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Informatica PowerCenter vs Tableau 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

Informatica PowerCenter
Ranking in Data Visualization
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (2nd)
Tableau
Ranking in Data Visualization
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of Informatica PowerCenter is 1.7%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 27.2%, down from 31.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Lars Borchers - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and reliable product that provides a variety of features for data integration
The solution is not for newcomers. It has an old touch. The solution must improve the integration with new services. It was part of the program at Informatica when they moved to their cloud platform. It is integrated. However, from an on-premise perspective, we need to buy licenses for PowerExchange. If we want a native driver to access a special service, we need to extend our license to those services. It is expensive. I don't like that it's not all included in the solution.
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 support is valuable. There are also open-source ETL products, which work very well, but there is no support. When we face a production problem, being able to get support is valuable, and it brings efficiency. With an open-source solution, we can't engage anyone to resolve the problem as quickly as possible."
"The most valuable features are the metadata repository and the data warehouse application console."
"The setup is very simple."
"Enterprise-scale ETL solution that's very stable and is easy to scale. It integrates and connects with multiple new systems, both structured and semi-structured."
"The setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable features of Informatica PowerCenter are the ease of use, and development, and is simple to find resources."
"The most valuable feature of Informatica PowerCenter is the flow designer functionally. It is the best out of any ETL tool. Additionally, the solution is reliable and trustable in dealing with large data sources anytime. When we're using billions of data transactions, it's smooth."
"Has a good visual tool for data mapping."
"The UI part is the best. The end-users can easily get started with Tableau Desktop or Tableau Online because of its user-friendliness."
"It provides business users with a tool, so they are not dependent on IT."
"Tableau is easy to use. That's the first and most important thing. I not only provide consulting but I also train people to use it, so with its ease-of-use it's not as difficult for me to train executives and management staff, because they don't have the IT background, unlike when I'm using Python."
"It is so easy to do a lot of things. There is a lot of flexibility and creativity in this product. In other products, you don't have this flexibility."
"It is easy to use, and it can handle a large amount of data."
"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."
"Tableau is easy to use."
"Gradual scalability from simple to complex situations"
 

Cons

"There is a need to buy a separate license if one wishes to connect with some kind of SAP system, such as SalesForce."
"Now they are migrating to a new version, and they have something that is called Informatica Developer. Previously, they just had PowerCenter. Now, when they move everything to Informatica Developer it's not as good or stable like it was when it was PowerCenter, though it has some nice features. This Developer tool could be better."
"Its interface can be modernized. It is an old product. I have been working with it for 14 years, and it still looks the same. It hasn't been modernized much. It also needs to handle more modern formats, such as JSON files. It works with the old text files and databases, but it does not always work with the newer, modern stuff. You need to make your own programs to support that kind of stuff. Support is also a kind of difficult with Informatica. They don't do direct support and rely on using their distributors around the globe for support, which means that you kind of have to go through this layer of different companies before you get help."
"The solution's commercial cost is very high. Other open-source tools can do the tool's functions for free. The world is moving to the cloud, but the solution hasn't updated its drivers. I presume that its downfall will start soon. The tool is trying to cross-sell or upsell without helping customers derive benefits from the existing products. They have multiple tools and licenses. It is better to bring the smaller tools in one umbrella."
"Informatica PowerCenter could improve on the documentation for the implementation. The documents provided are not very good for a new user."
"There can be scalability issues. Huge amounts of data ingestion will impact performance."
"The price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required, considering the fact that the present licensing charges of the tool are expensive."
"The UI is a little outdated."
"There could be improvements on the mobile application, it is lacking features."
"It would be nice to include more features on each dashboard."
"At the organizational level, increasing the servers' capabilities to support us as an enterprise tool."
"I would like to have the product be more flexible in terms of creating online shared dashboards."
"Some of our clients are looking for better UI when using Tableau as they often work with this solution directly."
"I would like Tableau Prep to be integrated with Tableau Desktop. I would also like more customizations for tables."
"It's not an aesthetic platform at the moment."
"We need big servers to perform the operations that we are doing. They should probably relook at its architecture."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other tools, I think PowerCenter is a bit expensive. When I compare it to Oracle, if you want to use Oracle databases, you can easily get an ODI tool, so it's easier to handle. Informatica is a standalone tool—it's an independent company—and there are no databases around them, so it's quite expensive to use. Generally, large companies use PowerCenter because of the price. If companies want to expand their usage areas, they try to consider if it's easy to implement and easy to understand the pricing. I think the pricing is a barrier for Informatica."
"According to what I've heard and read on various blogs, it's quite expensive when compared to similar competitive products."
"Since the solution's cost is higher, I rate the pricing as a five out of ten."
"Cost could be improved."
"Our client has purchased the license, and we are using it."
"It is for big enterprises. We have leveraged Informatica for big enterprises but not for small and medium enterprises because it is a very costly product as compared to other products. We propose this solution only for enterprise customers. For small to medium enterprises, we would propose the Microsoft solution. Its licensing is currently bundle-wise. It should be features-wise and not bundle-wise."
"The license model is CPU based."
"Our customers pay a licensing fee yearly."
"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. My guess would be that it is $1000 or less per year. We might go for Power BI in the future because of its umbrella with Microsoft licensing. It is much cheaper for us to use Power BI, and some folks will go in that direction because they don't want to pay the higher license."
"The cost of the solution should be improved."
"The initial cost that is set according to CPU cores is expensive."
"One of the biggest drawbacks of Tableau is the price, it is expensive. The price should be reduced."
"The product's price is relatively inexpensive and manageable for enterprise-level companies."
"Basically, we prefer a permanent license. A one-time charge is much better."
"We are on an annual license which costs us $1,400 which is very expensive. Microsft BI is less expensive."
"Paying for users you never setup or buying expensive desktop licenses for users who can solve their users with web editing on the server are the two biggest expenses."
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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
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance 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

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Also Known As

PowerCenter
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, LexisNexis, Rabobank
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 Informatica PowerCenter vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.