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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 (5th), Data Preparation Tools (1st)
Tableau
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
296
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 21.4%, down 26.0% compared to last year.
Tableau, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 17.5% mindshare, down 19.1% 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 scheduling feature for the automation is excellent."
"The drag and drop and layout is simple to understand, with intuitive names of features."
"Alteryx is user-friendly and allows easy creation of workflows compared to Informatica PowerCenter."
"Technical support is very helpful."
"The analytics are easy​."
"The connectors are a very good feature."
"I like the solution's velocity, the speed with which it processes data, and its ease of use."
"The product's initial setup phase is simple and straightforward."
"It provides business users with a tool, so they are not dependent on IT."
"The most valuable feature is the 3D charting."
"The solution deployment was straightforward."
"It is an excellent tool for data capture, processing, and visualization."
"Analysis is now more visual than in the past."
"Tableau is good for routine dashboards, and it has integration with Slack, through which it can send you daily updates."
"It's the ease of use. It is also a self-service tool so it decreases the burden on having centralized IT-type teams or developers."
"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."
 

Cons

"We are hoping that the NLP features will also support Chinese characters."
"It should have Linux support. It currently supports only Windows. It does not support any other platform. Its price should also be lower. Their US partner management program is actually unresponsive. One of the reasons why we don't have a formalized partnership plan with them is because their partner management team is atrociously unresponsive. This is something that they need to change."
"The solution can be quite complex in some aspects."
"I'd like it to be easier to work with PDF."
"The product could benefit from improved integration with visualization tools or even the inclusion of built-in visualization features."
"I think they should really work on integrating or have a capacity to integrate some algorithmic code. I think that's one of the most important things they need to be doing."
"They can provide some pre-built tools for predictive analytics instead of us having to build all the tools. It should also be improved from the visualization aspect. It should have better visualization capabilities. There are tools out there that have better visualization capabilities, which Alteryx is lacking currently."
"There are no ready models to use in analytics."
"Tableau's data modeling, mining, and AI library features need improvement."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Tableau is a company that does not respect partners."
"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."
"Its documentation can be improved so that a user can get a good hands-on experience. Tableau is well documented, and on their website, there are a lot of tutorials that are available for free. I started my learning process through those tutorials, but there are certain loopholes in those tutorials, which only got filled through a couple of good YouTube channels that talk about Tableau. YouTube helped me a lot. So, the documentation could be better, I understand that it is evolving day by day, and with more usage, there would be more such documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's very expensive. I'd rate it a four out of ten in terms of the price. It's great for big companies but not for small companies."
"Opt for the three year subscription. It is 20% less than the yearly one."
"Alteryx is generally more suited for medium—to large companies due to its potentially high licensing costs."
"The desktop platform costs $5,000 per year. It's very costly."
"My organization pays for it, and I do not look into the financial aspect of the licensing, but I know it is pretty 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."
"It has a good price."
"The seat is too expensive."
"There is a license for this solution and we pay on an annual basis."
"The solution is expensive but it depends on the customer's needs which will determine the cost of the licensing."
"It is fairly expensive. I have no idea what they paid. We were on an enterprise license, so whatever it is they licensed at the enterprise level is what we paid."
"The cost of the solution should be improved."
"Tableau has core-based and user-based licensing, and it is tied to scalability. The core-based licensing is about you buying a certain number of cores, and there is no restriction on the number of users who can use Tableau. The restriction is only on the number of cores. In user-based subscription licensing, there is a restriction on the number of users. Big companies and government organizations with a lot of users typically go for core-based licensing. User-based subscription licensing is a more common model. It has user roles such as creator, explorer, and viewer. A creator is someone who does the groundwork or development work. An explorer is someone who is into middle management but is not technically savvy, such as a category head. A viewer is like a typical decision-maker in senior management. For each role, Tableau is priced differently. The viewer role has the minimum price, and the creator role has the highest price. This pricing is available on their website. Everybody can see it."
"Its price is reasonable. Everything is included in the license."
"It is a bit overpriced."
"We are on an annual license which costs us $1,400 which is very expensive. Microsft BI is less expensive."
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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.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.