Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued) vs. Tableau Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Power BI for Office 365 allowed users to model and analyze data, and query large datasets with complex natural language queries. It has been discontinued in favor of other editions of Power BI going forward.N/A
Tableau Server
Score 8.0 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
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)Tableau Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)Tableau Server
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)Tableau Server
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)Tableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
9.0
11 Ratings
10% above category average
Tableau Server
9.5
94 Ratings
15% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports9.010 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.011 Ratings9.793 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates10.08 Ratings9.680 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
9.5
11 Ratings
16% above category average
Tableau Server
9.1
94 Ratings
12% above category average
Drill-down analysis9.011 Ratings8.894 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.011 Ratings8.792 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages10.06 Ratings9.058 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration10.011 Ratings9.788 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
9.5
11 Ratings
13% above category average
Tableau Server
8.3
90 Ratings
0% below category average
Publish to Web10.011 Ratings9.884 Ratings
Publish to PDF10.010 Ratings9.683 Ratings
Report Versioning9.06 Ratings9.069 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.64 Ratings8.276 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.73 Ratings5.19 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
10.0
11 Ratings
22% above category average
Tableau Server
8.7
89 Ratings
8% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)10.010 Ratings8.985 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization10.011 Ratings8.984 Ratings
Predictive Analytics10.08 Ratings8.363 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
9.8
10 Ratings
14% above category average
Tableau Server
8.1
94 Ratings
5% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)10.010 Ratings8.192 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model9.08 Ratings8.189 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)10.09 Ratings8.191 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)10.05 Ratings8.161 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
9.5
10 Ratings
18% above category average
Tableau Server
8.3
78 Ratings
4% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access10.010 Ratings8.076 Ratings
Mobile Application9.09 Ratings8.060 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile10.09 Ratings8.867 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
7.8
3 Ratings
1% below category average
Tableau Server
7.2
45 Ratings
9% below category average
REST API9.02 Ratings9.039 Ratings
Javascript API8.02 Ratings9.036 Ratings
iFrames8.01 Ratings9.039 Ratings
Java API8.01 Ratings5.57 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.02 Ratings6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)7.02 Ratings4.67 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)Tableau Server
Small Businesses
Cyfe
Cyfe
Score 8.8 out of 10
Cyfe
Cyfe
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)Tableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(15 ratings)
8.0
(110 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.2
(4 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
5.2
(16 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
3.0
(18 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)Tableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
If you're already using Office 365, Power BI for O365 is an easy choice. Start playing around with the free version and then easily add individual Pro licenses with little risk. However, if you anticipate using this with many users, it can get expensive quickly.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Server is well suited for a data warehouse build and handling big data. Tableau data aggregation, transformation, clustering capability is powerful and easy to implement. The choice of charts and visualisation tools is outstanding. Customisation and dynamic data visualisation capability is superb. The user interface takes some time getting used to.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Easy to make visual dashboards from SQL queries. Previously we had to use a third party application that had to run on a web server that was so complex to setup and run. PowerBI removes all that.
  • Ability to control who/which group has access to each dashboard or report. Ties in well with the rest of the Office 365 ecosystem.
  • Has many connectors to allow pulling data from various systems, both onsite (via gateway) or external (via APIs), and join the data to create a report/dashboard.
  • Ability to show data but also export the data, if permitted.
  • Easy to show PowerBI dashboards on SharePoint or on other websites via embedded code.
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
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Licensing: Currently, Microsoft has a fixed pricing model for Office 365 users, regardless of role/function of the user. Most organizations have a small number of "power users" that create usable content and many more "consumers" that simply view/run reports created by power users. Microsoft does not differentiate between these users, and thus the pricing limits organizations from large deployments of the software.
  • Version incompatibility: Excel 2010 and 2013 workbooks are compatible with each other. However, workbooks created in 2010 that include PowerPivot databases must be upgraded to 2013 format to run in 2013. Subsequently, you cannot open these upgraded PowerPivot workbooks in 2010. This requires ALL users to be on the same version.
  • Visualization: Excel charting with PowerPivot workbooks is adequate for many users. Power View also contains a number of GREAT visualizations, including animated bubble charts and a very flexible dashboard/report design canvas. However, compared to some of the other self-service BI solutions, it is still limited in its visualization capabilities.
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
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
I will continue to recommend this suite to folks looking for a reporting and analytics solution, as I find in MOST cases, it's great at meeting almost every requirement I've been given by a multitude of clients across a range of industries. I've built Capacity Planning solutions that allowed end user input which was then submitted to SharePoint, Executive Dashboards, custom applications, simple analytical tools for teams to easily slice and dice data, and super simple reports as well as some very complicated ones. If you haven't seen the demos online, do a search, and see for yourself - this is a great BI suite! (I do not work for Microsoft, although I do consult out there from time to time. I do occasionally make a recommendation for a different BI reporting tool, but in general, find Excel can accomplish quite a bit for less money and in less time.)
Read full review
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.
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Usability
Microsoft
We are satisfied with the functionality and capabilities of Power BI. Product is cost effective and full-fill the reporting requirements of the organization. You can perform most of the report level complex analysis with the help of DAX which makes Power BI very powerful analytic tool. Power BI for Office 365 has gone away and Power BI is the next evolution of it. Power BI comes with your Office 365 E5 subscription or you can purchase licensing for it separately.
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Tableau
I think the use case we described earlier about a non-technical user that was copying/pasting data into Word during emergencies is our best reason. This person had little technical ability, and the Tableau mobile solution powered by Tableau server completely resolved the issues. She has since become one of the most vocal proponents of Tableau.
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
as of now there is strong community for Power BI, you can get solution for most of your problems from there. Also you can send your error to Microsoft as well. After every 15 days they release updates to overcome all the issues of defects.
Read full review
Tableau
I think the folks that work in support are generally pretty good at what they do (when you get them on a WebEx). But the process of reporting issues to them and waiting for a response (via email only) is a hassle. I never understood why you can't just call them up and discuss the issues with them. It would take a handful of email exchanges before they would agree to a WebEx session. That was frustrating.
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In-Person Training
Microsoft
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.
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Online Training
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
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
Microsoft
Oracle was nice, super expensive to implement if it's not in use already. JobDiva is choppy and heavy on the system while does not give great reports. Salesforce is good; remote access is good however their support is terrible
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.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • As a Microsoft Partner implementing Business Intelligence solutions, Power BI has removed the barrier for our clients to begin the "BI journey". So often, projects get hung up in that early phase of procuring and installing/configuring expensive hardware and software. Just simply getting started and designing a beginning solution has allowed our clients to see results in 1-2 weeks using their data that might have taken months to achieve otherwise.
  • One significant ROI example is process improvement. In many cases, individuals or teams are spending days each month gathering data from multiple sources for reporting to their constituents. We are reducing these times to minutes by automating many of the data collection and integration processes that were previously manual.
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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.
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ScreenShots

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.