Best Self-Service BI Tools: A Comparison

Hi, we'd like to offer interactive dashboards for our customers. Each project will be quite unique, we need a solution that allows us to

Create interactive dashboards (no-code UI would be ideal but its not a dealbreaker)

white-labeling

custom url

near real time, so the dashboard periodically checks for new entries and outputs

Our data currently lives in excel, but we're happy to change this

at any time we work with about 15 clients, and they need separate, password protected access to their individual dashboards (a data leak or the ability to see a competitors dashboard would be very bad for us)

we care a lot about the frontend UI/UX, currently we serve our clients their data using tableau, so we'd like something approaching it

we're a small company, so paying north of $10,000 per year would be out of budget, ideally we'd like a solution that fits under this price

Can you recommend some suitable embedded analytics services please?

Thanks

Hi all, I'm currently researching for an embedded BI tool for my company use case. We need to provide embedded analytics to our customers (OOTB dashboards + self-serving capabilities).

• We have a multitenant database in redshift where each customer has a separate and slightly different schemas, and a few hundred customers.

• preferably be as near real time of data refreshing as possible

• we have a fairly small data team of just one Data Eng and one Backend Eng

• we have customers on multiple regions with data sovereignty requirement.

• pricing is also important as eventually we want to provide some level of analytics to many users My shortlists include Looker, Thoughtspot, Domo, Sisense. Would love to hear from anyone who have used any of these tools or have any similar use case to us! Much appreciated!

I searched far and wide but found nothing. I know how most people feel about Qlik, but what about using it for embedded analytics? I'm interested in:

• how easy it is to embed (into an app, I need a real-time dashboard)

• what the UX is like for the end-user - does it load quickly, play well with the rest of the app, glitch out, etc.

• how much it costs and how it's priced (consumption-based per query, flat fee, etc.)

• how it compares to similar embedded intelligence apps, e.g. ThoughtSpot

Thanks a bunch!

Hi folks,

we are currently searching for an embedded analytics solution and I'm wondering whether some of you might have some insights or advise.

tl;dr: Questions: Which providers would you recommend / what is your experience with them and does it make sense to combine the BI tool with the embedded analytics solution?

Our situation:

Start-up with one mid-size BI team (analytics engineers, web analyst, BI analysts). Most our systems are usually referred to as part of the modern analytics stack (data pipeline tool, dwh, dbt etc) with the expection of the frontend BI tool where we are using PowerBI. We are now looking into embedding our analytics solution into our main application (B2B but >1.000 clients) in order to provide more transparency to our clients. We are not talking about full self service exploration (altough this might come at a later stage) but more showing dashboards and maybe allowing to schedule to receive csv / excel files when they need them. We are hesitant to do that with PowerBI for a couple of reasons:

1. Max 8 data refreshes per day if you don't go for the premium option (5k / month) or opt for the somewhat limited direct query option

2. No git versioning

3. M / Dax staff instead of SQL

4. No proper data alerts / scheduling of reports without PowerBI premium

5. Way to much logic in the report instead of the DWH, making it slow

6. To much stuff is dependent on the MS eco systems in which we neither have the expertise nor are we willing to buy into (sharepoint, azure)

As most of these topics do not just apply to PowerBI as an embedded solution we would replace it completely.

What we need:

• Managed BI solution with the ability to embedded into our main application with good security and a role concept / row-level security (hashed parameters in URLs are fine)

• Good visualization library or the possibility to import d3 or use python

• Good performance (calculations in the dwh)

• Some kind of portal / folder structure where we have present the dashboards to our internal stakeholders (not for our clients)

• scheduling of mails / alerts via slack & mail

What we prefer:

• SQL > No-SQL as the entire team can write it and it's usually easier to read than some drag-n-drop stuff.

• git versioning

• As few logic as possible in the BI frontend, as we would prefer to build that stuff in the dwh (with dbt). This includes a semantic layer for self-service purposes. If the tools brings this in a way that is a good setup (think Looker) than I'm fine but we do not depend on it, as we are not a huge company and there is not a lot of self service or governance required

What we are looking into so far:

1. Looker: Seems like a good fit, but it is quite expensive + user based pricing for the embedded solution makes it kind of unattractive from a price stand point. LookML seems nice, but we do not require that kind of governance layer (at least yet)

2. Mode analytics: Good combination of notebooks + the reporting and the fact that the pricing for the embedded solution is a package price (instead of user based pricing). Unfortunately the out of the box visualizations and the report design are fairly limited if you don't go into HTML / JS and no self service / scheduling for embedded users.

3. Metabase Pro seems potentially to be a good fit but support is quite limited and unsure whether it can compete with the bigger players in the field.

4. Sisense: No versioning and user based pricing otherwise could potentially fit as well

5. PowerBI: See negatives above, but would require the 5k / month premium option

6. Tableau: Similar to PowerBI: No SQL, to much logic in frontend, no versioning, feels optimized for business users and pixel perfect reporting and not the analytics workflow

My questions to the community:

1. Does make sense to combine the two use-cases (internal analytics and customer facing embedded analytics) in the same software? Or should we look into something like cumul.io or panintelligence (meaning an embedding focussed solution) + a BI solution.

2. Did I miss any relevant vendors that might be able to offer this setup?

3. What is your experience with the ones I named? Is our high level evualuation correct or should we take other providers into a PoC?

Thanks!

My goal is to embed a tableau visualization I made from my tableau server onto my website and allow anyone who comes to my site to be able to view it. I have a tableau server creator's license and when I try to add the embed now, it works perfectly for me, but for everyone else, it wants a password to be able to view it.

I'm not very experienced with tableau server but I noticed there is a "Guest Mode" that seems like it's exactly what I want but it's grayed out not allowing me to click it. Upon further exploring it seems I need tableau core (which I don't know what that is really). So I called tableau to ask them for help/guidance. I told tableau I just wanted to display my visualizations for the public and the reason why i can't use tableau public and paid for my own server license is that I want my visualizations to update when the data gets updated on a scheduler, which tableau public doesn't do. The tableau server "specialist" told me I would need the core license. Okay, how much is the core license I ask?... $131,000 .... and that's their cheapest option..

This has to be wrong..

Is it true that if you want to display your visualizations from a server you paid for to the public just to view, nothing more you are either using tableau public (which doesn't let you update data on a schedule) or paying $131,000?

Hey all, looking for some insight from those with experience of Sisense and Looker specifically in the world of embeddeding & monetizing within an enterprise web application. Here are some key things I’m looking for: • Multitenancy - I want to have a master dashboard that all end users access. What they see is dependent on RLS at a group and then potentially a user basis. Would like to have the ability for a single user to create/save a filter in the dashboard that only they can see and have it still applied when they come back later. Would like the ability for a single user to schedule email alert/summaries of said dashboard w/filter applied (obviously don’t want to email the unfiltered master dashboard). • Single-Sign on - ease of use to implement a single sign on solution (API’s), integration with our web app so if you log out of app, it logs out of dashboard. • Embedding - How difficult is it to embed in a web application with having controls over the widgets+whitelabeling. • Row level security - We have our own custom security model where each users only has access to certain locations. We would like to embed the row level security so that if a person only has access to location 1 and 2, then Looker/Sisense also only shows data for sites 1 and 2. See the first point for how we need this to work regarding filters & alerts. • Eye candy - Sisense seems a bit limited in terms of UI customization and visual options. How does Looker compare?