TIBCO Spotfire vs Tableau comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Tableau and TIBCO Spotfire based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed TIBCO Spotfire vs. Tableau Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: What's your experience or opinion about Spotfire vs. Tableau vs. Qlik?
Answer: If you want real world proof. Have a bake off or POC with a real world set of criteria: 4 or more data sources, 100M or more records and mobile, etc. You'll be glad that you did!
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable part of the solution is the general dashboard features.""The most valuable feature is the geographic data analysis.""Tableau is very good in the front-end visualization compared to Power BI.""Tableau has many different connectors for different databases. It's very easy to connect to MySQL, SQL Server, Amazon EMR, Presto, Redshift, BigQuery, and so on.""The most valuable feature is the ease of use.""The solution has a lot of customization when comparing to Microsoft BI.""The most valuable features of the solution are the permission management and the user management.""I believe one of the most valuable features of the solution is trend analysis."

More Tableau Pros →

"R and automation services.""It's scalable.""The product's initial setup phase was simple.""From a scalability standpoint, I would say it's pretty fantastic.""One of the main features is integrated statistical analysis.""The out-of-the-box features are simple and easy to use across the board.""We used it pretty heavily in gathering data, which goes to our VPs. They are able to base their next revenue planning based on this metric. So, it has been invaluable.""I appreciate Spotfire's range of visualization options, advanced analytics features, and seamless integration with other TIBCO products."

More TIBCO Spotfire Pros →

Cons
"SAP BusinessObjects has some semantic layer designs that give the flexibility to do ad hoc reporting or dashboard designing. If that can be brought into Tableau, it would be great. We have the data in the database, but we should also be able to bring something between the database and the dashboard and do some semantic layer modeling for ad hoc reporting requirements.""The charts need to be improved. The drawings and the visualization need to be more accurate.""There should be stronger data modules for the platform.""When I've done presentations in the past, I've had issues with uploading the cartography.""A strict security measure is needed. I believe it is weak in terms of security.""We did have issues with Tableau 10.1 server with the brokers failing on heavy load but since moving to 10.2, then to 10.3, this issue seems to have been resolved and the environment is now quite stable.""The ability to use it on MAC machines. As far as I know, this is not possible.""The interface can be improved, in part because there is no indication that something is running or that it's processing."

More Tableau Cons →

"Print capability and trigger-based events.""We would like to see some improvement in the default properties of the solution, so that there is less need for us to spend our time coding.""The way TIBCO Spotfire is designed, in my opinion, is the reason why it lags a bit, especially compared to other BI tools like Qlik.""When you do the data loading, it is slow.""Personalising Spotfire, as a whole, is painful and is something that could be made easier.""The handling and consumption of realtime data could be improved.""One aspect where Spotfire could improve is its global recognition, especially in terms of support.""The initial setup of TIBCO Spotfire is in the middle range of difficulty. The initial setup of Power BI is easier."

More TIBCO Spotfire Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "For big business, Tableau could be expensive as having a lot of Tableau server users (entering with a browser to reports) could be a bit expensive."
  • "Best advice on pricing is to anticipate the desire for more licenses once the results of this product are acknowledged in other parts of your company."
  • "Paying for users you never setup or buying expensive desktop licenses for users who can solve their users with web editing on the server are the two biggest expenses."
  • "Buy 50 at a time. Project your use base every three months, and project your requirements forward."
  • "Tableau can be costly (but this can be indefinable, such as user experience vs. cheaper etc.)"
  • "I wish there was more of a subscription model with the pricing when it comes to Tableau, so you can get all the latest version upgrades/features if you pay monthly/annually."
  • "The cost is high."
  • "Deployment of dashboards to viewers and unit supervisors can be prohibitively expensive."
  • More Tableau Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The ROI is nearly impossible to calculate."
  • "The pricing seems competitive and reasonable. The value delivered by the product far exceeds the cost."
  • "The Tibco sales teams have been very difficult to work with - ignoring requests, misrepresenting level of demand, etc."
  • "The cost is a few hundred dollars per user per year."
  • "The cost of TIBCO Spotfire could improve. It should be less expensive. It's the most expensive visualization tool in our company."
  • "The price-point for this solution is negotiable depending on usage levels."
  • "This product carries a monthly licensing charge, with the amount depending on the features that are to be included. This costs also covers the use of technical support."
  • "In comparison to other solutions such as IBM Cognos, TIBCO Spotfire is more affordable."
  • More TIBCO Spotfire Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts use to create and share insights. It is also the tool of choice for rapid prototyping of dashboards. Tableau is very flexible with its data import. Tableau's data blending capability is very intuitive. This capability is useful when you have data spread across several different sources that has not gone through ETL processes. This is a problem analysts deal with routinely. They are unable to wait for the data warehouse team to develop ETL processes to provide the physical models they need to build an analysis. The Tableau interface is Excel-like and has a low barrier to entry for analysts that are used to working in Excel. Building a dashboard by mashing up visualizations in a Tableau worksheet is extremely simple. Users are able to build good presentation-quality dashboards in a very short amount time. Tableau's annotations capabilities and its time and geographical intelligence are key differentiators. Tableau has overcome limitations in data sharing with the introduction of a Data Server in Tableau 7.0. The Data server allows Data sources and extracts to be shared securely and opens up interesting new possibilities. If your application can take advantage of the above… Read more →
    Answers from the Community
    Michael Roytman, MBA Global Management
    Ed Dallal - PeerSpot reviewerEd Dallal
    Consultant

    I kinda agree with the below assessment with the following additions:
    Graphics: Qliksense: Good, Tableau Excellent
    Ease of use: QlikSense: Good, Tableau: Good

    Hope this helps!
    Thanks
    Ed

    it_user155820 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user155820 (Works)
    Vendor

    Criteria

    1.)Implementation Speed-- High (Qlikview) Good (Tableau)
    2.)Scalability-- Limited by RAM (Qlikview) Very Good (Tableau)
    3.)Drill Down-- Excellent(Associative Search) (Qlikview) Good (Tableau)
    4.)Dashboard Support-- Good (Qlikview) Excellent (Tableau)
    5.)Big Data Support-- Good (Qlikview) Above Average (Tableau)

    Michael Roytman, MBA Global Management - PeerSpot reviewerMichael Roytman, MBA Global Management (Vertex Inc.)
    Vendor

    Thank you, Everyone. All of your point are valid and well taken.
    Greatly appreciate your time and insight!

    it_user78465 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user78465 (CEO at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees)
    Consultant

    We thought Tibco's Spotfire was the best of the three BI tools you've asked about in terms of:

    1) its end user experience,
    2) their engineering receptivity to questions and suggestions, and
    3) its' overall functionality for the money.

    As previously mentioned by another reviewer, scale (in terms of the size of your company/IT department/budget) and leadership buy-in are critical factors to consider in making such a decision. In other words, you can't/shouldn't buy what you can't afford, ... and if your company's leaders aren't interested/won't listen once you stand up whatever BI.data visualization solution you choose, what's the point?

    With those considerations in mind, it may be best to clarify that our company wasn't willing to settle for the functionality that such traditional BI vendors as those three had to offer.

    Here's why ...

    To suggest that any of those three business intelligence tools actually accomplishes true 'data visualization,' or even more interestingly its most intriguing cousin, data animation (a la Edward Tufte and Hans Rosling) would be a real stretch.

    http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

    http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen

    Alternatively, we would highly recommend Information Builders' (IBI's) solution, and especially the newly emerging data visualization/animation functionality that is being offered by IBI through their new and improved InfoDiscovery tool this Spring (2015).

    Watch out for it :)

    We believe that IBI's solution is head and shoulders above those three other BI tools, as well as all of the other myriad of BI tools we evaluated in terms of:

    1) end user experience/intuitiveness of design and handling,
    2) drag and drop capabilities, and in essence
    3) cutting IT out of the BI hand holding/red headed step child syndrome that has plagued the IT industry for far too long.

    We were fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to preview what the IBI engineers have been able to accomplish in this regard so far, and quite honestly, they knocked our socks off!

    In our collective opinion, IBI's solution is the most complete BI tool out there (especially relative to its' data visualization/animation functionality) as far as we have seen.

    And the kicker is:

    1) they listened intently to our request for this sort of data visualization/animation functionality (voice of the customer),
    2) brought their programming whizzes to meet with us to best understand what we were after,
    3) engaged the leadership of their company in our ideas and recommendations,
    4) met with us periodically along the way to keep us abreast of their progress,
    5) built the program to in fact achieve that vision as we had requested,
    6) asked for and received our input recently to make the prototype even better prior to launch, and
    7) are in the process of demo'ing it now yet further to other IBI super-users to both show it off and to secure yet further improvement ideas.

    That's what makes IBI the sort of IT business partner/company we truly enjoy and appreciate doing business with!

    John Becker
    Chief Governance Officer
    Phenix Energy Group
    727-735-1407

    it_user199530 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user199530 (Decision Analytics Architect at a financial services firm)
    Vendor

    Love the site. We are doing a comparison with the same data set at the moment will give you my personal feedback once completed.

    Regards,
    Pieter

    it_user174663 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user174663 (Systems/Applications Specialist with 201-500 employees)
    Vendor

    This is a great question!

    I am not confident enough of answering it though I will be much interested to read if someone else manage to complete such a review.

    Regards,
    Hristo

    it_user4008 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user4008 (CEO with 1,001-5,000 employees)
    Consultant

    This is not a trivial question for anyone to tackle openly and objectively

    I would respond to the person requesting a free Gartner report on DV leaders with the following questions:

    · Is your firm committed to selecting one of these vendors?

    · Is the question based on 2 or 4 developer's licenses or an enterprise system?

    · Would this be a tactical decision or strategic?

    it_user176847 - PeerSpot reviewerit_user176847 (BI and Location Analytics Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees)
    Consultant

    Each product serves the purpose of aggregating data and providing visual display of the data depending on the enhancements configured for data visualization (i.e. geospatial map viewer). Tableau is the less costly and easy to use like Qlik of the three products with Spotfire being the most costly and complicated to configure and generally used by companies with larger IT budgets. There is a report comparing these BI products. https://apandre.wordpress.com/tools/comparison/

    Carolyn French

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos… more »
    Top Answer:Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it… more »
    Top Answer:Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies… more »
    Top Answer:The product's initial setup phase was simple.
    Top Answer:I would describe TIBCO Spotfire as an averagely-priced product.
    Top Answer:The way TIBCO Spotfire is designed, in my opinion, is the reason why it lags a bit, especially compared to other BI tools like Qlik. The speed of creating reports or dashboards is slower in TIBCO… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    26,921
    Comparisons
    23,202
    Reviews
    19
    Average Words per Review
    620
    Rating
    8.6
    Views
    2,402
    Comparisons
    1,698
    Reviews
    9
    Average Words per Review
    477
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
    Spotfire
    Learn More
    Overview

    Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights. 

    Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

    Tableau has many valuable key features:

    • Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
    • Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards. 
    • Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions. 
    • Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data. 
    • Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries. 
    • Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

    Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "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.

    Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.

    TIBCO Spotfire is a versatile data analytics platform that can handle large datasets and be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. Its dynamic reporting, easy creation of dynamic dashboards, and highly customizable tool make it a valuable asset for process data analysis, industrial performance dashboards, problem root cause analysis, business intelligence, and real-time analytics for IoT devices in the energy sector. 

    The solution also offers data science functions, map visuals, R and Python integration, and the ability to write HTML and JavaScript text areas. Spotfire has helped organizations deliver projects more efficiently and cost-effectively, allowing for faster data analysis.

    Sample Customers
    Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
    Allergan, ASSS de Montreal, Avantium, Blue River, Bank of Montreal, Citibank, FrieslandCampina, Hellmann Logistics, Merck, Novartis
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Computer Software Company12%
    University7%
    Healthcare Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization34%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Energy/Utilities Company23%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Manufacturing Company15%
    Energy/Utilities Company13%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise39%
    Large Enterprise47%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise8%
    Large Enterprise78%
    Buyer's Guide
    TIBCO Spotfire vs. Tableau
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about TIBCO Spotfire vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Tableau is ranked 2nd in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 290 reviews while TIBCO Spotfire is ranked 13th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 65 reviews. Tableau is rated 8.4, while TIBCO Spotfire is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Tableau writes "Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of TIBCO Spotfire writes "A robust BI tool, with good dashboard features and adverse event tracking". Tableau is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Amazon QuickSight, Domo, SAS Visual Analytics and SAP Analytics Cloud, whereas TIBCO Spotfire is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, QlikView, Qlik Sense, Amazon QuickSight and TIBCO BusinessWorks. See our TIBCO Spotfire vs. Tableau report.

    See our list of best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.

    We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools 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.