Great value. Would use again.
Updated July 21, 2022

Great value. Would use again.

Scott Kennedy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Power BI Desktop

Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft Power BI

The entire organization is using Power BI. Depending on your technical ability, any one person could be leveraging the technology differently. For example, we have folks using Power BI desktop (who know how to use DAX) and others using the Power BI online service exclusively. For online users, that would include report consumers and builders.
  • Ability to crunch large volumes of data
  • It has a ton (and growing) number of data source connections
  • The visualization opportunities get better each month
  • The cost model could improve for the premium tier
  • Power BI desktop of a VM is pretty cumbersome
  • Power BI desktop doesn't work for Macs
  • Since the cost is so low, I was able to spend more $$ on people
  • The TOC is tricky if you consider the database cost involved
  • DAX is still a tricky language to learn for beginners
Power BI from a price perspective is the lowest cost (probably even from a total cost of ownership perspective) of all the offerings I have ever evaluated. The piece that really stands out for Power BI is the data transformation layer called Power Query. This section allows you to manipulate data in great detail.

Do you think Microsoft Power BI delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Microsoft Power BI's feature set?

Yes

Did Microsoft Power BI live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Microsoft Power BI go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Microsoft Power BI again?

Yes

The usability is great. Microsoft has been in the reporting game in one way or another for many years. Think about Excel, SSRS and other products like that. The Microsoft team has a deep bench of people who understand what analysts are trying to achieve with business intelligence tools to get their jobs done.
Assuming you have the $10 per month license of Power BI Pro, you get a really solid support team straight from Microsoft. Also, since my company uses Microsoft Teams, the support agent was able to have a very quick and easy chat about my problem directly through Microsoft Teams. This was a nice benefit.
Power BI desktop originally started as a simple tool to pull minimal amounts of data and do rudimentary visualizations. Over the last few years, it has grown into a robust business intelligence solution that can be scaled to thousands of users at a company. The cost model works well for smaller companies too.

Microsoft Power BI Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
10
Customizable dashboards
10
Report Formatting Templates
9
Drill-down analysis
10
Formatting capabilities
9
Integration with R or other statistical packages
10
Report sharing and collaboration
10
Publish to Web
10
Publish to PDF
10
Report Versioning
10
Report Delivery Scheduling
9
Delivery to Remote Servers
9
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
10
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
10
Predictive Analytics
10
Multi-User Support (named login)
10
Role-Based Security Model
9
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
9
Single Sign-On (SSO)
9
Responsive Design for Web Access
9
Mobile Application
9
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
10
REST API
9
Javascript API
9
iFrames
9
Java API
10
Themeable User Interface (UI)
10
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
9