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 subscription model is excellent. About half of our reporting comes out of the subscription, and from there, the ease of use in dragging and dropping reporting objects."
"The ability to create aesthetically pleasing information by providing dashboards."
"The simplicity of MicroStrategy is what I like the most."
"Workstation and Desktop on the client side will speed up some development activities."
"We prefer having the analytic capabilities in a single platform, like MicroStrategy provides, because it is easier. The customer gets used to one type of tool, then sticks with it."
"The architecture is very solid."
"You can build once and deploy to multiple operating systems. Also, it resizes in the way you want it to."
"We pretty much use the knowledge base. We feel that Microstrategy's community is a good forum to use."
"Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly."
"It provides business users with a tool, so they are not dependent on IT."
"One of the most valuable features of Tableau is that it's a visual analytics solution, not just a dashboarding solution. Compared to Power BI, which is a dashboarding solution, there are no limitations with Tableau. For example, when you add a chart or a map to Power BI, it has a 3,000-point limitation. When you try to track your whole vehicle on the map, you only see the first 3,000 rows on the map, and Power BI doesn't tell you which part of the data is shown on the map. But Tableau doesn't have any limitations, which means that you can see five million data points on a map. It starts the project by creating the visuals that directly converts to SQLs. In that way, all the components have no limitations. When we compared Tableau to Power BI, we also found Tableau to be more fancy. Fancy means you can create more visual graphics and more visual dashboards. With Power BI, this isn't so—it's just some tables and some simple charts together. Tableau is more for business users who want to analyze data. Tableau can directly connect the analytics systems, like R or Titan, and get the results in screen, so it's a good solution for analytics scientists. It has some predefined capabilities to understand the data."
"Visualization attributes: Marks – Color, Size, Label, etc.. Easily Accessible and Intuitive."
"From my perspective, it enables clients to better understand our data and make better decisions based on that information."
"Tableau's initial setup was straightforward."
"The data visualization piece is most valuable. We do ad-hoc analysis or one-time shot things, but there are things that we have to track every single day. When our management and our customers want to see how things are changing, the dashboarding provides that information. Tableau is key in providing that data on a refresh basis. We use a data blending tool that pumps the data into Tableau, and we just schedule it to run every single day. So, the automation of the data and being able to present it to people who are interested are the most valuable features."
"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."
"From a stability standpoint, from MicroStrategy, I would say it's fairly consistent. I would give it a "B" because there are times where we have issues that are just inexplicable. They go away and then we have no resolution. To me, that's not acceptable. There are just times where our users can't access things and we're not sure why, and that's a problem to me."
"Training would be an area that they could improve upon."
"Sometimes, it has become too complex to upgrade and adjust to the ecosystem."
"MicroStrategy should become more user friendly. It should behave more like Tableau."
"The solution's reports are not very flexible."
"There are some challenges in our organization on how we store the data."
"The pricing could be lower because it is costly."
"There is room for improvement on the graphs."
"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."
"I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles."
"In the cloud sometimes the performance is a little bit slow."
"The user story model is the most deceptive part of Tableau. It is a big marketing option, however, the reality is that it is not enough."
"The customization requires a lot of effort and should be simplified. The performance could be better."
"The pricing is a bit higher than the competition. They'll need to lower it to stay competitive."
"I think Tableau could be improved with cheaper or more flexible licensing, though this is a generic improvement and applies for any product. It would be better if they had more flexible payment and licensing plans so that they could suit small- and mid-sized organizations."
"The solution could improve the scalability, it is difficult to make changes."
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, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, IBM Cognos, 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.
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