It's challenging to think of a niche that became more saturated than <strong>data science</strong> in the last couple of years. Thousands of startups are coming up with hit-and-miss <strong>products and services</strong> daily, so staying relevant is easier said than done. Today we'll see how one major player - <strong>Posit</strong> (<a href="https://appsilon.com/posit-rstudio-rebrands/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">formerly RStudio</a>) - stays at the top of the game in this competitive market by examining one of the most important, but often overlooked aspects - customer stories and reviews. We'll go through some positive and negative customer stories for two of their best-known products (<strong>RStudio IDE</strong> and <strong>R Shiny</strong>), and see where Appsilon fits in as a certified Posit partner. <p style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: 12px;">Posit Connect Authentication? <a href="https://appsilon.com/why-use-rstudio-connect-authentication/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Here's why it's a must for securing your applications</a>.</span></strong></p> Table of contents: <ul><li><a href="#rstudio">RStudio by Posit: Data Science for Everyone</a></li><li><a href="#shiny">R Shiny: Build Data Science Dashboards With Posit's R Package</a></li><li><a href="#appsilon">Appsilon's Business Perspective</a></li><li><a href="#summary">Summing up Posit Data Science Products</a></li></ul> <hr /> <h2 id="rstudio">RStudio by Posit: Data Science for Everyone</h2> RStudio Desktop needs no introduction. It's one of the most popular IDEs for R and Python, and it's used by millions of people weekly. The IDE is by far the best-known product the company makes, and for a good reason - it offers everything you need with regards to writing code, analyzing history, debugging, plotting, managing workspace, and so on. <p style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: 12px;">Looking for efficiency in RStudio? We've compiled a <a href="https://appsilon.com/rstudio-shortcuts-and-tips/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">list of shortcuts, tips, and tricks to work faster in RStudio</a>.</span></strong></p> It's one of the best (if not the best) platforms for statisticians and data scientists, but it can be overwhelming to newcomers due to all the features and options available from the app. Let's inspect and comment on some of the <a href="https://www.capterra.com/p/210152/RStudio/reviews/">user reviews</a>: <h3>A Positive Transition from SAS</h3> <img class="size-full wp-image-17410" src="https://webflow-prod-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/6525256482c9e9a06c7a9d3c%2F65b7d27bebc881cc38310146_ab88574b_1-2.webp" alt="Image 1 - RStudio review 1" width="2593" height="1435" /> RStudio review 1 - "Great tool for coding in R" Prince J. switched from SAS Analytics Pro due to the sky-high pricing of the platform. He founds RStudio simple to use, especially for calculations that use data from different sources, which would take hours when working manually. As for the benefits, he mentioned the sheer powerfulness of RStudio and all the packages available, while he lists the outdated UI and the program speed as areas of concern. <h3>A Biotech Student Review of RStudio Desktop</h3> <img class="size-full wp-image-17412" src="https://webflow-prod-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/6525256482c9e9a06c7a9d3c%2F65b7d27c7b3b084627438fa2_ff87bf33_2-3.webp" alt="Image 2 - RStudio review 2" width="2594" height="1436" /> RStudio review 2 - Review from a student Anette H. is a biomedical student, and she has used RStudio as a part of the Applied Biostatistics and Bioinformatics course. She mostly used it for data analysis and visualization, but also collaboration through GitHub and RStudio Cloud. As for the benefits, she mentioned that RStudio is easy to use for statisticians without an extensive coding background, which we agree 100%! On the other side, she found the app to be resource-intensive on large projects. <h3>RStudio in Agricultural Research</h3> <img class="size-full wp-image-17414" src="https://webflow-prod-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/6525256482c9e9a06c7a9d3c%2F65b7d27d4d0cd7b2980fe393_1c7a0d72_3-3.webp" alt="Image 3 - RStudio review 3" width="2594" height="1436" /> RStudio review 3 - "Excellent software for data analysis of agricultural research" Dikshya S. used RStudio for data analysis of agricultural research, mostly through R's data visualization packages. She founds the app to be useful for students and researchers, as charts are informative and self-explanatory, and she could easily export them out of RStudio. <p style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: 12px;">Are you also into agriculture? <a href="https://appsilon.com/r-shiny-in-agriculture-examples/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Check out our curated list of the Top 5 Agriculture Dashboards built with R Shiny</a>.</span></strong></p> And finally, let's take a look at one slightly less positive review. <h3>A Challenging Transition from IBM SPSS</h3> <img class="size-full wp-image-17416" src="https://webflow-prod-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/6525256482c9e9a06c7a9d3c%2F65b7d27e1dba582716203bff_4f2abb50_4-3.webp" alt="Image 4 - RStudio review 4" width="2594" height="1436" /> RStudio review 4 - "Many functionalities but large learning curve" Rachel W. found RStudio to have a steep learning curve. She liked the tabling and charting packages, and also everything statistics-related R can do for free. She switched from IBM SPSS Statistics for a coursework assignment but found R and RStudio to be difficult to learn in a short time frame, due to all the options and R-specific coding syntax. <p style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: 12px;">We agree R can be challenging for beginners - <a href="https://appsilon.com/r-for-programmers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">But check our these 7 essential pacakges if you're coming in from a different programming language</a>.</span></strong></p> Up next, let's take a look at some R Shiny reviews. <h2 id="shiny">R Shiny: Build Data Science Dashboards With Posit's R Package</h2> R Shiny is an R package specially tailored for making interactive apps and dashboards straight from R, all without too much code. At Appsilon, we love R Shiny and have built dozens of dashboards for Fortune 500 companies. We can't show you these, but our <a href="https://demo.appsilon.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">R Shiny dashboard examples</a> gallery is always available if you want to see what Shiny is capable of. Others share the same passion for R Shiny as we do, so let's take a look at a couple of user stories: <h3>Automating Processes and Reducing Billable Hours with Shiny</h3> <img class="size-full wp-image-17418" src="https://webflow-prod-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/6525256482c9e9a06c7a9d3c%2F65b7d27f05b9d92375f92ff7_ae89ee11_5-2.webp" alt="Image 5 - R Shiny review 1" width="2594" height="1436" /> R Shiny review 1 - "Build outstanding interactive web apps" Debarpan M. used R Shiny to build interactive dashboards which displayed consolidated reports to stakeholders and also to automate processes and save man-hours at the end of the day. He found the package great for near real-time reporting and liked it for being so easy to learn and use (basic R, HTML, and CSS). What Debarpan disliked was no built-in functionality for role-wise access. <h3>Simplicity in Shiny</h3> <img class="size-full wp-image-17420" src="https://webflow-prod-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/6525256482c9e9a06c7a9d3c%2F65b7d2806778869364e8c1f0_f4aa1095_6-2.webp" alt="Image 6 - R Shiny review 2" width="2594" height="1436" /> R Shiny review 2 - "Shiny has been a [day-to-day] problem solution" Guadalupe R. sees R Shiny as a simple, intuitive, and well-designed platform for making apps and dashboards. He uses it in every application he makes and just loves the reduction of code Shiny introduces when compared to other platforms. Guadalupe finds R programming language a bit challenging to adapt to, but that's an issue that will resolve itself with time and experience. <h3>The Right Tool for Sophisticated Analyses</h3> <img class="size-full wp-image-17422" src="https://webflow-prod-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/6525256482c9e9a06c7a9d3c%2F65b7d2806778869364e8c20b_c069a00f_7-1.webp" alt="Image 7 - R Shiny review 3" width="2594" height="1436" /> R Shiny review 3 - "Great performance" Ailed M., an engineering student, finds R Shiny to be a worthy library for presenting data and for doing sophisticated analyses. He loves how he can share the results of his work through a webpage (app), but has found linking R, RStudio, and R Shiny a bit troublesome at the start. We hope he's well past these beginner challenges by now. <h3>Custom Data Apps in Logistics</h3> <img class="size-full wp-image-17424" src="https://webflow-prod-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/6525256482c9e9a06c7a9d3c%2F65b7d2814d0cd7b2980fe579_709b5d39_8-1.webp" alt="Image 8 - R Shiny review 4" width="2594" height="1436" /> R Shiny review 4 "Great tool for developing highly-custom data apps" An unnamed reviewer working in logistics found Shiny + RStudio integration to be a complete system, so they invested some time into learning and using it. They find Shiny great for R developers that aren't necessarily web developers but limiting when used in BI workflows. We agree - it's easier to drag and drop a couple of columns in Tableau or Power BI, but Shiny offers much more capabilities and is an overall more flexible solution. <p style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: 12px;">How exactly does Shiny compare with Power BI? <a href="https://appsilon.com/powerbi-vs-r-shiny/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Read our detailed explanation covering most of the features</a>.</span></strong></p> So far, we've taken a look at reviews for the two most popular products Posit offers. Now it's time to see where Appsilon comes into the picture as a <a href="https://appsilon.com/rstudio-certified-partner/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Posit Certified Partner</a>. <h2 id="appsilon">Appsilon's Business Perspective</h2> At Appsilon, we help customers develop impactful dashboards. We believe that Posit products significantly help enterprises make data science more open, intuitive, accessible, and collaborative. <h3>Our Posit Partnership</h3> As a Posit Partner, we support clients wanting to get the license and get the most out of it. That includes supporting Data Scientists in talks with the business representatives, building MVPs to showcase the value of the products, and installing and scaling them. <h3>Our R Shiny Team</h3> Our R Shiny Consultants and Developers support companies in delivering business-critical applications proving Shiny value for enterprises. That often includes taking existing R Shiny applications developed by the internal teams to the next level. Our teams create custom UI styling for R Shiny dashboards and applications and refactor them to work faster. Our specialists are also generating automated, interactive dashboards that are easy to share. That means that you get additional muscle, letting you focus on the data, while we build the dashboards to help you make an impact on an organization. Posit products are found in a variety of Fortune 100 and 500 companies (Posit products are trusted by 62 of the Fortune 100). And when combined with Appsilon experts, Posit products help you create a <strong>personalized</strong>, <strong>scalable</strong>, <strong>business-critical</strong>. Posit tools are designed with Data Scientists' needs in mind and help you build better solutions for business representatives to base decisions on data. <hr /> <h2 id="summary">Summing up Posit Data Science Products</h2> To summarize, the suite of Posit products covers everything you could ever need in a modern data science workflow. Need an IDE for R or Python? Check. Want to work in a collaborative cloud version of RStudio? Check. Want to write dashboards around your insights? Check. Want to share the dashboard with others? Check and check. What's even better is the fact you can get started for free in all of these areas. Free versions might be all you need, but the options to scale exist and are fully transparent on <a href="https://posit.co/pricing/individual-products/?utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=appsilon&amp;utm_campaign=article" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Posit's pricing page</a>. <i>Are you currently using a paid version of any Posit product? How do you like it when compared with the free version?</i> Let us know in the comment section below, or reach out on Twitter - <a href="http://twitter.com/appsilon" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">@appsilon</a> - we'd love to hear from you. <i>This article was co-authored by Appsilon's <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/wizmur/">Jacek Wizmur-Szymczak</a> (Appsilon's Business Perspective section).</i>