Geckoboard vs. Microsoft BI (MSBI)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Geckoboard
Score 6.4 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Geckoboard enables users to create real time dashboards using data from over 80 cloud services. It integrates with other products such as: AWeber, Basecamp, Campaign Monitor and HubSpot.
$35
per month
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft BI is a business intelligence product used for data analysis and generating reports on server-based data. It features unlimited data analysis capacity with its reporting engine, SQL Server Reporting Services alongside ETL, master data management, and data cleansing.
$9.99
per user/per month
Pricing
GeckoboardMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
Editions & Modules
Starter
$35
per month
Team
$159
per month
Team Plus
$275
per month
Company
$599
per month
Power BI Pro
$9.99
per user/per month
Power BI Premium
4,995
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GeckoboardMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Features
GeckoboardMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
9.3
5 Ratings
13% above category average
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.6
49 Ratings
5% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.03 Ratings9.042 Ratings
Customizable dashboards10.05 Ratings8.049 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates10.04 Ratings8.947 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
7.7
5 Ratings
5% below category average
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.7
49 Ratings
7% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.04 Ratings8.944 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.03 Ratings8.049 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.02 Ratings8.939 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.05 Ratings8.949 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
9.0
5 Ratings
7% above category average
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.9
48 Ratings
6% above category average
Publish to Web10.05 Ratings8.944 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.01 Ratings8.944 Ratings
Report Versioning9.02 Ratings8.940 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.03 Ratings8.943 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.03 Ratings8.924 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
8.7
5 Ratings
7% above category average
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.9
48 Ratings
10% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)10.05 Ratings8.947 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization10.05 Ratings8.944 Ratings
Predictive Analytics6.02 Ratings8.942 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
7.8
5 Ratings
10% below category average
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.9
49 Ratings
3% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.05 Ratings8.946 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model7.03 Ratings8.943 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.03 Ratings8.946 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)6.12 Ratings8.928 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
9.5
5 Ratings
17% above category average
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.5
39 Ratings
6% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access9.05 Ratings8.036 Ratings
Mobile Application10.03 Ratings8.027 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile10.04 Ratings9.936 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
10.0
2 Ratings
23% above category average
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.8
21 Ratings
10% above category average
REST API10.02 Ratings8.919 Ratings
Javascript API10.02 Ratings8.919 Ratings
iFrames10.02 Ratings8.918 Ratings
Java API10.02 Ratings8.917 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)10.02 Ratings8.918 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)10.02 Ratings8.017 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GeckoboardMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 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
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User Ratings
GeckoboardMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(6 ratings)
8.7
(73 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(25 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.9
(14 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.9
(15 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
6.9
(3 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(7 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
GeckoboardMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
Likelihood to Recommend
Geckoboard
Great value for the money. Excellent for smaller agencies with multiple projects and teams in a smaller space. We can quickly roll out mobile displays to help with a particular deployment push or monitoring a clients website engagement. It's also useful for showing live data without requiring analytics to run reports from a CRM, etc.
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Microsoft
Microsoft BI is well suited for Stream analytics, easy data integration, report creation and UI/UX designs (limited but what all available are great ones) Microsoft BI may be less appropriate for handling huge number of datasets and difficult queries. It may also be difficult for a company with heavy data.
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Pros
Geckoboard
  • User self-help - the video tutorials and a robust publicly accessible knowledgebase.
  • Geckoboard can aggregate data from a number of other apps into a singular dashboard.
  • Sleek, dark UI.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Comparatively easy to use compared to other data analytics solutions, collaborating with other colleagues on data work is simple.
  • Using Visual Studio for database, ETL, reporting, and analytics development save time and money.
  • Transfer of data from one application to another via Excel and comparison of data attributes between applications
  • Dashboard functionality, as well as Python support, are available, allowing you to add additional charts and graphs.
Read full review
Cons
Geckoboard
  • A bit more flexibility in the number of columns would be nice.
  • Ability to scale to mobile device (web).
  • App capabilities are missing on Android.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • The race to perfect gathering of Non-Traditional datasets is on-going; with Microsoft arguably not the leader of the pack in this category.
  • Licensing options for PowerBI visualizations may be a factor. I.e. if you need to implement B2C PowerBI visualizations, the cost is considerably high especially for startups.
  • Some clients are still resistant putting their data on the cloud, which restricts lots of functionality to Power BI.
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Likelihood to Renew
Geckoboard
My company did not renew due to changes in the organization.
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Microsoft
Microsoft BI is fundamental to our suite of BI applications. That being said, Northcraft Analytics is focused on delighting our customers, so if the underlying factors of our decision change, we would choose to re-write our BI applications on a different stack. Luckily, mathematics are the fundamental IP of our technology... and is portable across all BI platforms for the foreseeable future.
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Usability
Geckoboard
With a simple interface and available templates, creating basic dashboards is easy. Obviously depending on the data you want to visualize, there may be higher learning curves. That being said, they have a huge amount of integrations and extensible frameworks. If you are using anything made in the past ten years there is an API function or integration that can get it talking to the platform. As such, it's pretty easy to hit the main data points you want and get it on a cheap display in front of your team.
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Microsoft
The Microsoft BI tools have great usability for both developers and end users alike. For developers familiar with Visual Studio, there is little learning curve. For those not, the single Visual Studio IDE means not having to learn separate tools for each component. For end-users, the web interface for SSRS is simple to navigate with intuitive controls. For ad-hoc analysis, Excel can connect directly to SSAS and provide a pivot table like experience which is familiar to many users. For database development, there is beginning to be some confusion, as there are now three tool choices (VS, SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for developers. I would like to see Azure Data Studio become the superset of SSMS and eventually supplant it.
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Reliability and Availability
Geckoboard
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The product has been reliable.
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Performance
Geckoboard
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can drag at times. We created two report servers and placed them under an F5 load balancer. This configuration has worked well. We have seen sluggish performance at times due to the Windows Firewall.
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Support Rating
Geckoboard
The support levels vary based on the level of plan that you have but that's to be expected. Virtually everything except the Enterprise plan has basic chat/email support. While they are responsive they are not going to be much assistance in helping you figure out API calls or implementing 3rd party integrations. That is to be expected and the support community can pretty much get you in the right direction if you look.
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Microsoft
While support from Microsoft isn't necessarily always best of breed, you're also not paying the price for premium support that you would on other platforms. The strength of the stack is in the ecosystem that surrounds it. In contrast to other products, there are hundreds, even thousands of bloggers that post daily as well as vibrant user communities that surround the tool. I've had much better luck finding help with SQL Server related issues than I have with any other product, but that help doesn't always come directly from Microsoft.
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In-Person Training
Geckoboard
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.
Read full review
Online Training
Geckoboard
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
I have used on-line training from Microsoft and from Pragmatic Works. I would recommend Pragmatic Works as the best way to get up to speed quickly, and then use the Microsoft on-line training to deep dive into specific features that you need to get depth with.
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Implementation Rating
Geckoboard
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
We are a consulting firm and as such our best resources are always billing on client projects. Our internal implementation has weaknesses, but that's true for any company like ours. My rating is based on the product's ease of implementation.
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Alternatives Considered
Geckoboard
Domo is more robust. We do use both because Geckoboard is really easy to show the rest of our team without the need for additional licenses.
Read full review
Microsoft
We have used the built in ConnectWise Manager reports and custom reports. The reports provide static data. PowerBI shows us live data we can drill down into and easily adjust parameters. It's much more useful than a static PDF report.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Geckoboard
  • While we originally used this as an internal IS tool, we eventually have expanded it to be used by nearly every department.
  • Because pricing is monthly, we can grow or decrease our usage based on our current client needs.
  • Because it is low cost and easy to deploy, we can utilize it in place of considerable resources in analytics and reporting by delivering snapshots of data without pulling reports.
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Microsoft
  • As a SaaS provider we see being able to provide self-service BI to our client users as a competitive advantage. In fact the MSSQL enabled BI is a contributing factor to many winning RFPs we have done for prospective client organisations.
  • However MSSQL BI requires extensive knowledge and skills to design and develop data warehouses & data models as a foundation to support business analysts and users to interrogate data effectively and efficiently. Often times we find having strong in-house MSSQL expertise is a bless.
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ScreenShots

Geckoboard Screenshots

Screenshot of Create live KPI dashboards in minutes. No coding or training required.Screenshot of Easily pull in real-time data from over 80 different tools, including spreadsheets and databases, as well as popular business tools like Salesforce, Zendesk, Google Analytics and many more.Screenshot of Anyone can build custom dashboards that make data and KPIs look professional and are easy for everyone on the team to understand at a glance.Screenshot of Get important numbers in front of the team or stakeholders, whether they're in the office or WFH.Screenshot of Every part of your organisation can surface metrics that matter to them and show progress towards their goals.