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Meraki Location Analytics vs Microsoft Power BI 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

Meraki Location Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
33rd
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
319
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Meraki Location Analytics is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 21.4%, down from 22.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Jacobo Levy - PeerSpot reviewer
You can manage thousands of devices with a click and deploy applications in seconds
Deploying Location Analytics is super easy. The vendor handles the maintenance. You set the schedule for updates, and let them know if you want to automatically deploy firmware updates. It manages the device downtime, so everything doesn't go down at the same time. It does the update device by device to minimize downtime.
James Balbach - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements
Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support has always been very good."
"I like Location Analytics' geofencing features for devices. You can manage thousands of devices with just a push of a button and deploy applications in seconds. For example, in schools, you can deploy an app update for thousands of iPads in just two clicks."
"In general, it is helpful because it allows administrators to see where the Wi-Fi and network services are being most used."
"The initial setup process is easy."
"I like Microsoft BI's drill-down feature and its overall ease of use."
"The most valuable feature is that it's easy to use. It's very useful for non-engineers and it is the ultimate solution for providing information and insights. Power BI is the best visualization tool I have ever worked with."
"Ease of development and maintenance."
"They should add mobile access."
"Implementation is very quick and the solution is very user-friendly."
"I like the flexibility it offers."
"SSRS and the Tabular server/Vertipaq engine/DAX are probably the two most valuable components."
"Provides data feeds for enterprise KPI reporting."
 

Cons

"The pricing is a pain point for us. It's a bit expensive."
"I would like to see all of the features included in a single package."
"The biggest issue is negotiating the price with a client. That's the most complicated part, but the product is worth it."
"The technical support before implementation could be better for premium partners."
"I have found using Microsoft BI is not easy. For example, trying to use the auto-refresh feature is not simple."
"The visualization aspect, while being the most visible to business users, also happens the be the weakest point in the entire Microsoft BI stack."
"I would like to see Machine Learning for Power Bi Pro users or an intermediate license to enable Machine Learning if you don't have access to a Premium account."
"An area for improvement is data refresh functionality"
"The UI is the main improvement that could be made. Specifically, there is something called DAX, in Power BI, which is complicated compared to calculated fields used in Tableau."
"It's not really complicated, but I didn't find the things I was looking for. The ones I used to work with within Dash are more open, and there are more choices. But with Power BI, there are only limited types of plots that I can use. For example, when I wanted to put the plots in Power BI, there was no extendable space. You have a limited page where you can place a maximum of three plots in that, and you can't do more than that on a single page. You have to create a new page, a different page for that. That made it a bit annoying, and the filtering part is limited, with basic functions. If you want to make custom filtering or custom functions, you can't do that."
"I think because I'm moving more into RPA, I'd definitely like to see integration across the RPA, Power BI, or Tableau platforms, because that integration could then make automation and mundane reporting much faster."
"The dashboard could be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They have different tiers of pricing including one-year, three-year, five-year, seven-year, and ten-year."
"The product is less expensive compared to other vendors for gold partners."
"I believe that the price is reasonable, at least for an enterprise solution."
"For my primary use case, i.e. teaching students, the free version of Power BI is adequate."
"Our license is paid yearly and we have found that we have to be careful not to over-extend our usage in order to avoid upgrading our capacity plan."
"There is room for at least 45% discount as compared to the initial price."
"The pricing for the solution is relatively higher compared to other alternatives."
"We have enterprise licenses and some of the other tools or features come as a package and others you have to purchase separately."
"Setup is easy, and the cost is economical. You do sometimes need to pay additional costs for third party products which "plug-in" to Microsoft BI."
"My company needs to make monthly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Retailer
18%
Computer Software Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Meraki Location Analytics?
The product is less expensive compared to other vendors for gold partners.
What needs improvement with Meraki Location Analytics?
The product's technical support services need improvement.
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ladbrokes, Neinver, Westwind School Division, The Salvation Army, Queensland Airports Limited
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Meraki Location Analytics vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.