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Alteryx vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Alteryx
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (1st), Data Science Platforms (5th), Data Preparation Tools (1st)
Tableau
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
294
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 24.2%, down 25.7% compared to last year.
Tableau, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 19.8% mindshare, up 18.5% since last year.
Predictive Analytics
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Vivek Vaibhav - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a good UI and drag-and-drop features which makes it easy to understand
There have been some issues with licensing, particularly with the increased prices. This has led some companies, including ours, to consider reducing the number of licenses or potentially discontinuing their use of Alteryx. Since most of our team members work with Alteryx, deploying workflows to clients who may not have licenses became a hurdle. Every user needed a license to run the workflows, which could pose difficulties, especially for clients who only needed occasional access for small data analyses. Unlike other software like Microsoft Power BI, which offers free trials or user licenses for basic functionality, Alteryx doesn't provide such options, potentially limiting its accessibility for occasional users. It should improve scalability.
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

"Alteryx is user-friendly and allows easy creation of workflows compared to Informatica PowerCenter."
"Alteryx has a good UI. We use it frequently in our projects. The tool comes with drag-and-drop features and is easy to understand for business needs. One situation where Alteryx's advanced analytics capabilities were particularly beneficial for us was during a forecasting project. Unlike Python, which requires coding, Alteryx simplifies the process significantly. With Alteryx, users can adjust parameters within the user interface without writing any code."
"Alteryx makes it easy for the end customer to see clean data in a structured form."
"Alteryx is a low-code platform, and that's the biggest reason why we chose it."
"The solution offers excellent predicting power. The accuracy and confidence have been great."
"The product is very stable and super fast, five-star. It's significantly more stable than it's nearest competitor."
"My primary focus is creating numerous data pulls, and Alteryx Server handles the automation well."
"The most valuable feature of Alteryx is its performance. It is a powerful solution."
"Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports."
"A valuable feature of Tableau is that it is a useful tool for small setups. I shuffle between Tableau and MicroStrategy, so I use Tableau for personal purposes more than enterprise. I like the light version of Tableau for personal usage and doing some use cases on my own. When it comes to something small, I use Tableau for setups, rather than any other tool."
"Tableau's most valuable features are user-friendliness and have a connection between multiple source systems. You can publish a report by using Tableau Public and there you can make your data online, not only batches of data, you can use it as an online analytical tool."
"The action feature which Tableau has is very useful for us. If we click on one visualization, it will pass the value to another visualization. That interactivity within different visualizations is the most valuable feature of Tableau."
"Tableau's performance is really good, and it is adding new features."
"The data visualization piece is most valuable. We do ad-hoc analysis or one-time shot things, but there are things that we have to track every single day. When our management and our customers want to see how things are changing, the dashboarding provides that information. Tableau is key in providing that data on a refresh basis. We use a data blending tool that pumps the data into Tableau, and we just schedule it to run every single day. So, the automation of the data and being able to present it to people who are interested are the most valuable features."
"All features are valuable. It is very user-friendly, and it is mostly drag-and-drop. If we have the dataset available, then we can develop any dashboard very quickly."
"It provides business users with a tool, so they are not dependent on IT."
 

Cons

"If there is any way to make the learning curve less steep, that would be ideal."
"The only weakness I would say is on the visualization side of having that dynamic incapability."
"The pricing seems high for my current needs. However, considering the benefits, it is easier to justify to management for broader company usage."
"The screen when you are looking into your workflows and your ETL processes needs to be improved. You cannot manage it very well."
"There is currently no cloud solution and this would be valuable for many clients."
"They should make the solution user-friendly for nontechnical people by giving specific names to the options."
"The product's pricing needs improvement."
"It's a technical product and those that don't have proper training will have to deal with a steep learning curve."
"An area needing improvement involves the complexity of the product should you need to alter a lot of parameters. If you have technical servers, much interface, different providers and more serious processes, that will be time consuming."
"The product's features for cloud integration need improvement."
"They need a write-back; that is what is missing. If they get the write back to the database, they will be fully automated, but for the time being, they are not."
"The price of Tableau is too high."
"Tableau is an end-to-end analytics platform, and it is doing a pretty good job in terms of connecting to the data and analyzing it. It can, however, do better in terms of data management and the ETL features, which are not on the advanced analytics or machine learning side. Tableau Prep is where users would want to see more advancements. They can improve Tableau Prep, which is an analytic platform tool for data cleansing. People who work with data spend most of their time curating the data. Cleaning up the data and getting it ready for analysis is what takes the most time. If Tableau can invest more time in improving the Tableau Prep platform, it would be great. Previously, Tableau didn't have the functionality for writing to a database. So, you couldn't really alter the database tables and write to your database, but they fixed that in one of the very recent releases. However, it isn't really advanced and should be improved."
"Improvements in schema security and row/column security need to be made."
"If you wanted to create something without making it an extra column in the data set, you can't just rename it to a more user-friendly short name."
"It would be nice to include more features on each dashboard."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Opt for the three year subscription. It is 20% less than the yearly one."
"The solution has a more costly license than other tools in the market."
"The license is really expensive, we cannot afford to have two or three. It takes away all the budget of my area."
"My organization pays for it, and I do not look into the financial aspect of the licensing, but I know it is pretty expensive."
"In my opinion, it's actually quite expensive."
"If one is a high price, and ten is a low price, I rate the tool's price as a one. The tool is expensive."
"​Very transparent.​"
"The product's price is relatively inexpensive and manageable for enterprise-level companies."
"Tableau's prices are relatively high for our market. I am from Serbia, so many companies in this market don't have the ability to pay for expensive software. My clients are quite satisfied with a lot of Tableau's qualities except for the prices."
"Buy 50 at a time. Project your use base every three months, and project your requirements forward."
"The pricing of Tableau should be better to remain competitive in the market, especially when compared to alternatives."
"This solution is a bit expensive. The pricing options have become more difficult over the years. I think they are bordering on pricing themselves out of the market. They need different pricing options for various-sized businesses. Where my organization is a large organization, we are happy to pay a higher price because we can leverage the products very extensively. For smaller enterprises, different pricing options would be good."
"The initial cost that is set according to CPU cores is expensive."
"I downloaded the solution online for free."
"I believe it has a lifelong license, and once you purchase it, you don't have to renew it, but I'm not sure."
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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
42%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
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.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.