
Alternatives to Tableau? - mynameismonkey
After four months of training our data analysts how to use Tableau Server, I&#x27;ve just now found out Tableau won&#x27;t let me serve Tableau content from our Tableau server without jumping from a $6k&#x2F;year spend to a $72k&#x2F;year spend, just to enable the &quot;guest&quot; viewer account to view the visualisations.<p>Has anyone run into this, or had a good experience with an alternative to provide something similar? Else we will be begrudgingly reverting to Highcharts, Indiemapper and SAS&#x2F;Graph.
======
scapecast
so I hear a few things from you, also based on your comments in the thread so
far. You're using Redshift as your DW, and you want to:

\- find a (cheap) alternative to Tableau for data viz

\- allow basic self-service analytics for your team

\- embed charts into applications

\- provide a professional growth platform for data engineers

It sounds a bit like you're trying to build what the folks at Clearbit covered
in a blog post:

[http://blog.clearbit.com/enterprise-grade-analytics-for-
star...](http://blog.clearbit.com/enterprise-grade-analytics-for-startups-2/)

Some suggestions (a few of these tools have been mentioned already):

Data viz:

\- Metabase

\- AirBnB's Superset
[http://airbnb.io/projects/superset/](http://airbnb.io/projects/superset/)

those two are open source products; not that the PM on superset used to work
at Tableau... just sayin'...

for data viz & embedding charts:

\- Mode Analytics

\- Looker

\- Periscope Data

\- grow.com

\- reflect.io (highly recommended, built just for that purpose, but I think
they want $60K / year too...)

shoot me a note at lars at intermix dot io - we have a spreadsheet with all
the data viz tools out there, a list of some 40+ tools....

------
rawrmaan
Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I've been loving Metabase,
and it's free! [http://www.metabase.com](http://www.metabase.com)

~~~
mynameismonkey
That is extremely helpful, thank you! One quick question, is iframe the only
way to embed content in a third-party app? I couldn't see any other formal way
to serve content without going directly to the Metabase instance.

~~~
vfaramond
You can generate a public link which exports the question result in CSV / JSON
/ XLSX format ;)

~~~
mynameismonkey
Very interesting. Thanks, I need to dig into the docs for a day or two, but
this all looks very promising.

------
huy
You can try us out.

[https://www.holistics.io](https://www.holistics.io)

Some benefits:

\- Designed with the analysts who's comfortable with SQL in mind, thus
extremely flexible.

\- Extra visualizations catered for product/marketing analytics: Conversion
Funnel, Cohort Retention

\- We have in-built ETL that helps analysts load data from Excel, CSV, Google
Sheets to your reporting DB without bugging engineers

------
Habesha
Give Microsoft Power BI a shot. It has a free desktop tool to explore your
data quickly, author reports,visualizations and Models and publish them to
powerBI service. But you can also leverage Power BI embedded or Power BI as a
service to share your reports. an on-premises version is also introduced
recently. Research the licensing carefully. [https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-
us/pricing/](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/)

There is a free course on edx Analyzing and Visualizing Data with Power BI
[https://www.edx.org/course/analyzing-visualizing-data-
power-...](https://www.edx.org/course/analyzing-visualizing-data-power-bi-
microsoft-dat207x-6)

[https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/)

------
TumbleRoad
Yikes. I have a lot of my clients who are using Tableau, now moving to Power
BI. PBI's got all the functionality in one product so no integration issues.
It's cheaper than Tableau but cost is only part of the equation. It's the
ability to connect to older on-premises systems like SharePoint 2010 is huge
for many that aren't in the cloud or are hybrid. Also, the integration with
Microsoft Flow is very attractive. You can kick off Flows from Power BI
automatically, when a metric crosses a threshold, making BI self-escalating. I
think it's easier to learn Power BI if you know Tableau as well. Lastly, Power
BI Mobile is included and is the fastest growing area of use. Executives want
everything on their phones and Apple watches. Hope this helps.

------
phonon
[https://quicksight.aws/](https://quicksight.aws/) ?

~~~
mynameismonkey
Trying not to be totally locked in to AWS, although that's where we are for
Redshift so it may be much simpler, but heck if I can get their page to work.
These auto scrolling pages... I can get to two sections of their page but the
rest doesn't work or auto scrolls past where I want to look. I could CTRL A
and paste into something else to read it, but man that's annoying to work
with. Thanks for the link, I'll circle back to it.

~~~
phonon
It's super cheap--worth a look. The useful links are

[https://quicksight.aws/resources/](https://quicksight.aws/resources/)

You can connect directly to Redshift.

------
nagarajs
Using Power BI you can offer BI with rich visualization, mobile enabled with
ability to connecf to multiple data sources, enrich your data with 3rd party
data, provide row level security and publish the same on pbi.com. Cost USD9.99
per user. We can do embeded analytics, on prem bi, integrate powerbi to your
SSRS comes available with ylu sqlserver EA. Need help reach out to us
nagarajs@orioninc.com phone 7324220084. Orion systems integrators microsoft
Gold Application Development, silver cloud platform, silver data analytics

------
olympus
I'd recommend RStudio. They have a server edition and R is extremely powerful
for data crunching. The two downsides are that you'll have to re-code all your
dashboards/reports, and R isn't as user friendly as Tableau. This will kill
your productivity when switching, unless your analysts are already proficient
in R.

[https://www.rstudio.com](https://www.rstudio.com)

~~~
mynameismonkey
We tend to attract the SAS crowd, I've been trying to get more R in the
company but it's not as prevalent as I'd like. That said, this is a useful
link, thanks!

~~~
olympus
In the stats world, SAS users are like Mac toting hipsters that have enough
spare money to pay extra for a product that "just works." R users are more
like the Linux types that grumble about how enterprise products are ruining
the world and you can get the exact same capability from free software. They
never mention that the learning curve is more like climbing a sheer granite
rock face.

If your analysts don't have scruffy beards and stains on their T-shirts then
you should stay away from R.

~~~
mynameismonkey
Duly noted :o)

------
nomel
There's

[https://spotfire.tibco.com](https://spotfire.tibco.com)

They have different licensing prices for the different types of users. For
example, the web consumers, that use the templates created by others, are much
cheaper than the the full analytics license. Scripting in IronPython, custom
visualizations in d3.js and .net extensions. Custom data sources in .net.

------
kpatrick
SAP Analytics Cloud (which I work on), combines BI, Planning and Predictive.

------
eyeball
My company uses qlikview.

[http://www.qlik.com/us/](http://www.qlik.com/us/)

Not privy to prices but I would be surprised if it's less expensive than
tableau.

------
thorin
Depends what you are looking for exactly and what skillset you have. When I
was using it jasper reports now owned by tibco had free options.

~~~
mynameismonkey
Mainly looking to 1\. empower the analsyts to publish without having to talk
to engineering to get an app/site/charting created 2\. Bring some commonality
to interrogation and reporting across different business lines/staff cohorts
3\. Make sure we are providing attractive jobs by providing attractive, CV-
building tools/skills 3.14. Expose minimally-interactive reports to execs and
customers, something above a routine PDF but below a full on data query
interface

------
aceregen
How did that happen? Wasn't their pricing for viewer accounts from their
website at $35/viewer/mth?

~~~
mynameismonkey
I spent an hour on the phone with them yesterday, there are no viewer
accounts. Basically I have Server, but it needs a named license to view. Named
licenses are 1k down, $200 per year. To get a viewer account or to embed the
content elsewhere for viewing I need a different kind of Tableau Server (core-
based), of which there is no mention on the sales or pricing pages, but it
starts at 72k/yr (non-profit pricing).

My completely misguided understanding was that I would pay for Desktop for the
analysts, and Server was where folks could view the stuff. I was wrong. So
everyone is now double-licensed, Desktop to do their work, Server to publish
their work, and no-one but the very same analysts can actually look at the
dashboards unless I add $1k licenses for everyone who needs to see data.

~~~
aceregen
Hmm, the $1000/$200 was their old pricing.

How did they explain the difference between your pricing and what's on their
website that says Tableau server is priced for $35/user?

[https://www.tableau.com/pricing](https://www.tableau.com/pricing)

------
officefapper
I'm a fan of Kibana

