We compared Tableau and MicroStrategy across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Based on the user feedback summaries, Tableau is preferred over MicroStrategy due to its superior data visualization capabilities, user-friendly interface, and strong customer service and support. Users highly value Tableau's ease of use, powerful data analysis capabilities, and ability to handle large datasets. They also appreciate Tableau's prompt and efficient support team. Additionally, the favorable pricing and positive return on investment from Tableau make it a preferred choice. On the other hand, MicroStrategy could benefit from improvements in areas such as scalability, user interface design, collaboration features, and expanded functionality.
Initial Setup: When comparing user reviews, it is evident that there are differences between Tableau and MicroStrategy in terms of the duration required for deployment, setup, and implementation phases. Some Tableau users spent separate timeframes on deployment and setup, while in MicroStrategy, these terms likely refer to the same period.
Features: Tableau is praised for its ease of use, interactive dashboards, and storytelling functionality. Meanwhile, MicroStrategy stands out for its intuitive interface, powerful visualization tools, and seamless integration with other systems.
Room For Improvement: Tableau's room for improvement lies in enhancing data visualization capabilities and offering more advanced data analysis features. Users also request improvements in customization options and menu navigation, as well as better support and documentation for beginners. On the other hand, MicroStrategy could benefit from enhancements in scalability and performance, especially with larger datasets. Users also suggest improving the user interface for a more intuitive and user-friendly design, and expanding collaboration features and data visualization options.
Pricing and ROI: Comparing the setup costs, Tableau has reasonable and efficient implementation process. MicroStrategy also offers reasonable setup costs with flexible licensing arrangements according to user experiences. In comparing the ROI between Tableau and MicroStrategy, Tableau users reported significant impact in terms of return on investment. They praised its valuable insights, data visualizations, and user-friendly interface. MicroStrategy users also found the ROI to be positive and satisfactory, with improved data analysis and decision-making capabilities.
Customer Service: Tableau's customer service is highly praised for its exceptional assistance, promptness, expertise in troubleshooting, and effectiveness in providing solutions. MicroStrategy's customer service is commended for efficient assistance, prompt response, knowledgeable staff, and proactive issue resolution. Customers highly regard both companies' customer service.
The summary above is based on interviews we conducted recently with Tableau and MicroStrategy users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The hyperintelligence is the most valuable feature."
"The mobile for MicroStrategy is the best of all the BI platforms. As a separate product for the mobile device, MicroStrategy is the entire BI platform. It is an enterprise solution, a separate unit, etc."
"The dashboard features and functionalities that come through the MicroStrategy Suite are the most valuable. It can be used by end users with minimum knowledge of the product. They can run a report or create a dashboard on their phones, which is kind of cool."
"The reporting, the dashboards, and the new visualization functions. It is very easy for users to understand their data and dashboards."
"I like the user interface and the experience has been great."
"Dossiers are going to change the name of the game for us. We want to be able to have the executive committee go into a meeting and tell a story. We want them to tell us a story, not us."
"In terms of functionality, MicroStrategy is alright. It's a solid BI tool and can handle most tasks you'd expect."
"Speed for high level aggregation by using Intelligent Cubes."
"We frequently utilize visualizations using maps and different objects, all with rich coloring options. And tooltips are absolutely essential for us. Tooltips, like the pop-up descriptions when you hover over some object or graph. Those tooltips in Tableau are great features."
"I like the calculation feature. I would not say it's such a good feature in Tableau, but if you have the knowledge, you can make that feature visible to everyone. It's not a feature that we can drag and drop and get the information. But whatever the data, whatever the calculation, I'm able to do. It's basically the knowledge base. Whatever knowledge I have, I can make that information public and publish it for management."
"It allows us to basically understand and evaluate our numbers in an expedient manner."
"It is easy to use, and it can handle a large amount of data."
"Tableau's most valuable features are user-friendliness and have a connection between multiple source systems. You can publish a report by using Tableau Public and there you can make your data online, not only batches of data, you can use it as an online analytical tool."
"Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good. It is a very good tool, and it basically brings life into data with good design. We have been creating a lot of interactive visualizations and dashboards. It has a public version. There are public communities from where you can get a lot of examples for practice."
"The geospatial maps representation and the visualizations are nice."
"Tableau has improved my organization in a variety of ways, one of its uses being that of data analysis. A feature I have found most valuable is the ease of use and straightforwardness, in addition to the flexibility of Tableau."
"They need to supply the support system that's just not there right now. They don't have Enterprise Manager classes. You need in-depth classes to understand what those metrics are doing, to understand the table associations from one to the other. You can't just go and pick it up and understand that DT_DAY connects to all of these tables, without going into Architect, looking at the source tables. I, as a analyst, a slightly technical user, I don't have the expertise to do that. Business users definitely don't have the expertise to do that."
"I would like to see a single standalone application to control everything from the administration perspective, and also to develop new applications."
"The analytic speed would probably be what I would look for in terms of improvement because we have super huge data, and if I do not build views on top of data, then reports render really slowly."
"We've found the scalability to be very good. However, it depends on the environment. In general, it could be much better."
"I know we are not competing against Tableau, but MicroStrategy needs to step up its game on the GUI side."
"Native VI on mobile apps and better android support are lacking."
"The interface you can design in MicroStrategy is great, but I feel it needs to be refreshed, add a bit more functionality. I would like to see more capabilities on the mobile side, to bring it on par with apps that you see in the App Store."
"They need to improve on distribution services. There are lack of features which were there earlier with Narrowcast, but they are not there in the distribution services."
"More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement."
"The performance could be better."
"The charting is overly complex in comparison with Power BI's"
"Tableau's automatic insight could be improved. It has some predefined capabilities to understand the data, but I think they need more. Customers need more insight automatically from data—they don't want to discover them, they want to get the forecast automatically. The data preparation should also be improved because it's not easy. Tableau tries to focus on the business side, but the backend side has not improved much. They also have an ETS solution, but it's limited."
"Include forecasting on table calculation fields."
"It would be nice to include more features on each dashboard."
"When compared to Power BI, it is less user-friendly."
"Firstly, the high cost of Tableau licenses makes it inaccessible for many mid-scale clients. Secondly, the server requires at least 128GB of RAM, which can be impractical for some systems. We need a dedicated system to use Tableau."
MicroStrategy is ranked 4th in Embedded BI with 155 reviews while Tableau is ranked 1st in Embedded BI with 290 reviews. MicroStrategy is rated 8.2, while Tableau is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of MicroStrategy writes "A robust solution for powerful data analytics". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tableau writes "Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time". MicroStrategy is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, IBM Cognos, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, Qlik Sense and Oracle OBIEE, whereas Tableau is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Amazon QuickSight, Domo, SAS Visual Analytics and Looker. See our MicroStrategy vs. Tableau report.
See our list of best Embedded BI vendors and best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.
We monitor all Embedded BI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.