Panoply

I was introduced to Panoply by a colleague. I was trying to analyze a bunch of climate variables that were in netcdf format. Before I could write a code in Matlab to analyze the data, I needed to know the data structure. For this I have used a combination of F77 and Matlab in the past. However, I wanted to exclude Fortran and have a more convenient way of knowing the basic data structure. Matlab was more powerful with the actual analysis but not with the pre processing. This is where Panoply came in handy. All I had to do was upload the netcdf data file directly into panoply and boom. It gave me the basic structure that includes the number of data points, latitudes and longitudes of the data points and other essential details I needed.

I did not come across any problem in particular for the 2+ years I have used Panoply. Sometimes, It did take a little long to load it if the netcdf file I was working with was a large file but it was not a big deal. Panoply actually was immensely helpful in knowing the data structure of the variable type for which I followed a much more complex procedure in the past before I used Panoply.

We used Panoply to ingest DynamoDB data and send it to the analytics platform for intellegence. The software worked and functioned fine, our we had a simple use case, but it never failed us.

The pricing was really steep for our simple use case and didn't bring the value that the price tag suggests. Ultimately we found a service that is 40% the cost that suites our needs. When I went to cancel there is no unsubscribe button, I had to hunt for a cancellation email address. After going back and forth with the director of customer service, I finally got it cancelled. However, they threw a 30-day notice clause at us causing us to pay an extra 50 days for a product we are not using. Really bad form in my opinion.

Query optimization is great and all behind the scenes.
Views automatic materialization is great and enable me to create very complicated views without considering runtime.
support representatives are very responsive and usually very helpful.
In general, very flexible company that always to get better and answers it's clients needs

Web platform can be built better
Materialization processes have some problem sometimes (downtime) and are not visible properly on the platform

It's really easy to start and add various data sources. You can then create connections between data sources and start building custom reports that show you insights and valuable data.

The biggest con I can think about is the lack of built-in visualization tools. At the moment if you want to see your data visually you must use an external software. Hoping they would get around to adding it soon!