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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
9th
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

"Good product if you are trying implement data quality, data integration, and data management projects."
"Can manage a huge quantity of data and provide reliability."
"The solution is stable."
"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."
"What I like the most is that we have to deal with less while writing the queries."
"It is easy to use, and it is quick for developing things. It is fairly powerful, and it can integrate with a lot of different platforms without much hassle."
"One of the most valuable features for us is the metadata repository because it can easily understand the lineage of first target mapping. My company and I also find Informatica really easy to use—when a consultant joins our company, in just a few days to a few weeks, they can understand how to use it—so we prefer to use this ETL tool."
"Technical support, and their approach is good. They have a support portal and support tickets. If you open a ticket it has multiple levels of severity from level one to very high or critical."
"From my perspective, it enables clients to better understand our data and make better decisions based on that information."
"It has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view."
"Tableau is good for routine dashboards, and it has integration with Slack, through which it can send you daily updates."
"The initial setup is quick and easy and you don't need special outside assistance to set everything up."
"I love the customization skills that Tableau has, it is not restricted to what is built-in already."
"I have found the solution easy to use and the interface is very good."
"The solution deployment was straightforward."
"Compared to other products, visualization features are really good."
 

Cons

"The pricing could be improved."
"The UI is outdated and old-fashioned, at least in our current version. Also, we have experienced some stability issues with the Workflow Monitor application."
"If you want to transfer a ZIP file, it is a pain. You need to use Command-Line. Sometimes we just want to transfer a file. It should be easy to move them from A to B."
"I would like to see improvements made to the custom transformations. It should be more open for users that want to write their own code and use cases."
"Support could be better."
"The performance of Informatica PowerCenter could improve."
"Informatica PowerCenter is outdated and would benefit from modernization. They should have a very good migration strategy from Informatica PowerCenter to AACF. Informatica PowerCenter there is no point in using it, you have to use a cloud version."
"It would be nice to have all tools in one place. CDC needs more effort, as it's only easy to develop if you are familiar with Linux."
"Could have more integrations with different platforms."
"We would like a report model, because currently there is no schema that we can create in the tool."
"Users would like to be able to export an Excel file when they see a table or something like that. That's not an out-of-the-box feature for Tableau."
"In the next release, I would like to be able to have the option to see more raw data that I'm converting on the dashboard."
"The only issue with the solution is with its prices at a regional level."
"Most of the problems in Tableau Online that I have noticed have to do with performance or weird, inexplicable bugs that I can't pin down. For example, you might try unloading some data, and you'll be waiting for a long time without anything happening."
"The charts need to be improved. The drawings and the visualization need to be more accurate."
"The charts in Tableau are quite limited."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be better. It's very expensive. On a scale from one to five, I would give Informatica PowerCenter's price a one."
"The price of this solution is high."
"It's much more expensive, almost three times more expensive than most other solutions."
"Since the solution's cost is higher, I rate the pricing as a five out of ten."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten. The price is very high, and it doesn't understand the market now."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a six out of ten. The exact pricing depends on various products that you have."
"We have a site license, but we do pay by the division."
"Its maintenance is expensive."
"Tableau has reasonable pricing."
"At $70 per month, I think the price is a bit scary. I have a small consulting firm in Ghana, working in about 15 different African countries, and when it comes to our part of the world, $70 a month is a lot of money for software."
"The cost is high."
"It is reasonable and cheap as compared to other major tools. It has a good price, and people go for it because of its pricing."
"Its cost is quite high. A corporate license costs about 150-200K per year for all the users, but there was probably some discounted amount. This cost includes everything."
"For the use and the capability of the software, it's $70 per month, and that is quite inexpensive."
"The pricing of Tableau should be better to remain competitive in the market, especially when compared to alternatives."
"Tableau is not as cost-effective as Microsoft BI."
report
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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%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Azure Data Factory compare with Informatica PowerCenter?
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Which is better - SSIS or Informatica PowerCenter?
SSIS PowerPack is a group of drag and drop connectors for Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services, commonly called SSIS. The collection helps organizations boost productivity with code-free compo...
Which Informatica product would you choose - PowerCenter or Cloud Data Integration?
Complex transformations can easily be achieved using PowerCenter, which has all the features and tools to establish a real data governance strategy. Additionally, PowerCenter is able to manage huge...
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 ...
 

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.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.