Top Tableau Alternatives for user-facing analytics in 2024

You may be here because:

• You are searching for a better alternative than Tableau in the embedded analytics space.
• you are looking for more customization for your user-facing dashboards.

What is Tableau primarily used for?

Tableau is known for its internal dashboard reporting as a business intelligence tool, but when it comes to embedding user-facing dashboards it has many limitations—starting with the fact that it embeds through an iFrame. As a SaaS app, when you are providing value to the end-user through user-facing dashboards, you want the dashboard to feel like a natural extension of your application, offering a cohesive user experience while maintaining control and flexibility. Here we discuss 3 top alternatives for Tableau in 2024: Vizzly, Domo and Looker.

1. Vizzly

Vizzly is a purpose-built embedded analytics tool. It is primarily used by modern SaaS applications for adding user-facing analytics to their app.

With Vizzly you will get:

• Control over underlying CSS: Vizzly offers greater customization flexibility by enabling users to pass through CSS components from within their design system via its Theme API.
• Inclusion for Non-Technical stakeholders: Vizzly follows a balanced approach with a no-code and pro-code. With this approach, non-technical stakeholders can build and customize dashboards and datasets through an intuitive and easy to use, visual interface.
• Better Developer experience: As opposed to iFrames, the embedding is done through a native javascript component like React, Angular or Vue of the developer’s choice; this makes a better developer experience as it is their preferred framework.
• Extensible with code: One thing to note is that Vizzly embeds are extensible with code and thereby extremely customizable to meet end-user needs and even the most intricate design systems.
• Intuitive and advanced custom reporting feature also known as self-serve analytics.

What users say about Vizzly:

We looked for months and tried many options for a solution which would fit our customer needs. The main things we were looking for were something easy to use, easy to set up and install and of course a solution that is scalable. When we found Vizzly we instantly knew it was the one. Since we have been partners, I can confidently say we made the right choice. I recommend Vizzly to everyone I speak to.

CEO @ Launched, Joe Allen

Vizzly Pricing

• Vizzly has a fixed embedded analytics pricing model. This means that the pricing does not scale with dashboards created or end-user accounts and has no hidden costs.
• It has a free trial.
• Pricing varies according to feature uptake, which includes Custom Reporting, direct API access, automated PDFs, and other high-value reporting tools.

Tableau vs Vizzly for Embedded Analytics

• Tableau offers a simple iFrame embed, whereas Vizzly can be embedded as a Native React or HTML component, giving the developer more control and reducing latency.
• Although aspects of Vizzly are no-code, the product comes with a range of APIs so developers can customize the look, feel and behavior of the dashboard and workflows.
• On design specifically, Vizzly offers a Theme API for overriding CSS objects; allowing developers to incorporate frameworks like Tailwind CSS and Chakra UI.
• Vizzly offers for Custom Reporting and extensive end-user configuration, which is not possible with Tableau.
• Because Vizzly's pricing is fixed from the beginning, there are no scalability problems.

2. Domo

Domo is an end-to-end business intelligence and data visualization tool that is primarily used for internal reporting. It has a secondary offering called Domo Everywhere for user-facing analytics.

What you will get with Domo:

• Domo offers a range of database and data warehouse integrations. You can also connect to a handful of APIs from third-party SaaS tools.
• The dashboard builder offers a no-code experience for non-technical stakeholders.
• It offers an extensive range of chart types and visualizations.
• It is a Cloud-based solution, there is no option for self-hosting the data.
• Advanced integrations such as R and Python analytics.

Domo Pricing

• Domo pricing increases when you scale and is charged per user and data refresh rates.
• Domo has 3 pricing plans - Standard, Enterprise and Business Critical.
• Domo subscriptions include more than 1000 data connectors and support 250 million rows of data.

Domo vs Tableau for Embedded Analytics

• Tableau and Domo both are tools that are primarily built for internal reporting, the process of embedding the dashboard in your app remains as a secondary use case.
• With Domo you have a wider range of pre-built connectors with which you can connect to existing data warehouse or data lake.
• Even though Domo has an extensive range of chart types and visualizations, it lacks a higher degree of customization that other purpose-built tools offer.
• If you prefer the self-hosted option, Tableau might be better suited.
• Domo's dashboards are more user-friendly and manageable than Tableau's.
• Both Domo and Tableau come with advanced integrations with R and Python analytics.

3. Looker Embedded

Looker Embedded is a secondary offering by Google on top of their Business intelligence tool Looker BI.

What you will get with Looker:

• Implementation for looker embedded is done via an iFrame.
• Uses LookML language to construct SQL queries against a particular database.
• Looker has SSO for external embedding which means the end users will need to have a Gmail account to then have access via Looker API.
• Works well with native Google Cloud integrations.

Looker Pricing:

• Google offers a free trial for Looker Embedded. Looker Studio is free to use, however.
• The looker pricing structure consists of 3 parts: User licenses, platform costs and management.
• For user licenses looker charges a fixed amount for each platform user (views and writes).
• Platform cost is the price of launching and maintaining looker. It includes integration fees, administrative expenses, and its semantic modeling capabilities.
• Management: The price per user varies based on their job, therefore managers and administrators are more expensive than average users.
• The Looker Embedded plan supports 10 standard users (who can access folders, dashboards, and charts), 2 developer users (who may write code within the tool), and up to 500,000 query-based API requests per month (typically from end users).

Looker vs Tableau

• Looker has a steeper learning curve with the need to have a deep understanding of LookerML, which is completely different from SQL.
• Looker performs better with native Google Cloud integrations.
• Looker has a bigger chart library, offering more extensive data visualization.
• Looker's close integration with Google Cloud Platform may limit interoperability with non-GCP systems, creating issues for enterprises that use a variety of data sources and platforms outside of this.
• Looker and Tableau are both primarily built for internal dashboard reporting.

Conclusion

Modern B2B SaaS companies want to get to market fast, but they don’t want to compromise on control. They want flexibility over the look, feel and behavior of the analytics experience. Unlike other BI tools, Vizzly is built for customer-facing applications as a primary use case. Tableau may be a terrific tool for internal BI teams at large enterprises, but customer-facing analytics has a very different set of requirements that need to be considered.

See how Tendable successfully delivered user-facing dashboards with Vizzly.

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