5 BEST Tableau Alternatives for Digital Marketers: Feature Comparisons
Tableau is a leading BI tool, but it’s not the best one for digital marketers. Discover five marketing-focused Tableau alternatives in this post.
Are you frustrated with Tableau?
Although Tableau is one of the most popular data visualization and BI tools on the market, configuring Tableau is no easy feat, and requires SQL knowledge.
If you are a digital marketer or marketing agency looking for a simple, user-friendly, and real-time marketing dashboard, you need a Tableau alternative.
At Adriel, we’ve worked with over 6,300 marketing agencies and brands and they are all looking for easy-to-use real-time automation software to see key advertising insights in one place.
Whether you’re choosing a marketing dashboard for the first time or looking for Tableau alternatives, here are five industry-leading tools we recommend instead:
Adriel
Grow.com
Microsoft Power BI
AgencyAnalytics
Whatagraph
Read on to get an in-depth comparison between Tableau and other software.
The Cons of Tableau
Tableau is a powerful business intelligence software but it might not be the right fit for digital marketers. It focuses solely on data visualization and lacks extra features for ad optimization, such as real-time alerts and report automation.
We’ve talked to thousands of marketers and here are the main problems they’re facing with Tableau:
Difficult to set up: To use Tableau, you need a good understanding of SQL series, as well as configure data connections, clean the data, and build your own data visualizations. This is a steep learning curve for digital marketers who are not programmers or data analysts, and who don’t have the time to learn the software in depth. You could hire a Tableau expert or agency to set it up for you but this can cost you thousands of dollars.
Slow performance: If you have 10+ marketing channels and huge rows of data, it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to a few hours to import them into Tableau.
Lack of real-time data refresh: As of 2021, Tableau’s dashboard doesn’t refresh ad data in real-time and doesn’t notify you of performance changes automatically. Its alert system is also very complicated and time-consuming to set up.
Complicated dashboard design: While Tableau offers drag-and-drop charts and widgets, you need to do extra tweaks and configuration to design a dashboard, which can take up to months. Some marketers we’ve talked to have also said that Tableau’s dashboard looks formulaic and outdated, and is difficult to adjust to their brand tone.
No ad creative insights: For digital marketers, analyzing ad creatives is critical to maximizing ROAS for their campaigns. On Tableau, it’s impossible to extract insights from your published ad creatives and you won’t be able to see what worked and what didn’t.
Non-existent customer support: With over 86,000 customer accounts, Tableau struggles to offer individual support for their clients. Many online reviewers on Trustpilot have vented that it’s next to impossible to get issues resolved with customer support tickets staying open for months before getting a single reply.
What are the best Tableau alternatives?
We’ve explained why Tableau might not be the right fit for digital marketers. Here are five data visualization and BI software that fits much better for digital marketers.
Adriel
Real-time data on Adriel’s cross-channel marketing dashboard.
Overview
Adriel is a marketing intelligence platform that compiles, analyzes, and visualizes data from ad platforms, analytics tools, and databases in real-time.
The best way to describe what Adriel does is a mix between Google Data Studio and Tableau; it’s a marketing-focused data visualization tool with a data pipeline built in and a sprinkling of fun features such as a creative intelligence suite that allows you to analyze your ad creatives on the dashboard.
Adriel is a complete no-code, plug-and-play tool; you don’t need to have any technical background or write any codes to get started. You can easily set up your data connections and see all your KPIs within minutes, even if you’re switching from another dashboard software.
Who is Adriel for?
Adriel is ideal for marketing agencies with more than 5 clients and brands with multichannel ad campaigns. Many of Adriel’s customers include marketers who are looking to replace their Tableau or Data Studio workflow.
How does Adriel work?
Getting started with Adriel is easy. You just need to:
Create an account or sign into the app here. Free for 14 days, no credit card required.
Choose from a drop-down list to import data sets from your ad accounts, analytics tools, and mobile measurement partners.
Use ready-made templates to instantly see all your KPIs in minutes. Or, start from a blank page and choose your data visualization widgets and graph types.
Adriel vs. Tableau
Data integration speed
While it takes 20 minutes to a few hours to import your marketing data into Tableau, it takes only seconds on Adriel.
All you need to do is choose your data source (e.g. Google Ads) from a drop-down menu, and all your metrics and KPIs will be automatically pulled into your dashboard through APIs. No manual processing or data cleaning required.
No. of data sources
Adriel supports native integrations with over 650 data sources, ranging from your favorite ad platforms like Meta Ads to popular analytics tools like Adjust. In contrast, Tableau only integrates with 100+ platforms.
You can also request a custom integration if the software doesn’t support it natively. Adriel also serves as an ETL (extract, transform, load) tool to bring your data in from your existing data warehouses.
Ease of use
Adriel is built to be intuitive. Connecting to data sources only takes one click and the software handles the rest. With ready-made dashboard templates and drag-and-drop charts and widgets, you don’t need to have any technical background to build a banging dashboard.
Real-time data refresh
The biggest differentiator between Adriel and Tableau is that Adriel provides marketers a real-time, holistic view of their marketing performance from all channels. The data on the dashboard refreshes automatically, without any human prompts needed.
For dashboards, Adriel keeps the data on the cache for 1 hour, and if it’s expired, it will be refreshed when the user refreshes their dashboard. For data archive, it’s usually refreshed twice a day (except for Google Ads and Facebook Ads, which are refreshed every 2 hours).
Alert system
Unlike Tableau, Adriel’s alert system is intuitive and extremely easy to set up. Just navigate to the sidebar, click on “Alarm settings”, and put in the conditions for the alerts you want to get.
Not only does the software alert you on your dashboard, but it also sends you an email notification in real-time, so you’ll never miss critical insights again.
Special features
Adriel boasts a Creative Intelligence Suite where you can gain insights on how key creative elements impact ad performance and use this actionable data to maximize ROAS. Analyze which keywords, colors, and emojis drive the best clicks and conversions in specific regions, and A/B test natively on one dashboard.
Pricing
Adriel offers three pricing tiers that cater to your agency’s specific needs, with its Professional, Team, and Enterprise plans starting at $299, $699, and $1,499 per month respectively.
Grow.com
Real-time marketing data and metrics on business intelligence platform Grow.com.
Overview
Grow.com is a no-code, full-stack business intelligence tool combining data visualization and warehousing into a single easy-to-use platform. Features such as a real-time reports interface, advanced analytics, data modeling, and collaboration provide the hands-on tools needed to fuel growth and transform businesses through data-driven decision-making.
Like Tableau, Grow.com gives users the ability to connect to credible data sources, utilize data visualizations, predict possible trends, and analyze business standing. However, the platform maintains simplicity in its approach to business intelligence, giving teams the same solutions large enterprises get without the need for highly technical resources.
Who is Grow.com for?
Grow.com is primarily designed for small to medium-sized enterprises looking for easy-to-use data analytics, automated reporting, and data visualization tools that can be easily implemented into their business.
How does Grow.com work?
To get started with Grow.com, follow these steps:
Sign up for a free account by entering your name, work email address, and phone number.
View the dashboard menu on the top left-hand side of the analytics platform interface. Here, you can create a new blank dashboard by clicking on the plus button next to "All Dashboards."
Once your dashboard is created, select "Metric" – this will take you to the Add Data page, where you can view all data sources you have already connected to Grow and connect new ones.
Grow.com vs. Tableau
Data integration speed
Grow.com quickly connects to the data sources needed to run your business with ease. With Grow.com, you can connect to all your most important data sources and create a single source of truth for your team.
No. of data sources
Grow.com offers 150+ integrations that span a wide range of common marketing channels, including Salesforce, Shopify, Hubspot, and more. Unlike Tableau, these integrations are native to Grow.com.
Ease of use
While Tableau’s drag-and-drop interface is beneficial for users without prior programming skills, Grow.com’s simple business intelligence platform makes it easier to navigate, allowing users to manage a sophisticated business intelligence strategy within a single system.
Real-time data refresh
Data on Grow.com refreshes every 15 minutes, ensuring users are up-to-speed with the latest relevant data insights for their marketing reports and campaigns in real-time.
Alert system
While alerts for updates on your team’s marketing activities are currently unavailable on Grow.com, real-time notifications for integrations with other platforms such as Podio can be accessed through the list of data sources.
This will give you access to all event notification data matching the selected date range, including notification ID, text, created date, user type, and viewed date.
Special features
Grow.com’s dynamic dashboard feature lets users display data and create metrics that automatically filter based on who is logged in.
Pricing
Pricing starts at $1,500 per month, with custom pricing for their software features also available. The platform does not currently offer a free plan.
Microsoft Power BI
The main user interface of the business analytics suite Microsoft Power BI Desktop.
Overview
Microsoft Power BI is a suite of tools for business analytics and intelligence designed for everyday business users, marketers, and small to medium size agencies. It is particularly best for developers, analysts, IT, and other businesses to help visualize and analyze data on a unified, interactive interface.
Who is it for?
Microsoft Power BI is a comprehensive BI tool for the whole organization, including human resources, logistics, customer service, market analysis, and sales departments.
How does Microsoft Power BI work?
Microsoft Power BI is a suite of business intelligence tools that supports the stages of data processing, from sourcing to optimal decision-making. The platform itself is built on three key elements that are designed to let users create and share key business insights. These include the Power BI desktop application, SaaS-based Power BI Service, and Power BI mobile apps for iOS, Windows, and Android devices.
In addition to these three elements, Microsoft Power BI is also built on two other features known as the Power BI Report Builder and Power BI Report Server, where users can publish reports after creating them through Power BI Desktop.
Microsoft Power BI vs. Tableau
Data integration speed
With Power BI, you can easily and quickly connect to a range of data sources needed to run your business, including Google Analytics, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics. You can get started by using your credentials to integrate with your chosen source. A Power BI workspace with a dashboard and set of reports will be created, providing insights in real-time.
No. of data sources
Power BI easily integrates with over 120 channels including marketing, sales, project management, productivity, IT, and finance applications. You can also connect Power BI to Excel sheets, Google Sheets, and even databases.
You can also deliver visualizations with Python/R using libraries such as seaborn/matplotlib. If you are interested in data science practice with analytics and visualizations, you can practice with Kaggle, AceAI, and Leetcode.
Ease of use
The data analytics and visualizations on Power BI are easier to understand and implement than Tableau, and it offers excellent functionality throughout.
Real-time data refresh
As a customizable software, Power BI offers users features such as pre-built dashboards that unify essential KPIs and metrics in a single platform, with real-time updates on every device. It also includes features for monthly product updates, data management, data analysis expression, intuitive reporting, ready-made templates, and Azure Machine Learning.
Alert system
Power BI does have a user-friendly alerting system that notifies you when your dashboard data changes beyond the limits you set. However, you can only set alerts on tiles pinned from report visuals, and on gauges, KPIs and cards. The alert system doesn’t work on custom streaming data.
Special features
For marketers concerned about data security, Power BI comes with four layers where you can adjust the settings to control who has access to your data. These layers are: • Privacy Levels in Power Query • Row Level Security (RLS) in Power BI • Office 365 Sensitivity Labels • Power BI Workspace Security
Pricing
The Power BI free version is great for basic data visualization and connectors, but there are limitations on the number of data refreshes, data storage, and the number of users.
The pro plan starts from a monthly price of $10 per user while the Premium version starts at $20 per user per month for cloud-based deployments.
This is significantly cheaper than Tableau, which costs a minimum of $70 per user. However, Power BI does charge a hefty sum ($4995 per month) for on-premises deployment.
AgencyAnalytics
Real-time marketing metrics are available on AgencyAnalyics’ dashboard interface.
Overview
AgencyAnalytics is an all-in-one business intelligence and reporting tool allowing you to create customized dashboards and real-time reports for SEO, PPC, social media, and more. The software offers a full suite of SEO-related features for users to view essential KPIs and metrics in real-time.
Who is it for?
AgencyAnalytics is primarily for digital marketing agencies, media companies, brands, multi-location franchises, and freelance marketers across all industries. The software is designed to help marketing agencies and freelancers track, manage, and report results to their clients.
How does AgencyAnalytics work?
To get started with AgencyAnalytics, follow these steps:
Sign up for an account.
Connect your data sources like Google Analytics, Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and more. Connect the relevant data sources to your AgencyAnalytics account.
Set up your dashboard by selecting the widgets and data sources you want to display. You can also add clients and team members to your dashboard for easy collaboration.
AgencyAnalytics vs. Tableau
Data integration speed
AgencyAnalytics comes with a range of data integrations, all of which are readily available to users for quick and easy use in ensuring up-to-speed insights on overall campaign performance.
No. of data sources
AgencyAnalytics integrates with over 70 platforms to report on SEO, PPC, social media, call tracking, email marketing, and more. While this is less than what Tableau supports, they cover a wide range of common marketing channels.
The company is always looking to release new integrations each month to keep you up-to-date with your client's data in one, unified place.
Ease of use
AgencyAnalytics’ real-time dashboard and SEO suite provide users with easy-to-follow functions necessary to stay on top of essential KPIs and metrics for clients.
The platform is widely-used and recommended by users for its simplicity and user-friendly interface, providing users with the ability to pull in data from different websites for a more holistic view.
Real-time data refresh
AgencyAnalytics data refreshes in real-time, ensuring users are given access to the most up-to-date and relevant data insights for their clients and marketing campaigns first.
Alert system
AgencyAnalytics delivers real-time notifications to alert users on significant issues or changes that could compromise a website's SEO performance.
Special features
Apart from being a paid media reporting tool, AgencyAnalytics is also a robust SEO analytics software. Track keyword rankings, monitor backlinks, and perform technical website audits all on one platform.
Pricing
AgencyAnalytics offers two pricing tiers for agencies at all stages of growth – Freelancer and Agency, with each costing $12 and $18 per client campaign or month respectively. A third tier, Enterprise, is also available to users for customized pricing.
Whatagraph
Whatagraph provides a visualized PPC marketing report along with essential cross-channel performance in real-time.
Overview
Whatagraph is a cross-channel business reporting platform that helps users track, measure, and analyze marketing performance with their clients and teams. The platform allows teams to automatically extract complex data from all their marketing channels, create visual reports, and relevant KPIs in real-time.
The cross-channel tool was created with the goal of assisting marketing agencies and their clients, offering features such as weekly or monthly reports using data from multiple sources and automated workflows from marketing channels.
Who is it for?
Whatagraph is primarily catered to digital marketing agencies and their clients, with its automated cross-channel marketing reports answering the need of all agency workers from data analysts to CEOs.
How does Whatagraph work?
Users can get started with their first cross-channel marketing reports in minutes through Whatagraph’s easy-to-build, customizable, or readymade templates. With a range of templates to pick from, users can easily launch reports with insightful data analytics for clients.
The platform is built on hundreds of clients' reports that can be easily adjusted at any time, with functions for automated scheduling and live reporting with customizable date ranges available.
Whatagraph vs. Tableau
Data integration speed
Whatagraph’s many available data integrations can be quickly and easily loaded into reports or interactive dashboards in real-time, which allow users to track website events, traffic, and overall campaign performance.
No. of data sources
The platform integrates with over 40 platforms for users to easily connect their marketing data, including Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Google Analytics, YouTube, Instagram, and Mailchimp.
Ease of use
Whatagraph is an easy-to-use automated reporting platform popular among many digital agencies. Its intuitive features allow users to build visual cross-channel marketing reports for all their clients.
Real-time data refresh
Whatagraph’s software provides users with real-time data refresh for its dashboards on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
Alert system
Users can expect real-time alert functions on Whatagraph as well. For instance, Whatagraph provides users with an error detection alert system, notifying users of something in the platform that may hinder day-to-day processes, and when the issue can be addressed.
Special features
Whatagraph provides specialized email monitoring features to obtain all essential email marketing metrics in a single report at specific intervals.
Tracking email campaigns is made more accessible through integrations, allowing you to monitor your outgoing email performance, ROI, and other crucial KPIs in real-time.
Pricing
Whatagraph offers two pricing tiers, Professional and Premium. These are priced at $179/month and $269/month respectively. A third tier is available at customized pricing.
Get Started with Adriel
With a wide range of options available for marketing dashboards, it can become challenging to decide which platform is best suited for the unique needs of your organization. In this post, we explored the five best alternatives to Tableau and how you can benefit from implementing them in your business and marketing strategies.
If you are looking for a real-time dashboard that is easy to set up and design with an extensive range of data connections, Adriel is the right fit for you. Create compelling reports in minutes, streamline strategic data-driven decision-making, and improve business growth with Adriel.
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