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Qlik Sense vs TIBCO Spotfire vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
Qlik Sense provides quick ROI through enhanced data access, improved decision-making, cost-effectiveness, and reduced manual efforts.
Sentiment score
7.1
Tableau provides fast ROI through efficient reporting, quick user adoption, and cost savings, outperforming many other BI tools.
Sentiment score
6.6
TIBCO Spotfire boosts productivity through reduced maintenance and enhanced analysis, justifying its cost with aligned organizational adoption.
In my organization, we moved from OBI to Qlik Sense due to limitations with OBI, resulting in very high ROI.
This saves a significant amount of time, particularly for reports that would have needed around fifty people.
The ROI of using Tableau extends to its seamless integration across various platforms, as it's from Salesforce and thus not limited to any specific cloud provider.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Qlik Sense customer service is excellent, but technical support receives mixed reviews; users often rely on the community for help.
Sentiment score
7.1
Tableau's support is praised for responsiveness, community resources, and Salesforce integration, despite occasional delay reports during peak times.
Sentiment score
7.1
TIBCO Spotfire customer service is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, with ratings ranging from 7 to 9 out of 10.
While tech support is comprehensive, the stability of Qlik Sense means I generally do not need it.
Technical support requires improvement.
In Turkey, the consultant firms are very professional, and they support you.
They provide quick email and phone responses and have Thai-speaking personnel.
The technical support for Tableau is quite good.
I find Tableau's technical support to be good with elite support, but it struggles with usual, general support.
TIBCO's support, especially for integration products, is swift.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Qlik Sense excels in scalability, handling large data effortlessly, though licensing and integration issues may arise for some.
Sentiment score
6.7
Tableau offers scalable solutions for handling large data, supporting various organizations, though very large datasets may present challenges.
Sentiment score
7.3
TIBCO Spotfire offers strong scalability, supporting large datasets and real-time processing, though setup and updates may pose challenges.
It performs well in terms of performance and load compared to others.
I believe it is easily scalable.
Tableau is easy to use across various dimensions, whether on-premises or on the cloud.
The solution is fully scalable and performs well even with large datasets, provided there is proper supporting hardware.
Tableau's data blending capabilities are an added feature.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Qlik Sense is reliable, with minimal issues and strong support, efficiently handling large data volumes and earning high ratings.
Sentiment score
7.4
Tableau is stable and reliable, excelling with simple data, but may slow with complex datasets; frequent updates enhance stability.
Sentiment score
6.6
TIBCO Spotfire is reliable but may face stability issues with complex tasks, dataset size, and improper real-time data integration.
The stability is very good.
I rate the stability a five or six because Tableau updates very often with new versions or patches.
There are no significant stability issues as long as the product's capabilities are understood and not overly pushed.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek enhancements in Qlik Sense's integration, customization, analytics, and performance, alongside better interfaces, training, and collaboration features.
Tableau requires improvements in data handling, integration, affordability, enterprise features, and advanced analytics to enhance user experience.
TIBCO Spotfire struggles with customization, user-friendliness, data integration, and requires enhancements in training, support, and mobile functionality.
Power BI has better visualizations and interactions with updates in 2023 that provide ease of use.
Providing an API feature to access data from the dashboard or QEDs could be beneficial.
Maybe more AI or real-time analytics could be incorporated.
We cannot send the entire Excel file reports via email within Tableau.
The product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role.
It sometimes requires extensive investigation to determine why the data does not appear correctly.
TIBCO Spotfire and ClickView need improvement in scheduling, which is critical yet lacking in quality.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find Qlik Sense pricing competitive yet high, with flexible licensing models requiring careful negotiation for cost efficiency.
Tableau's pricing is competitive but variable, supporting large enterprises better than smaller businesses, with limited bulk discounts.
TIBCO Spotfire's pricing is high yet competitive, offering value with comprehensive features despite challenges in transparency and negotiation.
Compared to Power BI, it is definitely costly.
Among the BI tools and data analytics tools, Qlik is the most expensive.
For small or large organizations needing many or few licenses, pricing varies.
Power BI as a much cheaper alternative.
The cost for viewer rights is around $60, but it can vary based on the business and is usually for a year.
Tableau is rated an eight because it is pretty expensive compared to alternatives like Power BI.
TIBCO Spotfire's pricing is high, particularly in traditional markets like Turkey, impacting market penetration.
 

Valuable Features

Qlik Sense provides intuitive data visualization, rapid development, scalability, and customization with powerful analytics and seamless data integration.
Tableau offers powerful visualizations, easy integration, customization, geospatial support, and efficient data processing for real-time analytics.
TIBCO Spotfire excels in interactive visualizations, real-time analytics, and seamless integration, praised for handling large datasets efficiently.
From an end-user perspective, it's convenient and performance-oriented, providing something meaningful from all the organization's data.
It is a single product that I can use as an ETL database, BI, and more.
It has an interactive interface with Qlik graphs, pivot, and interactivity, which makes it easier to use than other tools.
A significant feature for me is the real-time connection to data sources because it effectively manages large data sets.
Tableau serves as a stable dashboarding tool for higher management, aiding in quick decision-making.
Building hyper extracts and visualization capabilities make Tableau a robust tool for data analysis.
TIBCO Spotfire integrates with R and Python, offering a differentiator from the competition.
 

Mindshare comparison

Data Visualization
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Vishal_Goyal - PeerSpot reviewer
In-memory data storage boosts performance
The advantages compared to other BI tools show architectural differences. The main feature is that it keeps all the data in memory. It doesn't retrieve the data from data sources when I need it on the dashboard; instead, it quickly provides the desired data, making it very fast compared to other BI tools. The ROI is very high using Qlik Sense. It offers many benefits of BI. It is flexible from a developer's point of view, allowing me to accomplish many tasks compared to other BI tools. From an end-user perspective, it's convenient and performance-oriented, providing something meaningful from all the organization's data.
Nattawat Choosuwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time data connection enhances workflow and decision-making process
An area for improvement in Tableau is the Explorer license type. It is not as useful, and the product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role. Additionally, the frequent updates with many versions available for download can be confusing and could affect stability. They should avoid providing access to older versions on their website.
Mohsin Pathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, offers a single pane of glass, and is highly customizable
There's one area I see that specifically needs improvement. That is when you do the data loading. It is slow. For historical data, when you talk about gigabytes of data, terabytes of data, then it becomes prolonged. Loading could be improved. That's one part. That is actually there with every tool. I would not say that this is a specific problem with Spotfire. However, it is a problem with all the BI tools. That is one area which can be improved. When you are doing analytics, you see that the value has to come perfect. There was a missing feature of alerting out of the box within Spotfire. However, they have released this in version 12.
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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
Educational Organization
60%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
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 wou...
What do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
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 be...
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....
What do you like most about Tableau?
Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.
What do you like most about TIBCO Spotfire?
TIBCO Spotfire is easy to use. We initiated Spotfire as POC, with support from a tech team based in South Africa. Whi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Spotfire?
TIBCO Spotfire's pricing is high, particularly in traditional markets like Turkey, impacting market penetration. Ther...
What needs improvement with TIBCO Spotfire?
ClickView ( /products/clickview-reviews ) offered more visually appealing visualizations. TIBCO Spotfire and ClickVie...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

QlikSense
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
Spotfire
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
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.
Allergan, ASSS de Montreal, Avantium, Blue River, Bank of Montreal, Citibank, FrieslandCampina, Hellmann Logistics, Merck, Novartis
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Qlik, Splunk and others in Data Visualization. Updated: April 2025.
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