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.
$70
per month
Tableau Server
Score 8.2 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.
When we first looked at getting a visualization software for analytics we looked into two options Microsoft Power BI and Tableau Desktop, and even though Power BI is more cost-effective we decided to go with Tableau Desktop as it had more options that we are looking for such as …
Microsoft PowerBI could potentially be a better fit for organizations on Office365, it's a close call though. Google Data Studio has potential but is still far behind Tableau on the "user-friendly" factor. Tableau still seems to dominate for the "recommended" analytics tool, …
Tableau is next generation tool where other two are old traditional BI tools Other tools are very slow and difficult to use, and required lot of technical expertise to use them. Tableau's look and feel is much nicer than those two.
Against the usual incumbents within the pharmaceutical industry, Tableau has much better and faster access to database data especially stored in the Oracle database, without needing any interim transformations or data universe needing to be created. Also it has comparatively …
If any changes had to be made to existing visualizations when we used QlikView, a lot of security constraints existed and I had to run to the IT team for every change I had to implement.
Tableau gives easy security change rights to the developer environment.
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 …
My current work environment uses both Tableau Online, MicroStrategy & SSRS in parallel. Tableau is much closer to the SSRS in terms of visualization tool where as MicroStrategy is an enterprise data modeling and reporting tool.
Based on the use case we use different tools. Here …
I have used SSRS, Crystal Reports, Microsoft Excel, and Business Objects. Tableau offers more functionality than the rest and is pretty intuitive. I think SSRS is the easiest to use. Query speed is excellent with SSRS (at least when you are connected to SQL Server). Microsoft …
In comparison to Tableau, the other dashboarding/BI tools I've used feel clunky, are very slow to develop in, and seem to lack features of a more modernized tool like Tableau. In Pentaho Analyzer, for instance, trying to include multiple worksheets or reports in a single …
As far as I know, we do not currently use Domo, however I've seen some demos of their product. Domo is very good with cloud-based software and it also incorporates social media data. Domo is also good at using cloud-based excel file building vs. building spreadsheets on my …
Renowned digital analytics consultant, innovator, speaker, thought leader
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 …
Cass evaluated Domo, QlikView and Birst prior to selecting Tableau. It came down to cost (and by a significant margin); the others have relatively high implementation, hosting and other costs. Additionally, based on a recent Gartner "Magic Quadrant", Tableau exceeds all others …
I had the trial version of Tableau Desktop downloaded, installed, configured and was creating meaningful dashboards in almost 15 minutes. While other software we used had great features, none of them were able to compare with this trial experience. Tableau's user forums were …
Verified User
Engineer
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.
Tableau is by far the superior product when it comes to analysis, ease of use, and end user experience. People are usually more familiar with Excel so it can be difficult to break them out of their comfort zone. Lastly, when it comes to subscriptions, SSRS is the tool I prefer. …
The primary factors for choosing Tableau were the licensing costs; ability to view data from multiple data sources; the ease of infrastructure to setup; and ability for users to create and maintain their own worksheets without the need for IT assistance.
Verified User
Analyst
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop needs no to minimal coding experience. It easily integrates with various data sources. It is very easy to create usable smart reports.
We evaluated QlikView and Tableau for a Fortune 500 corporation 15 months ago in full disclosure. To be all too brief we found QlikView to be a very good tool but more IT dependent than Tableau. Newer features and functions may offset some this one significance.
Tableau is the most powerful and easy to use of the alternatives, as long as the data sources are properly connected. None of the other tools have allowed us to connect and integrate data into one report in the way that Tableau's data connectivity allows us to. Then the ability …
We have evaluated QlikView as well. QlikView is another tool in the "Self-Service BI" world. However, it's focus is mainly on creating ad-hoc data models and using these models to make visualizations. Tableau, on the other hand, will take an existing data model and make much …
The choice to use Tableau Server is really made for you if you already have adopted Tableau Desktop. If you're focused on an on-premise solution, Tableau is probably the way that you'll have to go. Looker and Mode are cloud-based (so is Tableau Online) and offer a true …
There were a lot of reasons why we chose Tableau and the least is the cost but also the way Tableau stores data in the columnar fashion instead of in Cubes. We went through a painstaking selection process and at the end, came down to a couple of vendors and we ended up with the …
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 …
I did not choose Tableau for my organization, but did choose my organization in part because they use Tableau! Fantastic flexibility combined with relative ease of visualization.
A comprehensive proof of concept study done. We evaluated different vendors and also consider strategic reports (like Gartner) to make a decision. Tableau was the winner. The developers especially liked it, because integrating it to the existing system was very easy.
Sisense was another tool I came across, but I chose Tableau over Sisense as an end-to-end tool for data visualisation and BI. Tableau is the complete data visualisation tool, which is what I was looking for. So, I chose Tableau. Plus, it's easy to use and there are no complex …
Tableau is better than Splunk in analyzing the unstructured data and displaying all relevant information to the user. I have used Splunk but it does not provide the information of every component of a system, it just drills down to log analytics. Tableau is beyond Splunk, as …
QlikView, Tibco Spotfire, SAS, and SAP. At the time, all cost more than Tableau for our (small) needs, SAS and SAP were in some ways overqualified in terms of breadth, and none of them had the ease of use of Tableau.
Tableau Server has many competitors, two primary ones would be SAP Business Objects and Microsoft PowerView through Tabular Analysis Services. I have worked with all three products. First and foremost, in terms of data visualization Tableau is the best by far. However there are …
This search turned up a number of candidates. I think the main alternative considered was SiSense. Tableau Server with Tableau Desktop was the most expensive solution but I was convinced it actually represented the best value.
Tableau by far has the most intuitive interface and best out of the box looks for presentation. The speed of development and ease of development is unbeatable.
QlikView can't connect to live data (in general) Licensing Costs of QlikView and Cognos are expensive. Cognos doesn't have excellent Graphics embedded within the tool
I've personally have used a vast majority of the Business Intelligence products on the marketplace. I've used all of the Oracle products over the past few years. I've used all of the products in the Microsoft stack, along with Cognos, Qlikview, etc. Each are effective if your …
Sr. Data Analyst and Tableau SME for North America
Chose Tableau Server
We also looked at Spotfire and Qilkview
Verified User
Administrator
Chose Tableau Server
Three "self service" BI tools were looked at: Tableau, Spotfire & Qlikview. To put it very simply, Spotfire had a lot of overlap with a tool that was already present at the bank, SAS. QlikView's biggest negative was that everything was brought in via RAM, and there are gigantic …
Vice President of Product Management & Engineering
Chose Tableau Server
We evaluated Tableau Server against all the major players out there. We had a bad experience with one of the major players and switched them out for Tableau. It was one of the best business decisions we have made due to our experience with Tableau and their team. Tableau offers …
Tableau Desktop is one the finest tool available in the market with such a wide range of capabilities in its suite that makes it easy to generate insights. Further, if optimally designed, then its reports are fairly simple to understand, yet capable enough to make changes at the required levels. One can create a variety of visualizations as required by the business or the clients. The data pipelines in the backend are very robust. The tableau desktop also provides options to develop the reports in developer mode, which is one of the finest features to embed and execute even the most complex possible logic. It's easier to operate, simple to navigate, and fluent to understand by the users.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
I have never really used support much, to be honest. I think the support is not as user-friendly to search and use it. I did have an encounter with them once and it required a bit of going back and forth for licensing before reaching a resolution. They did solve my issue though
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.
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.
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.
The training for new users are quite good because it covers topic wise training and the best part was that it also had video tutorials which are very helpful
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.
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.
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
If we do not have legacy tools which have already been set up, I would switch the visualization method to open source software via PyCharm, Atom, and Visual Studio IDE. These IDEs cannot directly help you to visualize the data but you can use many python packages to do so through these IDEs.
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.
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.
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.
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.