Amazon Redshift vs. Tableau Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Redshift
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Redshift is a hosted data warehouse solution, from Amazon Web Services.
$0.24
per GB per month
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
Amazon RedshiftTableau Server
Editions & Modules
Redshift Managed Storage
$0.24
per GB per month
Current Generation
$0.25 - $13.04
per hour
Previous Generation
$0.25 - $4.08
per hour
Redshift Spectrum
$5.00
per terabyte of data scanned
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon RedshiftTableau 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
Amazon RedshiftTableau Server
Considered Both Products
Amazon Redshift
Chose Amazon Redshift
As our applications are hosted on AWS service, Redshift is the best option for us. Also, it provide a near to real-time performance on limited datasets and less complex queries. High availability is the major concern for any growing business and AWS is the best option for this. …
Chose Amazon Redshift
Most of our stack is on AWS, so while Snowflake and BigQuery was a viable option from a performance perspective, it was easier to integrate with RedShift. We considered hosting SQL Server on AWS or using Amazon RDS (Postgres or MySQL), however, the self-service aspect of …
Tableau Server
Chose Tableau Server
Tableau is extremely self intuitive to use and has a large supporting community
Features
Amazon RedshiftTableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Redshift
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
8.4
95 Ratings
3% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings7.194 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings9.081 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Redshift
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
7.8
95 Ratings
3% below category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings8.095 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings8.093 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings8.059 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings7.189 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Redshift
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
7.3
91 Ratings
13% below category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.185 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings7.184 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.070 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings8.077 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings5.19 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Redshift
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
8.3
90 Ratings
5% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings9.086 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings8.085 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.064 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Redshift
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
10.0
95 Ratings
16% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings9.993 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings9.990 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings9.992 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings9.962 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Redshift
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
8.1
79 Ratings
3% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings9.977 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.061 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings7.168 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Redshift
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
6.4
46 Ratings
19% below category average
REST API00 Ratings8.040 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings8.037 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.140 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings5.57 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings4.67 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon RedshiftTableau Server
Small Businesses
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.7 out of 10
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Snowflake
Snowflake
Score 8.8 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Snowflake
Snowflake
Score 8.8 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon RedshiftTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(38 ratings)
8.0
(111 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(10 ratings)
8.0
(17 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(7 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)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon RedshiftTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
If the number of connections is expected to be low, but the amounts of data are large or projected to grow it is a good solutions especially if there is previous exposure to PostgreSQL. Speaking of Postgres, Redshift is based on several versions old releases of PostgreSQL so the developers would not be able to take advantage of some of the newer SQL language features. The queries need some fine-tuning still, indexing is not provided, but playing with sorting keys becomes necessary. Lastly, there is no notion of the Primary Key in Redshift so the business must be prepared to explain why duplication occurred (must be vigilant for)
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
Amazon AWS
  • [Amazon] Redshift has Distribution Keys. If you correctly define them on your tables, it improves Query performance. For instance, we can define Mapping/Meta-data tables with Distribution-All Key, so that it gets replicated across all the nodes, for fast joins and fast query results.
  • [Amazon] Redshift has Sort Keys. If you correctly define them on your tables along with above Distribution Keys, it further improves your Query performance. It also has Composite Sort Keys and Interleaved Sort Keys, to support various use cases
  • [Amazon] Redshift is forked out of PostgreSQL DB, and then AWS added "MPP" (Massively Parallel Processing) and "Column Oriented" concepts to it, to make it a powerful data store.
  • [Amazon] Redshift has "Analyze" operation that could be performed on tables, which will update the stats of the table in leader node. This is sort of a ledger about which data is stored in which node and which partition with in a node. Up to date stats improves Query performance.
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
Amazon AWS
  • We've experienced some problems with hanging queries on Redshift Spectrum/external tables. We've had to roll back to and old version of Redshift while we wait for AWS to provide a patch.
  • Redshift's dialect is most similar to that of PostgreSQL 8. It lacks many modern features and data types.
  • Constraints are not enforced. We must rely on other means to verify the integrity of transformed tables.
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
Amazon AWS
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
Amazon AWS
Just very happy with the product, it fits our needs perfectly. Amazon pioneered the cloud and we have had a positive experience using RedShift. Really cool to be able to see your data housed and to be able to query and perform administrative tasks with ease.
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
Amazon AWS
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
Amazon AWS
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
Amazon AWS
The support was great and helped us in a timely fashion. We did use a lot of online forums as well, but the official documentation was an ongoing one, and it did take more time for us to look through it. We would have probably chosen a competitor product had it not been for the great support
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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
Read full review
In-Person Training
Amazon AWS
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
Amazon AWS
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.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
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
Amazon AWS
Than Vertica: Redshift is cheaper and AWS integrated (which was a plus because the whole company was on AWS).
Than BigQuery: Redshift has a standard SQL interface, though recently I heard good things about BigQuery and would try it out again.
Than Hive: Hive is great if you are in the PB+ range, but latencies tend to be much slower than Redshift and it is not suited for ad-hoc applications.
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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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Amazon AWS
Redshift is relatively cheaper tool but since the pricing is dynamic, there is always a risk of exceeding the cost. Since most of our team is using it as self serve and there is no continuous tracking by a dedicated team, it really needs time & effort on analyst's side to know how much it is going to cost.
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Our company is moving to the AWS infrastructure, and in this context moving the warehouse environments to Redshift sounds logical regardless of the cost.
  • Development organizations have to operate in the Dev/Ops mode where they build and support their apps at the same time.
  • Hard to estimate the overall ROI of moving to Redshift from my position. However, running Redshift seems to be inexpensive compared to all the licensing and hardware costs we had on our RDBMS platform before Redshift.
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

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.