Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Infor Birst
Score 6.4 out of 10
N/A
Infor Birst offers multi-tenant cloud BI for deployment in a public or private cloud, or on-premises. It provides an in-memory columnar data store and a BI layer comprising a reporting engine, predictive analytics tools, mobile native apps, dashboards, discovery tools, and an open client interface.N/A
Tableau Cloud
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Cloud (formerly Tableau Online) is a self-service analytics platform that is fully hosted in the cloud. Tableau Cloud enables users to publish dashboards and invite colleagues to explore hidden opportunities with interactive visualizations and accurate data, from any browser or mobile device.
$15
per month per user
Tableau Server
Score 7.6 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
Infor BirstTableau CloudTableau Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Tableau Viewer
$15
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Viewer
$35
per month billed annually per user
Tableau Explorer
$42
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Explorer
$70
per month billed annually per user
Tableau Creator
$75
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Creator
$115
per month billed annually per user
Tableau+
Contact Sales
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Infor BirstTableau CloudTableau Server
Free Trial
NoNoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Infor BirstTableau CloudTableau Server
Considered Multiple Products
Infor Birst
Chose Infor Birst
Birst is the best all in one tool that we found, especially at a good price point and already using Infor
Chose Infor Birst
Tableau does not have a common semantic layer like BIRST does so we use Tableau for data discovery purposes and BIRST for enterprise BI.
Within BIRST, we can increase the level of data governance.
Chose Infor Birst
Birst provide a much better web UI and end user experience and distribution mechanism than both Tableau and SSRS. Power BI simply did not have the full complement of features that we needed at the time of our selection to be competitive and Pentaho was too custom and would have …
Chose Infor Birst
Birst was the only tool that did the following:
  • robust enough ETL for our data warehouse team
  • data would remain within our data warehouse and not within the tool's proprietary store, in case the company went out of business.
Chose Infor Birst
There are a few items I evaluate when looking at different tools.
  1. Price per user
  2. License price
Chose Infor Birst
We compared Birst vs Tableau and Lumirra and there's no question that Birst is the best option from a cost perspective. Additionally, the ease of use complemented with our support team has allowed us to innovate on the platform quickly
Chose Infor Birst
We evaluated and compared Birst, OBIEE 12c, and Tableau based on several criteria such as "Data Analysis & Discovery", "Data Integration", "Security model", "Data Visualization", "User Experience" or "Infrastructure & Architecture".
The only point where Birst was rated higher …
Chose Infor Birst
  • Birst lacks external modular components power bi has currently. New custom visuals, charts, statistical models created by third party vendors can be added to existing dashboard and enhanced.
  • Birst lacks interactive dashboard functionality and external inputs.
  • Powerbi and Tableau
Chose Infor Birst
  • Value for money
  • Birst was by far less expensive than the other tools evaluated in regards the KPIs defined
Chose Infor Birst
We needed multi-tenancy, embedding, scalability and preferred a cloud solution that removed the need for us to manage upgrades.
Chose Infor Birst
Both Tableau and Qlik needed back end data preparation done before they could start. BIRST has that full process integrated. Most importantly, BIRST's fully integrated stack (we chose the cloud option) allows you to focus on delivering what your organization needs, without …
Chose Infor Birst
We preferred to have an all-in-one cloud solution that could connect to Salesforce.com and on-premise servers. I thought the combination of ETL built into a star-schema was unmatched. QlikView could do something similar, but the resulting data file was not an enterprise grade …
Chose Infor Birst
- Great could solution.
- Modern UI for Dashboards.
Tableau Cloud
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau Desktop is great because it has much more extensive capabilities. Tableau Prep is great for ETL. It makes it easy to aggregate multiple data sources, union, clean, etc. It is easy to QA within Prep, and takes a lot of the guesswork out of troubleshooting issues with …
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau Online is much better at presenting and visualizing and manipulating your data. While Host Analytics is second to none in data consolidation, Tableau has much greater flexibility in exploring that data.
Chose Tableau Cloud
Both Tableau Online and BI solutions provide visualizations. In Power BI we choose the visualization first, then drag the data into it. In Tableau, we select the data and switch between visualizations on the fly. It’s easier to jump between visualizations in Tableau. Power BI …
Chose Tableau Cloud
From an analyst point of view, Tableau is the most intuitive tool and it's really easy to use. It's simply the most convenient product and gives the biggest possibilities. Of course, it's more expensive and not all features are necessary for some users. I have chosen Tableau
Chose Tableau Cloud
Birst seems very good at getting data aggregated into the tool (ETL), but weaker at the front end visualizations.
Tableau Server
Chose Tableau Server
The choice to use Tableau Server is really made for you if you already have adopted Tableau Desktop. If you're focused on an on-premise solution, Tableau is probably the way that you'll have to go. Looker and Mode are cloud-based (so is Tableau Online) and offer a true …
Features
Infor BirstTableau CloudTableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Infor Birst
7.4
77 Ratings
10% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.6
74 Ratings
7% below category average
Tableau Server
8.4
95 Ratings
3% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.068 Ratings7.656 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.077 Ratings8.774 Ratings7.094 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.159 Ratings6.563 Ratings9.081 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Infor Birst
7.0
78 Ratings
14% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.6
74 Ratings
5% below category average
Tableau Server
7.8
95 Ratings
3% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.078 Ratings8.674 Ratings8.095 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.077 Ratings7.271 Ratings8.093 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages6.127 Ratings6.247 Ratings8.059 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration7.068 Ratings8.672 Ratings7.089 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Infor Birst
8.0
75 Ratings
3% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.8
72 Ratings
5% below category average
Tableau Server
7.2
91 Ratings
13% below category average
Publish to Web8.052 Ratings8.568 Ratings8.085 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.067 Ratings7.567 Ratings7.084 Ratings
Report Versioning7.28 Ratings7.655 Ratings8.070 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.066 Ratings8.559 Ratings8.077 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings6.538 Ratings5.19 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Infor Birst
6.9
72 Ratings
15% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.8
70 Ratings
2% below category average
Tableau Server
8.3
90 Ratings
4% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.072 Ratings8.267 Ratings9.086 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.058 Ratings8.366 Ratings8.085 Ratings
Predictive Analytics5.833 Ratings7.857 Ratings8.064 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings7.26 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Infor Birst
8.3
72 Ratings
2% below category average
Tableau Cloud
8.4
69 Ratings
1% below category average
Tableau Server
10.0
95 Ratings
16% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.070 Ratings8.363 Ratings10.093 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.068 Ratings7.756 Ratings10.090 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.069 Ratings8.559 Ratings10.092 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings8.77 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.754 Ratings10.062 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Infor Birst
5.0
54 Ratings
43% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.5
59 Ratings
3% below category average
Tableau Server
8.1
79 Ratings
5% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access7.052 Ratings7.457 Ratings10.077 Ratings
Mobile Application3.034 Ratings7.744 Ratings7.061 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile3.042 Ratings7.851 Ratings7.068 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Infor Birst
-
Ratings
Tableau Cloud
6.9
41 Ratings
11% below category average
Tableau Server
6.4
46 Ratings
19% below category average
REST API00 Ratings7.936 Ratings8.040 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings7.334 Ratings8.037 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.833 Ratings6.040 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings5.629 Ratings5.57 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.735 Ratings6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings7.232 Ratings4.67 Ratings
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User Ratings
Infor BirstTableau CloudTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(99 ratings)
9.3
(75 ratings)
8.0
(111 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(35 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(12 ratings)
8.8
(28 ratings)
8.0
(17 ratings)
Availability
4.1
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
7.5
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
6.0
(19 ratings)
8.7
(20 ratings)
3.0
(18 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.3
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Configurability
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
6.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
5.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Infor BirstTableau CloudTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Infor
Infor Birst OEM and embedded analytics are well suited for advanced analytics and business intelligence. It has flexible deployment features and a lot of configuration ability with low code - no coding ability. Ability to ingest data from multiple live data sources. Source data from multiple sources can be segregated into multiple sections based on business criteria. Easily searchable business terms (metadata) across all enterprise analytic content.
Read full review
Tableau
If you're using Tableau as the primary BI tool, then Tableau Cloud is well suited to publish and share the results with a wide(r) audience. It is well suited for various degrees of self-service proficiency, from pure consumers of analytical work to more advanced users who can use web editing for smaller or larger adjustments, and even for desktop power users who will publish their work to Tableau Cloud. It has many good ways to organize the content and make it easily accessible via search, favorites, folders, collections ("playlists for your data"), or history ("recents"). It might not be ideally suited if there are many on-prem sources to be used (even though there are options to connect them) or if you have very special requirements regarding custom server setup, which is limited in a shared cloud environment like Tableau Cloud.
Read full review
Tableau
Whole funnel and specific channel performance from upper to lower funnel metrics. The ability to view full channel performance for some time, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly, has truly been monumental in how my team optimizes specific channels and campaigns. Daily performance tracking is a bit overwhelming, with load times and having to refresh specific live views over time. It can be challenging to do so at times, as extensive dashboards take much longer to load.
Read full review
Pros
Infor
  • End-to-end solution, from raw source data, ETL, warehousing and reporting, Birst is able to do everything we need in one package instead of needing to develop and maintain multiple technologies
  • Intuitive report development. The drag and drop creation of reports is simple. More complicated queries are easy to generate.
  • Very user-friendly and interactive. A lot of nice features are available both for developers and end users to streamline the process of preparing and consuming data
  • Rich API which allows us to programmatically interact with Birst
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau Online is completely cloud based and that's why the reports and dashboards are accessible even on the go. One doesn't always need to access the office laptop to access the reports.
  • The visualizations are interactive and one can quickly change the level at which they want to view the information. For example, one person might be more interested in looking at the country level performances rather than client level. This is intuitive and one doesn't need to create multiple reports for the same.
  • The feature to ask questions in plain vanilla English language is great and helpful. For quick adhoc fact checks one can simply type what they are looking for and the Natural Language Programming algorithms under the hood parse the query, interpret it and then fetch the results accordingly in a visual form.
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
Infor
  • Birst prices are fairly expensive. License plus cost of users can add up pretty quickly
  • Depending on the size of data, rendering of reports can take a little bit. Need faster processing of data
  • Takes a little time to understand how to build reports, not the most intuitive UI
Read full review
Tableau
  • Can be a steep learning curve for new users
  • Modeling and building algorithms aren't always intuitive and take some testing/retesting to ensure it's working as it should
  • Inability to integrate easily with our HRIS platform. Reports are pulled from HRIS at various intervals and uploaded into Tableau
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
Infor
We have been able to overcome any of the drawbacks we've found with Birst easily and it has fulfilled almost all of our analytic needs to date. Having seen their roadmap it would be highly unlikely we would move away from this platform any time soon. You simply can't beat the functionality that Birst provides for the price and the things I see coming out of the company solidify that our decision to choose Birst was the best possible choice. We have never regretted the decision.
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
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
Infor
I would like to see additional usability put into the ETL scripting. Recently, Birst added a nice function reference inline to formula creation which has kept me from having to return to documentation so much. The same in ETL would be very beneficial. The interface problems related to the Flex framework are being addressed in a rewrite to HTML 5, but for now they are still a hindrance to a higher usability rating.
Read full review
Tableau
Based on comments from our clients, I awarded it this grade. Non-technical customers frequently compliment us on the ease with which they can utilize Tableau Online. Usability is rarely a source of contention amongst our customers. Few complaints have come from me as a user of our internal products.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Server takes training and experience in order to unlock the application's full potential. This is best handled by a qualified data scientist or data analytics manager. Tableau user interface layout, nomenclature, and command structure take time and training to become proficient with. Integration and connectivity require proper IT developer support.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Infor
We frequently experience -103 errors due to us using the Live Connect functionality, which does not seem to handle even minor interruptions in connectivity, and treats all future connection attempts or data requests as errors, even if the issue does not exist any longer
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
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
Infor
Everything runs very fast and smoothly. The only process that I wish was faster would be processing the data after uploading new data or making changes to the existing data model. It can take 15-20 minutes (roughly) to upload and process new data once you start getting into 10's of millions of rows. Given my experience with how long it takes me to pull the same data using SQL Server Management Studio, I don't think Birst is unreasonably slow - but for me to give a higher rating, I would want it to be unreasonably fast
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
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
Infor
When we have an issue that is stopping our business from proceeding, I want answers sooner than later. While Birst does have a published response time for each case level, we always wish it could be quicker. What response improvement could there be with a larger support team? In response to first question: Blackhole of issues - Birst needs to improve upon closing issues that resolution was dependent upon code fixes or enhancements, perhaps someone to add a comment on all case tickets at least every 60 days. Escalation - I always have the ability to electronically or via phone escalate a ticket. I also have my Customer Success Manager through whom I can escalate topics.
Read full review
Tableau
I have not had any issues that require customer support from Tableau at this time, which speaks well to Tableau. I have taken an online course with Tableau and it was very professional and well done, so based on that I would assume a similar level of quality for their customer service.
Read full review
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
Infor
I have attended two different training sessions. The first one was my initial training on the system. It was well paced, clear and concise. If there were questions that were not able to be answered by the instructor, he took down the question and actually followed up and provided us a response quickly. The second session was specific to the dashboard and report design components. This training was very good though there were some attendants who had little or no experience and their questions slowed the class.
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Tableau
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
Infor
Although I found the online resources helpful, a lack of appropriate examples for certain tasks key to report creation and advanced modeling make the online training/documentation less than perfect. For an inexperienced BI professional, the online training would not enable a streamlined launch of the product.
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
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
Infor
Have clean data! Birst flexibility allows - Start small, then introduce functionality and complexity along the way. If you try to present all the functionality [bells and whistles] and wow them, but bad data is uncovered, the end user blames the new application and turns away.
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
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
Infor
Birst was better than Domo for our needs because we could get in and tinker with it. Our impression of Domo was that it had a lot of connectors and ready to go reports, but it made too many assumptions about applications we use. We customize too much to use a "ready to go" solution like that. When we looked at Tableau, we liked its visualization capabilities, but it wasn't going to help us do the extractions, ETL, and warehousing of data. It may have come some distance since then.
Read full review
Tableau
In determining whether to go with Tableau Online versus Alteryx, two important factors stood out in determining our go-to solution. First, while Alteryx is an impressive tool for data cleansing, it did not stack up in terms of data visualization capabilities. Tableau, on the other hand, provided us everything we needed in terms of visualizing our data and analytics. The second factor is cost. Well neither solution would be considered cheap, Tableau was the more cost effective solution for our needs.
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
Infor
we can see that loading a lot of data can cause a noticable slow down in performance. Birst support indicated that they don't really consider anything less than 30 seconds to be an issue, but that is not the case for our customers, so we have had to change some of implementation to address this
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
Tableau
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Infor
  • Being a manufacturing company we tend to lag behind technologically. But having all the data for different ERP systems in one place has been an eye opener for the executives. It has lessened the need to convert some legacy ERP systems.
  • Having such a simple reporting tool is a great asset to some of our sites that have traditionally had trouble gathering data from AS400 systems.
Read full review
Tableau
  • When we release new products, we are now able to quickly see data and toggle between current periods and previous to see performance
  • Generating new reports requires less IT time to build
  • Data can be shared across many different device types
  • We now have integration where our customers can extract data from our software more easily-this was a big ask from our customers
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.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Infor Birst Screenshots

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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.