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MicroStrategy vs Qlik Sense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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

MicroStrategy
Ranking in Embedded BI
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th)
Qlik Sense
Ranking in Embedded BI
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Harjinder-Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a simplified attribute and maze-creation process but lacks a thriving community
The solution provider should take some initiatives to grow the MicroStrategy community because, presently, it's quite small, and I wasn't able to find a solution to my problem by searching in the community. MicroStrategy can offer user-friendly training through platforms such as YouTube. Recently, at our company, the features we were able to utilize in the developer tool were not there in the workstation; such issues can be resolved through training videos or learning content distribution from MicroStrategy. The solution provider is presently promoting the workstation on the cloud instead of the developer tool, so there should be relevant resources for learning about the product. MicroStrategy is also working on integrating AI technology into its product. The object migration process from one environment to another using the solution is somewhat complex. It involves package creation, dependency, and transportation. But the migration process is rather simpler in OBIEE, where reports need to be archived in one system and unarchived in another, for example, from Dev to SID.
Yogesh_Pawar - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use but needs to improve the user interface part
Qlik Sense is not meant for writing something from the user interface, which is a major challenge because our company wants users to interact with the reports and to input some comments or data that should get stored into some database. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product. With Qlik Sense, there is a need for it to provide good performance because if there is a large volume of data, then its performance becomes slow. User interaction or user experience is not that great in that case if the data size or reports are huge. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product. Right now, we are trying to follow up with some best practices recommended by Qlik Sense, but to be honest, it is not helping us much because we have very large data in a single application, and we are struggling with it. The product should have an interactive and friendly user interface. The use of APIs is not as friendly as it should be in the first place, especially when considering Python scripts and all other scripts, making it an area where improvements are required. There should be some easy way to integrate the product with the aforementioned areas.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform can be easily monitored. You have quite a good overview of tasks which are being run."
"Semi-automatic support of implementing date dimensions, including delta to prior year implementation."
"We prefer having our analytics capabilities in a single platform, which MicroStrategy's offers."
"There's extensive logging capabilities, if something is wrong then we are able to find out why."
"The technical support is quite good."
"This solution has allowed us to become a top-class competitor among other consulting companies."
"The most important feature is the way it handles ad hoc queries and provides formatted reports."
"I have never had any problems with the stability."
"Qlik Sense has a modern look and feel and a very intuitive UI, so non-technical users find it very user friendly."
"The drag-and-drop dashboard builder is an intuitive interface for building dashboards from source reports."
"This solution has improved our organization by making our analysis results available to customers."
"The time it takes to deliver a dashboard is real quick."
"The most valuable feature of QlikSense is that you can capture the data without modifying it and then perform the ETL (extract, transform, and load) process."
"The reports are better looking than in QlikView."
"What I found most valuable in Qlik Sense is its flexibility. It's a very flexible tool, and it has a lot of capabilities compared to Tableau and Power BI. In Qlik Sense, you can take data from any of the systems, and you can do data transformation, prepare the data, then present your KPIs. Data transformation isn't present in Tableau, Power BI, and other tools. In Qlik Sense, you're able to get the data and directly present that data. The presentation layer is also very good in Qlik Sense. My company is very happy with this tool."
"The Qlik Sense cloud insights advisor helps our business users to get the answers to their data questions so that they do not have to rely on IT/BI resources every time they have some data request."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in data visualization."
"We did have issues with stability, and that was because we were co-located with another business unit, and we outgrew them on the unit. So we had to get to a separate physical instance."
"I would like to see more Writeback capabilities that would allow our IT department not to be worried about the wild, Wild West of Writeback."
"They need to supply the support system that's just not there right now. They don't have Enterprise Manager classes. You need in-depth classes to understand what those metrics are doing, to understand the table associations from one to the other. You can't just go and pick it up and understand that DT_DAY connects to all of these tables, without going into Architect, looking at the source tables. I, as a analyst, a slightly technical user, I don't have the expertise to do that. Business users definitely don't have the expertise to do that."
"Needs more visual essence and connectors for the ecosystems, which would be easy to use."
"The solution has a very non-logical user usage part. It has a library mode where users can access all the data, reports, and dashboards, but they also can be accessed from a platform. They have to log into the platform. The user experience is confusing for the users. MicroStrategy needs to define which one they will use. Some functionality isn’t available in library mode but is available in the portal. There should be Office integration. For example, if I do a presentation, then I should be able to add a chart to my presentation."
"MicroStrategy is dragging behind other tools on the self-service visualizations, like Tableau. I would rate Tableau as a 10. For the same visualizations, I would say MicroStrategy is an eight, maybe nine. They're still behind on the self-service visualizations,"
"From a stability standpoint, from MicroStrategy, I would say it's fairly consistent. I would give it a "B" because there are times where we have issues that are just inexplicable. They go away and then we have no resolution. To me, that's not acceptable. There are just times where our users can't access things and we're not sure why, and that's a problem to me."
"They need to keep it as simple as possible but include as much advanced functionality as possible by positioning all the objects on the page, changing colors for all the objects, improving sheets actions, etc."
"It would be nice to have more native features from QlikView built into Qlik Sense."
"Ad-hoc reporting capabilities would be ideal."
"Qlik has a fast learning curve due to great online training resources (Qlik continuous classroom), but those are lacking the advance features like building extensions and using the API."
"What needs improvement in Qlik Sense is the support. It could be faster. My organization had already talked to Qlik management and has escalated multiple times, so management is looking into the support."
"We have faced some issues with NPrinting, so I feel there is some improvement needed such that it would allow the use of variables and calculative fields from Qlik."
"Qlik Sense is working very well on going to low code and development. They are trying to make their environment more user-friendly. However, the training is not free. When you want to learn more about the tool, sometimes you need to pay for the training. This does not make sense to me because training should be free because the more you learn about the tool the more you use it and the more you are loyal to the company and want to continue usage."
"It's going to take 20 to 30 minutes to refresh sometimes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year."
"They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools."
"We have one of the best pricing available, but we can't disclose that information."
"There is no subscription, I am using the free version."
"​They gave us a good deal.​"
"They need to work on their license structure. They are not competitive against somebody like SAP BusinessObjects. We had a quote that was almost a third the price, coming from SAP BusinessObjects, and it's not a better platform. It's not cheaper. They do concurrent user licensing, while MicroStrategy does named user licensing, and that was literally the only difference. But it made a $500,000 difference. They've got to do something to make themselves more competitive. Maybe it's assessing your business users and what you really expect them to use, and maybe giving a reduced price on that. But they are already giving us a 60% discount and they were still a million or so above, over a three-year time period. That doesn't account for synergies as we get from on-site resources that are already available, but I thought that that was a big, big deficit for them."
"They made a change in the licensing module some time ago and we can now use all the enterprise tools for free."
"The licensing is a bit high per user."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Licensing can start to get expensive, but compared to other tools in this space it is about average."
"Start small with tokens. You can always buy more."
"You need to pay 5,000 Norwegian kroner per user. Microsoft Power BI is slightly more expensive than Qlik Sense."
"The new licensing model is much better."
"I believe pricing is similar to other products in the same category, if you have it on-premise."
"For on-premise enterprise users, a number of additional features come at a premium cost."
"Ultimately, the cost is low, and it implements fast. The limiting factor is how quickly your staff can keep up."
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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
10%
Retailer
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Educational Organization
59%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
There is a need to improve the automatic generation of metrics in MicroStrategy, as currently everything must be done manually. Additionally, the hierarchy creation process in MicroStrategy could b...
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...
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...
What do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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QlikSense
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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.
Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
Find out what your peers are saying about MicroStrategy vs. Qlik Sense and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
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