I used this solution for providing dashboard analytics from MySQL data.
Operations Manager at iWantGreatCare
Good filters for data security, but reports should be downloadable as PDFs
Pros and Cons
- "This solution has improved insights into quantitative data."
- "Reports should be downloadable as PDF files."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
This solution has improved insights into quantitative data.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are the user filters for data security and subscriptions to distribute images of reports.
What needs improvement?
The cost of the solution should be improved.
Reports should be downloadable as PDF files. Emails containing images of dashboards can be scheduled, but there is still demand for creating printable PDF snapshot views of dashboards. UPDATE - In fairness to Tableau, with the right design, dashboards that are downloadable can be created ad-hoc.
Buyer's Guide
Tableau
March 2025

Learn what your peers think about Tableau. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Good
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Good - by licebnse model can be replaced by an enterprise model solution for large numbers of licenses.
How are customer service and support?
Good - customer success program is a great service
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I've looked briefly at Google Data Studios (good basic solution) and Amazon QuickSight which also looks good.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Check that you need the functionality that you pay for - Tableau is not cheap.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
No
What other advice do I have?
None
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?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
SVP Technology at Tesco
The most valuable feature is the 3D charting, though they need to improve the bar chart position and width
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature is the 3D charting."
- "They need to improve the bar chart position and width."
What is our primary use case?
We use it for dashboard designing.
How has it helped my organization?
It has improved our organizational departments, like sales, HR, etc.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the 3D charting.
What needs improvement?
They need to improve the bar chart position and width.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
Tableau
March 2025

Learn what your peers think about Tableau. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.
VP at EON group
End users no longer have to wait for the IT department to develop data visualizations.
Valuable Features
Easy visualization, with only drag & drop, double-click!
Improvements to My Organization
Yesterday: Excel -> pivot table -> graph ....think...think...think and re-work because of no insight.
Today: Double-click or drag & drop and see....see...find insight.
Room for Improvement
- Korean geographic map at the detail level
- Polygon map is a hot requirement from end users
Korean users want the Tableau default map function to be one more detailed level
when they would visualize Korean territories.
----------------
Country : South Korea
Great area(OOO-do) : Seoul city, Busan city, KyungKi-do, Chungchung-do,...
County(XXX-gu): Mapo-gu, Seocho-gu,.Gangnam-gu these are covered by Tableau 10.
It needs more detailed level (GGG-dong) that is Seocho-dong, Minrak-dong, Woomyun-dong as these are not covered yet.
Use of Solution
I have been using Tableau for six months.
Deployment Issues
DB speed, but it's a complicated issue that could be caused by Oracle? Excel? Tableau? N/W? etc...
Customer Service and Technical Support
I rate the level of customer service and technical support 9/10.
Initial Setup
Initial setup was easy: Download the software and drag an DB file(i.e. excel) onto the Tableau icon.
That's it. There is no easier way to get started.
Implementation Team
End users should "study" the software.
Do not wait for the IT department any longer.
Do it yourself.
ROI
Return = time saving, efficiency.
Investment = license fee & study time.
When you consider how much time is wasted on DB work, including visualization, the license fee is a small issue.
Unfortunately, many people are concerning only "the cost of software".
They miss "the hidden in-efficiency".
Other Advice
At first, buy one or several copies (not 10's or 100's).
Be an information worker who see and understand data by yourself without waiting an IT department support.
Then, expand later
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Data Warehouse Consultant Sr at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
It has good community support and useful training videos.
What is most valuable?
- Very easy and fast to build dashboards, compared to many other BI tools
- Has connectivity options to various data sources
- Good community support and very useful free training videos
How has it helped my organization?
Clients are pleased with the beautiful and interactive dashboards. They are also happy with the noticeable shortening in time to production.
What needs improvement?
If it had a semantic layer, it would be great. I know Tableau is not meant for data modeling but the data warehouse is not always perfect. Without a semantic layer, we need to reach out to the ETL team for even small data model changes.
Also, a semantic layer would have allowed for building 'subject areas' by grouping tables and defining joins. This would then allow users with appropriate permissions to build ad-hoc reports without having to worry about table joins.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used it for 1.5 years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We did not have any issues with deployment, stability and scalability. We deployed Tableau Server in the AWS cloud.
How are customer service and technical support?
We have contacted customer support few times and the support team always came back with solutions / work-arounds promptly. So, customer service and technical support is good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We evaluated a few other solutions, but we chose Tableau because of the speed with which we can build reports, the simple deployment (cloud), easy scalability and the cost factor.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was straightforward and in fact very simple.
What about the implementation team?
An in-house team implemented it, but we went for AWS cloud-based deployment, which was not complex.
What other advice do I have?
Try the trial versions and explore all of the features before going in; it is very useful. Also, the training videos on their website are good.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Developer with 501-1,000 employees
It has provided more effective involvement of business users in defining business requirements and reporting needs.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of this product is that business people with no technical background can autonomously design and implement their visual reports, relieving the IT staff from this burden. On the other hand, despite its ease of use, the tool does not support highly complex visualization and filtering mechanisms.
How has it helped my organization?
The adoption of this platform has improved the interaction between the IT and the business departments, through an increased awareness and more effective involvement of business users in the definition of business requirements and reporting needs. Now, the IT people can mainly focus on the setup and administration of suitable data sources published on the server that business users can directly connect to and explore with Tableau's visual tools.
What needs improvement?
I would give it a perfect rating if it weren't for a few flaws and limits that make it slip off from perfection.
There are some weaknesses in the desktop tool that could be greatly improved, concerning the dashboard layout management and the initialization of parameters.
There are also some frustrating limitations in its data engine that sometimes make it hard to handle filtering and combining data from multiple data sources in the same dashboard. Hopefully such limitations are expected to be solved in the next upcoming release, version 10.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this product for more than two years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
We have never encountered relevant issues with our deployments. Only once, and for a limited time, we encountered a JavaScript incompatibility with Google Chrome browsers.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is very responsive, as well as customer service. They easily escalate to the developers if a bug or a performance issue arises.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we had been using the SAP BusinessObjects suite for BI reporting. There were too many issues regarding the complexity in development, the deployment of reports and, mostly, the performance and stability of dashboards.
After the bad experience with SAP BusinessObjects, we evaluated and adopted Tableau for its amazing straightforwardness in the representation of geo-referenced data on maps, which was a strict requirement from our sales & marketing department.
How was the initial setup?
This is probably one of the major strengths of Tableau: It enables organizations to set up and run a collaborative BI reporting platform in just a few days, with a smooth learning curve.
Of course, fine tuning of operating parameters - when it comes to optimizing performance - requires some more care, but really the administration of the system is easy compared to other equivalent platforms.
What about the implementation team?
We first started alone with in-house activities. Then, at a later time, we got some support from a local consulting company that was a Tableau partner.
In my opinion, a medium-sized company could adopt the platform without any significant support from outside.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I’m not in a position to make a reliable evaluation of ROI. However, I can firmly say that the cost of licenses is pretty fair and surely more convenient compared to other competitors.
What other advice do I have?
The best way to have a clear perception of the potential of this product is just downloading a trial version of the desktop application and play with it a few days. In my case, that experience was clearly decisive in making the decision to buy.
Its desktop application is a beautifully designed tool - very powerful and intuitive. It allows a business user, with no knowledge of databases and query languages, to build in a matter of minutes complex and compelling visual dashboards that enable users to detect and highlight interesting patterns in data. The dashboards created can be published and shared through Tableau Server, a powerful web platform where dashboards are rendered efficiently in HTML5. A cloud version and a free public version are also available.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
IT Admin at a tech company with 51-200 employees
It supports multiple languages well. When I develop a dashboard in English or Japanese, it can display time differently based on the language you choose.
Valuable Features
- It's easy to connect to, and supports, a variety of datasources
- It supports multiple languages well, which is very convenient for me. When I develop a dashboard in English or Japanese, it can display time differently based on the language you choose. For example, EN: 2010/01/01, JP: 2010年01月01日.
- Stunning graphs, easy to drag & drop dimensions into your dashboard.
- Compresses data well.
Improvements to My Organization
We use it to develop dashboards for our customers; they will use these to analyze their business using BI knowledge.
Room for Improvement
There are many things that users want Tableau to improve:
- Multiple choice for filter selection. This is a very big shortcoming.
- Dynamic parameters.
- Currently, it cannot aggregate further on a measure that has been aggregated already
- A button function for dashboards. Sometimes, we need a button to link to another dashboard.
- Display/hide an object based on a parameter as a real function, not using tricks. You can do it using tricks, but it looks so ugly.
Use of Solution
I have used it for about two years.
Deployment Issues
As I mentioned above, sometimes we need to use tricks to develop dashboards, and it has stability issues.
Customer Service and Technical Support
I rate the level of customer service and technical support 8/10.
Initial Setup
Initial setup was very easy; just "agree", "next" and "finish".
Implementation Team
Our IT support team did it.
Pricing, Setup Cost and Licensing
No complaints. Reasonable price for professional version.
Other Solutions Considered
I have used a variety of BI-related products:
- QlikView: not worth trying. Not good for support (Qlik Japan); ugly charts; limited functions. It’s one strength is that it's free.
- IBM Cognos: very scalable. You can do anything with your dashboard/report using HTML; good at all functions. However, it's only suitable for big companies, hard to maintain, and very expensive.
- Oracle PBCS/Essbase: good for medium-sized or big enterprises with big/multi-dimensional data; supports Excel. Difficult to set up, and browser-based PBCS is so bad, you may lose your work at any time because of its corrupt JavaScript.
- Tableau is good for small-sized companies; reasonable price. But you get what you pay for: limited functions. It's a data visualization tool, not a BI tool.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Owner at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Great for users trying to perform data visualization with just Excel, but lacks control for some organizations
Pretty Pictures of BI: Tableau
There is an emerging genre of BI tools built specifically for business users to perform visual data discovery. The user interfaces are designed to be intuitive and the features simple. These software products are meant to require little if any training. Architecturally, many provide in-memory analysis for high performance.
Of course, these "exploration" tools are also not intended to be full enterprise BI platforms. Instead, they are complementary to more robust products. You will not replace your existing BI products (SAP Business Objects, IBM Cognos, IBI WebFOCUS, MicroStrategy, etc.) with the limited scope of visualization software but you might consider supplementing them.
Competitive Vendors
The main data exploration products on the market today include:
- QlikView ($204 million revenue in 2011)
- Spotfire ($105M 2011) acquired by Tibco in 2007
- Tableau ($62M 2011)
- ADVIZOR Solutions ($10M?) which is also sold as WebFOCUS Visual Discovery

While QlikTech's revenue reporting for QlikView appears much higher than that of Tableau's, the job statistics imply that Tableau is in much higher demand.
Tableau to be the Winner?
Tableau arose out of a Stanford University research project from 1997 to 2002, and was spun off as a company in 2003. (Keep in mind that Jim Goodnight started SAS as a small college project which he later grew into a multi-billion dollar mega-software vendor.)
As part of a Department of Defense initiative, PhD candidate Chris Stolte created a "Visual Query Language" to explore large multi-dimensional databases. As luck would have it, Stolte's university mentor was Pat Hanrahan, a founding employee of Pixar.
Together, they created what has been called “a kind of high powered, highly visual Excel,” which is a really good way of explaining the innovative software product. One of their first interested partners was Essbase, which makes sense. A common user interface for the Essbase cube was Excel, and Tableau was a nice next-generation version of that.
Tableau is the type of visual analytics software that Microsoft itself should have added to Excel.
The main Tableau products include:
- Tableau Desktop (authoring/publishing tool)
- Tableau Server (web hosting component)
- Tableau Reader (web viewing tool)

Several of about twenty-four "Show Me" options light up for the user. Simply clicking on one, such as a geographic map or a stacked bar chart, does all of the work. There is no coding and no macros, just an easy to use graphical interface.
Within an hour after downloading a Windows desktop copy, I had used one of their accompanying demo files to generate a report, pie chart, bar chart, and geographic map.
The full version of Tableau Desktop allows access to a variety of databases and publishing capabilities while the "Personal Edition" works only with desktop flat files and spreadsheets. You can easily download copies of Tableau Desktop for one or two thousand US dollars per user license (for Personal and Professional Editions, respectively).
Why Not Tableau?
I will address Tableau's enterprise web-based and mobile usage at a later date but for departmental desktop usage, there are few hurdles to using Tableau.
If you have "spreadsheet jockeys" trying to perform data visualization with just Excel, then Tableau is a perfect holiday gift.
If your organization has a formal software development group anxious to control BI, however, then handing out desktop tools may not be a popular option. Controlling one version of the truth becomes harder when business users create their own BI fiefdoms.
But Business Intelligence is a strange animal and IT organizations often seem unable to control it. Few want to be the BI zookeeper. If so, responsibility for quality BI moves over to the business.Organizations that rely upon end-user spreadsheets for reporting and analytics will bring in Tableau Desktop without much consideration.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Software Developer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
An easy-to-deploy tool that performs well and enables users to create visualizations easily
Pros and Cons
- "The product’s performance is better than other tools."
- "Creating empty extracts is not easy."
What is most valuable?
The product’s performance is better than other tools. The working speed is good. Creating visualization on Tableau is somewhat easier than other tools.
What needs improvement?
The product has some limitations. Creating empty extracts is not easy. We faced some issues in the initial phase. Creating extracts side by side with multiple lines is not possible in Tableau. This feature is available in Power BI.
If we want to make any changes to the server, we must have the Administrator role. The product should also allow users with Explorer roles to make these changes.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for the past three and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The tool is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The tool is scalable. Around 50 people are using the product in our organization. Everyone knows about the product. We have around seven administrators. The number of administrators varies based on the project and tasks.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is good. I raise a ticket in Tableau Community if I get stuck at any point. I can get the solution easily from the community.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I am also using QuickSight. When we create multiple visualizations and multiple sections using Tableau’s dashboard, the way of executing the visualization is quicker in Tableau compared to other tools. We can pull millions of data and create millions of tables. Apart from the performance issue, compared to other tools, the product provides the best and most advanced features.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is easy. The time taken for deployment depends upon the data, the visualization, the types of reports, and the number of cards.
What other advice do I have?
We are also learning to use other tools. It is beneficial to learn Tableau. It will help us in the future. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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Updated: March 2025
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I think the experience of my division represents where Tableau's sweet spot is. Our team is a group of business power users who help create insights into the business out of our data. Our company is a BOBJ shop but being a small division, we didn't have the funds to pony up to IT to get our own metadata layer created, ETL built, etc. Plus, IT in our organization is not embedded enough in the business to understand business req's, workflows, etc. Even in the cases where the business launches a project to create a new set of reporting/analytics, that winds up being the set of reports/analytics that users have to live with for a long time as there is a typical month+ waiting time for changes to these.
Doing some guerilla BI, our team had cobbled together access to different data sources but needed a tool to combine the data and then make a meaningful presentation of that data. When I joined the team, we were using MS Access for ETL, Excel for chart creation and then PPT for presentation. Yikes. But I give credit to the folks who did that work--very resourceful. I helped convince my manager to get a Desktop license of Tableau and it's been awesome for data exploration and presentation. It allows for a very rapid prototyping and I can update reports for our clients without a months of wait time. However, Tableau definitely could NOT do the type of ETL that we needed. We wound up getting access to a SAS server that was recently installed and SAS Enterprise Guide has become our ETL tool. It's a bit kludgy and probably isn't the optimum usage of SAS but it still gets what we need: a server-based ETL tool.
Of course now that we've established our own little rogue business warehouse, and shown how easily Tableau can present that data, IT is coming to our doorstep, as they're realizing the need to have a better level of governance over the data. We've also started building momentum with Tableau as the number of licenses quickly jumped as other users saw it in action.
For us, the value of Tableau over other tools allowed us to show what could be done, without having to wait an inordinate amount of time or spend piles of cash to get something in place.