Grist vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Grist
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Grist combines the capabilities of spreadsheets, databases and app builders. Using a familiar spreadsheet interface, information can be organized as a relational database, and dashboards built using drag-and-drop. Solving spreadsheet problems Ensures data is well-structured and stored in one place with no duplication, no spreadsheet-wrangling, no merging documents. Collaboration on sensitive data Data is protected…
$8
per month per user
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.3 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
GristTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
Pro
$8
per month per user
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Tableau Creator
$70.00
Per User / Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GristTableau Desktop
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Features
GristTableau Desktop
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Grist
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.5
167 Ratings
4% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings8.5139 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings8.8166 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.2145 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Grist
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.8
164 Ratings
8% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings9.0159 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings9.0162 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings8.1122 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings9.3157 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Grist
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.6
158 Ratings
3% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.7149 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings8.3149 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.6116 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings9.1123 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.473 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Grist
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.6
156 Ratings
6% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings9.0154 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings8.7149 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.7126 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
Grist
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.8
142 Ratings
2% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.8139 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.3119 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.7129 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.977 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Grist
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.4
135 Ratings
5% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.5124 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings8.197 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings8.8117 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Grist
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.7
64 Ratings
9% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.756 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings8.551 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings8.949 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings9.246 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings8.453 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings8.646 Ratings
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User Ratings
GristTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
9.9
(2 ratings)
8.9
(194 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(39 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(63 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
6.1
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 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
GristTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
Grist Labs
This is well suited to someone (or a team) who are technically minded and have a dataset that they need to be able to use in many ways. It's less appropriate for a team who isn't technically minded and/or don't have the data they need to manipulate. It would be useful for things that you could use a database or spreadsheet for such as CRM, Advertising database, Business tracking, Health tracking etc.
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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
Grist Labs
  • Provides amazing customer service, help, examples, and explains what they are having you do
  • The layout is easy
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
Grist Labs
  • Making the user permissions more obvious on how to use them - They are highly adaptable, but hard to understand how to use them
  • Small changes such as auto colouring the choices/toggles options and being able to edit them once set.
  • Being able to copy the formatting from one column to the next
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
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Likelihood to Renew
Grist Labs
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.
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Usability
Grist Labs
No answers on this topic
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Grist Labs
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.
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Performance
Grist Labs
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
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Support Rating
Grist Labs
No answers on this topic
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
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In-Person Training
Grist Labs
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.
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Online Training
Grist Labs
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
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Implementation Rating
Grist Labs
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Grist Labs
Grist is easier to use, faster, and loads quicker with heavy data.
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.
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Scalability
Grist Labs
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.
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Return on Investment
Grist Labs
  • It's saved a lot of time in both creating an advertising database and managing it week to week effectively. I had previously created in others that haven't worked, and this does, saving me a good 1 hour weekly, and 5 hours or more each time I had problems with the last ones
  • Being able to stay on track with this has meant I'm following up at the right time (advertisers) and keeping a professional manner and not losing business due to missed communication
  • Saving me $ from buying a program like Access (or Airtable monthly) and then the learning curve that that has. This has a much easier learning curve to say the least.
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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

Grist Screenshots

Screenshot of the drag and drop dashboard editor used to build layouts.Screenshot of the custom user permissions that determine who can see what, down to each column and row.Screenshot of dynamic charts and reports that update with the click of a mouse.Screenshot of Grist's formula support for Excel-like functions or Python formulas. Technical users can drill into database structure in code view.