Plotly Chart Studio vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Plotly Chart Studio
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Plotly headquartered in Montreal offers Chart Studio, a data visualization tool with an open source and free cloud editions, as well as enterprise editions deployable on-cloud or on-premise. The vendor describes Chart Studio as a sophisticated editor for creating D3.js and WebGL charts.
$99
per month
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.
$75
per month
Pricing
Plotly Chart StudioTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
Private Hosting
$99.00
per month
Tableau
$75
per month per user
Tableau Enterprise
$115
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Plotly Chart StudioTableau 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
Plotly Chart StudioTableau Desktop
Features
Plotly Chart StudioTableau Desktop
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Plotly Chart Studio
8.0
1 Ratings
2% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.4
175 Ratings
3% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.01 Ratings8.1145 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings9.1174 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.1151 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Plotly Chart Studio
9.0
1 Ratings
12% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.3
172 Ratings
3% above category average
Integration with R or other statistical packages9.01 Ratings8.0126 Ratings
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings8.5167 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings8.4170 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings8.5165 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Plotly Chart Studio
8.5
1 Ratings
7% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.3
164 Ratings
4% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.01 Ratings8.5162 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.01 Ratings8.5156 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings7.57 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Plotly Chart Studio
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.3
166 Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.0155 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings8.0154 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.3120 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings8.6128 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.678 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Plotly Chart Studio
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.9
149 Ratings
4% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings9.0145 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.8125 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.7136 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.010 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings9.183 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Plotly Chart Studio
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
7.9
141 Ratings
2% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.7130 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.3101 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings7.5122 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Plotly Chart Studio
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
7.9
67 Ratings
2% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.259 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings7.953 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings7.251 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings8.548 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.754 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings8.248 Ratings
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User Ratings
Plotly Chart StudioTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(2 ratings)
8.4
(203 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(41 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(72 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(57 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(34 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(4 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Plotly Chart StudioTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
Plotly
[Plotly Chart Studio is] a great tool to make visualizations on a web based portal. For python developers, it can ease of some burden of writing code again and again for the same thing and also refreshing visualizations on old scripts when data changes. All in all, a simple yet effective tool for your report generation and visualization needs[.]
Read full review
Tableau
The best scenario is definitely to collect data from several sources and create dedicated dashboards for specific recipients. However, I miss the possibility of explaining these reports in more detail. Sometimes, we order a report, and after half a year, we don't remember the meaning of some data (I know it's our fault as an organization, but the tool could force better practices).
Read full review
Pros
Plotly
  • Connects to almost every kind of data source like SQL, Excel, MS Access, flat files and more.
  • Charts get saved to the repository and are re-used by multiple users.
  • No need of manual intervention in order to refresh the charts every time the data gets changed.
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
Plotly
  • Lack of customer support
  • Sometimes fails to visualize extremely large datasets ( probably also due to computer resource constraints)
Read full review
Tableau
  • Pricing should be more user-friendly and usage-driven
  • Making edits to the production reports is fairly tough and has a vast scope of additional capabilities
  • Tableau Desktop should be able to differentiate itself from the Tableau server else there is no major meaning of two different products being offered
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Plotly
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
Plotly
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
Plotly
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
Plotly
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
Plotly
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Tableau support has been extremely responsive and willing to help with all of our requests. They have assisted with creating advanced analysis and many different types of custom icons, data formatting, formulas, and actions embedded into graphs. Tableau offers a weekly presentation of features and assists with internal company projects.
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In-Person Training
Plotly
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
Plotly
No answers on this topic
Tableau
I think the training was good overall, but it was maybe stating the obvious things that a tech savvy young engineer would be able to pick up themselves too. However, the example work books were good and Tableau web community has helped me with many problems
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Plotly
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
Plotly
Read full review
Tableau
I have used Power BI as well, the pricing is better, and also training costs or certifications are not that high. Since there is python integration in Power BI where I can use data cleaning and visualizing libraries and also some machine learning models. I can import my python scripts and create a visualization on processed data.
Read full review
Scalability
Plotly
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
Plotly
  • Improvement in productivity as charts can be shared with teams and feedback can be collected, consolidated and incorporated in the design and charts.
  • Charts are aligned with the organization theme and colors and one doesn't need to put in effort every time to do that.
  • No upfront capital expenditure and minimum user criteria helps the organization to keep the costs down.
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