Metabase

The model versus question distinction is confusing because users see no real difference, and a model can be accidentally converted back into a question when publishing, which is only noticed when drilling in fails.

Affects: Analysts building charts

Applying a single filter across ten charts requires duplicating a chart ten times and changing the filter on each one, which the commenter calls manual labor.

Affects: Dashboard builders

The commenter objects that serialization is gated behind a paid plan and also requires self-hosting, which makes the payment feel unjustified.

Affects: Self-hosting teams

A company running Metabase for customer-facing insight dashboards finds instance performance unpredictable.

Affects: Team powering product insight dashboards

Embedding Metabase white-label requires a commercial license, and the tier with row-level security is priced high enough that the commenter suggests considering other tools.

Affects: Teams embedding reports in their web app

Affects: Teams with BIGINT primary and foreign keys

Affects: MySQL users on Docker

Affects: Postgres users on read replicas

Affects: MySQL users writing SQL with table aliases

Affects: MongoDB users

Affects: Postgres users

Affects: Slack users

Affects: BigQuery users

Affects: Enterprise development teams

Requests a driver that lets Metabase pull data from REST APIs when the data is not held in a database.

A self-hosting user likes how easy models and queries are to set up but wishes Metabase offered more chart types, since custom charts are not worth the time for typical requests.

Affects: Self-hosted business analytics user

To show the same metric over several time windows the user must create a question per interval and add new ones every week, and wants one templated question instead.

Affects: Dashboard builders

Pivot tables only sort alphabetically, but sorting by value or subtotal is more meaningful in many cases.

Pivot tables require drivers supporting expressions and left joins, excluding MongoDB, Druid and third-party drivers.

Affects: Users of MongoDB, Druid and third-party drivers

Affects: Teams running mixed-architecture Kubernetes

Affects: Dashboard builders

Affects: Teams with dev and production Metabase servers

Affects: Dashboard builders

Affects: Dashboard users with large filter lists

Affects: Teams sharing charts in documents and emails

Affects: MySQL users

Affects: Teams with data in separate systems

Affects: Users outside GMT time zones

Affects: Teams exposing Metabase externally

Affects: Teams with non-technical Metabase users on MongoDB

Affects: Teams sharing one dataset across departments

Affects: Developers automating against the Metabase API

Affects: BigQuery users

Affects: Teams sending reports to non-Metabase users

Affects: People launching instances on behalf of others

Affects: Organizations whose week starts on Monday

Affects: Teams querying read replicas

Affects: Admins managing many users

Affects: Business users exploring data

Affects: Analysts using the GUI editor

Affects: Analysts who write reports

Affects: Redshift users

Affects: Small business

Affects: SQL question authors

Affects: Admins curating the data model

Affects: Mattermost users

Affects: SQL authors

Connecting Metabase straight to the application database causes trouble when integrating another data set such as CRM data, so the commenter loads everything into a warehouse first.

Affects: Teams connecting Metabase to production databases

A company that grew from 10 to about 80 people still runs Metabase but reports unspecified frustrations and is evaluating other BI options.

Affects: Company with a 5-person data team

The team says support was poor when problems occurred and showed little willingness to act on feedback, so they plan to move internal analytics to Omni.

Affects: Company using Metabase for internal and customer dashboards

A company uses Superset instead of Metabase only because Metabase did not support Azure AD single sign-on, and plans to switch once it does.

Affects: Company requiring Azure AD SSO

A commenter rules out Metabase because of its AGPL license and Clojure codebase and prefers an MIT-licensed JavaScript alternative.

Affects: Teams evaluating self-hosted BI

A startup evaluating Metabase found joins unavoidable, concluded Metabase was opposed to them, and paid for Tableau instead.

Affects: Startup evaluating BI tools

Affects: Teams using BigQuery with Segment