Salesforce Sales Cloud vs. Tableau Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a platform for sales with a community of Sellers, Sales Leaders, and Sales Operations, who use the solution to grow sales and increase productivity. The AI CRM for Sales features data built right in, so that companies can sell faster, sell smarter and sell efficiently. Salesforce Sales Cloud is used for, and supports: Buyer Engagement Sales Engagement Enablement Sales AI Sales Analytics Team…
$25
per month
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
Salesforce Sales CloudTableau Server
Editions & Modules
Starter
$25.00
per month per user
Professional
$80.00
per month per user
Enterprise
$165.00
per month per user
Unlimited
$330.00
per month per user
Agentforce 1 Sales
$550
per month per user
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Salesforce Sales CloudTableau Server
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Salesforce Sales CloudTableau Server
Considered Both Products
Salesforce Sales Cloud

No answer on this topic

Tableau Server
Chose Tableau Server
We still use Microsoft Excel for much of the lighter, day-to-day pivot tables or calculations. We see Tableau as the future however and are slowly tying more and more of our standard work with Tableau. Smartsheet isn't a 1:1 example, but it was considered for importing …
Chose Tableau Server
I didn't select Tableau but am very glad we have it! I have used several reporting tools and Tableau is the easiest to use and has the best user adoption. Other tools can involve lots of background work or just difficult to display the data as needed. Tableau is easy to use and …
Features
Salesforce Sales CloudTableau Server
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.2
269 Ratings
6% above category average
Tableau Server
-
Ratings
Customer data management / contact management8.9269 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow management8.4258 Ratings00 Ratings
Territory management7.7211 Ratings00 Ratings
Opportunity management8.8259 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)8.0244 Ratings00 Ratings
Contract management7.9215 Ratings00 Ratings
Quote & order management7.7198 Ratings00 Ratings
Interaction tracking8.6229 Ratings00 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management8.0190 Ratings00 Ratings
Customer Service & Support
Comparison of Customer Service & Support features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.8
104 Ratings
2% above category average
Tableau Server
-
Ratings
Case management8.2102 Ratings00 Ratings
Call center management7.782 Ratings00 Ratings
Help desk management7.486 Ratings00 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.1
244 Ratings
5% above category average
Tableau Server
-
Ratings
Lead management8.2239 Ratings00 Ratings
Email marketing8.1206 Ratings00 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.0
248 Ratings
5% above category average
Tableau Server
-
Ratings
Task management8.2236 Ratings00 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management7.478 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting8.5201 Ratings00 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.3
260 Ratings
9% above category average
Tableau Server
-
Ratings
Forecasting7.9228 Ratings00 Ratings
Pipeline visualization8.2247 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable reports8.6257 Ratings00 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.6
252 Ratings
12% above category average
Tableau Server
-
Ratings
Custom fields9.0249 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom objects8.8239 Ratings00 Ratings
Scripting environment8.2176 Ratings00 Ratings
API for custom integration8.6209 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
9.0
253 Ratings
7% above category average
Tableau Server
-
Ratings
Single sign-on capability9.0221 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based user permissions8.9225 Ratings00 Ratings
Social CRM
Comparison of Social CRM features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.2
160 Ratings
10% above category average
Tableau Server
-
Ratings
Social data8.3158 Ratings00 Ratings
Social engagement8.0156 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
8.1
217 Ratings
9% above category average
Tableau Server
-
Ratings
Marketing automation8.2213 Ratings00 Ratings
Compensation management8.1146 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
7.7
232 Ratings
2% above category average
Tableau Server
-
Ratings
Mobile access7.7232 Ratings00 Ratings
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
8.4
95 Ratings
3% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings7.094 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings9.081 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
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 Ratings7.089 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
7.2
91 Ratings
14% below category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.085 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings7.084 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
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
8.3
90 Ratings
4% 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
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
10.0
95 Ratings
16% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings10.093 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings10.090 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings10.092 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings10.062 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
8.1
79 Ratings
4% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings10.077 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.061 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings7.068 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Salesforce Sales Cloud
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
6.4
46 Ratings
19% below category average
REST API00 Ratings8.040 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings8.037 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.040 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings5.57 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings4.67 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Salesforce Sales CloudTableau Server
Small Businesses
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 10.0 out of 10
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Salesforce Sales CloudTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(425 ratings)
8.0
(111 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(58 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
8.4
(135 ratings)
8.0
(17 ratings)
Availability
9.8
(27 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(18 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(92 ratings)
3.0
(18 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.9
(11 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(15 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
2.1
(18 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.8
(9 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.8
(83 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
9.3
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Salesforce Sales CloudTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Salesforce
Obviously, for any business, there are two main areas to focus on — the sales path and the service path. Sales Cloud wouldn’t be suited for a company that’s primarily into support services. For those kinds of companies, Salesforce has a different product — Service Cloud. So, for anyone in the support or service space, Sales Cloud isn’t the right fit.
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
Salesforce
  • The customizations - We have an organization that operates differently from most companies, so we’ve had to implement quite a few customizations — and Salesforce allows us to do that quite quickly. Most of the time, delays come from dependencies on other internal parties rather than the system itself.
  • From my perspective as a consultant, one of the biggest advantages is that everything is in Salesforce — all the details, all in one place. The ability to customize it easily is a big plus; there’s really a lot you can do with it.
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
Salesforce
  • We still need to include the production part. We started using Salesforce to sell the seeds — our inventory is in SAP — and from there we handle sales and track the process of planting, harvesting, selling, and then collecting payments. But we don’t yet manage the earlier production processes, like production planning. We handle allocation, but not full production planning, and that’s an area where we still have room for improvement.
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
Salesforce
There are days when I wish we hadn't switched, but I know that if we put in the time, we will get to where we want to be with the software and that it has many more capabilities than anything else we looked at. However, the amount of time and onboarding we need to do is also far greater than we realized/were told when we originally bought the product. They told us we should hire onboarding support, but at the end, after we had already reached our budget maximum for this, so it's been slower than we had hoped.
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.
Read full review
Usability
Salesforce
Because I think it could be easier. We have different standards today since we’re used to interacting with consumer apps like Starbucks, where all you do is scan your card. Then, when you use Sales Cloud, there are still a lot of manual inputs. So my mission with AI is really about figuring out how to make that easier.
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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.
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Reliability and Availability
Salesforce
Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.
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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
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Performance
Salesforce
Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day."
Points per Salesforce -
1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs.
2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers.
3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years.
4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed.
5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale.
6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com.
7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements.
8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training.
9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure
Read full review
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
Salesforce
The overall support has been good. More and more features are being released quite frequently. Very small features are also making big difference in how the tool can be adapted and used better. If there is anything we need or are stuck, the support team sets up a call and helps in resolving the issue/provides workarounds.
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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
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In-Person Training
Salesforce
I attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person.

I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business
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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
Salesforce
I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training.

We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this
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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
Salesforce
Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.
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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
Salesforce
So I've evaluated, implemented Microsoft Dynamics in the past. I've used Oracle CRM solutions. I've used Daylight, which is a very niche CRM system the last couple of years. And I've evaluated a variety from Legacy Microsoft Ones to Zoho and Sugar when making implementation decisions at other companies. But usually I've gone with Salesforce. I'd say it's better than most. The only one that I generally prefer, and last time I chose an implementation from scratch, I did Microsoft Dynamics. And the reason is for small mid-size organization, Microsoft Dynamics, if you already have Microsoft Office products, it's much better integrated to all of the Excel, Word, OneNote, Outlook email than what you get from Salesforce. And so that's the only one that if someone's a Microsoft organization and small sized company, it'll save a lot of integration things, a lot of security, a lot of login and access and IT management by just sticking within the Microsoft ecosystem. But outside of that, if you don't use Microsoft or if you're a large organization or have other needs that you want, Salesforce I'd say is better than all of the other CRM offerings out there. It's the easiest to use and the most robust and the most vendors and products for the ecosystem.
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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
Salesforce
Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system. Professionalism tends to increase when things go wrong for market leaders. Salesforce considers us as users because they own the market. Having all of our data in one place and all of our teams working within Salesforce. Anyone who uses Salesforce is impacted by it, even if they don't.
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Tableau
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Salesforce
It's very scalable as it has a ton of features (but you do need an admin who understands how to leverage these features). Because of the various features, we've also needed to host onboarding sessions with our users so that they can familiarize themselves with the platform, which isn't always super user-friendly or intuitive.
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Tableau
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
Salesforce
Using Salesforce.com has made my daily routines more efficient and simplified the manual tasks I had to perform independently. I can now access data from any device, online or offline, and provide better guidance to my team about the forecasts provided by the built-in artificial intelligence (AI). A chat with a Salesforce support specialist would be great. The knowledge base has a community forum where Salesforce users can ask questions and learn more about the product.
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Tableau
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Salesforce
  • It is easy for the sales team to track how well the dealers in their region are selling products.
  • It is easy to generate reports and see how well sales are each month compared to past months.
  • Quicker time to get products shipped to customers.
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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

Salesforce Sales Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

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.