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ELK Kibana vs Sisense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

ELK Kibana
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sisense
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (13th), Cloud Analytics (4th), Reporting (8th), Data Visualization (10th), Embedded BI (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

KJ
Engineer at Raytheon Technologies
Visualization tools are optimized providing us with increased flexibility
One area that could be improved is security. Being an open source product, if you want to add security, if you want to add authentication, you've got to use a third party plugin that may or may not cost you, or alternatively upgrade to their subscription service, which is a downside as well. I think the types of visualizations are nice, but I think there's room to add more without having to go to third party plugins to do that. Just comparing the total number of visualizations that it provides compared to Grafana, you can see that it's lacking. The UI experience isn't as rich as it is with Grafana or certain other tools. I would like to see better authentication options, typical authentication options, like active directory and LDAP as well, just a richer UI with more graph type options.
Caramel Moana - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Business Analyst at Target
Data analytics has transformed our KPI tracking and now drives faster sales decisions
This tool has given me the power to convert data into new analytical applications, giving me transparency about working on multiple platforms, and since it is cloud-based, it combines different pages for a complete progress report. Overall, it is playing a perfect, fantastic role in my organization. Some of the best features Sisense offers include its speed due to the In-Chip methodology, great visualization that makes BI easier, and the ability to load millions of data in seconds, which did not seem possible with other traditional reporting tools. It also has a robust architecture and provides REST APIs for external access. I emphasized the In-Chip methodology because it allows for accessing millions of data in a short span of seconds while providing the best visual effects for our business data.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The stability of this solution is fantastic, as it has not failed us for months and we use it extensively."
"The automatic update of the graphs from a dashboard is very convenient."
"Some visualization tools are optimized for time series like Kibana, which allows you to do both, and we like the flexibility of being able to analyze different types of data."
"The user interface is very good, and the data visualization is simple and user-friendly."
"Having a tool where you can find logs that were generated months ago, and being able to search over a long period of time, is great."
"The optimization and flexibility of visualization tools."
"Sisense has helped us to migrate core functions of our previous tool in less than 90 days."
"We dropped Excel and saved hours of finance team work, with automated reports and dashboards."
"There are many built-in connectors, which allow us to easily add new sources of data, often in minutes."
"​Allows users to build their own solutions without as much reliance on technology staff."
"We like that this solution allows us to use data cubes to set up specific visualizations."
"Whenever we have an issue or are unsure how to proceed, they manage to simplify the issue and help us execute it in a graceful and scalable way."
"The client we have deployed this for is now able to easily make decisions based on the visualizations from this BI solution."
"Using Sisense, we were able to get rid of those complex Excel sheets, improve the automation of the company and produce meaningful insights."
 

Cons

"Populating data sometimes is also difficult for the user."
"One area that could be improved is security. Being an open source product, if you want to add security, if you want to add authentication, you've got to use a third party plugin that may or may not cost you, or alternatively upgrade to their subscription service, which is a downside as well."
"Security could be improved thereby avoiding the necessity of a third party plugin."
"Having a kind of wizard that would help you when you are typing your search would make it easier and quicker to refine your search, and ultimately find what you are looking for."
"This solution should allow the user to combine two indices into one graph and it should provide a unique count."
"I would love to have more customization capabilities for building dashboards, especially in creating custom widget sizes."
"For very complicated blended data from multiple sources we would like Sisense to add a "nerd mode" where we can geek out without the visual connecting of tables and data elements."
"Users with viewer access have less capabilities than similar users in Tableau."
"The administrative side of Sisense is a little cumbersome and confusing."
"When your data cubes become too complex (many layers of custom tables), the performance of the tool might be slightly affected."
"I would say that using Sisense on Linux's platform might not be advantageous for everyone."
"The only thing I am missing is the option to plug in any data from any source easily since Sisense only offers a limited amount of supported data providers."
"The initial version we purchased only ran on Windows servers, which was less than ideal for our DevOps team. I believe that has been remedied in the latest release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"This solution is more expensive than Tableau, Qlik and Dundas. It is an expensive tool. They charge $75,000 while Tableau is $45,000."
"Compared to Power BI or Tableau, Sisense is much more expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with Sisense?
So far, Sisense is performing well, but some visualizations lack flexibility in design options. Sisense should improve on handling extremely large data sets, and they should improve on maintaining ...
What is your primary use case for Sisense?
In our organization, we use Sisense for business intelligence where it helps us with complex data from multiple sources and provides excellent insights, which makes it easy for us to make data-driv...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sisense?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive, as the price is relatively affordable compared to other solutions, and I have no challenges with the pricing. The setup is s...
 

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