Overview
Tableau is a visual analytics platform known for drag-and-drop exploration and high-quality interactive charts. Salesforce completed its acquisition of Tableau on 1 August 2019, combining what it described as the world’s number one CRM with Tableau’s analytics platform.[4] The product family includes Tableau Cloud with browser-based web authoring, Tableau Desktop and Prep Builder for authoring and data preparation, Tableau Pulse, and Tableau Next, an agentic analytics product built on Salesforce’s data and AI platform.[3] Salesforce publishes starting prices for Tableau Cloud from US$15 per user per month billed annually, with Tableau Next from US$40 per user per month; CRM Analytics, a separate analytics product inside Salesforce, starts at US$140.[3] Tableau’s strengths are visual exploration and an extensive user community. Its main limitations are cost compared with Power BI for large audiences, and a product direction increasingly tied to the Salesforce platform, which matters less to organisations that do not use Salesforce CRM.
What Tableau does
- Drag-and-drop visual exploration
- Tableau Cloud with web authoring
- Tableau Pulse metrics
- Tableau Next agentic analytics
- Slack integration
- Tableau Desktop and Prep Builder
Tableau pricing
Tableau Cloud from US$15 per user per month, billed annually (entry role). Tableau Next from US$40 per user per month, billed annually. CRM Analytics from US$140 per user per month. Higher-capacity and enterprise editions are quoted.
Tableau strengths and limitations
Strengths
- Strong visual exploration
- Desktop and browser authoring
- Large user community and training ecosystem
- Integration with Salesforce data and Slack
- Deep visual exploration tools for analysts
- Choice of hosted or self-hosted deployment
Limitations
- Full authoring roles cost more than the entry price
- Direction tied to Salesforce platform
- Annual billing on published prices
- Data preparation is a separate tool
- Role-based licensing makes total cost depend on user mix
- Every deployment needs at least one Creator licence
Appears in
Tableau alternatives and competitors
Alternatives to Tableau: companies ranked in the same lists.
Metabase
Qlik Cloud Analytics- Zoho Analytics
Microsoft Power BI- Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio)
Sisense
Amazon Lex
Sigma Computing
Domo
ThoughtSpot- Grafana
Google Cloud Conversational Agents (Dialogflow CX)
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