If you run a mid-sized startup, consider these BI tools.

Having data alone does not make it valuable, but utilizing it does.

You're a mid-sized startup, you're growing. New hires and expanding team mean more demand for insights. You don't want to stunt growth by having all data requests stuck at your data team.

As a Mid-sized Startup, you know that you need a BI tool - but how do you decide which one to choose?

Go for the most popular? Sure, that'd cost you at least $35K/year - doesn't sound sustainable for mid-sized startups. You need a more lightweight BI tool that can scale with you.

Let's take a look at these 06 BI tools for mid-sized startups.

01. Holistics Data

Holistics is a cloud-based, self-service BI platform perfect for non-technical teams. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface allows users to answer their own data questions quickly and easily.

Some of its features include:

• Users can embed analytics dashboards inside their own web applications.
• dbt integration allows users to model and transform their data in dbt and push those definitions to Holistics.
• Reports can be exported in various formats like CSV, Excel, and PDF.
• Users can share data and reports with direct links, emails, and even Slack. They can also push this data to third-party apps like Azure Storage and S3 as well as Google Sheets for further analysis.
• Code-based modeling layer with self-service data exploration. Data teams use to define the data metrics and prepare well-defined explorable datasets and reports for key data consumers. Non-technical users can build their own reports with simple, visual report builders.
• Git Version Control and analytics as code. You write code (DSL) to define your analytics logic and check them into Git version control for better governance.
• Custom alerts that keep the team up to date with changes in data events

Holistics pricing:

• Free Trial: 14-day free trial
• Entry — $120/month for 10 users.
• Standard — $300/month for 20 users.
• Professional — $600/month for 20 users.
• Enterprise — Contact Holistics for pricing

02. Power BI

This BI tool by Microsoft is one of the most popular in the market. With power BI, Microsoft provides an analytics solution that comprises an array of products for individuals and teams. These products use Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) - Power BI’s programming language - and have data modeling, reporting, and visualization capabilities at different levels. They are Power BI Service, Power BI Desktop, Power BI Pro, Power BI Premium, Power BI Mobile, and Power BI Embedded. The Desktop version, however, can only be used on a Windows computer.

Each of these comes with its own distinctive features, including:

• Users can view, build, and edit dashboards with minimal functionalities using a web browser.
• The desktop version supports connections to hundreds of on-premises and cloud-based data sources and enables automated refreshes.
• A self-service Power Query tool allows users to transform and model data.
• Forecasting, interactive reporting, AI-driven augmented analytics with no code.
• Users can collaborate with team members in workspaces with features like commenting and change alerts.
• It is easy to share reports publicly or with other Power BI subscribers across and outside the organization. It also allows integration and sharing with other Microsoft solutions like Microsoft Teams and Dynamics 365.
• The Embedded feature allows developers to embed Power BI dashboards and reports into other applications.

Pricing:

• Free with limited capabilities
• A free 60-day trial of paid versions
• Power BI Pro - $9.99/user/month
• Power BI Premium - $20/user/month or from $4,995 per capacity/month

03. Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio is an online tool that allows users to visualize insights easily from their data. This Google product enables access to data from various sources via over 660 connectors, including Google data, data warehouses, and even third-party data from YouTube and Facebook. Users can also create dynamic reports and dashboards by automating data freshness depending on the source. This means that when there’s an update to the original data source, it automatically reflects on any reports that reference that source.

Data Studio has a very intuitive interface that users can get used to very quickly, making report creation a breeze.

Its other features include:

• An editor to write SQL queries directly from databases and warehouses
• Real-time collaboration between team members with the option to manage permission.
• A share option similar to that of all other Google products where you can share reports with the public or specific people or embed them in other websites using the code or URL.
• An email delivery feature that allows users to send scheduled reports directly to clients at specified times.
• Over 30 in-built charts and graphs to communicate insights. Users also have access to other community visualizations.
• No code data blending feature that allows users to merge different data sets.

Pricing: Free

Related reading: Community Crowd-Sourced BI Evaluation Worksheet: Feature-to-Feature Comparison

04. Redash

Redash is a web-based Business Intelligence tool built by the open source community of over 350 contributors, and it is great for mid-sized startups. Regardless of technical expertise level, using this tool to produce insights is relatively easy. Redash supports SQL, NoSQL, Big Data, and API data sources, allowing users to query data from different sources. Some of these data sources include Amazon Redshift, Snowflake, MongoDB, and other integrations like Salesforce and JIRA.

Some of its features include:

• A Query editor where users can write SQL codes with the aid of auto-complete and keyboard shortcuts functionalities. The results are also cached for minimal running times.
• Users can also create visualizations with different chart options using the drag-and-drop functionality.
• Collaboration between team members by enabling users to share queries and visualizations for review. Redash also has user management Single Sign On (SSO) and access control which are important features for any mid-sized startup.
• Allows users to schedule auto update times for charts and other results
• Users can set up alerts for changes in specific events on their data

Pricing:

• A free 30-day trial of the Business plan
• Starter - $49/month
• Pro -  $99/month
• Business - $450/month

05. Bipp

Bipp is another modern Business Intelligence platform that meets the needs of mid-sized startups. Anyone can use this tool, regardless of their level of technical expertise. It allows for connection to several popular databases, data warehouses, and other integrations. One of Bipp’s most interesting features is the ability to build and test reusable visual data models by simply dragging and dropping columns in your database schema - no code required. This technology relies on bippLang, a data modeling language that streamlines SQL.

Some of its other features include:

• A variety of visualizations that users can save and use in any dashboard. Bipp also creates custom visualizations according to the user’s unique needs.
• An intuitive visual SQL data explorer with point-and-click functionality that lets users query their data and build charts without coding. Users can also switch to text-based SQL and modify it accordingly.
• All Bipp projects are natively integrated with Git, automatically backing up data models and SQL queries. Its modern version control feature records and manages file versions for each user.
• Every time a report or dashboard is refreshed, Bipp’s In-database analytics fetches data directly from the data source, ensuring that all reports are always up to date in real-time.
• Users can also schedule personalized reports delivery to many recipients in different file formats.
• Custom alerts any time there’s a change in specified data events that enable users to make quick decisions.

Bipp pricing:

• Free up to 3 users
• A free 30-day trial of the Premium plan
• Premium —  $15/user/month up to 50 users
• Enterprise — Contact for pricing

06. ClicData

ClicData is a cloud-based Data Analytics and Business Intelligence platform that helps teams make decisions from a single source of truth. This tool was designed particularly for small and mid-sized companies. Users can connect and integrate data from over 250 sources into a single data warehouse. ClicData also has a free mobile app, available at the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, where users can easily access their dashboards.

Some noteworthy features include:

• While users can refresh their data up to once per minute, ClicData makes additional provisions for immediate data refreshes, every time there is new data, using Zapier or the API. Additionally, users can trigger data refreshes on-demand based on events in applications outside of ClicData.
• An intuitive dashboard designer with a drag-and-drop component that helps users quickly transform data into beautiful visualizations.
• Machine learning platforms in-app that provide predictive analytics services and enable users to implement Artificial Intelligence algorithms directly on their data with R and Python.
• Users can do much more than view dashboards on the mobile app; they can also export them to PDF and send them by email.
• User management is relatively easy in ClicData with viewer and editor licenses on individual and team levels. Parameters can also be set on both levels to filter data on dashboards to show insights that are most relevant to them and not see other users' data.
• It’s easy to share dashboards with specific users or teams or embed them in internal collaboration platforms. ClickData can also deliver these dashboards in different formats directly to your email.

ClicData pricing:

• Free trial: 14-day free trial
• Personal —  $79/user/month
• Team — $269/user/month
• Business — $525/user/month
• Enterprise — Contact for quote

For more Business Intelligence recommendation, check out:

• 05 Best Self-Service BI & Analytics Tool
• Best Grafana Alternatives For Data Exploration and Visualization
• Best Open-Source BI Tools You Might Not Heard Of
• Best Embedded Analytics and BI Solutions - With Detailed Pricing