Microsoft BI vs Qlik Sense comparison

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35,558 views|30,026 comparisons
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5,968 views|3,831 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft BI and Qlik Sense based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft BI vs. Qlik Sense Report (Updated: January 2023).
745,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable features of Microsoft BI are its intuitiveness and ease to use.""Previously we used Excel, which took a long time - two or three weeks - to bring the data into a uniform format, whereas BI can do the same job in a day.""Like all Microsoft products, it is very easy to set up initially.""Power BI allows you to create user defined charts which is really useful.""I find Power BI's reporting feature the most valuable. The solution has improved a lot. There are new features getting added day by day. In the past, they didn't even have the printing feature, but now they have it.""The data can be accessed from anywhere.""The initial setup is simple to do.""It's a powerful platform."

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"It is simple to develop, which is good.""Qlik Sense provides features to manage and govern data, ensuring data security, accuracy, and regulation compliance.""What I found most valuable in Qlik Sense is its flexibility. It's a very flexible tool, and it has a lot of capabilities compared to Tableau and Power BI. In Qlik Sense, you can take data from any of the systems, and you can do data transformation, prepare the data, then present your KPIs. Data transformation isn't present in Tableau, Power BI, and other tools. In Qlik Sense, you're able to get the data and directly present that data. The presentation layer is also very good in Qlik Sense. My company is very happy with this tool.""The most valuable features are that Qlik has a very strong ATL available and the capacity to handle large volumes of data.""Qlik has a powerful load script that uses an enhanced SQL language which is excellent for loading and transforming the data.""The product responds fast for data analysis.""From siloed reports, we went to a centralized knowledge hub, combining cross-functional data, and helping decision-makers see the data as a whole, therefore making more informed decisions.""The reports are better looking than in QlikView."

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Cons
"Microsoft should offer additional features for visualization and have additional features for slicing and dicing that data.""Sometimes while developing, the front end is not easily customizable and it has limitations. We cannot go and do any UI we want. We have to stick to the limitations of the product.""There is no specific area that I have a problem with. It's just that, with whatever feature you come across, every visual has its own formatting and behavior. What you get in one visual for a feature, you don't seem to get in another.""One of the more difficult things to do is to export some of the data from Power BI to Excel.""Things can slow down if you create too many pages.""The initial installation is difficult.""I believe there is room for improvement in terms of authentication and certain functionalities in Power BI. For instance, adjusting the width of columns is not easily done, as there is only an option to enable or disable automatic adjustment. This can be a significant drawback for clients who desire more flexibility.""The only challenge I have found is that they do not have a Mac version."

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"Qlik Sense could include additional features for data preparation and integration, making it easier for users to clean, transform, and integrate data from various sources.""The only thing I would like to see is the ability to create a master app that opens when a user creates a new app that has all the master items, colors, logos, etc., that my organization uses. This would help with keeping master items the same across the apps and would make development a little quicker.""What needs improvement in Qlik Sense is the support. It could be faster. My organization had already talked to Qlik management and has escalated multiple times, so management is looking into the support.""Qlik Sense is working very well on going to low code and development. They are trying to make their environment more user-friendly. However, the training is not free. When you want to learn more about the tool, sometimes you need to pay for the training. This does not make sense to me because training should be free because the more you learn about the tool the more you use it and the more you are loyal to the company and want to continue usage.""There is room for improvement in the storytelling mode and the report sharing. Qlik Sense also does not have a subscription base like Power BI. So a lot of the analysis is housed in community pages that are managed by either the author or a database administrator, or whoever the Qlik Sense manager is there.""Mostly when it comes to the loading of the data and reload times of the reports, it could be better.""They need to keep it as simple as possible but include as much advanced functionality as possible by positioning all the objects on the page, changing colors for all the objects, improving sheets actions, etc.""Qlik application automation needs additional work and features."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "In the beginning, the solution cost approximately $1,000 per month, we have a Microsoft startup subscription. There is a subscription pack for startups company which we are able to have for one year."
  • "If you purchase a license for a server, for users, or the professional version, you might not have to. The free version I think it can satisfy many customers' needs."
  • "We have enterprise licenses and some of the other tools or features come as a package and others you have to purchase separately."
  • "We're charged a monthly subscription fee of 500 rupees per person."
  • "They have a free Power BI Desktop version, but it has limitations."
  • "It's straightforward licensing."
  • "I have not had a customer suggest the solution is too expensive. There are licenses to use the solution."
  • "Both cost-wise and implementation-wise, this product is a good choice."
  • More Microsoft BI Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I would rate Qlik's pricing four out of five."
  • "We have 20 licenses for Qlik Sense, and it is a special license that allows people in the whole company to use it over time. You buy this license and there are some minutes that can be used. For example, for the users that used only a few minutes in a month, we use this license. All the people have the ability to work with Qlik Sense. However, the number of licenses is not the number of users. The number of users that uses Qlik Sense is approximately 35 people."
  • "I'm not able to reveal the licensing cost for Qlik Sense, but because it was a huge deal, the cost was less than the usual cost. The license wasn't that costly. It was the infrastructure that was very costly."
  • "The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
  • More Qlik Sense Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows:  1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle  - look for SAP… more »
    Top Answer:Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance… more »
    Top Answer:Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle… more »
    Top Answer:It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos… more »
    Top Answer:The product responds fast for data analysis.
    Top Answer:The product is expensive compared to Power BI. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten.
    Ranking
    Views
    35,558
    Comparisons
    30,026
    Reviews
    89
    Average Words per Review
    515
    Rating
    8.0
    2nd
    out of 68 in Data Visualization
    Views
    5,968
    Comparisons
    3,831
    Reviews
    22
    Average Words per Review
    570
    Rating
    8.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Power BI, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
    QlikSense
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft BI is a business intelligence solution that connects to all your data sources and turns your data into insightful and useful business information that is relevant to all levels of the business, ensuring data accuracy, consistency, and security.

    Microsoft BI combines familiar Microsoft tools - Office, SharePoint, and SQL server - with extra features for end-users, such as Power View and Power Pivot. This powerful product gives businesses a competitive advantage by allowing end users to better analyze their data, collaborate, and better present their data.

    The BI platform empowers members of your organization to make data-driven decisions that drive strategic actions quickly by allowing them to work together easily on the same data, share insights, and collaborate on reports using other Microsoft Office applications.

    Microsoft BI Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using Microsoft BI include: 

    • Scalability: Easily scale the Microsoft BI platform to help reduce costs and minimize the security risks and complexities that arise as a result of maintaining multiple systems.
    • Secure analytics: Protect your data with sophisticated data security features, including sensitivity labeling, end-to-end encryption, and real-time access monitoring. View and share meaningful AI-based insights enriched by data visualizations.
    • Regular user-driven innovative updates: Get weekly and monthly updates that improve the capabilities of Power BI based on thousands of ideas submitted each year from a community of over 500,000 members worldwide.
    • Seamless integration with Microsoft products: Microsoft BI connects with Microsoft 365, allowing you to create Excel queries, data models, and reports for the Power BI dashboards. These integrations make it easy to collect, analyze, publish, and share Excel business data.
    • Access Microsoft BI from any location: BI can be accessed at any time from anywhere using its mobile app, allowing ease of access to distributed teams or businesses across many locations. The business intelligence platform also enables teams to work on any file at the same time.
    • User-friendly dashboard: View and manage your data in a user-friendly and intuitive customized dashboard. The Microsoft BI platform enables teams to work independently while exchanging analytics between different departments and users. With Microsoft BI, you can easily create personalized dashboards that combine on-premises and cloud data into a single view, allowing you to monitor enterprise data from multiple business applications.
    • Easy installation: Install the platform in minutes just by creating an API key and inputting it into the software.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Microsoft BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its integration options and its data analytics capabilities.

    Tariq R., an operations & BI analyst at American Hospital Dubai, writes, “Power BI is a complete ecosystem. It has an integrated ETL tool and good connectivity with applications such as Office 365 and SQL. Power BI supports the DAX and Power Query M languages. These languages are making Power BI very strong in data analytics, and you can do many types of analysis. ”

    Qlik Sense is a visual analytics and business intelligence (BI) platform that gives users full control over their system’s data. From this platform they can control every aspect of their system data. It maximizes an organization’s ability to make decisions driven by their data.

    Benefits of Qlik Sense

    Some of the benefits of using Qlik Sense include:

    • Easily manipulate data: Qlik Sense allows users to easily combine and otherwise manipulate their system’s data. It allows them to create interactive visual representations of your datasets. The many different ways that the data can be represented offer many potential options for how to analyze the data. These choices enable users to easily gain critical insights.
    • Easily automate alerts and routine actions: Qlik Sense enables users to keep a close eye on their data. Automatic alerts that will notify them if their data changes in any way. Users don’t need expert knowledge of coding to create automated data-driven events. Users of all experience levels can take advantage of this benefit. Qlik Sense enables routine actions to be automated when necessary data insights will spur the system to take action. This combination of analytics and other tools empower users to take charge of their data.
    • Customize reporting: Users can set Qlik Sense to generate custom reports. These reports can also be customized to be shared by way of one of several methods, allowing users to control who sees their data and what they see.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Qlik Sense stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its associative analytics technology and its remote access capability. Qlik Sense employs an associative analytics engine that gives users the ability to take their data analytics to the next level. Users can create visual connections between different datasets spread across their network, creating deep insights that enable users to gain a full understanding of their data. This engine is easily scaled up to allow a large number of users to benefit from the deep insights that it provides. Users can access Qlik Sense from anywhere in the world. Qlik Sense has an online portal that can be used consistently from anywhere at all. Having the ability to remotely analyze data gives users flexibility when it comes to choosing how to deploy their manpower.

    Jarno L., the managing director of B2IT, writes, “The associative technology features are the solution's most valuable aspects. Qlik was the first company to implement an in-memory associative analytics engine. This basically means that all data is loaded into memory, but it also means that instead of joining data together, the data is associated together. From the front end, from the user interface point of view, data can be joined or included or excluded on the fly. It can be drilled down and drilled through and users can slice and dice it and that type of thing can be done from anywhere in the data to any other place in the data. It doesn't have to be predefined. It doesn't have to have hierarchies or anything like that.”

    Tami S., the senior business intelligence analyst at the La Jolla Group, writes, “With the changing business landscape, it is nice to access Qlik Sense through an external website. As an organization when we use QlikView Desktop, we need to connect to our internal network. We can access QlikView through the QlikView access point but the website has a little different look and feel than the desktop application. We appreciate that Qlik Sense is browser-based and the user experience is the same whether at home, in the office or on a boat. As long as the user has internet access, performance is the same.”

    Offer
    Learn more about Microsoft BI
    Learn more about Qlik Sense
    Sample Customers
    Konica Minolta, Klout, Mahindra Satyam, The Weather Channel, Argus, Credit Suisse, NCR, and Sysmex.
    Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization34%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Retailer10%
    Healthcare Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization47%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Computer Software Company6%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise46%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business10%
    Midsize Enterprise51%
    Large Enterprise39%
    Buyer's Guide
    Microsoft BI vs. Qlik Sense
    January 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft BI vs. Qlik Sense and other solutions. Updated: January 2023.
    745,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Microsoft BI is ranked 1st in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 83 reviews while Qlik Sense is ranked 2nd in Data Visualization with 22 reviews. Microsoft BI is rated 8.0, while Qlik Sense is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Microsoft BI writes "User friendly, easy to set up and great for analyzing data". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Qlik Sense writes "Robust solution, but could use a PowerPoint integration". Microsoft BI is most compared with Amazon QuickSight, Tableau, KNIME, Domo and SAP Crystal Reports, whereas Qlik Sense is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, Apache Superset, Alteryx and Looker. See our Microsoft BI vs. Qlik Sense report.

    We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.