Tableau Reviews

Name: Tableau
Brand: Salesforce
Rating: 4.2 (295 reviews)

Vendor: Salesforce

4.2 out of 5

295 reviews
89% willing to recommend

13K followers

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What is Tableau?

Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights.

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Tableau is the #1 ranked solution in top Data Visualization solutions, #1 ranked solution in top Embedded BI Tools, #2 ranked solution in top Business Intelligence Tools, and #2 ranked solution in top Reporting Tools. PeerSpot users give Tableau an average rating of 8.4 out of 10. Tableau is most commonly compared to Microsoft Power BI: Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI. Tableau is popular among the midsize enterprise segment, accounting for 48% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a educational organization, accounting for 44% of all views.

Helped 839,255 peers since 2012

Featured reviews

ROMIL SHAH

Deputy General Manger - Information Technology at Nayara Energy

When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

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NidhiJain

Assistant Vice President - Business Managment Specialist at Deutsche Bank

For data analysis, we primarily use Tableau for basic tasks like creating pie charts or calculating averages. However, it lacks extensive or complex data analysis capabilities. Tableau's data planning capabilities are somewhat limited. To compensate, we rely on other tools like Alteryx for data manipulation. Once we've prepared the data, we create hyperfiles and use Tableau for dashboarding. I would recommend Tableau for advanced visualization tools. Still, I must mention that other powerful options are available in the market, such as Power BI. Power BI, which offers extensive data manipulation and dashboarding capabilities, while Tableau is old. Additionally, Power BI has newer versions, enhanced capabilities, and better integrations. Right now, there are no talks on replacing it. So, my company will continue to rely on Tableau because it has many users. If we have to move to another tool, there must be a migration plan and many logistical changes, which could be a challenge. I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. I advise those considering using Tableau to analyze their needs beforehand. Tableau can be a valuable data analysis and visualization tool, but it's important to understand what you want to achieve with it.

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Theresa McLaughlin

Senior Capacity Planner at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. The other thing that I never liked about Tableau is its ability to handle large sets of data. To present the data in the dashboards, we have to stage it up exactly like it is going to come into the dashboard. We use another tool called Alteryx that does that for us. So, we manipulate the data, get it staged, and then push it into Tableau. Tableau is terrible at handling large data sets, and we knew right away that we couldn't use Tableau to do data manipulation.

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Tableau mindshare

Product category:

As of March 2025, the mindshare of Tableau in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category stands at 18.3%, down from 19.0% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

PeerAnalyst reports

Type	Title	Date
Category	BI (Business Intelligence) Tools	Mar 1, 2025	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Mar 1, 2025	Download
Comparison	Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI	Mar 1, 2025	Download
Comparison	Tableau vs Amazon QuickSight	Mar 1, 2025	Download
Comparison	Tableau vs Oracle OBIEE	Mar 1, 2025	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Microsoft Power BI	4.0	21.8%	93%	319 interviews Add to research
Teradata	4.1	0.8%	87%	76 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

"The solution provides the leverage of having custom visualization and the capability of self-service."
"Tableau's performance is really good, and it is adding new features."
"Tableau's most valuable features are its ability to summarize data, provide dynamic controls for navigating different charts, and showcase historical data trends. I appreciate the option to colour-code different charts for improved customer experience."

Room for Improvement

"The visualizations should be user-friendly and allow for more custom visualizations."
"Tableau's integration with Einstein Analytics could be better."
"Tableau could be improved by introducing a data manipulation layer within the tool itself. Currently, data manipulations require using additional tools like Alteryx. If Tableau included these capabilities, it would reduce the need for external dependencies. The tool gets slower when we feed huge amounts of data."

Pricing

Enterprise buyers evaluating Tableau should note its pricing model includes both core-based and user-based licensing. The cost for Tableau Desktop is $1,999 per user, with an annual license averaging $70 per user per month. Bulk purchases may lack discounts, and server licensing can be costly. However, many users find the investment worthwhile due to the comprehensive features and competitive edge it offers. Pricing can be higher than alternatives like Power BI, especially for large-scale deployments.

"Tableau is an expensive solution."
"The solution's licensing is based on user-basis. It depends on the business ROI it offers. It's not on the higher side or too cheap; it falls in the medium-cost range. The price is determined by user usage, so the cost will also increase as the number of users increases."
"Tableau is an expensive solution compared to Power BI."

Popular Use Cases

Tableau is primarily used for data visualization, reporting, dashboard creation, and analytics in various industries such as finance, healthcare, telecommunications, and retail. Many users appreciate Tableau for its ability to simplify data analysis, enabling businesses to track KPIs, create performance dashboards, and extract actionable insights. It supports interactive visualizations and fosters decisions by allowing integration with multiple data sources like .xlsx, .csv, and databases from systems like SAP and Salesforce.

Scalability

Tableau's scalability receives mixed feedback. While some users praise its ability to handle numerous users with significant data volumes, others report performance issues with large datasets. Scalability often depends on factors like data architecture and dashboard design. Recent versions and server configurations help broaden scalability. Licensing costs and performance with extremely large data require improvement. Users with strategic designs and server setups tend to experience better results, but challenges persist in high-data scenarios.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Tableau Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Review data by company size

By reviewers

By visitors reading reviews

Top industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

44%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

University

Government

Healthcare Company

Retailer

Insurance Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Non Profit

Construction Company

Media Company

Comms Service Provider

Legal Firm

Hospitality Company

Pharma/Biotech Company

Wholesaler/Distributor

Transportation Company

Performing Arts

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Outsourcing Company

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Learn more about Tableau

Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

Tableau has many valuable key features:

Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards.
Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions.
Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data.
Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries.
Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.”

Tableau was previously known as Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online.

Tableau customers

Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.