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.
"It scales well. It used to have only a max of four I-servers, but I think recently, somewhere in version 10, they doubled that, so you can have eight I-servers now."
"Semi-automatic support of implementing date dimensions, including delta to prior year implementation."
"Having the analytics capabilities on a single platform."
"On our mobile solution you can deploy up to 100,000 users. In our case, we're up to about 10,000 active users, and MicroStrategy's server technology behind the scenes, the Intelligence Server and the Mobile Servers, are very robust and they can handle the workload."
"Stability is great, especially with package deployments. It is very consistent and stable."
"Project Schema/metadata- Very flexible, connects to a variety of different data sources and is very flexible for many specific tasks. Attributes/metrics/filters created once used by everyone."
"It's user-friendly, also the MTDI cube is a very good approach, as it helps you to use the pre-format instead of using the standard objects from the schema of MicroStrategy."
"Workstation and Desktop on the client side will speed up some development activities."
"We found Tableau has the quickest learning time out of the few other BI reporting tools that we have used."
"The most valuable feature is the geographic data analysis."
"The platform's most important feature is predictive analysis."
"The ability of filtering and segmentation of the data makes it very flexible compared to other tools."
"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."
"Data Interpreter: Which can identify issues or potential errors with your imported data."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the permission management and the user management."
"We haven't invested in the mobile platform. We want to invest, but the problem is the security. We are in the health domain, so we have PHI data."
"The implementation itself was pretty straightforward. The tricky part was understanding MicroStrategy's licensing model, which was a bit convoluted back then."
"The online community page of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"It would be good if it had greater analytics so we could build these visualizations by ourselves with scripts."
"I did not see any additional value of providing one button for installation on the whole platform if it was going to be installed for different servers. You would have to make customization every time. There was no additional value in an installer."
"I know we are not competing against Tableau, but MicroStrategy needs to step up its game on the GUI side."
"They need to improve the web."
"Its price should be lower. In terms of features, what we have is quite encompassing right now."
"I also work as an SME on the platform side. Tableau is very nice and jazzy for the end-users, but there are pain points for the admins. Performance is something about which we hear a lot of complaints, such as the dashboard doesn't open in time. It performs well on the desktop but not on the server. I know that there is always a limitation when it comes to a huge amount of data or the complexity of the calculations, but we often hear from end-users about the performance on the server side. It is easy to drag and drop all the columns and do what we want, but if it is not going to load better on the server, users are not going to like it."
"In the next release, there should be more information describing each chart because users have a difficult time telling them apart. They should also include the animations/videos, similar to Power BI."
"The architecture should be improved to better handle the data."
"Requires a lot of user training."
"I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles."
"I don't have the ability in Tableau to create a tooltip and see the picture of a piece of jewelry or watch that is a best seller."
"The pricing is high. I'm using a student license, however, I know that even this license is very expensive. I've tried to have this product in our organization, however, it's quite expensive. We don't have the internal budget."
"The Hyper Extract functionality is not as strong as that provided by Microsoft SQL."
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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