Board vs MicroStrategy comparison

Read 160 MicroStrategy reviews

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Board

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Board and MicroStrategy compete in the business intelligence space. MicroStrategy appears to have an upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set that justifies its higher price point.

Features: Board integrates seamlessly with multiple data sources and focuses on ease of use, intuitive analytics, and excels in planning and forecasting. MicroStrategy offers advanced data visualizations, robust analytical depth, and powerful data mining functionalities.

Room for Improvement: Board could enhance its advanced analytics capabilities, offer more customizable reporting options, and improve scalability. MicroStrategy has room for improvement in user-friendliness, simplifying deployment procedures, and reducing dependency on IT for basic functions.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Board provides straightforward deployment with excellent customer support, ensuring smooth implementation. MicroStrategy's deployment is more complex but compensated by detailed documentation and support.

Pricing and ROI: Board offers lower setup costs and good ROI, appealing to small and medium-sized enterprises. MicroStrategy justifies its higher cost with extensive capabilities that provide significant ROI, appealing to organizations requiring deep analytical solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Board vs. MicroStrategy Report (Updated: March 2025).

Board vs. MicroStrategy

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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

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

Senior Consultant at IMD Company Limited

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.

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AJIN S L

Technical Analyst at Allianz

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to create a data model and have it in testing within a week is fantastic."

"The drill down is good for people who have that high level view, because they can do some analysis based on it."

"A lot of flexibility from the data modeling standpoint. It can add specific line items into our budget, for example, or if we want to make changes to the data model itself, we have that flexibility."

"It has definitely saved us time, especially in our budget and planning processes."

"Now, we have only one version of the truth."

"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 useful for self-analysis regarding company data and helps to find areas where we can improve."

"The dynamic selections on the screen and details by function are also valuable for inside the data view."

More Board pros

"It is scalable and integration-friendly."

"Semi-automatic support of implementing date dimensions, including delta to prior year implementation."

"Dossiers are going to change the name of the game for us. We want to be able to have the executive committee go into a meeting and tell a story. We want them to tell us a story, not us."

"The architecture is very solid."

"The stability of the product is good."

"Mobile brings reports/dashboards closer to the business user."

"This solution is the most scalable BI platform in the world."

"The interactive features that appear in the report were good. The external rendering option they give with multi servers was also good."

More MicroStrategy pros

Cons

"I'd like to see a more passive report user for enterprise report writers that aren't particularly technical."

"It needs more export to Excel functionality. Right now, we're having to build within the cloud-based platform, as well as build within the Excel add-in, because the export to Excel is somewhat ugly."

"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."

"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. "

"One of the things that I would like to see is the ability to have a rule directly referenced on the cubes."

"We can't delete entities and cubes in Boards because it interrupts our whole data model."

"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."

More Board cons

"This solution is missing enhanced features in the dashboards."

"I would like to see a feature where migrations are easier. When you migrate from certain environments, it could probably be a little cleaner. Sometimes it seems to be somewhat clunky when you migrate from one environment, say a development to a test or production environment."

"I would like to see the enterprise version available in a demo or as a trial version."

"Data preparation-wise, it was not so straightforward with respect to getting different sources. Preparing or transforming the data inside and then bringing it onto the dashboard was a bit difficult, and the experience could have been better."

"It would be good if it had greater analytics so we could build these visualizations by ourselves with scripts."

"I know we are not competing against Tableau, but MicroStrategy needs to step up its game on the GUI side."

"We're starting to open it up to more and more people to give them the ability and start looking at these things themselves, but it's not the most intuitive system, Enterprise Manager that is, so it's tough. We're trying to bridge the gap between usability and who we let in the system, because you're not going to come in and just pick it up."

"Currently, the client view looks completely different depending on what you are building."

More MicroStrategy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."

"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."

"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."

"In terms of the pricing, it was reasonable. BOARD is not the lowest in the market, but it was reasonable for us."

"It would be nice if there was a sticker price that says, "This software costs this amount of money." But I think that's just indicative of all software vendors. A lot of people are in it to make money, commissions, so it's just the nature of the business. But I would like to see more transparency, more equality, on pricing. Some people get better deals than others, I think."

"We are waiting to switch to Microsoft Power BI because MicroStrategy is too costly."

"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."

"They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools."

"We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us."

"There have been actual direct bottomline impacts in terms of extra revenue created from the reporting solutions."

"MicroStrategy's licensing cost is higher than that of other tools in the market. My company uses the enterprise edition of the product."

"For larger businesses, the pricing is logical."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Insurance Company

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...

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Comparisons

Anaplan vs Board

Compared 32% of the time

Pigment vs Board

Compared 14% of the time

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Board

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Board

Compared 9% of the time

More Board Competitors

Tableau vs MicroStrategy

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Cognos vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Product Reports

Board

Download Board product report

Download MicroStrategy product report

Overview

BOARD International - headquartered in Switzerland - is a leading global provider of software for improving business results through better decision making. By unifying Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management into a single product, BOARD enables companies to achieve a shared vision of their performance across the entire organization, and thus a single version of the truth.

BOARD provides seamless solutions for • Reporting & Analysis • Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting • Profitability Modelling & Optimization • Simulation & What-if-Analysis • Scorecarding & Strategy Management • Financial Consolidation. Based on visual modelling, BOARD has enabled global companies to deploy BI and CPM applications without a single line of code in a fraction of the time and cost associated with traditional solutions.

Board International

Company: Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is a leading worldwide provider of enterprise software platforms. With direct operations in 26 countries worldwide and approximately 2,000 employees, our mission is to provide enterprise analytics, mobility, and security platforms that are flexible, powerful, scalable and user-friendly. To learn more, visit MicroStrategy online, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Product portfoilio:

MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise™ empowers leading organizations to analyze vast amounts of data and distribute actionable business insight throughout an enterprise through two distinct offerings: MicroStrategy Analytics™ and MicroStrategy Desktop™. MicroStrategy Analytics delivers reports and dashboards, and enables users to conduct ad hoc analysis and share insights anywhere, anytime, via mobile devices or the Web. It also combines the agility and productivity of self-service visual data discovery with the security, scalability, and governance features of enterprise-grade business intelligence. MicroStrategy Desktop is a standalone, on-premise visual data discovery tool designed to enable business users to analyze and understand their data. MicroStrategy Mobile™ enables organizations to rapidly build custom business applications that deliver analytics combined with transactions, multimedia, and custom workflows to mobile devices. MicroStrategy Secure Cloud™ combines all of the enterprise analytics, mobile, and security features in MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise with powerful and scalable data integration, validation, and warehousing services — all delivered in an environment where organizations can deploy transformational analytics applications in minutes.

Usher, MicroStrategy’s breakthrough security solution, is a powerful mobile security platform designed to dematerialize traditional forms of identity verification (such as passwords, tokens, and physical badges) and replace them with a single mobile identity badge that is cryptographically linked to its owner’s smartphone and dynamically linked to an enterprise’s existing identity repositories. Usher works on standard Android and iOS smartphones, and also boasts an Apple Watch™ integration.

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.

Board vs. MicroStrategy