Our primary use case of Tableau is for reporting purposes for our clients. We provide analytics for clients, giving them the ability to build reports. We also have our own product which provides the data analytics platform. I'm a product manager and we are a customer of Tableau.
Product Manager at TCG Digital Solutions Private Limited
Good data flow and data management; a lot of training required to master the features
Pros and Cons
- "Good data flow and management."
- "Requires a lot of user training."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
I like the data flow and the ability to easily manage the data. The solution also has good building capabilities. When we apply filters, we tend to order different reports and it becomes easier for us.
What needs improvement?
The solution requires a lot of user training before reports can be created. That can make things difficult and require us to have Tableau specialists. It's difficult for a newbie to start developing reports.
Tableau queries and analytics, as well as development could be improved. The solution could also include an option to incorporate more open source libraries. I know Tableau has this closed loop so they might not want to provide that but if they did have integration capabilities with open-source libraries, I think that would be great.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for three and a half years.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This is a scalable solution.
How are customer service and support?
We don't generally need technical support although the clients do but I'm not sure if they provide good service. There are Tableau videos we can use if necessary. Whenever we need some solution we go to Tableau training and go through the videos.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
People who have always used Tableau want to stick with it but those just getting into the field will look at options that can provide almost a similar functionality with the main difference being the cost. It's a trade-off between the different features offered on the solutions in this market and the cost.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward and can probably be completed in two or three hours. The client is responsible for maintaining their own solution, we only implement. If they want to upgrade the platform, that's their responsibility.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing is charged per user, I believe. Even if they're just providing you a minimum specification there will be added costs if you need more processing power. If you want to connect to the data sources, then that needs to be included in the complete solution. It's an adaptive cost.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend anyone looking at this solution to check the validity of the business case. If you don't have a very expensive business case and you're going to be on the data processing side, I wouldn't necessarily recommend the product. But if you have standard templates and can just put in the data, export the defaults and send it, then it's a good solution because there's no complexity.
I would rate this solution a seven out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Vice President, Business Analytics at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
The easy to use, drag-and-drop interface allows us to better explore our data
Pros and Cons
- "This solution has transformed us from an Excel reporting environment to one of visual exploration."
- "I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles."
What is our primary use case?
We use this solution for enterprise reporting, dashboarding, and insight.
We have an eight-core server. There are up to seven hundred unique consumers weekly, and twelve hundred monthly. There are twenty-five power users that publish to the server on a regular basis.
How has it helped my organization?
This solution has transformed us from an Excel reporting environment to one of visual exploration. We don't just look at the numbers, we can easily explore why a number is what it is.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the "drag and drop" environment. We also appreciate the ease of use for adoption with "row-level" internal customers.
What needs improvement?
I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles.
For how long have I used the solution?
Six years.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
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June 2025

Learn what your peers think about Tableau. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Director Consultoria at tecnoscala consulting
Impressive visualization has helped to improve our presentations
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features are data discovery and fine visualizations."
- "The SQL programming functionality needs to be improved."
How has it helped my organization?
Whereas we used to present statistics in a traditional way, we now have interactive web-based presentations.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are data discovery and fine visualizations.
What needs improvement?
The SQL programming functionality needs to be improved.
For how long have I used the solution?
Seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a very stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Ths scalability of this solution is good. It depends on your DW design, as opposed to limitations in Tableau. If your DW model is poor then Tableau is not miraculous.
How are customer service and technical support?
Tableau does not have good technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously worked with Qlik, but we switched to Tableau because of its visualization and simpler way of programming. Tableau is also good for data discovery.
How was the initial setup?
The setup and support are not very expensive. In that way, it is not a complex technology.
What about the implementation team?
We are a software consulting company and we have implemented tableau for more than ten clients.
What was our ROI?
We are a consulting company and do not track the ROI information for our customers.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Be careful with the Tableau Viewer's licenses, and stay with the right number of users.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing this solution we evaluated Qlik, BusinessObjects, and Oracle BI.
What other advice do I have?
Be careful with tableau support. Stay in touch with the professional partners because Tableau itself does not have the right number of developers or people for support.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Tableau Partner Babylone systems
Intuitive and user-friendly UI helps naive users easily click and connect, drag and drop, and build fantastic visualizations
Pros and Cons
- "It has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view."
- "Licensing and pricing options could be made better so that more users would be able to use it."
What is our primary use case?
This product is for non-technical users who know, or may not know, what they need but would like to automate their processes.
How has it helped my organization?
It has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view. The explorer capability in Tableau allows analysts to connect to data sources published on the tableau server, build their own product and customize reports.
What is most valuable?
The extremely intuitive and user-friendly UI helps naive users easily click and connect, drag and drop, and build fantastic visualizations. Of course, the back-end data structure needs to be strong for them to be able to do that, but it saves them a lot of time.
What needs improvement?
Licensing and pricing options could be made better so that more users would be able to use it. The biggest concern any organization has is its budget when trying to implement a new product. Tableau is an extremely powerful tool and hence expensive, but if there was a way to cut down the cost they would end up attracting more users.
For how long have I used the solution?
Seven years.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Senior Director BI & Analytics at Hertz Global Holdings, Inc.
Friendly interface with mobile support helps us with data visualization and exploration
Pros and Cons
- "Scheduled extract and the multiple connectors are fantastic!"
- "The performance could be better."
What is our primary use case?
We use Tableau and Tableau Server for data visualization. We have a Global Tableau Server used by five thousand users on a monthly basis, with fifty thousand email notifications and more than five hundred workbooks for sales, marketing, revenue management, and operations analytics.
How has it helped my organization?
The solution has improved the organization by allowing quick access to data visualization and data exploration. Also, it helped to have a global server used as a repository to see all of the reports in the same place.
What is most valuable?
The features that stand out in this solution are:
- Scheduled extract and the multiple connectors are fantastic.
- Tableau Prep is fantastic.
- Tableau mobile on the tablet is also great for operations and the field users.
- "Ask Data" is good.
What needs improvement?
The performance could be better. At times, it can take up to one minute or more to open a workbook, which is very frustrating for the users.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability is okay, although performance is slow on our side.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Our solution handles five thousand users per month.
How are customer service and technical support?
Premium customer service and technical support are fantastic. Best in class!
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We previously used Cognos and Power BI. We switched because with Tableau, you do not need IT support. Users can create their dashboard really quickly.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was a bit complex, more so than expected. I would use a fully managed solution if I had the choice again.
What about the implementation team?
Our in-house IT department implemented this solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The initial cost that is set according to CPU cores is expensive. You need to go with at least thirty-two CPU cores for five thousand or more users.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
The solution is very good. Loved it and the employees also love how quickly they can create a workbook and share it. Overall, a great solution and a great team.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Software Quality Assurance Engineer at Syapse
Interactive dashboards enable the end user to modify the criteria or the filtering
Pros and Cons
- "One of the most valuable features is that the solution allows users to build interactive dashboards. This allows the end user to modify the criteria or the filtering if need be. As far as for my personal use as a QA Engineer, I really value how extensive their API document support has been."
- "Improvements can be made in template support. The workbook file structure is really hard to version control. If there was some sort of version control support offered particularly for workbooks, that would help big time."
What is our primary use case?
We use this business intelligence tool to build dashboards to display some of the statistical and analytical information that our company gathers. We develop a precision medicine software platform that enables academic and community healthcare providers to implement and scale precision medicine programming. We capture clinical data, genomic and other molecular data, biomedical knowledge, and the relationships among them. We also provide integrated complex genomic and clinical data to clinicians with actionable insights.
How has it helped my organization?
Previously, we built the dashboards manually but this practice proved to be inefficient and ineffective since it meant we spent a lot of time debugging. It's was hard to find developers capable of doing that kind of work at scale. Since the Tableau community user base is so big and a lot of people can use it; the widespread support is one of the biggest benefits. Besides that, it's a fantastic framework to build dashboards and innovative visualizations.
What is most valuable?
One of the most valuable features is that the solution allows users to build interactive dashboards. This allows the end user to modify the criteria or the filtering if need be.
As far as for my personal use as a QA Engineer, I really value how extensive their API document support has been.
What needs improvement?
Improvements can be made in template support. The workbook file structure is really hard to version control. If there was some sort of version control support offered particularly for workbooks, that would help big time.
Another note is that the interactions within the UI are not fast enough and in certain instances, there have been issues with the intuitiveness of the tool. Such as delays in configuring and achieving some specific effects.
I have to say Tableau does have excellent and extensive online support.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable. I've never had any problems.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
My impressions of the scalability of this solution are that there are ways to make it as scalable as you want. There have been some issues with the amount of the data that we had to use on the platform. We ended up using the extracts. It works fine now. I would say it is scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
I haven't contacted their live support or emailed them. Their documentation is fairly extensive and we also had a training session conducted by one of their partner companies. It was the Tableau Accelerated Course and that helped a lot.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward with respect to the deployment.
What other advice do I have?
Tableau provides a UI which can be used to build a clear graphical visualization that allows quick and easy data comprehension. This functionality really helps turn data into scalable insights. This makes things a lot easier for people who don't have coding experience and with dedicated people focused on managing the visualizations, not requiring them all to be developers or to have any coding experience is a real plus.
If I was to give this solution a rating from one-to-ten, ten is the best, I'd rate it a 9 because it does all that we require of it and more. I would recommend this solution to my colleagues from another company. It's a nice tool to work with.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
The diagram drop facilities help to double up hard drive reports
Pros and Cons
- "I work for clients. That is my business model. Business people really like to see Tableau. They love Tableau because it is very user-friendly. The platform provides an easy to use interface, which is what most people like about it."
- "From the developer perspective, the data connection handling the target data set is what most needs to be improved."
What is our primary use case?
I have a lot of experience using Tableau for the Healthcare Market. I use Tableau for visualization and reporting mostly. Main observations:
- Tableau is nice and smooth.
- Tableau is quite user-friendly and easy to use.
- The digital agents were really great.
- Clients and customers liked the visualizations.
Overall, I got positive feedback from clients by using Tableau.
How has it helped my organization?
I work for clients. That is my business model. Business people really like to see Tableau. They love Tableau because it is very user-friendly. The platform provides an easy to use interface, which is what most people like about it.
Being easy to use is more important to me than the look and feel Tableau gives to your data. Nevertheless, data analytics is what we value the most.
Tableau definitely has a big user community. If you get stuck or anything, you can easily seek help through that. Whenever you do this, you get good results.
What is most valuable?
The diagram drop facilities help to double up hard drive reports. The map facilities and the ability to connect with different data sources are the most valuable features.
Tableau has a lot of different connectors, many of which are very new. You can connect many different data sources with Tableau.
Overall, it was a good experience with Tableau and the visualization looks quite attractive with the proper combination of colors.
What needs improvement?
I have a lot of experience on the desktop version of Tableau. My recommendations for improvement for Tableau would be:
- From the developer perspective, the data connection handling the target data set is what most needs to be improved.
- Tableau keeps evolving with each version. With Tableau 192019.2, they're coming again with some more features.
- Data preparation is where Tableau needs to work a lot on. Every time with Tableau you have to invest a lot of time preparing the data before you start using the visualizations.
- Tableau doesn't perform well on big data processes. Suppose I was working with a file of like 1 or 2 gigabytes, then in that case Tableau is really slow.
Sometimes I feel that Tableau is too slow when you have a big data file.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's quite stable, aside from the data file which is not. Otherwise, Tableau doesn't hang.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Good scalability. Not that bad, not that great, it's good.
How are customer service and technical support?
I didn't need technical support with Tableau.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We don't have any preference for other solutions. We depend on Tableau for the solutions based on the client's requirement. If a client requires Tableau, we develop the application and customize it.
How was the initial setup?
A lot of complexity happens initially. Tableau is a little bit too complex. I started using the clear tool and application. Then you will feel comfortable with the tool and with the data.
There will definitely be some tough, complex things in your development, especially with the data. The data preparation (combining everything else) has to work.
Initially, all the data preparation tools have that kind of experience. In the beginning, you have some tough times and little complexity. Once you resolve this, the future and further development will come relatively easy.
What other advice do I have?
First, clients should be comfortable with the existing resources or existing platform which the organization is using - that is one of the very important aspects before you decide on any new tool or any kind of new technology.
Second, you want to go ahead and invite a new application into your current system. Ask how compatible the application is before you decide on any new product in your organization.
Third, you should consider if your employees are comfortable with the new incoming technology in terms of whether it’s easy to learn or adapt. Ask how comfortable your employees are before you bring any new tool into your organization
These are the key important points. I will rate Tableau at eight out of ten because there will be some shortcomings in the application that are not up to the mark.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Project Development Coordinator at ALIMENTOS ITALIA
I can upload excel files and visualize the information with details
What is our primary use case?
In particular, I believe in the ease that Tableau provides for generating statistics and content in real time. We no longer use the old system where we must load the data one by one, and with just one click, I can see all the information I need.
How has it helped my organization?
It has facilities that improve some aspects inside and outside of work. We use it basically to see statistics and locate focal studies to make decisions.
What is most valuable?
With Tableau, I can upload excel files and visualize the information with details.
Another aspect is that I can organize the information with the data I have as dates of income, expenses, and annuals.
What needs improvement?
To improve the next version, it is important to highlight the use of the tool in other languages. This includes internal handling and updates.
For how long have I used the solution?
Less than one year.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have never used a similar solution. It is my first time using this tool, and from the time of usage, it facilitates the process of information analysis.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Mainly, there is a free download version but with limitations that allow the user to evaluate and then contact the service provider for their respective installation and deployment.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have not reviewed other options. I think it does not exist; if it exists, I would know and leave a record to compare these tools.
What other advice do I have?
This software must be managed on mobile devices in several languages.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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