promote into production for us (hand out to IT). It's also easier to maintain over time with being a script language as opposed to a compiled one. ### 17. SAS 9.4 **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John L. | Accountant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 15, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I am able to datamine thru millions of transactions in seconds **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** I find that connecting to a SQL server makes the process very slow **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** SAS offers training in various cities. This training is paramount if you are going to use the software successfully. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to extract specific benefits paid out to specific people under specific circumstances ### 18. Using SAS Base to extract data **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Horst W. | Manager, Banking, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Extract and join data from a variety of platforms to create new datasets in a form usable by business partners. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** I found no real disadvantages in my opinion. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Bring usable data together quickly for downstream consumption e.g. modelling and reporting. ### 19. It has been phenomenal **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 21, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** The way it collaborates with other languages such that you have most in a one stop shop. Recently found out that the dim function was in SAS. I was impressed. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Just with the help, sometimes it takes a lot of effort when you're caught in a programming problem and need some ideas to get what you want. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Several, mostly based on customer scenarios. Sometimes remodifying the business problem to make more sense. ### 20. The best in Analytics **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aroop G. | Principal Consultant, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Flexibility, huge user base, availability of published papers **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Nothing really to dislike in my opinion. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** Do it! **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data drill down, results used for developing policy ### 21. Best analytics software **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Swapnil P. | Lead Data Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I have been a mainframe user for majority of my career. Due to change in job profile, I got an opportunity to learn SAS and was impressed with the functions and data handling capabilities SAS offers to developers as well as end users. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** I used Base SAS most of the time and did not like data import/export features much, it could be better. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data aggregation and manipulation. ### 22. a short SAS review **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lun l. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 01, 2017 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Numerous build-in functions with strict standards and detailed references. Capability of doing complicated data analysis in a few lines of code. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** The functions are too well-developed that sometimes it feels lack of freedom. Somewhat anti-intuitive sometimes who got used to the way of data manipulating in other languages such as python or R. Also trying to write a function for algorithms that is not already included in sas is painful. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am doing some data analysis with SAS and one thing I've noticed is that the ability of repeating is very nice. The lack of freedom in SAS actually allows different people to reach to the same results. ### 23. Excellent Tool for Data Manipulation and Analysis **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I have been using SAS for over 20 years and happy with its power to manipulate data in a flexible and efficient way. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** It would be even better if the dataset and variable naming convention is more flexible for the users. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Outlier identification ### 24. easy to use **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 15, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** easy to write code with. Great for querying large data. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** SAS server can be a little slow. Not much space to save data **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Analyzing customers through scorecard models. Understanding if they're frauds or risky customers. ### 25. SAS Base, far from basic **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 21, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Simple to use coding environment. Consistent between each version. Just works. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Could be more coding friendly and a more attractive gui. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Diverses data analysis related problems, from simple basic statistics to more advsnced data manipulations and simulations ### 26. Analytical software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rachel E. | Data Analyst, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 15, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** The interface is very friendly, where a beginner can catch on. The web support for SAS is superb; I could always find documentation on coding and functionality online. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** The graphics are fairly outdated. SAS will need to advance here, as other software products are much farther ahead. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Forecasting, risk analysis, etc. ### 27. Powerful software, unique languag **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I like the ability to deal with large amounts of data quickly and efficiently. I like that SQL is integrated and allows queries if you know SQL. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** The language takes some getting used to. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am doing statistical data analysis on large datasets. ### 28. Great software for a wide variety of analyses **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I have used SAS for a wide variety of analyses for various projects. These include from simple descriptive statistics to logistic regression's to multiple invitations. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** The code window could be made easier to navigate by having tabs for a different analyses and perhaps dates of when the codes were added so that when we opening the code the user can easily backtrack what they have done. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Analyses of a wide variety of data such as barriers that patients have to accessing healthcare appointments. The analysis can be performed quickly and easily. ### 29. SAS is a great tool for analytics **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 23, 2017 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** SAS can do anything you need it to do in terms of analytics/statistics. While there is a bit of a learning curve there is a large user base and lots of material online. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Not very user friendly even for a data analyst. The only other reason I would rate lower is that there are open sources tools that can do many of the same functions. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** You need to have a few power SAS users to make it worth the investment **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** SAS has been my primary tool doing all types of analysis and forecasting including extracting data, reporting, conducting diagnostic analytics to running predictive models. ### 30. Best data analyzing tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2017 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** It is best for data analysis and for statistics. It is very good in handling large datasets and quickly gives you output for any analysis. SAS programming is easy to learn similar to SQL. The datasets can be easily exported to any format. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** If you want to handle unstructured data then you need to go for test analytics tools, they are expensive and not very user friendly. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** For SAS this is the primary tool and it is more of manual thing you need to write lot of coding. If your good at SQL then it would be easy to use and play around with data. Installation is hard to do it, if your team have SAS admins then the job would be easy. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I work mostly on data analysis and do modeling. Apart form this do lot of data extraction and transforming the data in to different formats. Now i have been using SAS enterprise guide. ### 31. end-user programming for cdn$ personal banking products **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** easy syntax, powerful software to collect, analyze and report on data **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** not much to dislike about sas...need to get use to the ; requirement, but not much else is difficult for use **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** easy to use and powerful **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** mainframe and database data extraction and reporting ### 32. SAS Base **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** functionality, user interface, online support **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** graphics are outdated, other free products are now comparable **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** standard reporting and analyzis ### 33. Every statistician needs it **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** SAS is amazing for data cleaning and formatting. It can be used for complex analysis or summary statistics. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** There is almost nothing I dislike about SAS. Maybe could improve help features **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** Use it and love it **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Analyzing data to make business decisions. ### 34. Very intuitive and helpful **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2018 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Very intuitive and helpful and best for data analytics **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Complex, bad data visualtization and very expensive **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data analytics and reporting ### 35. SAS ... the misunderstood development tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Pharmaceuticals | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 01, 2017 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Great at data transformations, accessing a wide variety of data sources, a very rich function library, documented very well, great support. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** misunderstood and under-appreceiated by developers using other languages **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Complex data transformations and derivations, using heavy macro development driven by metadata. wish it was less expensive for an individual user and could be compiled. ### 36. Best for beginners **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Pharmaceuticals | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2017 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** In healthcare sector, most of the companies use sas. This is the best software for beginners. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** The long codes. Unable to write functions with ease. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business intelligence, data mart, data analytics, statistical inference ### 37. Powerfull data management and analysis **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 28, 2017 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Base SAS is powerful, flexible and easy to use **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** There is an initial learning curve before full productivity is reached. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** Take a training course from SAS. Many organizations have an agreement to get free online training courses. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data management and analysis ### 38. Great and immediate programming language **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Insurance | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 13, 2017 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** We used it to develop a set of standard procedure used by the insurance entity in order to collect, validate and upload data. We find it intuitive (easy-to-use and easy-to-learn). **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** More free documentation about the programming language would be appreciated **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We used it to develop a set of standard procedure used by the insurance entity in order to collect, validate and upload data. We appreciate the possibility of managing a wide range of data formats. ### 39. Powerful SAS Tool **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Erik G. | Economist, Hospital & Health Care, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Streamlined and not much in the way of frills. You set up your data, write your code, run it, and then view the output or pass it to another program for further analysis. It does this quickly and efficiently once you have everything set up properly. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Base SAS is a bit clunky to use - it feels somewhat dated as far as the interface is concerned and has a relatively steep learning curve (though that is as attributable to learning the language as it is this particular software). If you have problems, don't expect the software to give you much of a hand. You'll need to follow their online tutorials to learn the quirks of the program and how it's all laid out. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** Practice SAS first - or at least brush up on it via online guides/tutorials. Familiarize yourself with the way Base SAS is set up. You'll need to know exactly what you're doing going in as there's not much room for fumbling around. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Processing large data sets by individually analyzing clients and slotting them into categories based on a broad range of criteria. This process is exceedingly quick in SAS, although it did take a bit of work to get it to that point. ### 40. Great for data processing **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Management Consulting | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 31, 2017 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** SAS is great for manipulating data in ways that you can not easily do with excel. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Running summary statistics is not nearly as intuitive as it is in excel. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** Make sure to have a good training implemented to start off with or else new users may get lost. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Working with massive data sets is much easier thanks to SAS. ### 41. Great tool for statistical analysis and database management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dimitra M. | Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 19, 2016 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** It is very easy to use and support number of features. Easy to correct errors from the log window. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** In the VBA there is a interesting AI system called Intellisense, I wish SAS also had it then it would be very easier to choose different attributes and properties to choose from at the time of writing and do not need to consider other resources for the same. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** It is great software for statistical analysis, higly recommended. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using it for data management and statistical methods for regression. ### 42. SAS is am amazing analytical tool **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** SAS is extremely good at what it does. It's flexibility in terms of being able to use programming syntax or something like Enterprise Guide to visually build process structure works extremely well for us. SAS is not for the feint of heart though. The learning curve was fairly steep even for our experienced analyst. But do not let that deter you. If is worth the time and effort to learn and unlock it's full potential. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Hands down this is the worst install we have ever dealt with. I really don't understand why these high end software manufacturers make installs that you need a degree to figure out. What is wrong with a typical, user friendly install process where you are walked through a wizard and all the heavy lifting is done behind the scenes? Maybe the main program install is not bad but once you start needing to customise or adoptions then it all goes to hell. Installing SAS/Access was even worse. If there is one thing I would say to SAS is to revisit the whole install process and try and make it better! **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** As I have mentioned before, the install is a real pain! But if you can see past that then the software itself is infinitely powerful. It does not come cheap however so you will need to have a reasonable yearly budget for the licensing. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** We need analytics software that could handle large volumes of data, combined from a variety of sources and be able to manipulate and process it in very specific ways. The process would then need to be repeatable on a monthly or more basis with as little interaction with the software as possible. While it did take us some time to reach that final goal we now have refined things down with the help of SAS to do this processing each month in a very efficient way. ### 43. Best Statistical software in the world **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gary B. W. | Associated Faculty, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 18, 2016 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I have been using base SAS for over 25 years. Great company and it totally in touch with the best stats info. Very flexible and there is nothing I haven't been able figure out and run with this software. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** I can honestly say I have no complaints. Works great all the time. Would be nice if it ran on a mac. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I mainly do time series analysis and the work SAS has down to make their software the best is amazing. ### 44. Data Analytics **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Insurance | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 24, 2016 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** I like the robust power of SAS. Able to combine data sets and generate tests for variables quickly even on large datasets. SAS has a lot of programmed procedures to do the commands for you. Don't need to manually get the answer. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** I dislike the SAS language as it's hard for me to program in compared to VBA and Java. **Recommendations to others considering Base SAS:** High cost but comes with a lot of power. Good for large organizations that have large amounts of data. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Gives analytics on business problems for client and sponsors to make a decision. Benefit are ease of use as SAS has a wide variety of tests from things that are simple like frequency, mean to statistical tests for significance. ### 45. Gold standard, but steep learning curve **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** There is pretty much nothing you can't do with SAS. In my field it is the gold standard for clinical trials. Also, there are lots of resources available to learn about the software. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** It makes it more complicated than it has to be some times. Data management in particular can be very complicated. Other products like Stata and SPSS have a much better interface for most basic data management tasks. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use SAS when dealing with complex analysis as it offers basically every procedure and test out there. ### 46. SAs base, where it all begins **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Insurance | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** All the basic procedures are included and you can fully function in a BI environment with those procs. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Restrictions of the type of data sources we can read, need SAS access **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** All the BI data and reports are prepared with SAS. ### 47. Great for data access, transformation and reporting **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 13, 2016 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** It is an easy to learn programming language and very flexible. Lot of programs are ready to use if one needs for data manipulation, information storage and retrieval, descriptive statistics and reporting. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** The only thing people complain about is the cost of SAS software **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** It integrates well with DBMS and different analysis like hypothesis testing, ANOVA, regression can be performed easily. It helped me find effectiveness of a marketing campaign and for modelling ### 48. SAS for statistical analysis (Currently preparing for SAS Business Analyst certification) **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Biotechnology | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2016 **What do you like best about Base SAS?** Ease of access, easy to carry out complex statistical calculations. **What do you dislike about Base SAS?** Could take a while to learn how to code. Interface seems a little basic/ old when compared to other programs. **What problems is Base SAS solving and how is that benefiting you?** Statistical Analysis for solving Supply Chain problems. ## Base SAS Discussions - [What is the difference between SAS and SAS Enterprise Guide?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-difference-between-sas-and-sas-enterprise-guide) - 2 comments, 1 upvote - [What is Base SAS used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/base-sas-what-is-base-sas-used-for) - 1 comment - [Who uses SAS software?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/who-uses-sas-software) - 2 comments - [What is SAS platform?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-sas-platform) - 1 comment - [What is Base SAS used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-base-sas-used-for) - 1 comment - [View Base SAS pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/base-sas/reviews?page=3§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-25+14%3A24%3A12+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=bfe36a8f-e9a6-4c6a-8bd8-76c38ccfd2aa&secure%5Btoken%5D=506ef4d5a25aa5e2f6a2367e106be4198ed7bc0535295cb449d316992e689fde&format=llm_user) ## Base SAS Integrations - [REDCap](https://www.g2.com/products/redcap/reviews) ## Base SAS Features **Administration** - Quality Control - Data Sampling - Collaboration **Capabilities** - Data Visualization - Survival Analysis - Risk Data Attributes - Cost Analysis **Methodology** - ANOVA Support - Regression - Time Series Analysis **Generative AI** - AI Text Generation - AI Text Summarization ## Top Base SAS Alternatives - [IBM SPSS Statistics](https://www.g2.com/products/ibm-spss-statistics/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (893 reviews) - [Posit Team](https://www.g2.com/products/posit-team/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (567 reviews) - [eviews](https://www.g2.com/products/eviews/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (111 reviews)