MicroStrategy Analytics vs. Tableau Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
MicroStrategy Analytics
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
MicroStrategy Analytics is an enterprise business analytics and mobility platform. Key features include automatic big data analysis and reporting, data discovery and visualization, digital security credentials, and support for mobile devices.N/A
Tableau Server
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Server allows Tableau Desktop users to publish dashboards to a central server to be shared across their organizations. The product is designed to facilitate collaboration across the organization. It can be deployed on a server in the data center, or it can be deployed on a public cloud.
$12
Per User Per Month
Pricing
MicroStrategy AnalyticsTableau Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MicroStrategy AnalyticsTableau Server
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing information.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MicroStrategy AnalyticsTableau Server
Considered Both Products
MicroStrategy Analytics

No answer on this topic

Tableau Server
Chose Tableau Server
There were a lot of reasons why we chose Tableau and the least is the cost but also the way Tableau stores data in the columnar fashion instead of in Cubes. We went through a painstaking selection process and at the end, came down to a couple of vendors and we ended up with the …
Chose Tableau Server
I didn't select Tableau but am very glad we have it! I have used several reporting tools and Tableau is the easiest to use and has the best user adoption. Other tools can involve lots of background work or just difficult to display the data as needed. Tableau is easy to use and …
Chose Tableau Server
Tableau by far has the most intuitive interface and best out of the box looks for presentation. The speed of development and ease of development is unbeatable.
Chose Tableau Server
Looked at Cognos, Microstrategy and Business Objects. All were too IT / technical intensive. Moved to Tableau due to ease of use.
Chose Tableau Server
For full blown BI Suites, Microstrategy, Oracle and others were evaluated. However Tableau is used to supplement those systems in our case.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
MicroStrategy AnalyticsTableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
26 Ratings
20% above category average
Tableau Server
9.2
95 Ratings
12% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports10.023 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards10.023 Ratings9.494 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates10.024 Ratings9.381 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
24 Ratings
21% above category average
Tableau Server
8.9
95 Ratings
9% above category average
Drill-down analysis10.022 Ratings8.795 Ratings
Formatting capabilities10.024 Ratings8.493 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages10.016 Ratings8.959 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration10.023 Ratings9.489 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
23 Ratings
18% above category average
Tableau Server
7.9
91 Ratings
6% below category average
Publish to Web10.022 Ratings9.585 Ratings
Publish to PDF10.023 Ratings9.284 Ratings
Report Versioning10.020 Ratings8.070 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling10.022 Ratings7.477 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers10.05 Ratings5.19 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
22 Ratings
21% above category average
Tableau Server
8.4
90 Ratings
4% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)10.020 Ratings8.886 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization10.019 Ratings8.885 Ratings
Predictive Analytics10.018 Ratings7.764 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
21 Ratings
15% above category average
Tableau Server
7.3
95 Ratings
16% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)10.019 Ratings7.393 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model10.020 Ratings7.390 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)10.020 Ratings7.392 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)10.09 Ratings7.362 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
MicroStrategy Analytics
9.7
19 Ratings
20% above category average
Tableau Server
7.5
79 Ratings
6% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access10.019 Ratings7.177 Ratings
Mobile Application10.015 Ratings7.061 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile10.019 Ratings7.768 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
MicroStrategy Analytics
10.0
8 Ratings
23% above category average
Tableau Server
7.3
46 Ratings
8% below category average
REST API10.06 Ratings9.040 Ratings
Javascript API10.07 Ratings9.137 Ratings
iFrames10.05 Ratings9.140 Ratings
Java API10.04 Ratings5.57 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)10.05 Ratings6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)10.06 Ratings4.67 Ratings
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User Ratings
MicroStrategy AnalyticsTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
9.9
(47 ratings)
7.1
(111 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(27 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
3.2
(5 ratings)
5.4
(17 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
2.2
(5 ratings)
3.4
(18 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(5 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(4 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
MicroStrategy AnalyticsTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
MicroStrategy
MSTR is great for any organization that is looking for a way to deliver complicated data in an uncomplicated way. From business teams to marketing and finance, several departments benefit from using MSTR to keep track of KPIs enabling teams to make optimizations along the way. MSTR provides great visual representations of data enabling team members to distill thousands of data points into easily digestible charts and graphs
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Server is well suited for a data warehouse build and handling big data. Tableau data aggregation, transformation, clustering capability is powerful and easy to implement. The choice of charts and visualisation tools is outstanding. Customisation and dynamic data visualisation capability is superb. The user interface takes some time getting used to.
Read full review
Pros
MicroStrategy
  • They sell the product well, and make promises you will actually believe
  • "checks the box" for most features a company would need. Doesn't actually deliver them though
  • They answer the phone in a timely manner. Can't answer your questions or provide support, but the queue time isn't bad
  • They have online documentation. It's not up to date, and likely doesn't reflect the version of software you are using, but hey... they can point to it.
Read full review
Tableau
  • It's good at doing what it is designed for: accessing visualizations without having to download and open a workbook in Tableau Desktop. The latter would be a very inefficient method for sharing our metrics, so I am glad that we have Tableau Server to serve this function.
  • Publishing to Tableau Server is quick and easy. Just a few clicks from Tableau Desktop and a few seconds of publishing through an average speed network, and the new visualizations are live!
  • Seeing details on who has viewed the visualization and when. This is something particularly useful to me for trying to drive adoption of some new pages, so I really appreciate the granularity provided in Tableau Server
Read full review
Cons
MicroStrategy
  • The graph options are not as robust as an Excel user might want.
  • The metadata layer can sometimes be slower, and it takes a long time for reports to run.
  • Viewing the data feed entered can be cumbersome at times, in terms of validation with reports.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau Server has had some issue handling some of our larger data sets. Our extract refreshes fail intermittently with no obvious error that we can fix
  • Tableau Server has been hard to work with before they launched their new Rest API, which is also a little tricky to work with
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
MicroStrategy
I would always choose to renew MicroStrategy as long as they lead the market in features, functionality and price. The support of MicroStrategy is timely and professional, I frequently get answers to my questions within 24 hours and normally have solutions within 48 hours. Training available for MicroStrategy completely covers everything required to be able to expertly use MicroStrategy and understand data warehousing.
Read full review
Tableau
It simply is used all the time by more and more people. Migrating to something else would involve lots of work and lots of training. The renewal fee being fair, it simply isn't worth migrating to a different tool for now.
Read full review
Usability
MicroStrategy
The standard grid reporting could look more like the styling and object used for the Import and Visual Insight products. In addition, object properties almost seem to be hidden when first using the product. It's as if they are asking the engineers to only use the presets we make available...and, these presets are 10+ years old. On the positive side, Microstrategy seems to be the only product, not named Cognos, which can scale to Big Data. The product is "hackable" via the SDK or tricking the Intelligence Server to do uncommon things. The Microstrategy development team also seems to be very involved with their OEM partners; especially when it comes to features and enhancements. A large majority of the improvements we suggested have made it into the product or on the roadmap for future enhancements. Only suckas fall for the shiny objects from most other vendors; Microstrategy is really the only choice for Enterprise BI.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Server is unbeatable at creating easy to use, interactive dashboards for busy executives. The software also saves time for the busy analyst that is tired of always using Excel. Tableau Server is a head and shoulders improvement over Excel.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
MicroStrategy
I've never had an issue with MicroStrategy not being available due to MicroStrategy application malfunction. It is very robust and only failures I've seen were due to user error or the platform the machine running the service failed some how.
Read full review
Tableau
Our instance of Tableau Server was hosted on premises (I believe all instances are) so if there were any outages it was normally due to scheduled maintenance on our end. If the Tableau server ever went down, a quick restart solved most issues
Read full review
Performance
MicroStrategy
Being able to customize the performance based on the business need is extremely powerful. Proper configuration and understanding of the usage pattern is key, if the technical ability of the architect is not at top level, then the product will not be configured correctly which will lead to poor performance.
Read full review
Tableau
While there are definitely cases where a user can do things that will make a particular worksheet or dashboard run slowly, overall the performance is extremely fast. The user experience of exploratory analysis particularly shines, there's nothing out there with the polish of Tableau.
Read full review
Support Rating
MicroStrategy
Good user community. Support team is available if you are under AMC. You get decent support after raising the support ticket. If it is product bug they will inform you and let you know which patch will resolve the same.
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Tableau
We have consistently had highly satisfactory results every time we've reached out for help. Our contractor, used for Tableau server maintenance and dashboard development is very technically skilled. When he hits a roadblock on how to do something with Tableau, the support staff have provided timely and useful guidance. He frequently compares it to Cognos and says that while Cognos has capabilities Tableau doesn't, the bottom line value for us is a no-brainer
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In-Person Training
MicroStrategy
No answers on this topic
Tableau
In our case, they hired a private third party consultant to train our dept. It was extremely boring and felt like it dragged on. Everything I learned was self taught so I was not really paying attention. But I do think that you can easily spend a week on the tool and go over every nook and cranny. We only had the consultant in for a day or two.
Read full review
Online Training
MicroStrategy
I have attended many trainings offered by MicroStrategy; both distance and in-person training. I earned my CRD (Certified Report Developer) certification via the online training. I found the training to be well organized and concise. Overall I will definitely continue to increase my knowledge with MicroStrategy via the online training offering.
Read full review
Tableau
The Tableau website is full of videos that you can follow at your own pace. As a very small company with a Tableau install, access to these free resources was incredibly useful to allowing me to implement Tableau to its potential in a reasonable and proportionate manner.
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Implementation Rating
MicroStrategy
We measured following KPI for the success
  • Increase in Business Feeds Loads
  • Reduction in Controllers Manual Work.
  • Conversion of Manual Work into Systematic Workflows.
  • Increase in Customer Spend
  • Reduction in Service costs
  • Reduction in time-to-market for new campaigns
  • Increase in cross sell and Up sell
  • Error reduction in customer Identification
  • Existing client retained
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Tableau
Implementation was over the phone with the vendor, and did not go particularly well. Again, think this was our fault as our integration and IT oversight was poor, and we made errors. Would they have happened had a vendor been onsite? Not sure, probably not, but we probably wouldn't have paid for that either
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Alternatives Considered
MicroStrategy
Tableau is probably MicroStrategy Analytic's biggest competitor I've noticed over time, and I'm not sure why. Tableau only covers visualizations independently for each business user, which then creates the issues of every employee creating their own version of the data, and then you have 20 versions of the truth. A enterprise data warehouse and MicroStrategy's Visual Insight is a better method.
Read full review
Tableau
Today, if my shop is largely Microsoft-centric, I would be hard pressed to choose a product other than Power BI. Tableau was the visualization leader for years, but Microsoft has caught up with them in many areas, and surpassed them in some. Its ability to source, transform, and model data is superior to Tableau. Tableau still has the lead in some visualizations, but Power BI's rise is evidenced by its ever-increasing position in the leadership section of the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
Read full review
Scalability
MicroStrategy
This software is extremely scaleable, one can add more core servers which performs as a load balancing. The configurations available to manage usage patterns and daily activity are as high a caliber as any other enterprise level software. This product can be installed on both a windows and unix platform allow for integration on a budget.
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
MicroStrategy
  • MicroStrategy was helpful for reducing the amount of time we needed to spend number crunching large data sets, and in doing so, allowed me as the primary users to spend more time gleaning insights from the data that in turn informed our leadership team to make strategic decisions.
  • By creating numerous canned reports available to all members of the team through email distribution or basic access to the platform, we were able to reduce the time I spent showing people how to pull the data in Microsoft Excel by nearly 40% .
  • We ended up needing to make many changes to the way our DMP was feeding data into MicroStrategy due to incorrect reporting that caused complications in accounting and finance.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau does take dedicated FTE to create and analyze the data. It's too complex (and powerful) a product not to have someone dedicated to developing with it.
  • There are some significant setup for the server product.
  • Once sever setup is complete, it's largely "fire and forget" until an update is necessary. The server update process is cumbersome.
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ScreenShots

Tableau Server Screenshots

Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 2.Screenshot of Tableau Server permissions view.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 2.