Tableau Desktop vs. Zendesk Explore

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
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.
$75
per month
Zendesk Explore
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk offers Explore, a business intelligence and customer analytics tool which integrates with the Zendesk suite featuring ticket analytics, custom fields, dashboards, and other features. Zendesk is migrating customers of the BIME analytics product, which is approaching end of support, to Zendesk Explore in 2019.N/A
Pricing
Tableau DesktopZendesk Explore
Editions & Modules
Tableau
$75
per month per user
Tableau Enterprise
$115
per month per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Tableau DesktopZendesk Explore
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Tableau DesktopZendesk Explore
Considered Both Products
Tableau Desktop

No answer on this topic

Zendesk Explore
Chose Zendesk Explore
I selected Zendesk Explore only to provide an easy and quick access for my managers and supervisors regading metrics and volume trends. Is not the most flexible nor complete data visualization tool, but works well for day-to-day follow ups.
You need to use another tool if you …
Features
Tableau DesktopZendesk Explore
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.4
175 Ratings
3% above category average
Zendesk Explore
9.0
10 Ratings
10% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.1145 Ratings7.76 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.1174 Ratings9.210 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.1151 Ratings10.07 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.3
172 Ratings
4% above category average
Zendesk Explore
7.1
10 Ratings
12% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.5167 Ratings9.910 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.4170 Ratings5.810 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.0126 Ratings4.95 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.5165 Ratings7.610 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.3
166 Ratings
1% above category average
Zendesk Explore
7.9
10 Ratings
4% below category average
Publish to Web8.0155 Ratings7.06 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.0154 Ratings6.38 Ratings
Report Versioning8.3120 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.6128 Ratings8.97 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.778 Ratings8.14 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.3
164 Ratings
4% above category average
Zendesk Explore
7.2
7 Ratings
10% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.5162 Ratings6.76 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.5156 Ratings7.26 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.6131 Ratings5.65 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining7.57 Ratings9.43 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.9
149 Ratings
5% above category average
Zendesk Explore
7.6
10 Ratings
11% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.0145 Ratings8.39 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.9125 Ratings8.310 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.7136 Ratings6.28 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control9.010 Ratings8.64 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.283 Ratings6.48 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
7.9
141 Ratings
2% above category average
Zendesk Explore
7.8
7 Ratings
0% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access8.7130 Ratings6.25 Ratings
Mobile Application7.3101 Ratings8.32 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.4122 Ratings9.06 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
7.8
67 Ratings
1% above category average
Zendesk Explore
5.1
5 Ratings
41% below category average
REST API8.259 Ratings3.75 Ratings
Javascript API7.853 Ratings5.34 Ratings
iFrames7.051 Ratings5.94 Ratings
Java API8.448 Ratings5.24 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.554 Ratings6.84 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.148 Ratings3.73 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Tableau DesktopZendesk Explore
Small Businesses
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 8.8 out of 10
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
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
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Score 9.5 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Tableau DesktopZendesk Explore
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(204 ratings)
9.9
(10 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.5
(41 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(73 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
1.0
(57 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.4
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(34 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Tableau DesktopZendesk Explore
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).
Read full review
Zendesk
Zendesk Explore is well suited for tracking ticket flow, agent performance, and customer satisfaction providing valuable insights into response and resolution time, workload and support quality. Particularly useful for monitoring ticket handling for different teams. Helps ensure accountability by tracking how long tickets remain assigned before being reassigned to another group. Drill down capability helps identify support bottlenecks. However, it is less appropriate for real time monitoring as it lacks real time data updates making it unsuitable for instant decision making.
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.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • Zendesk Explore is easy to use.
  • Zendesk Explore allows users to create custom metrics.
  • Zendesk Explore allows users to create custom attributes.
  • Zendesk Explore is easy to learn.
  • Compared to other analytics function of other Ticket Management System, Zendesk Explore is probably the best as of now.
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
Zendesk
  • Some aspects of Zendesk, in general, are not super intuitive. The same goes for Zendesk Explore. And, while you can google answers and hope you find something helpful, there isn't a great way to learn to get the full potential out of the product unless you want to pay for someone from your team to take a class (which costs several hundred dollars).
  • To piggyback off the last point, if you would prefer to get help from a Zendesk expert, you'll find that there is almost no customer support available to you. For a company that aims to help other companies help their customers, this has always struck me as odd. Again, Google is your friend and beyond that, you're mostly out of luck.
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.
Read full review
Zendesk
No answers on this topic
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
Zendesk
I rate Zendesk Explore 8 out of 10 for it's overall usability because it offers powerful reporting and analytics with an easy to navigate interface and intuitive dashboards. It helps improve customer satisfaction by providing valuable insights into ticket handling, agent performance and customer satisfaction. Though the complex query builder can be challenging for non technical users.
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
Zendesk
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
Read full review
Zendesk
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.
Read full review
Zendesk
Support for all of Zendesk has exceeding my expectations. This company will always get a 10 out of 10 in my book. Any question you have they make sure you have the answer plus a step-by-step guide on how to do each step so you are set up for success!
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
Zendesk
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
Read full review
Zendesk
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.
Read full review
Zendesk
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Zendesk
I selected Zendesk Explore only to provide an easy and quick access for my managers and supervisors regading metrics and volume trends. Is not the most flexible nor complete data visualization tool, but works well for day-to-day follow ups. You need to use another tool if you want to see long-term patterns (e.g. month over month volume trends) and you need another platform if you want your interaction metrics to interact with other important factors of the business
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
Zendesk
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.
Read full review
Zendesk
  • Money saved due to proper staffing.
  • Happier Staff- proper staffing ensures no one is overworked.
  • Ability to quickly pinpoint where issues are and why.
Read full review
ScreenShots