Sisense vs. Tableau Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Sisense
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Sisense is a BI software and analytics platform. With what the vendor calls their In-Chip™ and Single Stack™ technologies, users have access to a comprehensive tool to analyze and visualize large, disparate data sets without IT resources.N/A
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
SisenseTableau 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
SisenseTableau Server
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMust contact sales team for pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SisenseTableau Server
Considered Both Products
Sisense
Chose Sisense
Sisense offered very reasonable enterprise licensing and was eaiser for end users than most other tools that can interface w/ the iSeries.
Chose Sisense
Sisense allows you to export individual widgets as iframes. It provides cube and row level security and can manage lots of data without interfering with the data sources. Tableau data sources were harder to manage and version. The customer support team with Sisense was head and …
Tableau Server
Chose Tableau Server
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 …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
SisenseTableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Sisense
8.7
46 Ratings
6% above category average
Tableau Server
9.3
95 Ratings
13% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.036 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.046 Ratings9.494 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates9.032 Ratings9.381 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Sisense
8.3
46 Ratings
2% above category average
Tableau Server
8.9
95 Ratings
9% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.046 Ratings8.795 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.046 Ratings8.593 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages9.026 Ratings8.959 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration7.33 Ratings9.589 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Sisense
8.2
45 Ratings
2% below category average
Tableau Server
7.9
91 Ratings
6% below category average
Publish to Web8.035 Ratings9.685 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.045 Ratings9.384 Ratings
Report Versioning8.023 Ratings8.270 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.038 Ratings7.577 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
Sisense
9.0
44 Ratings
11% above category average
Tableau Server
8.4
90 Ratings
4% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.044 Ratings8.886 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization9.041 Ratings8.885 Ratings
Predictive Analytics9.028 Ratings7.864 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Sisense
10.0
44 Ratings
15% above category average
Tableau Server
7.4
95 Ratings
15% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)10.044 Ratings7.493 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model10.043 Ratings7.490 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)10.044 Ratings7.492 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings7.562 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Sisense
9.0
39 Ratings
12% above category average
Tableau Server
7.7
79 Ratings
3% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access9.039 Ratings7.377 Ratings
Mobile Application10.024 Ratings7.161 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.033 Ratings7.968 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Sisense
-
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
SisenseTableau Server
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SisenseTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
6.1
(57 ratings)
7.2
(111 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(14 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(5 ratings)
5.4
(17 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(1 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(6 ratings)
3.3
(18 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.1
(3 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Configurability
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SisenseTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Sisense Ltd
I believe Sisense is perfectly suited for any organization of any size that have access to the proper resources, as the tool is very expensive. The data connectors come in all shapes and sizes out of the box, which allows a great deal of data control within the ElastiCubes. Additionally, while the platform only runs on Windows platforms, the web application can be accessed on any client: mobile, Apple, Windows, etc. This allows a much more flexible user experience, resulting in data and dashboards reaching further than any other tool.
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
Sisense Ltd
  • Customization - lots of supported and community plugins available. Users can also adjust the look and feel through JavaScript.
  • Innovation - Sisense is continuing to push the envelope by developing new features through Sisense Labs.
  • Customer support - the commitment to excellent customer service and ensuring organizations get the most out of their investment.
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
Sisense Ltd
  • The usability of the application on mobile devices needs some improvement, especially navigation and filtering.
  • Dashboards that are created by multiple users can be a bit of a hassle to share by Admins.
  • If you need to embed dashboards into your website, you are require to buy a license separate from the user and platform license. This is a norm on most BI visualization tools, but Sisense can seem a bit on the high side, cost-wide.
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
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Sisense Ltd
I think the business and myself as a user has come to rely on SiSense as a dashboarding and quick ad-hoc reporting tool. I am hoping to integrate SiSense dashboards into more parts of the business in the future. We have reduced our report turn-around time for the most part from hours/days to minutes and in some cases almost the speed of thought. Reports are also easier on the eye and more easily distributed. I would also like to say that the support and professionalism from the SiSense team has been excellent.
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
Sisense Ltd
New V5 is ground floor of an exciting collection of possibilities. Weekly Sisense developers come up with new functionality that they share with us in their forums. The move to HTML5 has been pleasing in that widgets auto size themselves into appropriate forms in the board but everyone of them can be popped out to full page size to be looked at in more detail
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Sisense Ltd
There are very few situations when there is unexpected downtime. Mostly during development, new dashboard implementation and during upgrades. other then that there were very few crashes.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Performance
Sisense Ltd
SiSense is usually performing better then other solutions even if going for complex reports/dashboards(of course within reasonable frames). I haven't noticed any bad influence on other systems, usually if something happens it stays within SiSense.
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
Sisense Ltd
SiSense's support ninjas are very knowledgeable and are exceptionally responsive. So far, all of the issues we ran into were resolved within minimum time. My sense of dealing with the support staff at SiSense is that they are very focused on not just answering your immediate question, but also to delve into the cause of the matter.
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
Read full review
In-Person Training
Sisense Ltd
Easy and free training that allowed us quickly understand basics in SiSense and start using them. More advanced features requires some browsing through SiSense forums, but there is always support to help, and SiSense support is one of the best whith which I worked so far.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Online Training
Sisense Ltd
Many examples, videos and scenarios which you try on your own right away. This combined with in-person training gives you enough to utilize most of SiSense's power.
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.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Sisense Ltd
Remember to migrate the plugins. The documentation however is pretty straight forward.
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
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Sisense Ltd
1) Easy to use, really, there is nothing too much to say. The set up is easy and not confusing. You can use it internally or externally.
2) Customer Service, having spoken to various product reps from similar industry. Sisense rep provides you with the best support to get started, and it is really appreciated.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Scalability
Sisense Ltd
Product is quite easily scalable. The whole installation can be easily moved to stronger machine if needed.
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Sisense Ltd
  • Report development time is reduced from 2~3 days to 2~3 hours.
  • Report querying time is improved from 0.5~10 mins to 2~30 seconds.
  • A 2-staff team delivers 10 times the BI output that we did on the old system.
  • We were able to deliver BI and data analysis for all business functions instead of a very limited group of users
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.
Read full review
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.