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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Tableau Desktop

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/ATableau 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.

    $1,380

    per year (purchased via a Creator license)

    Tableau Public

    Score9.9 out of 10
    N/ATableau Public is a free edition of the Desktop product. With this edition, data can only be published to the Tableau public website and does not allow work to be saved or exported locally.

    $0

    per month

    Xamarin

    Score6 out of 10
    N/AN/AN/A
    Pricing
    Tableau DesktopTableau PublicXamarin
    Editions & Modules
    Tableau Creator License
    $115
    per month (billed annually) per user
    No answers on this topic
    Xamarin
    Free
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Tableau DesktopTableau PublicXamarin
    Free Trial
    NoNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually. A Creator license includes Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep Builder, and Tableau Pulse. Discounts sometimes available for volume.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Tableau DesktopTableau PublicXamarin
    Considered Multiple Products
    Tableau
    Chose Tableau Desktop
    The online and public versions are only good for the hobbyist because they are not secure enough for most business applications. Dapresy is a marketing tool that is supposed to give executives a snapshot of marketing results. It's not very customizable and the results are …
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Desktop
    I feel like Tableau is easier to use and offers a greater selection of visualizations. I feel that the dashboards are easier to put together and offer a great amount of flexibility for the end-user. Tableau has an excellent user support group. I find the community to be …
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Desktop
    Tableau is more powerful than Excel. One does have more flexibility by using programming libraries like D3.js, which have been designed specifically for data visualization, but they also require the user to know how to program with javascript. Tableau is great for users who …
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Desktop
    It is easier to start with Tableau. The out of the box ready feel is more with Tableau than any of the other BI products. Product scalability is at a steep cost with Tableau but it gives the possibility to begin small and then grow as it proves its capability as compared to all …
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Desktop
    Python is programming tools, while Tableau is an easy to use drag and drop data visualization tool. This may not be an apple to apple comparison. Compared to Excel, Tableua is way over the top when it comes to data visualization.
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Desktop
    I haven't used other tools for a number of years - when I made the selection my criteria were ease of use (including, slicing & dicing data at will), connectivity to various data sources (especially REST API - which Tableau doesn't support natively but now has a way to use …
    Incentivized
    Tableau
    Chose Tableau Public
    Tableau public is Free and no subscription is required whereas Tableau Desktop is a paid subscription. if there is no private or confidential data it's easy to Tableau public and share reports with people. Tableau public has same features and options same as desktop. its easy …
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Public
    Tableau Public's primary advantage is its lack of cost. That's really what it excels at; otherwise, it's functionally just another Tableau Server.
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Public
    Tableau Public provides a variety of visualization and point-and-click functionality, with little or no scripting, gives Tableau the advantage. Also, being lightweight, Tableau Public finds the ease of use from our PSU bank-clients that use low-end hardware and devices. Tableau
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Public
    Tableau Public allows users to upload their work to a designated place online, where others can view and download it. This feature does not available in OriginLab, which is also a useful and popular program to do data analysis.
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Public
    Tableau Public lacks data connectors to Oracle/SQL Server or just about any. No ability to share non-public data nor to package into Tableau Reader. No ability to connect to Tableau Server or Tableau Online to secure your information. However, if you want basic visualization …
    Incentivized
    Chose Tableau Public
    We evaluated about 15 products when we selected Tableau 7 years ago, and periodically review products from other vendors (e.g. Microsoft, QlikView, Tibco Spotfire, Birst, Pentaho, etc.). To date, Tableau offers the widest variety of options and functionality at a reasonable …
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    93%
    Would buy again
    52 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    91%
    Delivers good value for the price
    50 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    55 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    38 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    44 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Tableau DesktopTableau PublicXamarin
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public and Xamarin
    Feature
    Tableau Desktop
    8.5
    175 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Tableau Public
    9.8
    12 Ratings
    19% above category average
    Xamarin
    -
    Ratings
    Pixel Perfect reports8.0145 Ratings9.710 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards9.2174 Ratings10.012 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates8.1151 Ratings9.712 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public and Xamarin
    Feature
    Tableau Desktop
    8.5
    172 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Tableau Public
    9.7
    12 Ratings
    21% above category average
    Xamarin
    -
    Ratings
    Drill-down analysis8.6167 Ratings9.812 Ratings00 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities8.5170 Ratings9.712 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages8.1126 Ratings9.59 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration8.6165 Ratings9.811 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public and Xamarin
    Feature
    Tableau Desktop
    8.5
    166 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Tableau Public
    9.5
    11 Ratings
    15% above category average
    Xamarin
    -
    Ratings
    Publish to Web8.1155 Ratings10.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publish to PDF8.2154 Ratings10.09 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Versioning8.6120 Ratings9.89 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling8.6128 Ratings9.69 Ratings00 Ratings
    Delivery to Remote Servers8.978 Ratings8.17 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public and Xamarin
    Feature
    Tableau Desktop
    8.4
    164 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Tableau Public
    9.8
    11 Ratings
    23% above category average
    Xamarin
    -
    Ratings
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.6162 Ratings9.811 Ratings00 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.6156 Ratings9.811 Ratings00 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics8.7131 Ratings9.79 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pattern Recognition and Data Mining7.77 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public and Xamarin
    Feature
    Tableau Desktop
    9.1
    149 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Tableau Public
    -
    Ratings
    Xamarin
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-User Support (named login)9.1145 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model9.1125 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.9136 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report-Level Access Control9.110 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)9.383 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public and Xamarin
    Feature
    Tableau Desktop
    7.9
    141 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Tableau Public
    -
    Ratings
    Xamarin
    -
    Ratings
    Responsive Design for Web Access8.6130 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Application7.5101 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.5122 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
    Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Public and Xamarin
    Feature
    Tableau Desktop
    7.7
    67 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Tableau Public
    -
    Ratings
    Xamarin
    -
    Ratings
    REST API8.459 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Javascript API7.653 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    iFrames6.751 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Java API8.048 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Themeable User Interface (UI)7.154 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.448 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Tableau DesktopTableau PublicXamarin
    Small Businesses
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    Chartio (discontinued)
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Swiftify
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Jet Reports
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Android Studio
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Jaspersoft Community Edition
    Score7 out of 10
    Kibana
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Swiftify
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Tableau DesktopTableau PublicXamarin
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (204 ratings)
    8.5
    (14 ratings)
    7.0
    (12 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.5
    (41 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    8.4
    (73 ratings)
    10.0
    (5 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.0
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    1.0
    (57 ratings)
    9.6
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (34 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    8.4
    (115 ratings)
    8.2
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sources
    7.9
    (115 ratings)
    8.8
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Tableau DesktopTableau PublicXamarin
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tableau
    Tableau public is the best platform to build dashboards for your personal profile and share with recruiters. It's always good to keep ourselves updated on the latest features, create sample dashboards and save them to a personal profile. Tableau public is free and doesn't need any subscription. anyone can create an account and start building reports.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    If you are required to develop applications that are cross-platformed, Xamarin is a great tool to use. It will help save time and effort from your development team to be able to build applications seamlessly for android, IOS, Windows, and web on a single platform instead of requiring multiple tools to get the job done.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tableau
    • Data visualization: lots of different options, including bar, scatter, pie, waterfall charts to explore relationships between variables, and to present findings/trends to different teams
    • Integrates readily with limited, though different data sources: TXT, CSV, TDE, Access
    • Exports reports for review of different dashboards: client-ready/team-ready, with a clean and tidy presentation in PDF format (or hardcopy)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Xamarin allows you to write cross platform code. This allows companies to build apps more quickly by writing less code. Having code abstracted and reused across multiple platforms allows for more testing and less issues overall.
    • The ability to use Visual Studio is a huge plus. Visual Studio is one of the best IDE's available and being able to write cross platforms apps while in a great IDE makes everything less painful.
    • Xamarin is now free with a large company backing. This means that bugs on the platform get fixed more quickly and there is a large community of developers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    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
    Tableau
    • Tableau Public (both Desktop and Server) like their "for a fee" counterparts offer very easy to learn and use tools to transform data into pictures and gain insights into your data. Most organizations report a reduction in development time of 10x vs. other similar tools, due to the intuitive user interface. That said, with Tableau Public, published workbooks are "disconnected" from the underlying data sources and require periodic updates when the data changes. Users are limited to 1 Gb of storage space per user ID and password as well.
    • I would like to see better options for public sharing of visualizations and data from within the "for a fee" products as more and more organizations are moving in the direction of data sharing with partners and their communities.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Forms - not 100% there. Still needs work but is production ready.
    • iOS - sometimes errors can be hard to understand, if they even show up.
    • Insights - Xamarin offers their own crash analytics software. However, it's not perfect and sometimes doesn't pick up crashes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tableau
    It's free, right? I'll keep using the free version. So the real question to ask is this? Will I pay $999 for the Personal version or $1,999 for the Professional? Yikes! That is a big stretch. I'm not sure about that. The product comparison chart is at: http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/comparison
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Xamarin has been great for developing different projects efficiently and effectively. It's nice to reuse the core business logic across different platforms so that there are less to maintain and little replications are needed. The biggest benefit is that C# programmers do not have to learn a different language to do mobile development.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    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.
    Read full review
    Tableau
    Tableau public is a great training tool to understand the basics of Tableau before buying it. A great tool to extend Excel's visualization and to publish data for others. Not useful for anything you need secure. No ability to access databases. Static information only.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    If you are required to develop applications that are cross-platformed, Xamarin is a great tool to use. It will help save time and efforts from your development team to be able to build applications seamlessly for android, IOS, windows, and web on a single platform instead of requiring multiple tools to get the job done
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    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.
    Read full review
    Tableau
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tableau
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tableau
    I have not yet required to contact support as the documentation and help i found online has always worked so far
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    I never had to contact support for any help. Most of the problems we ran into, we were able to identify and use peer support through blogs and other internet sources to resolve the problems. There are plenty of sources online which provide tutorials, discuss problems, etc. Example: StackOverflow
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    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.
    Read full review
    Tableau
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tableau
    I found it sufficient, and fast. I could easily "kick the tires" with Tableau on my data so I got up and running fast.
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tableau
    Start at the end and work backward. Identify the business case / issue and questions the end users have, then identify the data needed, and where to get it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Just with any programming tasks, have a plan first. Design out the system, spend time to build it correctly the first time and have plenty of testing and user acceptance opportunities. Xamarin was easy to implement for a C# programmer. However, you need to do tutorials to realize the platform's capabilities.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tableau
    Google Charts/Drive is sufficient for simpler data sets, but it does not integrate with other web platforms and the visualization does not look as professional. I'm not aware of any other competitors that offer the same package as Microsoft.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Xamarin runs natively on MacOS, and the debugger and other integration and auto-complete tools are far better than Eclipse for C# .NET. It also carries much of the plugin/add-on capabilities that are so desirable on Atom. Eclipse is a better for generalized software development, provided a developer is comfortable switching between the IDE the command line for certain parts of their workflow, like building, package management, or debugging. But for C# .NET development on MacOS specifically, Xamarin is the best product I've used for the job.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    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
    Tableau
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Tableau
    • Tableau Public visualizations have helped drive traffic to our content and sites
    • The lack of cost means it's easy to demonstrate our experience to attract paying clients
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Saves development time and deliver fast.
    • Allows inhouse developers build both Android and iOS application without switching languages.
    • Allows use coding in C# in Visual studio IDE from which we can code in different languages. We don't need multiple IDEs installed
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots