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Board vs MicroStrategy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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

Board
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
23rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Business Performance Management (10th), Reporting (20th)
MicroStrategy
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Board is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MicroStrategy is 3.2%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Wiboon Thabsuwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and requires less time to learn or understand its features
I think the product is good in terms of ease of use. The interface looks really nice and very easy to use. Every command appears in the icon. It looks like you don't have to understand everything about the command. You do not necessarily have to know more, or I would say that there is less time for our study about the products. Functionality-wise, it is quite easy to use and requires less time to understand or learn about the product. I am a software vendor, so I do not use the tool myself. I use it for my clients. My clients mostly use it for budgeting and timing purposes. I would say that's really less maintenance at all because they can do everything by themselves. It is good in terms of ease of use.
AJIN S L - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience has shown effective features for analysis, but needs interface improvements
The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis are those that cater to user needs. However, I find Power BI to be more useful when comparing some features, but my company does not choose Power BI due to certain code restrictions. The MicroStrategy interface is not as good as Power BI, especially concerning the user-friendly aspects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"By using Board we can do a lot of free analysis. We can change the layout of a table and even the end-user can change the layout of a table. And in Board 11.2 you can save the layout. That's very useful for the customer, it's a very good function."
"It is easy to make quick updates. As the business changes, we can maintain the tool without programming help from IT."
"We can build reports super fast.​"
"The tool seems to have a lot of ways to handle scaling."
"It allows people to quickly create dashboards with reports."
"The support from the BOARD team and their consultants is great. Whenever I use technical support, they are good."
"It has definitely saved us time, especially in our budget and planning processes."
"With the combination of 24/7 global support and their community, there was great customer service, tech support, and community support."
"Getting more data to people more quickly. Providing more flexibility for how they use the data."
"Has a great semantic layer."
"I find MicroStrategy the most suited to the enterprise-wide BI platform, because of its scalability and stability.​"
"The solution is ideal for enterprise-level companies or corporations."
"The drill-down functionality is also very good."
"It is very stable."
"It was easy to install and implement a report with it."
"Comprehensive security control and more."
 

Cons

"The engine of the Board should be made powerful like the engine of IBM planning which is more powerful in terms of performance. The consolidated finance area also needs improvement."
"Building similar models entirely from scratch could be made quicker with transfer abilities between databases and capsules."
"It can have more functionality for narrative reporting. They should also improve their training courses, which are currently very lightweight. When you get into more complex things, it is quite difficult to figure out what you're supposed to do, and you have to look at a lot of videos before you actually understand, which is a bit frustrating. Their training can be more comprehensive."
"It would be nice to be able to host your site and actually have BOARD be the driver of your site. So you could have anybody in your organization go to www.myorg.com, for example, and then go through what you allow them to go through. So rather than having to go through the application, to be able to go to actually host it to a website."
"I'd like to see a more passive report user for enterprise report writers that aren't particularly technical."
"The initial setup was very complex for us."
"We are looking at ways to improve how we deal with security in BOARD and other similar things. ​"
"It would be nice to see truly transferable processes from model to model, as well as a method of building repetitive processes."
"I want to be able to have one report that's delivered to 30 different people and all 30 different people see something different. Now, you can do that today with metrics. You cannot do that with attributes. There's a component of that which, if an attribute is on granularity-one and another is on granularity-two, and you remove granularity-one, you're now going to be summing to a level that you did not expect before."
"We would like access to more storage and access to more metadata to build the right programs that can construct all the stuff for us instead of us having to type it in all the time."
"MicroStrategy lacks that community support. You're either stuck figuring things out yourself or paying expensive fees to MicroStrategy consultants for help."
"There is room for improvement in data visualization."
"The interface you can design in MicroStrategy is great, but I feel it needs to be refreshed, add a bit more functionality. I would like to see more capabilities on the mobile side, to bring it on par with apps that you see in the App Store."
"​There is room for improvement on the graphs."
"If you do not learn the ins or outs, it can be a difficult tool to use. You could do a PoC and get enough out of it to be able to use it. However, when it comes to administering it, you definitely need the training.​"
"They need to improve on distribution services. There are lack of features which were there earlier with Narrowcast, but they are not there in the distribution services."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions."
"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."
"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."
"​In terms of the pricing, it was reasonable. BOARD is not the lowest in the market, but it was reasonable for us."
"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."
"While initial cost of MicroStrategy is still on the higher side, the long-term benefits brings down overall cost of ownership significantly as compared to other tools like Tableau/Cognos."
"The licensing is a bit high per user."
"​They gave us a good deal.​"
"All BI software vendors' list prices are high. It's about a price that fits the customer's needs. And I think MicroStrategy has some flexibility in its pricing model where we can easily demonstrate a total cost of ownership comparison against any of the other players."
"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."
"There have been actual direct bottomline impacts in terms of extra revenue created from the reporting solutions."
"They made a change in the licensing module some time ago and we can now use all the enterprise tools for free."
"I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year."
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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
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?
We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...
What do you like most about Board?
All the reports are prepared automatically.
What needs improvement with Board?
Some of my company's customers are interested to see the predictive analytics part of the tool. Some customers would like to leverage or prioritize predictive analytics as the main feature, but som...
What do you like most about MicroStrategy?
The stability of the product is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?
For larger businesses, I think the pricing is logical, but for smaller companies, it can be a bit costly.
What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?
MicroStrategy could learn from Power BI's user-friendly interface. I find the user interface lacking when compared to Power BI. Additionally, their hyperintelligence could be improved in certain as...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Coca-Cola, Puma, Desigual, Ricoh, KPMG, H&M, Groupe SEB
Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.
Find out what your peers are saying about Board vs. MicroStrategy and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.