Apache Kafka vs Tableau Server | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.9 out of 10

Based on 59 reviews and ratings

Score 7.9 out of 10

Based on 750 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Pixel Perfect reports

Customizable dashboards

Report Formatting Templates

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Drill-down analysis

Formatting capabilities

Integration with R or other statistical packages

Report sharing and collaboration

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Publish to Web

Publish to PDF

Report Versioning

Report Delivery Scheduling

Delivery to Remote Servers

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)

Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization

Predictive Analytics

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Multi-User Support (named login)

Role-Based Security Model

Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Responsive Design for Web Access

Dedicated iOS Application

Dedicated Android Application

Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

REST API

Javascript API

iFrames

Java API

Themeable User Interface (UI)

Customizable Platform (Open Source)

Pros

Apache Kafka is able to handle a large number of I/Os (writes) using 3-4 cheap servers.
It scales very well over large workloads and can handle extreme-scale deployments (eg. Linkedin with 300 billion user events each day).
The same Kafka setup can be used as a messaging bus, storage system or a log aggregator making it easy to maintain as one system feeding multiple applications.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Airlines/Aviation Company, 51-200 employees

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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

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Verified User

Program Manager in Customer Service

Computer Software Company, 10,001+ employees

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Cons

Still a bit inmature, some clients have required recoding in the last few versions
New feaures coming very fast, several upgrades a year may be required
Not many commercial companies provide support

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Juan Francisco Tavira

Global Technology Centre - Middleware

ProdubanFinancial Services, 10,001+ employees

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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

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Jacob Rasmussen

Data Engineer

QualtricsComputer Software, 1001-5000 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Apache Kafka 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Kafka is quickly becoming core product of the organization, indeed it is replacing older messaging systems. No better alternatives found yet

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Juan Francisco Tavira

Global Technology Centre - Middleware

ProdubanFinancial Services, 10,001+ employees

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Tableau Server 10.0

Based on 20 answers

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.

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Mathieu Gaouette

Consultant BI senior/Administrateur - spécialité SAS

Prospective MG inc.Telecommunications, 10,001+ employees

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Usability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Server 9.0

Based on 11 answers

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.

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Owner, previous CEO

Econometric StudiosFinancial Services, 10,001+ employees

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Reliability and Availability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Server 9.0

Based on 9 answers

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

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Management Consulting Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 9 answers on this topic

Performance

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Server 8.1

Based on 8 answers

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.

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Jonathan Drummey

Quality Management Data Analyst

Southern Maine Medical CenterHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees

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Support Rating

Apache Kafka 8.8

Based on 6 answers

We are using the Apache open source version of Kafka. The community is a good place to ask questions. and we can get most of our problems resolved there.

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Verified User

Strategist in Information Technology

Package/Freight Delivery Company, 10,001+ employees

View all 6 answers on this topic

Tableau Server 9.1

Based on 12 answers

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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Program Manager

Department of Health & HospitalsGovernment Administration, 1001-5000 employees

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In-Person Training

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Server 8.0

Based on 4 answers

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.

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BI Analyst

Kaiser Foundation Health PlanUtilities, 10,001+ employees

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Online Training

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Server 9.0

Based on 9 answers

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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MD

InterWorksComputer Software, 11-50 employees

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Implementation Rating

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Server 9.1

Based on 13 answers

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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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Leisure, Travel & Tourism Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

I would only use RabbitMQ over Kafka when you need to have delay queues or tons of small topics/queues around.I don't know too much about Pulsar - currently evaluating it - but it's supposed to have the same or better throughput while allowing for tons of queues. Stay tuned - I might update this review after we finish evaluating Pulsar. It's much less battle-tested though.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Internet Company, 201-500 employees

View all 6 answers on this topic

We used and still are using IBM Cognos for business intelligence purposes. It is good for use as a data infrastructure and analytic framework, rather than a BI toolkit, but Tableau is replacing Cognos fast. We used D3.js for a few proofs of concept visualization and dashboarding, but those efforts stopped because of productivity and maintenance problems.

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Verified User

Project Manager in Research & Development

Hospital & Health Care Company, 10,001+ employees

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Return on Investment

Positive impact on ROI since now we can use one large deployment of Apache Kafka that can be used for multiple scenarios ( storage systems, log aggregate, messaging queue ).
It is open-source so there are no licenses or subscription fees reducing the cost of deployment.
Data can now be ingested and analyzed in real-time making it easy to fine-tune the customer experience and decision making for internal IT.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Airlines/Aviation Company, 51-200 employees

View all 6 answers on this topic

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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Verified User

Executive in Information Technology

Education Management Company, 1001-5000 employees

View all 105 answers on this topic

Screenshots

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See All (5) Tableau Server Screenshots

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Apache Kafka Editions & Modules

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Additional Pricing Details

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General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Tableau Server Editions & Modules

Edition

Creator	$70.00¹
Explorer	$35.00¹
Viewer	$12.00¹

Per User Per Month

Additional Pricing Details

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Rating Summary

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

Apache Kafka

Tableau Server

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