BrightGauge vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
BrightGauge is a BI tool from ConnectWise that puts essential information in one place, providing visibility for more informed decisions. The user can customize BrightGauge dashboards and sync other business tools in its BI dashboard software for ultimate visibility. Users can also display data with embeddable gauges on public sites.N/A
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$70
per month
Pricing
BrightGaugeTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Tableau Creator
$70.00
Per User / Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BrightGaugeTableau Desktop
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BrightGaugeTableau Desktop
Considered Both Products
BrightGauge
Chose BrightGauge
BrightGauge is by far the easiest to learn/use of the BI tools I have experienced. We had managers building their own dashboards with no outside help. It is not incredibly versatile though so if you want to get much more beyond taking the data and putting it in a chart or table …
Tableau Desktop

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BrightGaugeTableau Desktop
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
BrightGauge
7.9
9 Ratings
4% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.5
166 Ratings
4% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports6.85 Ratings8.3138 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.09 Ratings9.0165 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.08 Ratings8.3144 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
BrightGauge
8.2
9 Ratings
1% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.9
163 Ratings
9% above category average
Drill-down analysis9.09 Ratings9.2158 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.09 Ratings8.9161 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.04 Ratings8.3121 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.08 Ratings9.3156 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
BrightGauge
8.0
9 Ratings
4% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.8
157 Ratings
5% above category average
Publish to Web9.05 Ratings9.2148 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.09 Ratings8.4148 Ratings
Report Versioning7.05 Ratings8.6115 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.09 Ratings9.1122 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.12 Ratings8.572 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
BrightGauge
8.6
8 Ratings
6% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.6
155 Ratings
6% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.88 Ratings8.9153 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization9.03 Ratings8.8148 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.04 Ratings8.7125 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
BrightGauge
7.7
9 Ratings
11% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.7
141 Ratings
1% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.09 Ratings8.8138 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model5.08 Ratings8.4118 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.68 Ratings8.7128 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.01 Ratings8.976 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
BrightGauge
8.9
3 Ratings
11% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.4
134 Ratings
6% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access9.02 Ratings8.6123 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.73 Ratings8.7116 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings8.396 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
BrightGauge
7.7
4 Ratings
3% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.6
63 Ratings
8% above category average
REST API10.03 Ratings8.555 Ratings
Javascript API9.62 Ratings8.350 Ratings
iFrames6.01 Ratings8.848 Ratings
Java API6.01 Ratings8.745 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)5.01 Ratings8.452 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)9.62 Ratings8.845 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BrightGaugeTableau Desktop
Small Businesses
Cyfe
Cyfe
Score 8.3 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BrightGaugeTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(9 ratings)
8.8
(193 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(39 ratings)
Usability
9.8
(2 ratings)
8.6
(63 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
6.1
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(2 ratings)
6.9
(56 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(34 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BrightGaugeTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
ConnectWise
I think this tool is an absolute have to have for MSPs, especially those using ConnectWise PSA for a ticketing system. From internal KPIs to showing customer's the value of your Managed Service, you will need this tool. 9/10 because the need for longer data sets is growing for my team. Trend lines over time are a big push industry wide to show improvements in our customers over the time as our MSP customer. Presently my team has to use CW PSA's Report Writer and that tool is the least user friendly we've encountered. Looking forward to the evolution of BrightGauge for our business
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Desktop is one the finest tool available in the market with such a wide range of capabilities in its suite that makes it easy to generate insights. Further, if optimally designed, then its reports are fairly simple to understand, yet capable enough to make changes at the required levels. One can create a variety of visualizations as required by the business or the clients. The data pipelines in the backend are very robust. The tableau desktop also provides options to develop the reports in developer mode, which is one of the finest features to embed and execute even the most complex possible logic. It's easier to operate, simple to navigate, and fluent to understand by the users.
Read full review
Pros
ConnectWise
  • Robust and flexible kinds of dashboards and gauges
  • Great customer support that often leaves custom video recordings answering your question, showing you how to do what you're asking
  • Good ability to tie into critical data sources for our company's operations
Read full review
Tableau
  • An excellent tool for data visualization, it presents information in an appealing visual format—an exceptional platform for storing and analyzing data in any size organization.
  • Through interactive parameters, it enables real-time interaction with the user and is easy to learn and get support from the community.
Read full review
Cons
ConnectWise
  • Modifying data sets to bring in custom fields requires an experienced SQL engineer
  • Cost when bringing in lots of data sources can be prohibitive
  • Limited ability to format gauges and reports
  • Make MFA a requirement - this data is sensitive and giving the admin the ability to force MFA is a MUST!
Read full review
Tableau
  • Formatting the data to work correctly in graphical presentations can be time consuming
  • Daily data extracts can run slowly depending on how much data is required and the source of the data
  • The desktop version is required for advanced functionality, editing on [the] Tableau server allows only limited features
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
ConnectWise
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Our use of Tableau Desktop is still fairly low, and will continue over time. The only real concern is around cost of the licenses, and I have mentioned this to Tableau and fully expect the development of more sensible models for our industry. This will remove any impediment to expansion of our use.
Read full review
Usability
ConnectWise
Usability is BrightGauge's strength. Granting the ability of virtually any user to be able to create a dashboard is incredibly valuable. If an organization very simple and straight forward reporting needs then BrightGauge is a perfect fit for them. Connecting to the dataset we used was very quick and easy and I imagine it would be the same for any major data source you would like to pull from.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
ConnectWise
No answers on this topic
Tableau
When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.
Read full review
Performance
ConnectWise
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast
Read full review
Support Rating
ConnectWise
We did not need to use BrightGauge's support for the entire time that we used it. Best support is always the one that isn't needed because nothing breaks.
Read full review
Tableau
I have never really used support much, to be honest. I think the support is not as user-friendly to search and use it. I did have an encounter with them once and it required a bit of going back and forth for licensing before reaching a resolution. They did solve my issue though
Read full review
In-Person Training
ConnectWise
No answers on this topic
Tableau
It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.
Read full review
Online Training
ConnectWise
No answers on this topic
Tableau
The training for new users are quite good because it covers topic wise training and the best part was that it also had video tutorials which are very helpful
Read full review
Implementation Rating
ConnectWise
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Again, training is the key and the company provides a lot of example videos that will help users discover use cases that will greatly assist their creation of original visualizations. As with any new software tool, productivity will decline for a period. In the case of Tableau, the decline period is short and the later gains are well worth it.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
ConnectWise
We looked very briefly at Solar Winds, but due to Connectwise the reporting was not very accurate and was conflicted.
Read full review
Tableau
If we do not have legacy tools which have already been set up, I would switch the visualization method to open source software via PyCharm, Atom, and Visual Studio IDE. These IDEs cannot directly help you to visualize the data but you can use many python packages to do so through these IDEs.
Read full review
Scalability
ConnectWise
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.
Read full review
Return on Investment
ConnectWise
  • Faster compilation of Business Review material
  • For larger customers, the dashboarding has helped our customers to remain sticky and add services/revenue to our MSP. They want to add more fragments of their IT for the 1 pane rollup.
  • From a leadership perspective, BG has allowed me to make difficult staffing decisions with confidence. Detailed metric driven decisions on who is hitting KPIs/who isn't - as well as when data proved we were overstaffed and understaffed.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau was acquired years ago, and has provided good value with the content created.
  • Ongoing maintenance costs for the platform, both to maintain desktop and server licensing has made the continuing value questionable when compared to other offerings in the marketplace.
  • Users have largely been satisfied with the content, but not with the overall performance. This is due to a combination of factors including the performance of the Tableau engines as well as development deficiencies.
Read full review
ScreenShots