Tableau Public vs. Tableau Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Tableau Public
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Tableau 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
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.
$12
Per User Per Month
Pricing
Tableau PublicTableau Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Tableau PublicTableau Server
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Tableau PublicTableau Server
Considered Both Products
Tableau Public
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
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 …
Tableau Server
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Tableau PublicTableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Public
9.8
12 Ratings
15% above category average
Tableau Server
9.3
95 Ratings
13% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports9.710 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards10.012 Ratings9.494 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates9.712 Ratings9.381 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Public
9.7
12 Ratings
19% above category average
Tableau Server
8.9
95 Ratings
9% above category average
Drill-down analysis9.812 Ratings8.795 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.712 Ratings8.593 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages9.49 Ratings8.959 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.811 Ratings9.589 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Public
9.5
11 Ratings
13% above category average
Tableau Server
7.9
91 Ratings
6% below category average
Publish to Web10.011 Ratings9.685 Ratings
Publish to PDF10.09 Ratings9.384 Ratings
Report Versioning9.89 Ratings8.270 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.59 Ratings7.577 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.17 Ratings5.19 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Public
9.7
11 Ratings
17% above category average
Tableau Server
8.5
90 Ratings
5% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.811 Ratings8.886 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization9.811 Ratings8.885 Ratings
Predictive Analytics9.79 Ratings7.864 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Public
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
7.4
95 Ratings
15% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings7.493 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings7.490 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings7.492 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings7.562 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Public
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
7.7
79 Ratings
3% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings7.377 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.161 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings7.968 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Public
-
Ratings
Tableau Server
7.2
46 Ratings
10% below category average
REST API00 Ratings9.040 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings9.137 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings9.140 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings5.57 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings4.67 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Tableau PublicTableau Server
Small Businesses
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Mathematica
Mathematica
Score 8.2 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Tableau PublicTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(14 ratings)
7.2
(111 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(2 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(5 ratings)
5.4
(17 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
9.5
(6 ratings)
3.3
(18 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Tableau PublicTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
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
Tableau
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.
Read full review
Pros
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)
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
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Cons
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.
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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
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
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
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.
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Tableau
Tableau Server is unbeatable at creating easy to use, interactive dashboards for busy executives. The software also saves time for the busy analyst that is tired of always using Excel. Tableau Server is a head and shoulders improvement over Excel.
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Reliability and Availability
Tableau
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
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Performance
Tableau
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
Tableau
I have not yet required to contact support as the documentation and help i found online has always worked so far
Read full review
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
Tableau
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.
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Online Training
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
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
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.
Read full review
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
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.
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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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Return on Investment
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
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.
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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.