Sigma Reviews & Product Details

I liked entering information in plain english and having it create a Chart. The AI identified some Trends, which is good enough for what we're doing. When I connected it to our AWS RedShift database, I was amazed that it did connect the first time and it wasn't a complete disaster (I fully expected it to). The non-technical users of our company are able to use this program and I am no longer bothered constantly with questions regarding reporting. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This thing cost an arm and leg and the price is going up all the time because every time we actually use it. The Visualizations that it creates are very simple looking and the performance is somewhat slow as well when trying to do something moderately complex. The largest complaint that I have is that no matter what formula that I try to build into a report, the tool will never recognize it; even if the syntax is correct and I end up wanting to throw my mouse across the room. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I enjoy about Sigma most is that it has the ability to make you feel as though you are in a spreadsheet while having access to warehouse sized amounts of data. On a day to day basis, this is where I go to slice and dice metrics, check for trends and quickly develop views that my teammates can utilize without reaching out to our data team. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When I am performing modeling work flow there are times when I find the workflow to be a bit restrictive, specifically when enforcing consistency across dashboard definitions. Also as well, I have experienced some issues when dealing with very large tables and worksheets as sometimes it will take longer to load than anticipated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sigma makes it incredibly easy to keep all my analytics in one place. I use it daily to track KPIs, monitor sales progress month over month, and quickly identify trends. The integration with HubSpot was fast and painless, making the implementation process straightforward. Their customer support team has also been excellent — quick to respond, helpful, and knowledgeable whenever I’ve had questions. The interface is intuitive, so I can easily access the insights I need without wasting time navigating complex menus. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There’s very little I dislike, but occasionally I wish there were more customization options for visualizing data directly in the dashboard without exporting. Some advanced visualization tweaks require a bit of extra setup, but overall it hasn’t slowed me down. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sigma has enabled us to build intuitive dashboards which can be used by colleagues and customers alike. Having complete access control rights on a row or column basis makes this very easy to implement, and with the embedding framework available, it’s really easy to modify frames to appear exactly as intended, to allow coherent designs across our own company portal. The AI enhancements available in the tool are very impressive – from helping to write succinct formulae for data manipulation, to explaining aspects of the visualizations, having Ask Sigma on hand is really a game-changer for our users. We have also really enjoyed using the inbuilt tagging and versioning control, which allows powerful cross-team collaboration and transparency when building out our systems. The versatility of the tagging approach allowed us to put together a framework which complements our own versioning control methods using other software.

Sigma’s attentiveness and customer service generally has set them apart from many companies we have worked with – they have a multitude of different options for getting help and are available for quick calls to collaborate on best ways to approach problems. A particularly strong offer is the live chat, which I’ve used a few times.

Finally, the initial learning curve of Sigma is relatively shallow – the “quickstart” options are presented at a very good level to add value from dashboards within just a few days – and any additional features are easily found in the documentation when required. Our team were able to build a complete set of embedded analytics dashboards within just a few weeks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Although most of our experience with Sigma has been positive, there has been some limitations.

1) Working with larger datasets can sometimes be very slow; of course, this can be remedied by pushing complex calculations further upstream, but where that is not an option, the latency can be cumbersome. Some more transparency on how to utilise any cache functionality would be good.

2) Some visualisations which are standard in other BI software are not present in Sigma, for example axis breaks are not present and can limit the use of visualisations where outliers are both present and important.

3) Font sizing options can be a bit clunky. Even when selecting “auto” as the font size, when moving to different screen sizes, element sizes can be skewed and upset the design of the dashboard. Thus, care has to be taken to build dashboards which are not impacted by this.

4) Switches to control hiding or showing a given graph based on the underlying data (aside from permissions) is a feature which we would welcome. In our use-case, it’s imperative to show only the important information to our clients and not cloud our output with redundant information.

5) When exporting dashboards (for example, via PDF), there doesn’t seem to be a clear way to enforce all information to be present on the page. For example, where a table has a “scroll” feature, it would be preferable to show all of the information upfront so the PDF pages can be printed without losing any information. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sigma is awesome at making data accessible and editable for non-technical users, requiring minimal tech background to use effectively. If the data is modeled optimally for Sigma, this creates a great user experience, for fast performance as well as ease of editing for those non-technical users. As with any tool though, technical users can focus more on driving business value than spending too much time improving query durations.

Their writeback feature is very helpful. It's something that other BI tools should take note of, in my experience, no one does writeback better than Sigma. We can have a functional application like experience, where users can input values, tweak assumptions and scenario plan, without ever leaving the report.

Ai functionality is very cool and intuitive. While Ask Sigma has room for improvement, I do appreciate where this is headed. Things like Explain this Chart is a wow factor, and is actually useful.

Their support chat is great. We used it heavily at the beginning of our implementation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sigma takes a very literal approach to data handling, in contrast to Power BI's more abstract methodology. This fundamental difference has significant implications for performance and cost management.

Cost and Performance Considerations

Cloud Warehouse Costs:

Sigma's literal data handling approach can lead to substantially higher cloud warehouse costs if not managed carefully. The platform requires more compute resources to execute operations compared to alternatives.

Data Preparation Requirements:

Success with Sigma depends heavily on proper data optimization and preparation. Organizations that invest in optimizing their data structure for Sigma's architecture can achieve good results. However, performing joins and on-the-fly data combinations creates a poor user experience for report consumers.

Visualization Limitations

Sigma struggles with complex visualizations, a problem that's becoming more pronounced with the introduction of input tables and linked input tables. These features drive extensive downstream calculations, but Sigma's handling of dependent visualizations remains inefficient.

Performance Issues:

Downstream visuals that utilize input table results suffer from slow interaction speeds. The platform needs to improve how it materializes results to address this fundamental performance bottleneck.

Materialization Problems

Sigma's materialization feature remains in beta status despite being available for an extended period. Even when functional, materializations are slow to execute—a significant issue given that data operations should be nearly instantaneous when occurring within the same data warehouse environment.

Technical Solutions Needed:

Sigma should implement more efficient use of temporary or transient tables for complex calculations. Downstream elements should access stored calculation results without triggering full refreshes, which currently cause compilation delays and poor user experience.

Performance per type of fact table

Strengths: Sigma excels with regular fact tables, particularly transaction data that requires simple aggregations like column sums.

Weaknesses: The platform struggles significantly with snapshot data like account balances. Visualizing balance-type data at scale requires extensive backend data preparation to achieve acceptable performance and user experience.

Bottom Line

While Sigma can be effective with proper data architecture and preparation, its literal approach to data handling creates performance challenges that require careful management to avoid cost overruns and user experience issues. We made the decision that the pros for accessible data outweighed the cons. Because if end users couldn't understand how to access and interact with the data, they wouldn't use it at all. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Three things stand out that set Sigma far above competitors:

1) Input tables. Yes others have writeback functionality but it's just so EASY with sigma to set up data entry, make changes, track changes, that we've had employees who have had whole careers around maintaining spreadsheets *prefer* to enter it into Sigma

2) We can query the AI engine right in the dashboard. Yes it sounds scary, but once you have it working, letting the users ask the dashboard what the data means? it's a game changer! Our BI team can focus on new things rather than explaining what the data means. And it produces queries that we can review to build in alerts, highlights and more information to really have the dashboards tell the stories going forwards.

3) Customer support - The initial set up felt like we were really taken care of. We were able to test out the features and get advanced things up and running right from the day of integration. We've replaced all of our 250 reports from DOMO in to 8-10 reports in Sigma and the users feel like they got an upgrade.

Bonus points: Having Cortex with all the LLM models built in to snowflake, makes the sigma integration with snowflake just the ideal setup. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The folder / user management style is a little rough still.

It doesn't have all of the visualizations we've come to expect from a Tableau. or DOMO.

It isn't intuitive on your first pass. You need to have someone guide you through the thought process to building dashboards. Once you get it, it's easy, but the learning curve on the first 3 dashboards is steep. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This tool is built to ensure that data is both accessible and actionable for all team members, no matter their technical expertise. By offering a user-friendly, spreadsheet-like interface, it simplifies data exploration and visualization for everyone. It is very easy to implement. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

At the moment, I have no complaints. This has truly made my life much easier. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that sigma feels like using a normal spreadsheet but it connects to all our data. I don’t need to be data expert to pull numbers or make reports. The dashboards are clean and it’s easy to share with my team so everyone sees the same info. It's really easy to implement and super fast onboarding Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When the data size is very big sometimes it takes time to load. also some chart options could be more flexible Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ever since we began to use Sigma software in our firm we have realized that there is a great shift in our way of doing things. I like Sigma mostly because of its usability. It is so simple to use and we were able to deploy the tool in no time at all and there is no hours of training required. All the members of the team, including the most junior and the most experienced have found an easy fit to change. I like one of the features which is customization capabilities. The software is customisable to our workflow and every feature feels customised. This has enabled us to adopt adequate remedies that have streamlined our routines and increased our productivity. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nevertheless, I believe that there are certain elements which could be enhanced. In spite of the software being very comprehensive, I have at times realized that some of the updates or new features sometimes take a period of time to ensure that they are fine-tuned and this is rather frustrating. Responsive customer support would be also nice; in some cases we have had to wait longer than would be our preference to get a problem resolved. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like how customizable the reports are to be able to filter in and view the specific data that I need, based on the various reports I consistently use on a daily basis, I can easily find what I'm looking for. I like how easy collaboration is as well when I can view what reports are endorsed, the date of things last being access/updated, and more. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't love how complicated it can be to customize and create visuals of the the data - bar charts, graphs, font, colors, etc. I feel like it also is a little slow and downloading reports / waiting for the data to load can take a long time. I also wish some of the filters were more dynamic in the sense that I don't have to select a drop down everytime. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.