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Alteryx vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alteryx
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (1st), Data Science Platforms (4th), Data Preparation Tools (1st)
Tableau
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Alteryx is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 23.1%, down 26.2% compared to last year.
Tableau, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 18.2% mindshare, down 18.7% since last year.
Predictive Analytics
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Theresa McLaughlin - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick development enables seamless data processing despite occasional support issues
There were times when the product would fail during development without an apparent reason. The support structure changed; initially, we received great support, however, it later became less reliable due to licensing issues and a tiered support system. Licensing negotiations were problematic, affecting our product usage. For instance, our licenses were temporarily lost during negotiations when an agreement couldn't be reached.
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution offers excellent predicting power. The accuracy and confidence have been great."
"This is a drag-and-drop tool which is easy-to-use and yet can be customized by creating your own components."
"The drag and drop and layout is simple to understand, with intuitive names of features."
"You get more support with Alteryx, and it's good for non-sophisticated users who can benefit from the support included in the price."
"I like the solution's velocity, the speed with which it processes data, and its ease of use."
"The most valuable feature of Alteryx is its performance. It is a powerful solution."
"The filtering is fast, and it provides a search tool that is great."
"Alteryx effectively visualizes the flow of data and what happens at each stage. I also like that it's a no-code solution. I also like that you can troubleshoot certain parts of the workflow by putting them in a sandbox."
"Tableau has many good features. It is user-friendly, has a simple-to-use interface, and has a customizable dashboard."
"I really like the interactivity of the dashboards."
"The most important feature in Tableau is visual analytics."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"The solution is configurable and flexible. We can customize the dashboards and configure the interface the way that we want. The data can be manipulated and arranged in different ways, such as columns."
"Any feature I am looking for usually is part of the next upgrade within a few months. They have a very good dynamic evolution."
"The solution has great features which nobody can beat, you can do a lot of customizations, such as use different dimensions and colorize them. Additionally, you can use the numeric values for the customization, which is an exceptional feature."
"Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports."
 

Cons

"Sometimes workflows tend to queue up, and they tend to get canceled for some reason that we don't know sometimes."
"It seems to me that it is not always user friendly."
"What they're struggling with is it's not as mature as Tableau in the user management area. It was tougher to manage the server part of it right away, especially since the user base has grown."
"There were times when the product would fail during development without an apparent reason."
"The interface could be improved."
"The price of the solution could improve by being lower."
"Alteryx could be improved in the area of analytics and central governance."
"It's a technical product and those that don't have proper training will have to deal with a steep learning curve."
"There are not enough language options. It needs to be offered in more than just English."
"What is happening, with so many tools coming up in the market, is that people have to continuously get educated in order to use some of the more advanced features."
"The SQL programming functionality needs to be improved."
"Many things have to be improved in Tableau. Right now, we make the calculation, and then we get that information. It would be better if business users could do that. I would ask the people at Tableau to provide that option to business users to get that information in one click. It would be better if they automated some calculations. There should be more automation in Tableau. However, there are many things in automation mode, but it is very limited at the moment. We need automation for people who do not know much about Tableau. It would also be better if there were good community support like in Alteryx."
"The data processing in Tableau is pathetic compared to Qlik."
"The customization in the front end is a bit difficult."
"The data entered into Tableau must be clean. Otherwise, it won't work properly."
"I also work as an SME on the platform side. Tableau is very nice and jazzy for the end-users, but there are pain points for the admins. Performance is something about which we hear a lot of complaints, such as the dashboard doesn't open in time. It performs well on the desktop but not on the server. I know that there is always a limitation when it comes to a huge amount of data or the complexity of the calculations, but we often hear from end-users about the performance on the server side. It is easy to drag and drop all the columns and do what we want, but if it is not going to load better on the server, users are not going to like it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The designer has a list price of $5,995 USD."
"We have a yearly cost that we pay for the licensing. We do not pay any costs in addition to the licensing fees."
"There are some implementation services and internal effort costs at the beginning but there is nothing else."
"The designer license costs 5000 euros. The server edition is 1000 euros."
"We use the free version of the solution. There are enterprise licenses available. It cost approximately $5,000 annually. It is an expensive solution and there are additional features that cost more money."
"ROI is huge. There are some secondary benefits, like analysts getting their post 5 PM time back or the ability to shorten all closing processes to a half or less."
"The price for Alteryx Designer is reasonable but the price for Alteryx Server for universal collaborations is too expensive."
"The cost of the solution could be reduced."
"The cost of the solution should be improved."
"Tableau is an expensive solution compared to Power BI."
"We always consider pricing when considering a new solution. We are a non-profit and price is a huge concern."
"For our organization, the cost hasn't been an issue."
"Tableau is a little cheaper as compared to Power BI and other technologies that we have used in the past. However, if the business users in our organization want to make presentations, Tableau has been asking us to purchase a Tableau Creator license, and $35 per month is expensive for business users. Power BI is giving a free desktop version for business users to connect to any data source and build their own dashboards. That's why we have proposed to use Power BI for most of the business users in our organization."
"Tableau is an expensive solution, though it comes with its advantages."
"The solution is very expensive. If you have many users then it is going to cost your company a lot of money."
"I'm using Tableau Public, which is free."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Educational Organization
44%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
One of the differences is that with Alteryx you can use it as an ETL and analytics tool. Please connect with me directly if you want to know more.
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
Alteryx is an extremely easy and flexible data tool, flexible in terms of drag and drop toolset and also has python, R integrations if your team requires this. It can handle over 2 billion rows of...
What is the Biggest Difference Between Alteryx and IBM SPSS Modeler?
I am not familiar with IBM SPSS Modeler, therefore, I cannot compare these two products. Regarding Alteryx I can say the following: - An excellent desktop tool for Data Prep and analytics. - Featu...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AnalyticsIq Inc., belk, BloominBrands Inc., Cardinalhealth, Cineplex, Dairy Queen
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Alteryx vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.