Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
reviewer1398615 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a training & coaching company with 201-500 employees
Consultant
Mar 24, 2021
Flexible with good support but it could be more mobile friendly and the price could be better
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the flexibility it offers."
  • "The graphic interface could be better."

What is our primary use case?

We use Microsoft BI for analytics.

What is most valuable?

I like the flexibility it offers.

What needs improvement?

The graphic interface could be better.

I would also like to see it mobile-friendly.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft BI for one year.

We are using the latest version.

Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Power BI
February 2026
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Power BI. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2026.
884,266 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In some ways, it is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's a scalable solution. We have 10 or 15 users in our organization.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is good, and we are satisfied with it.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before Microsoft BI, we used Tableau.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved with the installation but my understanding is that it was easy to install.

We have a team of two people to maintain this solution.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There are licensing fees.

It's an expensive solution.

What other advice do I have?

I am not sure if we will continue to use this solution, it depends on the business requirements.

Depending on their business size and setup, I may recommend this solution.

I would rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1501212 - PeerSpot reviewer
Part Owner at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Mar 13, 2021
Great technology and some very good features
Pros and Cons
  • "Good CS and administration."
  • "Creating dashboards could be easier."

What is our primary use case?

I am a consultant for a big company. We deal with energy companies, petroleum, sales companies and we deal with everything from financials to operations. We deal with market strategy and we provide consultancy services - I'm a part owner of the company. 

What is most valuable?

I like the CS, administration, most of the features are good as well as the technology.

What needs improvement?

I think creating dashboards could be easier. Compared to other solutions, the cost of the license is expensive and that could be improved. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for over 20 years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is excellent. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is excellent, all our professional consultants use it. Where we deploy in the banking sector, they can have 1,000 licensed users; in smaller companies there can be 50 users. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is quite good, but I'd like to see a quicker response time. 

How was the initial setup?

Deployment time depends on the company, it can take up to two months. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Power BI
February 2026
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Power BI. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2026.
884,266 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1517895 - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Mar 9, 2021
Easy to use, good scalability, and reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution is easy to use."
  • "There are some problems with the functionality of this solution. The dashboard is not very user friendly and is quite complicated."

What is our primary use case?

I have used the solution for analytics which is displayed on the dashboard for my client.

What is most valuable?

The solution is easy to use.

What needs improvement?

There are some problems with the functionality of this solution. The dashboard is not very user friendly and is quite complicated. They need to make it easier for developers because they could bring key components into the dashboard. I have found using scripting language in other competitor solutions easier.

Since I am new to using this solution I am not sure what should be in a future release. I probably do not need all of the features in this current version.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for a couple of months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. We have a couple of people using the solution in my organization.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used Qlik Sense in the past and it is more functional than this solution. I prefer Qlik Sense and I will most likely be switching soon.

How was the initial setup?

The solution is easy to install and it does not take long.

What about the implementation team?

I did the implementation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

As far as I am aware you do not need a license for the solution.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Comparing this solution to others such as Tableau and Microstrategy, this solution is probably better. However, I think overall Qlik Sense is best for me.

What other advice do I have?

I am not going to be using the solution in the future because I prefer Qlik Sense.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1499169 - PeerSpot reviewer
Research & Development Expert at a energy/utilities company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Feb 18, 2021
Good visualization and graphing functions, integrates with Python
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is integration with Python."
  • "The integration with third-party products could be more stable."

What is our primary use case?

I use Microsoft BI for my own projects that are related to integrating with Excel datasets. I use the visualization and graphing functions, and I have tried using the Python integration.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is integration with Python.

What needs improvement?

The integration with third-party products could be more stable.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately one month.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Microsoft BI could be a little more stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have approximately 10 users. I don't expect that we will expand our usage or continue using this product.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not been in contact with technical support.

How was the initial setup?

There is no complexity in the initial setup. It takes approximately 15 minutes to deploy.

What about the implementation team?

There are twenty people in the team that handles the deployment and maintenance of our solutions.

What other advice do I have?

In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1509708 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Feb 18, 2021
User-friendly with a straightforward setup and good stability
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
  • "It seems that the solution could use more analytics to help users draw more contextual business insights. Right now, you need other solutions for that."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution to run our industry reports. We get the data from data warehouse we are creating. I use it to export the data.

We have been using Microsoft BI for one of the customers. That was completely in the customer environment. That's all. We did not have that solution for us in-house. However, we are working towards introducing it for our own purposes in the near future.

What is most valuable?

The product is very user-friendly.

The solution can be used with any BI tool you have.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The solution has been very stable for our customers.

It appears the solution has the capability to scale, although we have yet to try to do so.

What needs improvement?

We have yet to implement the solution completely. We're still exploring features and capabilities. It's too early to discuss items that may be lacking.

It seems that the solution could use more analytics to help users draw more contextual business insights. Right now, you need other solutions for that.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for the past five years now. It's been a while.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product has been quite stable so far. The performance is good. It's reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

 We have not attempted to scale the solution yet. We are in the initial stage of exploring different features on it. We believe it to be a scalable product, however, we have not attempted it ourselves yet. We might in the future.

We don't have any customers on the solution right now as we are just trying to figure things out.

How are customer service and technical support?

We haven't used technical support. I wouldn't be able to speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We are also using Tableau. We use Tableau right now, and we are likely introducing Microsoft BI in-house in the near future. For now, we just have customers that use it.

How was the initial setup?

We found the initial setup to be straightforward. It's not a difficult implementation and I wouldn't describe it as complex. A company setting up the solution for the first time shouldn't have any problem doing so.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We're still in the process of licensing the model. We don't have it set up yet. My understanding is that we will pay for licensing on a yearly basis. I don't have the exact figures in terms of the costs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Right now, I am looking to do a comparison between Tableau, Power BI, MicroStrategy, and Pyramid Analytics. I have not had a chance to really dig too deep into research.

What other advice do I have?

We are just customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with Microsoft.

We are using the most recent version of the solution at this time.

We're still exploring the solution and haven't fully implemented it yet.

I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. It's very user-friendly and so far I have had a good experience.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Business Application Group Manager at OBASE
Real User
Feb 12, 2021
Scalable with various licensing options and offers good technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "Technical support is quite good."
  • "The licensing needs improvement. There needs to be a middle option between Pro and Premium versions."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily sell Power BI licenses. 

Mostly, we focus on the retail industry. Usually, we are using the Power BI reports for dashboards. We are also providing our customers with some data warehouse reporting. Basically, we do long-term categorization of stock and inventory numbers and sales figures so that they can compare the sales and stocks to the inventory numbers.

We tend to deal with physical inventory reports. We tend not to deal with the solution for financial operations.

What is most valuable?

The solution has different licensing tiers.

The product can scale if you need it to.

Technical support is quite good.

With the cloud deployment, there's no setup required.

The product works well for small or mid-level organizations.

What needs improvement?

The solution's stability could be improved. In the retail industry, due to issues with information updating and data uploading. Clients may end up pricing items wrong as they could accidentally base their choices on old or wrong data.

The licensing needs improvement. There needs to be a middle option between Pro and Premium versions. It could also be less expensive.

For how long have I used the solution?

While we have experience with Microsoft tools for the past ten years, I personally have had experience with Microsoft BI for the past two or so years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is not really stable. I've faced a lot of limitations especially in terms of some data flows updates. We have faced some exceptions. Right now, we have created a case for Microsoft in order to solve some problems we've been having as, right now, there's some sort of system fault.

While the platform is a little more stable, the big problem is the latency issues around customer updates.

In a recent project, in Sweden, we faced an exception in Power BI from the update path. Whenever we refresh the animations and the fact tables, we faced something that said we couldn't upload the data. After 20 minutes we tried to refresh again. We didn't change anything with our reports or platform or anything related to infrastructure or schema. We didn't touch anything. An yet, the data is updated successfully. That leads us to ask the question: what was the problem 20 minutes ago? We still don't know the answer.

That is why we need some stability for the update service. We are deciding some business decisions based on this data. If this data is not updated, we may decide to take the wrong path. 

This is very important in the retail industry. For example in the grocery field, sometimes with vegetables or fruits or other products, customers need to decide to change the prices within lock days. They need to decide, based on demand, if they should increase or lower prices. They can't make the correct decisions if the numbers don't update.  

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability potential actually depends on your licenses. Microsoft provides three licenses. One of them is absolutely free. Another is called Pro. Yet another is per user or Premium. There is a huge difference between the Pro license and the Premium license. There is no need to scale the Pro license or other license models.

When you put the on-premise reports, you can scale out or scale up. It depends on your existing resources. However, in the services as a software (SaaS) version, it actually comes with Microsoft's units or Microsoft resources. 

How are customer service and technical support?

We have an ASFP agreement with Microsoft. As a Gold Partner, Microsoft is pretty good and responding automatically and helping us resolve issues.

If a partner does not have an ASFP agreement, they tend to have to go to forums or try to Google answers to their problems.

We are aware that sometimes when we make changes to BI, the solutions might be complex. There might be SQL involved, which needs to be taken into account, for example. We may have to look into other resources and other tools to see if there are interactions that are the issue. However, Microsoft is quite helpful as we work through issues. We're quite satisfied with their level of support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We also work with and sell MicroStrategy in Turkey. 95% of the MicroStrategy projects have been completed with our company. It is a direct competitor with Power BI. My company commonly does consulting for some small and medium markets and for that we recommend Power BI. Whenever we talk about enterprise-level solutions, the company we will use is MicroStrategy.

How was the initial setup?

There isn't much of an installation process, as the solution is on the cloud.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There is a free license, however, it is limited. The Premium license and the Pro license functionalities are very different. Whenever we talk with our customers, they ask "Should we chose the Premium?" We say that "No, you don't need to, as it's too expensive. It is much more expensive than the Pro license." However, the Pro license functionality is not enough for some customers. There is no middle between Pro and the Premium. We need something in between.

The Pro license is maybe suitable for SMBs, small and medium-sized businesses. The premium version is ideal for companies that need to scale up and out.  

There also may be some additional costs that can drive up the price.

What other advice do I have?

I prefer this product and I suggest Power BI to all customers, however, we know that if Power BI is a new idea, we make sure to show company-specific data or analytics for analyzing the data and how this solution can analyze everything quickly. That said, it's not for everybody. If all companies tried to put all their reporting expectations in the Power BI, it would not fit their expectations.

It's not a standalone solution. You need other items in your toolbelt. You need, for example, something that can handle raw data, you need warehousing, et cetera.

In general, I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
PeerSpot user
Business Analyst at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Feb 6, 2021
An easy and flexible BI solution, but the dashboard could be better
Pros and Cons
  • "The Microsoft Power BI app is very good. It's also very flexible."
  • "The dashboard could be simplified."

What is our primary use case?

We use it mainly for Qlik Sense. We're using business interests analytics. Everyone from marketing to sales uses it. Microsoft BI is usually used for oversight.

What is most valuable?

Microsoft BI is easy and but not very user-friendly. But you can directly connect it to an Excel file. You can find out how many sites to look at and do it yourself directly. The Microsoft Power BI app is very good. It's also very flexible. 

What needs improvement?

The dashboard could be simplified. The service is currently good, but it could be better. If you compare it to Tableau and Qlik Sense, they are doing much better work. The ability of their dashboards is much better. The technical part is easy in Qlik Sense, where we can do some coding. It isn't easy in Power-BI.

Microsoft BI can be more user-friendly. Scalability is also a challenge for us because it's difficult to handle Power BI's dashboard.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Microsoft BI for the last four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Microsoft BI is a stable solution. We haven't had any issues yet.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's not very scalable because it's difficult to manage the Microsoft BI dashboard.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is good.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very easy.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Their price is good.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this product to potential users. But if they have options, I would recommend one of the others.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Microsoft BI a six.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Managing Director at IDMdev Tech Solutions®
Real User
Top 20
Feb 3, 2021
It is stable and provides a quick view of the most important indicators, but its setup and support should be better
Pros and Cons
  • "The use of graphics to show and view the data indicators is the most valuable feature. It is also very stable."
  • "Its setup and support should be improved. We would like to see more material for developers that provides clear explanations about how we can do data mining by using Microsoft BI. It would also be good if we can connect a feature to other customized machine learning solutions."

What is our primary use case?

We have integrated this solution into the software that we created for a client specifically for reports and data consumption. It is a hybrid infrastructure project with hybrid integration. It has a lot of reports executed or created from the cloud.

How has it helped my organization?

It has helped us to have a really quick view of the most important indicators of the operational issues of our platform. It has enabled collaboration between different operational levels in the company.

What is most valuable?

The use of graphics to show and view the data indicators is the most valuable feature. It is also very stable.

What needs improvement?

Its setup and support should be improved. We would like to see more material for developers that provides clear explanations about how we can do data mining by using Microsoft BI. It would also be good if we can connect a feature to other customized machine learning solutions.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has good stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't used it a lot, but it seems good so far. We have only three users. We may include two or three more users to the platform.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their technical support is bad. I didn't like the technical support of Microsoft.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We also use Oracle and Tableau.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was not complex, but we would like a more agile process. The initial deployment took about two months. The platform that we created was very robust.

What about the implementation team?

We are a reseller of the solution. We did the deployment.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We were thinking of integrating Tableau instead of Microsoft BI, but the client chose Microsoft BI.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Microsoft BI a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Power BI Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: February 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Power BI Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.