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Tableau Enterprise vs ThoughtSpot vs Zendesk 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Tableau Enterprise delivers rapid returns through efficiency, cost reduction, quick insights, and enhanced decision-making within six to twelve months.
Sentiment score
6.6
Users find ThoughtSpot beneficial for efficiency and decision-making despite challenges in financial tracking and initial investment costs.
Sentiment score
6.7
Zendesk enhances organizational efficiency and productivity, reducing costs despite licensing fees, with varied but significant financial benefits.
This saves a significant amount of time, particularly for reports that would have needed around fifty people.
The ROI of using Tableau extends to its seamless integration across various platforms, as it's from Salesforce and thus not limited to any specific cloud provider.
Tableau is saving me time, money, and resources, which I would rate as ten.
Using ThoughtSpot has resulted in significant time savings and improved business sales by allowing us to identify sellers and buyers across regions, facilitating targeted marketing.
Based on our implementation in one project, we are trying to raise more funding to expand its use.
ThoughtSpot saves a significant amount of time compared to other tools and is very user-friendly.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Tableau Enterprise support is praised for professionalism and multilingual assistance but needs improvement in response times and technical expertise.
Sentiment score
6.1
ThoughtSpot support is responsive with mixed feedback; praised for quick responses but criticized for insufficient resources and lengthy processes.
Sentiment score
6.3
Zendesk excels in responsiveness and issue resolution, though reliance on documentation may delay human support replies.
They provide quick email and phone responses and have Thai-speaking personnel.
There should be consistent standards for all users.
The technical support for Tableau is quite good.
I stopped opening tickets due to insufficient and untimely responses.
ThoughtSpot provides a dedicated customer success person and the ability to submit tickets online, with a response time of no more than a day.
The knowledge base for ThoughtSpot is less robust compared to others.
The technical support provided by Zendesk has been very satisfactory.
Their support team from Zendesk is excellent, similar to what you have in Freshdesk.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Tableau Enterprise's scalability varies, effective with design and configuration, but big data performance concerns and costs remain.
Sentiment score
6.0
ThoughtSpot excels in scalability for large datasets, despite user management challenges, with strong Snowflake integration enhancing automatic scaling.
Sentiment score
7.4
Zendesk scales well for various team sizes; praised for customization, integration, though challenges include data backup and departmental customization.
Tableau is easy to use across various dimensions, whether on-premises or on the cloud.
The solution is fully scalable and performs well even with large datasets, provided there is proper supporting hardware.
Tableau is easy to scale.
Tableau, Power BI, or Looker have separate tools for preparation, customization, and storytelling.
The platform does not have technical problems with scaling data or connections.
As our data has grown, I have validated huge datasets and complex models without significant issues.
Zendesk can scale from very small companies to very large ones.
The scalability of Zendesk is still in the same range as Freshdesk.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Tableau Enterprise is generally stable and reliable, with occasional issues mainly related to large datasets or server configurations.
Sentiment score
6.0
ThoughtSpot is reliable with high stability, though some users report performance challenges and increased costs from integration limitations.
Sentiment score
7.7
Zendesk is stable and reliable, despite occasional outages, making it ideal for small businesses and startups globally.
The application hangs after continuous use due to the buildup of cache.
I rate the stability a five or six because Tableau updates very often with new versions or patches.
I use it primarily for large datasets, and it performs faster than regular data visualization tools such as Power BI, which has limits on dataset size.
The upgrades are smooth with no downtime, which is super important.
The responsiveness of accessing live data is exceptional and faster than most other BI tools.
The stability has been quite reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Tableau Enterprise users seek better data integration, improved performance, cost-effective pricing, and enhanced analytics and collaboration features.
ThoughtSpot needs better visualization, dashboard customization, data integration, and performance features to compete effectively with Power BI.
Zendesk users face challenges with interface clumsiness, slow performance, customization, integration, and pricing, affecting overall usability and efficiency.
We cannot send the entire Excel file reports via email within Tableau.
The product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role.
It sometimes requires extensive investigation to determine why the data does not appear correctly.
Currently, it is not as customizable as the options available on Power BI or Tableau.
Handling governance when there are many models and dashboards is complex.
Enhancing integration capabilities with other tools like DBT would also be beneficial as it would make our lives easier.
There could be improvements in integration, which can be achieved with APIs or tools like Zapier.
 

Setup Cost

Tableau's pricing is high yet competitive, with increased costs for added features, posing challenges for small organizations.
ThoughtSpot offers competitive pricing, often cheaper than Tableau and more than Power BI, with flexible, negotiable billing options.
Zendesk pricing varies, perceived as high, but offers value and flexibility; negotiation advised for larger teams to optimize costs.
Power BI as a much cheaper alternative.
A license for 150 users costs around $17,000 USD per year.
Looker is known to be quite expensive.
HubSpot is expensive.
ThoughtSpot's pricing is reasonable and in line with other BI tools.
It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for money.
 

Valuable Features

Tableau Enterprise excels in data integration, visualization, and analytics, offering customization, real-time processing, and advanced capabilities for decision-making.
ThoughtSpot offers intuitive search, fast analytics, AI insights, and user-friendly interfaces for efficient, self-service data exploration.
Zendesk offers user-friendly integration, robust features, and valuable tools, enhancing efficiency and streamlining customer support processes effectively.
A significant feature for me is the real-time connection to data sources because it effectively manages large data sets.
Tableau serves as a stable dashboarding tool for higher management, aiding in quick decision-making.
Building hyper extracts and visualization capabilities make Tableau a robust tool for data analysis.
Its compatibility with most databases, including the latest from FlexMovely and Redshift, allows users to create joins and worksheets easily.
This alerting feature is very beneficial for our company at the moment, and we use it extensively.
When I upload a data dump, AI analytics suggest possible data visualizations and insights, which I can pin to dashboards or live boards for modification.
It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
The benefits I have seen from using Zendesk include faster response times.
 

Mindshare comparison

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tableau Enterprise11.0%
Microsoft Power BI14.5%
Amazon QuickSight4.9%
Other69.6%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ThoughtSpot1.5%
Microsoft Power BI14.5%
Tableau Enterprise11.0%
Other73.0%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
CRM Customer Engagement Centers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Zendesk6.9%
Microsoft Dynamics CRM19.1%
Salesforce Service Cloud13.7%
Other60.3%
CRM Customer Engagement Centers
 

Featured Reviews

Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of developing dashboards and receiving strong technical support have enabled efficient data visualization
Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau. As a developer, I can develop an on-demand report in Python quite easily, but exposing a REST API on the Tableau platform is not a very easy task. AI enablement is an area for improvement for Tableau, and that is something they might have to work upon. I have heard that ThoughtSpot is quite better in this regard, but the cost of ThoughtSpot is much higher. ThoughtSpot has lots of natural language-based report generation features that Tableau lacks.
Sushma Polavarapu - PeerSpot reviewer
Creates user-friendly analysis environments for large datasets
The tool is user-friendly for the end users. It is primarily a search-based tool. Users do not need a technical background to work directly on the dataset. Its compatibility with most databases, including the latest from FlexMovely and Redshift, allows users to create joins and worksheets easily. ThoughtSpot is fast, even with one to ten terabytes of data.
JohanSkibdahl - PeerSpot reviewer
Automating customer support with advanced AI capabilities and seamless communication
Zendesk has been invaluable in automating communications such as email and phone calls. It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. This intelligent tool can manage complex queries before users even realize they are interacting with a non-human. Additionally, we have integrated Zendesk with Datto and Klaviyo, enhancing our workflows.
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Performing Arts
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business117
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThoughtSpot?
The pricing is on the higher end but reasonable for what ThoughtSpot offers.
What needs improvement with ThoughtSpot?
I do not think there is anything that needs improvement at the moment. It is being improved continuously. They are co...
What is your primary use case for ThoughtSpot?
Clients use ThoughtSpot because of its search facility. It is easy for searching and does not require analysts to pro...
What do you like most about Zendesk Support?
I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?
Zendesk's pricing is reasonable. It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for mo...
What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?
I'm going to piggyback on what I said regarding Freshdesk concerning what could be better in Zendesk: incorporate mor...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
No data available
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Primary Capital Mortgage, Sterling Backcheck, RichRelevance, Rambus, Batteries Plus Bulbs
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: August 2025.
866,561 professionals have used our research since 2012.