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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Tableau Server

    Score7.5 out of 10
    N/ATableau 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

    Visual Studio

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AVisual Studio (now in the 2022 edition) is a 64-bit IDE that makes it easier to work with bigger projects and complex workloads, boasting a fluid and responsive experience for users. The IDE features IntelliCode, its automatic code completion tools that understand code context and that can complete up to a whole line at once to drive accurate and confident coding.

    $45

    per month

    Pricing
    Tableau ServerVisual Studio
    Editions & Modules
    Viewer
    $12.00
    Per User Per Month
    Explorer
    $35.00
    Per User Per Month
    Creator
    $70.00
    Per User Per Month
    Professional
    $45.00
    per month
    Enterprise
    $250.00
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Tableau ServerVisual Studio
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Tableau ServerVisual Studio
    Considered Both Products
    Tableau
    Chose Tableau Server
    Better visually and ease of use.
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    75%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    98%
    Would buy again
    40 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    75%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    40 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    88%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    41 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    32 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    71%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    36 Answers
    Features
    Tableau ServerVisual Studio
    BI Standard Reporting
    Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Tableau Server and Microsoft Visual Studio
    Feature
    Tableau Server
    8.4
    95 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Microsoft Visual Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Pixel Perfect reports9.129 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable dashboards7.094 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Formatting Templates9.081 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ad-hoc Reporting
    Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Tableau Server and Microsoft Visual Studio
    Feature
    Tableau Server
    7.8
    95 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Microsoft Visual Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Drill-down analysis8.095 Ratings00 Ratings
    Formatting capabilities8.093 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integration with R or other statistical packages8.059 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report sharing and collaboration7.089 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Output and Scheduling
    Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Tableau Server and Microsoft Visual Studio
    Feature
    Tableau Server
    7.2
    91 Ratings
    13% below category average
    Microsoft Visual Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Publish to Web8.085 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publish to PDF7.084 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Versioning8.070 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report Delivery Scheduling8.077 Ratings00 Ratings
    Delivery to Remote Servers5.19 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Discovery and Visualization
    Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Tableau Server and Microsoft Visual Studio
    Feature
    Tableau Server
    8.3
    90 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Microsoft Visual Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.086 Ratings00 Ratings
    Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.085 Ratings00 Ratings
    Predictive Analytics8.064 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pattern Recognition and Data Mining8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access Control and Security
    Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Tableau Server and Microsoft Visual Studio
    Feature
    Tableau Server
    10.0
    95 Ratings
    16% above category average
    Microsoft Visual Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-User Support (named login)10.093 Ratings00 Ratings
    Role-Based Security Model10.090 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)10.092 Ratings00 Ratings
    Report-Level Access Control10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Single Sign-On (SSO)10.062 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Capabilities
    Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Tableau Server and Microsoft Visual Studio
    Feature
    Tableau Server
    8.1
    79 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Microsoft Visual Studio
    -
    Ratings
    Responsive Design for Web Access10.077 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile Application7.061 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.068 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
    Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Tableau Server and Microsoft Visual Studio
    Feature
    Tableau Server
    6.4
    46 Ratings
    19% below category average
    Microsoft Visual Studio
    -
    Ratings
    REST API8.040 Ratings00 Ratings
    Javascript API8.037 Ratings00 Ratings
    iFrames6.040 Ratings00 Ratings
    Java API5.57 Ratings00 Ratings
    Themeable User Interface (UI)6.19 Ratings00 Ratings
    Customizable Platform (Open Source)4.67 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Tableau ServerVisual Studio
    Small Businesses
    Cyfe
    Score4 out of 10
    IntelliJ IDEA
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Qlik Cloud Analytics (Qlik Sense)
    Score8.1 out of 10
    PyCharm
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Sisense
    Score6.9 out of 10
    WebStorm
    Score9.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Tableau ServerVisual Studio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (111 ratings)
    9.1
    (118 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (20 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (17 ratings)
    9.2
    (15 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.1
    (8 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    3.0
    (18 ratings)
    8.8
    (15 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (9 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.1
    (13 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    5.1
    (79 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Data Sources
    6.6
    (82 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Tableau ServerVisual Studio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Tableau
    Whole funnel and specific channel performance from upper to lower funnel metrics. The ability to view full channel performance for some time, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly, has truly been monumental in how my team optimizes specific channels and campaigns. Daily performance tracking is a bit overwhelming, with load times and having to refresh specific live views over time. It can be challenging to do so at times, as extensive dashboards take much longer to load.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    When working with base C# code for desktop and web projects, then Microsoft Visual Studio is ideal as it provides the libraries and interfaces needed to quickly create, test and deploy solutions. It is when slightly more complex scenarios are required that issues can arise. The built-in integration for things like PowerBI Paginated Reports and dashboards is far from ideal.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • I like how the tabs and panels are organized; everything is gathered together so you can find what you're looking for quickly.
    • If you can't find something, there's a thorough search engine that searches all of Visual Studio's features.
    • The Team Foundation Server feature is fantastic since it allows us to easily deploy and roll back changes on the server.
    Read full review
    Cons
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Would be great if there was a better way to save and restore open tabs.
    • The built-in test runner can be improved, for example, by adding the ability to save a set of commonly run tests, etc.
    • Better integration for Microsoft SQL server would be great.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Tableau
    Tableau Server takes training and experience in order to unlock the application's full potential. This is best handled by a qualified data scientist or data analytics manager. Tableau user interface layout, nomenclature, and command structure take time and training to become proficient with. Integration and connectivity require proper IT developer support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    I love the overall usability of Microsoft Visual Studio. I’ve been using this IDE for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen it evolve by leaps and bounds. Today, with AI and code-suggestion/completion features, developers no longer need to remember countless libraries, methods, or language syntax, or invest a huge amount of programming effort to complete a project. It truly offers everything a developer needs to program, debug, test, and deploy in a single IDE.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    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
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    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
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    There are many resources available supporting Visual Studio IDE. Microsoft whitepapers, forum posts, and online Visual Studio documentation. There are countless demonstration videos available, as well. If users are having issues, they can call Microsoft Support, but depending on the company's agreement with Microsoft, the number of included support calls will vary from organization to organization. I've found that Microsoft support calls can be hit or miss depending on who you get, but they can usually get you with the right support person for your issue.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    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
    Microsoft
    IT is very complicated to understand all the functions that the environment has if you are not familiar with this type of development environments. It is important to select a good in-person training to achieve to understand all the possibilities and the capacity of the application. In this case, you will be able to develop a lot type of different applications.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    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
    Microsoft
    If you are not accustomed to develop in this type of development environments it would be complicated to follow all the parts of the course because if the course does not include a great tour with all the concepts to develop you will not have the option to understand all the functions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    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
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, quality testing and gives features to extract TRX file as result of testing which includes all the summary of each test case.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Using the integration between Visual Studio and our source control service, the cost of re-work and losing code is drastically reduced.
    • Paid versions of Visual Studio enable developers to be so much more productive than hacked-together open source solutions that it's hard to imagine developing in Windows without it.
    • When combined with support subscriptions and the vast array of free online help options available, Visual Studio saves our developers time by keeping them coding and testing, not wasting their time trying to guess their way out of problems or spend endless hours online hoping to find answers.
    Incentivized
    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.