MicroStrategy vs Tableau comparison

MicroStrategy and Salesforce are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. MicroStrategy is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.6, while Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6. MicroStrategy holds a 3.5% mindshare in BIT, compared to Salesforce’s 19.7% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of MicroStrategy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

MicroStrategy

Read 159 MicroStrategy reviews

4,992 Views
3,248 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Tableau

Read 295 Tableau reviews

20,237 Views
17,182 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

MicroStrategy

Tableau

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Tableau and MicroStrategy compete in the business intelligence software category, focusing on data visualization and analytics. Tableau seems to have the upper hand in data visualization and ease of use, while MicroStrategy's strengths lie in scalability and enterprise features, making it suitable for large-scale deployments.

Features: Tableau focuses on data visualization with its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, allowing seamless data source integration and diverse visualization models. It supports flexible reporting and rich graphical representations. MicroStrategy emphasizes meeting enterprise needs, offering advanced data exploration and centralized metadata management suitable for large-scale deployments.

Room for Improvement: Tableau users seek enhanced ETL capabilities, improved handling of large datasets, and additional enterprise features like version control. More customization options and third-party integrations are also desired. For MicroStrategy, users suggest simplifying its user interface, increasing visualization flexibility, and providing more intuitive design tools and better data blending capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tableau offers various deployment options, including on-premises and cloud solutions, though large-scale deployments receive mixed reviews. The customer service is praised for responsiveness and community support. MicroStrategy mainly operates on-premises with limited cloud options and faces mixed feedback on customer service, especially regarding response times and user-friendliness.

Pricing and ROI: Tableau's pricing can be high, particularly for larger deployments, but users recognize rapid ROI due to its usability and efficiency. However, there are concerns about cost-effectiveness compared to competitors like Power BI. MicroStrategy is also noted for being expensive, especially with user-based licensing, but it allows significant scalability in enterprise settings. Cost considerations impact broader adoption for both products.

To learn more, read our detailed MicroStrategy vs. Tableau Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

November 2024

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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

MicroStrategy

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

8th

Ranking in Embedded BI

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

159

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tableau

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

2nd

Ranking in Embedded BI

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (2nd), Data Visualization (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of MicroStrategy is 3.5%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 19.7%, up from 18.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Harjinder-Singh

Data engineer at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

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.

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ROMIL SHAH

Deputy General Manger - Information Technology at Nayara Energy

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.

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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

"If you have data, it is not that complex. It's manageable even for end users."

"You can build once and deploy to multiple operating systems. Also, it resizes in the way you want it to."

"MicroStrategy has what they call the Semantic Graph — an enterprise-grade semantic graph — and I think the technology is fantastic."

"It keeps BI in the hands of everyone, rather than a developer or an analyst."

"With all the APIs it's very scalable."

"I haven't come across any bugs."

"Scalability is fantastic. It can go from a small operation up to a gigantic operation. "

"We use MicroStrategy as an integrated solution with some of their other CRM type applications."

More MicroStrategy pros

"The most valuable features of the solution are the permission management and the user management."

"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 very easy to implement and to use."

"The number one thing was just the ease of getting something up quickly. The other thing that was good about it was that it was fairly fast for decent-sized data sets in terms of performance and run time."

"The ability of filtering and segmentation of the data makes it very flexible compared to other tools."

"Easy for beginners to use"

"The most valuable features are the visualizations, the way they show the combination charts."

"We frequently utilize visualizations using maps and different objects, all with rich coloring options. And tooltips are absolutely essential for us. Tooltips, like the pop-up descriptions when you hover over some object or graph. Those tooltips in Tableau are great features."

More Tableau pros

Cons

"Our data warehouse is sort of static; negative load and that is it. It is not as real-time as we would like. We are working on building that out first to create more real-time, at which point we will work on some potential integrations with other applications, but I don't think we are there yet."

"Needs tighter mapping integration."

"In the developer, there are things that you able to do in a document or a report that you are not able to do in the Dossier."

"When we come to them with a problem, they might know more of a generalized solution, but not one targeted to our industry."

"We haven't invested in the mobile platform. We want to invest, but the problem is the security. We are in the health domain, so we have PHI data."

"I prefer the capabilities of a single platform, but it does not always work. We are a huge company. Some areas do not use MicroStrategy, so you have to blend whatever systems they are using together to get the data points that you are looking for."

"If they can make it more stable, in terms of the connectivity, that would help."

"They need to improve on having more professional, well-equipped premium support."

More MicroStrategy cons

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

"Licensing and pricing options could be made better so that more users would be able to use it."

"At the organizational level, increasing the servers' capabilities to support us as an enterprise tool."

"Navigating through activities like cleansing, reshaping, and wrangling extensive or complicated datasets could prove challenging within the Tableau environment."

"We would like a report model, because currently there is no schema that we can create in the tool."

"Whenever it comes to specialized visualization, Tableau is an absolute failure."

"People are migrating to Microsoft BI due to the speed, which is quite slow to load, and the lack of visualization options."

"With performance tuning, it generates a pretty complex query when it is not required."

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for MicroStrategy is always on the higher side. They should seriously start thinking about their pricing and licensing strategy."

"Pricing, in general, is high. With Power BI, you get mobile with the license, whereas with MicroStrategy, you have to purchase mobile for extra."

"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."

"The licensing is a bit high per user."

"Additional costs are associated with maintenance."

"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."

"The pricing list itself is not publicly accessible, so it's a bit opaque."

"They offer yearly as well as perpetual licenses."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

"The solution's licensing is based on user-basis. It depends on the business ROI it offers. It's not on the higher side or too cheap; it falls in the medium-cost range. The price is determined by user usage, so the cost will also increase as the number of users increases."

"Deployment of dashboards to viewers and unit supervisors can be prohibitively expensive."

"The cost of the solution should be improved."

"Tableau has reasonable pricing."

"It is reasonable based on what it offers."

"This solution is a bit expensive. The pricing options have become more difficult over the years. I think they are bordering on pricing themselves out of the market. They need different pricing options for various-sized businesses. Where my organization is a large organization, we are happy to pay a higher price because we can leverage the products very extensively. For smaller enterprises, different pricing options would be good."

"This license is on a yearly basis."

"For data extraction and analysis, Tableau is better than any other tool I have used with the same pricing model."

More Tableau 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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

42%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Cognos vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 6% of the time

Databricks vs MicroStrategy

Compared 6% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Compared 20% of the time

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 6% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Tableau

Compared 3% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy

January 2025

Download MicroStrategy product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau

December 2024

Download Tableau product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

Learn More

Video not available

MicroStrategy

Salesforce

Overview

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.

Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights.

Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

Tableau has many valuable key features:

Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards.
Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions.
Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data.
Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries.
Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.”

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.

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.

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

November 2024

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