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Salesforce Einstein Analytics 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

Salesforce Einstein Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Salesforce Einstein Analytics is 1.2%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 18.2%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Parker Goodson - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful consistent measurements, high availability, and scales well
When it comes to generating reports, it appears that many users rely on experts to handle technical aspects. For instance, if you require a weekly report displaying accounts transitioning in and out of your modules, it seems challenging to accomplish without consulting experts for assistance. Such tasks should be user-friendly and easily achievable without external assistance. It would be beneficial to have visibility into any changes made to your account by individuals other than yourself or your team. It is also important to clearly track the history of these modifications and identify the responsible parties.
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

"The inbuilt features, like pictorial representation of the data and the ability to remap and realign the data, provide clarity in understanding sales perspectives."
"The most valuable features of Salesforce Einstein Analytics are the flexibility around the deployment, overall capabilities, user-friendliness, and interactiveness with the tools that came built with it."
"Transparency is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"The fact that the solution is visually appealing because of its lightning interfaces can be considered one of its most valuable features"
"The solution scales extremely well."
"We have found the scalability to be very good."
"It's scalable."
"The way Salesforce Einstein Analytics is structured in terms of the work assignments and the user profile is very good."
"From my perspective, it enables clients to better understand our data and make better decisions based on that information."
"It's easy to use."
"I work for clients. That is my business model. Business people really like to see Tableau. They love Tableau because it is very user-friendly. The platform provides an easy to use interface, which is what most people like about it."
"It's very easy to visualize data with this product. The visualization maps of and frames that we have been able to cross-reference has been excellent."
"It's the ease of use. It is also a self-service tool so it decreases the burden on having centralized IT-type teams or developers."
"I like the solution's web version, more so than Power BI's web version. It just makes it easier to drag and drop things and to blend data on the backend. It simplifies the process."
"It’s good for quick visualization and being able to quickly consume unstructured data to play around with."
"It is definitely easy to use. It is intuitive, and more or less, everything can be done from the front end. As such, there is no concept of metadata. You can just take data from a database and start building your own stuff, such as OLAP data warehouse. You don't need extensive metadata modeling like Oracle BI."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to simplify its features."
"Better pricing would make it available to more users and we would likely use it more broadly within the organization."
"I would advise others not to customize because they rolled out the newer versions, which are every six months. There had to be some significant testing and verification that happened. It is important to have a strong third-party provider that is very experienced. We used Deloitte, but we evaluated Accenture, KPMG, and IBM, but we decided on Deloitte and that was a good decision for us. Having a partner who has a center of excellence or experts that could give you a lot of the tips that they've learned could jumpstart your deployment and stick to the standards."
"When it comes to generating reports, it appears that many users rely on experts to handle technical aspects. For instance, if you require a weekly report displaying accounts transitioning in and out of your modules, it seems challenging to accomplish without consulting experts for assistance. Such tasks should be user-friendly and easily achievable without external assistance."
"All of the timesheets and appraisal management I have not been happy with. There should be some improvements. For example, as a management team, our managers do not have access to see a summary report, such as who is on leave today or how many hours each person logged in. You have to get into individual users and see. You cannot see a summary report, the reporting is missing. There should improve the reports."
"Salesforce is working very rigorously on improvements with each release."
"The product must be more transparent."
"The product is natively integrated into the Salesforce ecosystem. You also need a CRM license. It should be more flexible with other platforms."
"From a downside perspective, some of the more advanced modeling techniques are actually fairly difficult to do. In addition, I just fundamentally disagree with the way you have to implement them because you can get incorrect answers in some cases."
"The data entered into Tableau must be clean. Otherwise, it won't work properly."
"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."
"What is happening, with so many tools coming up in the market, is that people have to continuously get educated in order to use some of the more advanced features."
"In the next release, there should be more information describing each chart because users have a difficult time telling them apart. They should also include the animations/videos, similar to Power BI."
"It would be nice to include more features on each dashboard."
"There should be stronger data modules for the platform."
"Maybe the price could be a bit cheaper, especially if you're a personal developer that uses Tableau just to explore smaller data sets and you're not a company or something like that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"Salesforce has a subscription-based licensing structure, where it's between $20 to $75 per month, per user."
"Salesforce Einstein Analytics can be considered somewhat expensive, depending on the company's needs. If they want the complete package with all the features, it's pricier. It all comes down to what the company requires from the platform."
"Price-wise, Salesforce Einstein Analytics is an expensive tool."
"Although it was deemed slightly expensive and failed the cost analysis we conducted in our company, we proceeded with the purchase because we desired to have a leading CRM system in the industry."
"I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The biggest challenge we had was the cost and the licensing. We ended up getting an enterprise licensing agreement(ELA). That took a lot of negotiations and a lot of pressure. We were able to receive a good price for the community licensing they bundled Salesforce Einstein Analytics. They bundled a lot of capabilities with us with the ELA."
"The pricing of Tableau should be better to remain competitive in the market, especially when compared to alternatives."
"Tableau's licensing is pretty straightforward and simple."
"Be careful with the Tableau Viewer's licenses, and stay with the right number of users."
"I'm using Tableau Public, which is free."
"Tableau is an expensive solution."
"The solution is expensive but it depends on the customer's needs which will determine the cost of the licensing."
"Best advice on pricing is to anticipate the desire for more licenses once the results of this product are acknowledged in other parts of your company."
"The pricing for Tableau is the same as the other products in the market."
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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
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Educational Organization
44%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
The tool is valuable. It's one of the greatest programs I'm currently working with, and I believe it will continue to be crucial in the next four to five years. It's the future of our operations. I...
What needs improvement with Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
Salesforce is working very rigorously on improvements with each release.
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
I am a Salesforce CPQ developer. I have also worked on Einstein Analytics for reporting purposes.
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

Einstein Analytics, Salesforce Wave Analytics
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ADS Securities, Alstom Grid, American Express, Barclays Bank, Coca-Cola, CoderDojo, Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, Financial Conduct Authority
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 Salesforce Einstein Analytics vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.