Microsoft BI (MSBI) Reviews, Pricing, Pros & Cons 2024

Starting at $9.99 per user/per month

Overview

What is Microsoft BI (MSBI)?

Microsoft BI is a business intelligence product used for data analysis and generating reports on server-based data. It features unlimited data analysis capacity with its reporting engine, SQL Server Reporting Services alongside ETL, master data management, and data cleansing.

MSBI : a new boom in the digital world!

Rating: 9 out of 10

January 4, 2024

Vetted ReviewVerified User

I use MSBI specifically for data generation and data analytics. It has helped me to create a data way more simpler and easy to understand. It improved the frequent usage of da...

Verified user

Administrator

2 years of experience

Multiple tools in single package.

Rating: 8 out of 10

September 28, 2022

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

In my organization, we are using MSBI to create, maintain and deploy reposts. We use all three component of MSBI like SSIS, SSRS, SSAS. We use ETL packages to maintain Datawar...

Lakhan Suri

Engineer - Information Technology

SQL AND BI Developer

Carmen Solutions

4 years of experience

"Microsoft BI is a powerful analytic tool for large data sets."

Rating: 9 out of 10

December 6, 2021

Vetted ReviewVerified User

Microsoft Power BI is a beautiful and powerful data visualization tool that we use. It is a robust business analytics tool with excellent visualizations. Excel files, OneDrive...

Al Mubassir Muin

Project Manager - Information Technology

Software Engineer

Prime Tech Solutions Ltd.

2 years of experience

In the world of data visualization, this is one of the best virtualization tools

Rating: 9 out of 10

November 13, 2021

Vetted ReviewVerified User

With Microsoft BI (MSBI), we can create our own data sets, goals, and records with no difficulty. We have a wide range of options and features to choose from when it comes to ...

Aononna Tazin

Consultant - Information Technology

Customer Relationship Management Specialist

Green Light Ltd

1 year of experience

"Easy To Use BI Platform With Effective Reporting"

Rating: 9 out of 10

November 1, 2021

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

I can connect to Oracle, Snowflake, SQL Server, Excel, CSV, text files, and create custom visualizations with Microsoft Power BI Desktop. Our team can generate reports and ana...

Nilufa Hossain

Team Lead - Research & Development

IT Specialist

Lamda I-TECH

1 year of experience

Microsoft BI

Rating: 9 out of 10

June 3, 2021

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

Microsoft BI being used by Master Data Management team like Vendors data, Customers data, Sites data, Bank, Bank Accounts, Customer Mandates, Employees, and Products data with...

Shyam Agrawal

Project Manager - Information Technology

Business Systems Analyst

NetApp

3 years of experience

Microsoft BI: The only data analysis tool you will ever need

Rating: 8 out of 10

May 16, 2021

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

We use Microsoft Power BI for the data management of our projects. Some of our projects include collecting data of users who signup for webinars and Power BI is then used to a...

Verified user

Manager

2 years of experience

MSBI - Bang for the Buck

Rating: 8 out of 10

April 26, 2021

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

The Microsoft BI stack is being used as the enterprise BI software by our organization. The full stack of BI tools (SSAS, SSRS, and SSIS) are being leveraged to provide report...

Verified user

Employee

15 years of experience

A smart tool for data analysts to generate awesome reports

Rating: 10 out of 10

April 24, 2021

Vetted ReviewVerified User

I dont use it right now but , I used it during my research assistantship to generate beautiful visualizations for big data. At the time I was researching about covid has impac...

Verified user

Engineer

1 year of experience

Excellent BI Stack for an all-in-one solution architecture, however may need specialized platforms for non-traditional datasets

Rating: 8 out of 10

April 22, 2021

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

We implement Microsoft BI solutions to clients across North America. Clients are constantly coming to us having issues gathering their data from disparate sources in order to ...

Verified user

Contributor

5 years of experience

Powerful tool for data visualization

Rating: 9 out of 10

March 5, 2021

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

We are using Microsoft BI (MSBI) to visualize our data better and provide detailed insights on KPI. It also helps in building dashboards, which help key stakeholders analyze a...

Aniket Sawant

Manager - Product Management

Product Manager

Massey Services Inc

2 years of experience

Best when used by larger companies in a predominantly Microsoft environment

Rating: 8 out of 10

April 26, 2020

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

We currently use Microsoft BI to power the dashboard and analytics behind our performance management platform. Previously, this was done manually by each division in their own...

Verified user

Manager

2 years of experience

Microsoft PowerBI unleashes the power of your data

Rating: 9 out of 10

April 22, 2020

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

We use Microsoft PowerBI to analyze data from our CRM and invoicing system (Connectwise with a SQL backend). Connectwise has a large number of built-in reports and a custom re...

Bradley Geppert

Director - Information Technology

Director of IT Services

CompuType IT Solutions

1 year of experience

Microsoft BI the killer data analytics and visualization tool

Rating: 8 out of 10

March 14, 2020

Vetted ReviewVerified User

We have deployed the Microsoft BI tool company-wide now. It is very simple to use and better than other tools available. You can easily create and share dashboards. It helps a...

Ashutosh Gaikwad

Manager - Information Technology

Revenue Assurance and Fraud Managment

Reliance INFOCOMM Limited

3 years of experience

Casual User’s POC

Rating: 8 out of 10

February 8, 2020

IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User

Microsoft BI is being used for report generation to monitor ongoing technology projects and business initiatives. We have two users who generate reports but many consumers.

Verified user

Project Manager

1 year of experience

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons

It provided correct real time stream analytics which helped us to make necessary business decisions
It would be a lot better if it is a little low on cost.

Verified User

Administrator in Sales

Information Technology & Services Company, 201-500 employees

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Pricing

View all pricing

Power BI Pro

$9.99

Cloud

per user/per month

Power BI Premium

4,995

Cloud

per month

Entry-level set up fee?

No setup fee

For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://powerbi.microsoft.com/pricing

Offerings

Free Trial
Free/Freemium Version
Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

8.7

Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.7

Avg 8.1

9
Drill-down analysis
(43) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
8
Formatting capabilities
(48) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
9
Integration with R or other statistical packages
(38) Ratings
Integration with the open-source R predictive modeling environment.
9
Report sharing and collaboration
(48) Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration is the ability to easily share reports with others.

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

Avg 8.3

9
Publish to Web
(43) Ratings
9
Publish to PDF
(43) Ratings
9
Report Versioning
(39) Ratings
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
9
Report Delivery Scheduling
(42) Ratings
Report Delivery Schedule is the ability to have reports delivered to a destination at a specific data and time.
9
Delivery to Remote Servers
(23) Ratings
Ability to deliver reports to remote servers

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

Avg 8.0

9
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
(46) Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats are canned visualization types that can be selected to visualize different kinds of data.
9
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
(43) Ratings
Location analytics is the visualization of geographical or spatial data.
9
Predictive Analytics
(41) Ratings
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
9
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
(1) Ratings
Pattern recognition and data mining mean the ability to recognize hidden patterns in large quantities of data.

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

Avg 8.5

9
Multi-User Support (named login)
(45) Ratings
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
9
Role-Based Security Model
(42) Ratings
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
9
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
(45) Ratings
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
9
Report-Level Access Control
(1) Ratings
Report-level access control means that the type of report determines who has access to it.
9
Single Sign-On (SSO)
(27) Ratings
Allows users to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8.5

Avg 8.0

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

8.8

Avg 7.9

9
REST API
(18) Ratings
REST is an architecture style for designing networked applications
9
Javascript API
(18) Ratings
A Javascript API is a type of API
9
iFrames
(17) Ratings
An iFrame is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website
9
Java API
(16) Ratings
A Java application programming interface (API) is a list of all classes that are part of the Java development kit (JDK)
9
Themeable User Interface (UI)
(17) Ratings
A themeable user interface means that a specific visual them can be applied to it
8
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
(16) Ratings
A customizable, open source API Gateway is a fast and scalable type of API

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Product Details

About
Competitors
Tech Details
FAQs

What is Microsoft BI (MSBI)?

Microsoft BI (MSBI) benefits from the ubiquity of SQL server and the set of tools built around the database, including an ETL layer, master data management, data cleansing, report and reporting.

The reporting engine is SQL Server Reporting Services which does not have the visualization capabilities of visualization tools like Tableau or Qlik. Excel has historically been the platform visualization tool. Power BI for Office 365 has done much to improve the discovery and visualization capabilities of Excel.

Microsoft now offers Power BI cloud as the visualization platform with geospatial 3D, natural-language query generation, and self-service ETL along with charting and other data visualizations that can be uploaded and shared through the Power BI service.

The Power BI platform also provides live access to on-premises Microsoft SQL Server instances, and self-service access to third-party cloud sources including Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk, and GitHub. Mobility is supported through a native iPad app, an iPhone app.

This new platform is viewed by Microsoft as a visualization layer sitting on top of their earlier generation of installed SQL-based technology.

Microsoft BI (MSBI) Competitors

Microsoft BI (MSBI) Technical Details

Deployment Types	Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating Systems	Unspecified
Mobile Application	No

Frequently Asked Questions

Oracle Analytics Server and Spoom are common alternatives for Microsoft BI (MSBI).

Reviewers rate Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Microsoft BI (MSBI) are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).

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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(932)

May 23rd 2024

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Pros
Cons

Real-time Analytics: Users have appreciated the real-time stream analytics feature for making prompt business decisions. This functionality has been instrumental in enhancing their decision-making processes and improving overall efficiency.

Customizable Workspaces: Customers have highlighted the ease of customization for different project groups through a dashboard and drag-and-drop interface. This flexibility allows teams to tailor their work environments to specific project requirements, promoting collaboration and productivity.

Comprehensive Environment: Reviewers liked that Visual Studio integrated various development aspects, providing a comprehensive environment for different tasks. By combining database, ETL, reporting, and analytics development within one platform, users can streamline their workflows and accomplish diverse tasks efficiently.

High Cost and Pricing: Some users have found the cost of MSBI to be high compared to competitors, wishing for better pricing options that would make it more cost-effective and user-friendly. They emphasize the need for mid-market tier pricing to improve affordability for SMBs.

Limited Customization Options: Users have expressed a desire for more opportunities to customize visualization effects in MSBI, highlighting the current limitations in customization features available. They specifically seek detailed map visuals, the ability to use Python or R scripts, and input data within the platform.

Steep Learning Curve: Reviewers have mentioned experiencing difficulties with the steep learning curve of MSBI, especially for individuals with varying backgrounds. They stress that proper training is essential and call for simplifying installation processes to aid users during implementation.

Reviews

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MSBI : a new boom in the digital world!

Rating: 9 out of 10

January 04, 2024

Verified User

Vetted Review

Verified User

2 years of experience

Power BI Pro

$9.99

Power BI Premium

4,995

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