Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.
$168
per year per user
Syncfusion Essential Studio
Score7.3 out of 10
N/A
Since 2002, Essential Studio® has supported the development of software applications across industries and economic sectors, in both public and private enterprises.
$0
with the Syncfusion Essential Studio Community License. It includes free access to all 1,600+ controls and is available to companies and individuals with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue and 5 or fewer developers.
Pricing
Microsoft Power BI
Syncfusion Essential Studio
Editions & Modules
Power BI Pro
$14
per month (billed annually) per user
Power BI Premium
$24
per month (billed annually) per user
1. Syncfusion Essential Studio Community License
$0
*The Syncfusion Essential Studio Community License includes free access to all 1,600+ controls and is available to companies and individuals with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue, 5 or fewer developers, and 10 or fewer total employees. Note: An entity or organization may not have ever received more than $3,000,000 USD in capital from an outside source, such as private equity or venture capital, in order to be eligible for the Community License.
2. Essential Studio UI Edition
Custom Quote
per year Packages to suit teams of all sizes
3. Essential Studio Document SDK
Custom Quote
per year Packages to suit teams of all sizes
5. Essential Studio Standalone Document SDKs
Custom Quote
per year PDF Viewer SDK; DOCX Editor SDK; Spreadsheet Editor SDK
4. Essential Studio Standalone UI SDKs
Custom Quote
per year Grid SDK*; Chart SDK*; Schedular SDK; Gantt SDK; Rich Text Editor SDK; Diagram SDK; File Manager SDK*
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Power BI
Syncfusion Essential Studio
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Power BI Desktop is the data exploration and report authoring experience for Power BI, and is available as a free download.
*Grid SDK, Chart SDK, and File Manager SDK are also included as part of the Essential Studio UI Edition.
**The Syncfusion Essential Studio Community License includes free access to all 1,600+ controls and is available to companies and individuals with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue, 5 or fewer developers, and 10 or fewer total employees. Note: An entity or organization may not have ever received more than $3,000,000 USD in capital from an outside source, such as private equity or venture capital, in order to be eligible for the Community License.
Vice President, Mobile technology in Information Technology at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (Financial Services, 10,001+ employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft BI tool does a better job than most of the other software. The reason is excellent visualizations and its capability to connect with various other software and data sources. Tableau does a better job when it comes to tutorials and being more user-friendly. Also …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Report Developer/Designer in Information Technology at Phototype (Graphic Design, 201-500 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Power BI is a good tool overall. The price tag is way lower than Tableau which is a plus, but as you can expect, with a lower price you will probably miss out on a feature here or there. Tableau definitely is more feature rich with the customization and functionality of …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Business Intelligence Manager in Corporate at ZALORA Group (Internet, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Power BI, Tableau, and QlikView are the market leaders when analyzed on Gartner`s magic quadrant for business intelligence tool. One of the critical drawbacks of all these visionary tools is the absence or expensive back end that are needed to support the infrastructure. …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Analyst in Human Resources at Dallas Independent School District (Primary/Secondary Education, 10,001+ employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
As mentioned earlier, Power BI is not as mature as QlikView or Tableau and, as a result, is more limited in the kinds of things it's capable of. That said, it's still highly capable of fulfilling most typical BI dashboard requirements. We chose Power BI partly because of a very …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Senior Consultant in Information Technology at A.T. Kearney (Management Consulting, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
We use in the overlapping areas as data preparation and advanced analytics, monitoring and allerting also other tools as IBM ThingWorx (for the IoT tasks), Splunk (production and banking), SAP Lumira and SAP HANA, SAP Designer (production) and also specialized process mining …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Finance Manager in Finance and Accounting at Toffeln Footwear (Apparel & Fashion, 11-50 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
I have only used reporting and dashboards within our software programs, not used any other 3rd party service so can't comment too much. We went with Power BI because we knew it integrated well with our ERP and is backed by a large and progressive company so is likely to keep …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
VP Consulting Services in Corporate at Tactical Cloud LLC (Computer Software, 11-50 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Better yet, here is a blog explaining how this solution far surpasses iCharts:
https://www.tacticalconnect.com/single-post/2017/03/24/How-Tactical-Connect-far-surpasses-iCharts-for-NetSuite-in-every-possible-way
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
QA Engineer in Quality Assurance at Smoke Guard (Construction, 51-200 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
I currently use Power BI instead of Tableau because I can't yet justify the cost of another Tableau seat to my company. Tableau is a very powerful piece of software that can do a lot of things that Power BI can't, but that comes at a high price. As our data evolves, our needs …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IT Software Administrator in Information Technology at Rowmark, LLC (Plastics, 201-500 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
I thinking Microsoft Power BI is a great start for someone who wants something more powerful and distributable than Excel. During my relatively short evaluation, I did not find Power BI to be up to the task of more powerful tools. However it might compete well if properly …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Freelance Photographer in Research & Development at j. paroly photo (Graphic Design, 1-10 employees)
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft's Power BI is what Excel graphing and pivoting should have been like. Power BI has much better ways to look at your data visually than you can with Excel's own tools. You can select from many built-in graph types or you can use the growing number of add-ons to get …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Microsoft Power BI
As mentioned earlier it is free of cost and easy to learn as it is part of the Microsoft suite product. It blends well with ETL package tools such as SSRS and SSIS. It is also easy to distribute the dashboard to users of Office 365. It is a a complete Microsoft product which …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Has significantly improved collation of data and visualisation especially with business across Europe. Has given me the ability to see the Site availability at the click of a button to see which Site is in the "money" and seize opportunities based on Market data
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The datagrid is probably their most popular control I would think. It is so flexible and configurable. Most of mine are plain views in ASP.NET Core, but I have a whole bunch that are dynamically created at runtime in my controller. That is so powerful.
Options for data source connections are immense. Not just which sources, but your options for *how* the data is brought in.
Constant updates (this is both good and bad at times).
User friendliness. I can get the data connections set up and draft some quick visuals, then release to the target audience and let them expand on it how they want to.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Sometimes links point to dead addresses in the documentation.
Some components have a difficult learning curve but that is usually due to the complexity of the control.
Minor version changes introduce breaking changes, for example updating from 20.1.x to 20.2.x gives us licensing errors, which in my opinion is a kind of breaking change as it requires all users to update their licenses.
Theming with CSS variables is not possible. Access to Theme Studio code is not possible. So a fully custom solution is needed to make Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition components themeable with CSS variables.
Microsoft Power BI is an excellent and scalable tool. It has a learning curve, but once you get past that, the sky is the limit and you can build from the most simple to the most complex dashboards. I have built everything from simple reports with only a few data points to complex reports with many pages and advanced filtering.
It takes effort to include a new component library into existing software, especially in our case where we have 5 large applications that are written and maintained by about 100 developers. So changing such a core thing comes with a lot of effort. The other reason we will very likely renew our use of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition is that it works really well and has helped us to speed up the development process.
Automating reporting has reduced manual data processing by 50-70%, freeing up analysts for higher-value tasks. A finance team that previously spent 20+ hours per week on Excel-based reports now does it in minutes with Microsoft Power BI's automated Real-time dashboards have shortened decision cycles by 30-40%, enabling leadership to react quickly to sales trends, operational bottlenecks, and customer behavior.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I would rate Syncfusion® Essential Studio® a 10 out of 10 for overall usability. The components are intuitive to implement, with clear APIs and consistent design patterns across the suite. This makes it easy for developers to get started quickly and reduces the learning curve even when working with new controls. In addition, the documentation and sample projects provide practical guidance that helps accelerate development. The built-in customization options also allow us to adapt the components to fit our branding and business requirements without excessive effort. Overall, the usability is one of the key reasons why Syncfusion has become an essential part of our development toolset.
It is a fantastic tool, you can do almost everything related with data and reports, it is a perfect substitutive of Power Point and Excel with a high evolution and flexibility, and also it is very friendly and easy to share. I think all companies should have Power BI (or other BI tool) in their software package and if they are in the MS Suite, for sure Power BI should be the one due to all the benefits of the MS ecosystem.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Although I have decades of software development experience, I had never created a website from scratch before, and my html and css skills are not particularly strong. Between documentation and incredible dedication from the support team they helped me overcome all of my challenges. It's amazing that they typically create sample code for most of the issues that I submitted. On rare occasions where I uncovered a defect they kept me informed as to its status, and typically resolved it in a short-term release, and/or gave me a reasonable workaround. They hopped on zoom calls with me on multiple occasions when necessary.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Microsoft Power BI is free. If I didn't want to create a custom platform (i.e. my organization insisted on an existing platform that I *had* to use), I'd use Microsoft Power BI. For any start-up or SMB, I'd just use Claude & Grok to build it quickly, also for free. Would not pay for Tableau or Sigma anymore. Not worth it at all.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Firstly, there is a free version for small businesses and it allows you to jump start without risk. I found one of the other products a bit short in the number of out-of-the-box supported events handlers for each control and, although you can manually add them, I feel more comfortable to just have them ready. After using the free version I just felt in love with Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition controls and decided to stay with them; they have all I need and more. The usage of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition controls is straightforward and intuitive. Support is world-class even for the free version; you get answers in 24 hours at most. Also, the support team is ready to remotely connect to your project in case it is needed; we have had one situation like this, and the issue was solved.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
First of all, I think the best positive impact is the reduce of time development. I do not know exactly how much time, but certainly, using the framework we save a lot of effort and time.
About negative impact, sometimes using the controls of the framewrok have a signifcant impact in the execution time and page load.
And of course, the use of Syncfusion Essential Studio Enterprise Edition has a significant impact of the learning of javascript and JQUERY.
