Looking for alternatives to Sisense? Many users crave user-friendly and feature-rich solutions for tasks like Data Management, Reporting, and Data Transformation. Leveraging crowdsourced data from over 1,000 real Business Intelligence Tools selection projects based on 400+ capabilities, we present a comparison of Sisense to leading industry alternatives like SQL Server, Power BI, Domo, and ClicData.
Analyst Rating
User Sentiment
Microsoft Power BI is an analytics and reporting solution for individuals and enterprises. Ranked among the top five products in our BI product directory, it’s a user favorite, with 88% of reviewers giving it the thumbs up.
It’s versatile in connectivity, pulling data from files, databases and cloud sources. Power Query helps users transform data to the desired format for building accurate models. They will serve as the basis for analysis and reporting. With Azure Machine Learning, Power BI incorporates AI into the analysis.
Government agencies find them handy for tracking citizen programs, crime and health data, and utilities. For healthcare companies, it proves helpful in patient data tracking, population health management and operations. Retail is all about sales and revenue, and if this is you, the vendor offers ready-made report templates that can help you hit the ground running. That’s not all; other report samples are available too.
Reusable dataflows in Power BI help you create a process once and run it again. Dataflows are shareable, so your whole team benefits. DAX enables complex calculations, while natural language Q&A speeds up analysis. Team workspaces enable collaboration, and mobile insight is available.
Individual accounts include Power BI Desktop, Power BI Pro and Premium per User (PPU). Pro and PPU licenses use Power BI Service, which lets you share content with other Pro users and is suitable for small businesses.
Power BI Premium is an enterprise license; you can share content with anyone, even external users. Pro and PPU cost $9.99 and $20 per user monthly, while Premium comes at $4,995 per month. User reviews praise it for ease of use, connectivity and modeling, but most users find the pricing confusing, possibly because of the various Microsoft integrations that make Power BI a complete package.
Domo is a cloud-based analytics platform that integrates end-to-end data management into one solution. Being SaaS, it’s available from anywhere with an internet connection. The vendor offers the best of both worlds — self-serve ease of use and data science.
Domo has a friendly interface aimed at senior management who are hard-pressed to make tough decisions daily. A breadcrumb trail at the top of the workspace will help you navigate between folders. A performant, scalable warehouse supports fast queries with in-memory data.
Domo Buzz is an instant messaging option like Slack with file sharing and is available on the mobile app also. Annotation options allowed me to add comments to my chart and mark data points of interest. If you want something more than what it offers, you can build your own apps within Domo. It’s our analysts’ pick and a user favorite in its category for these and more features.
Domo Everywhere is the embedded version, though it doesn’t offer as many options to design views as some other platforms, such as Dundas BI.
You can use Domo dashboards and reports for several critical tasks. Decide where to reduce spending and identify the factors that affect your business. Forecast demand for your services and products. Predict how unexpected events can impact the economy and your business and do much more.
There’s a 30-day free trial after which you can upgrade to the Standard or Enterprise pricing model. Or opt for the Business Critical edition to get a private AWS link that promises watertight security and reduces latency.
Some users mention performance limitations, which could be caused by shared cloud resources. The vendor offers a consumption model — pay for what you use and add unlimited users at a flat fee of $750.
among all Business Intelligence Tools
Sisense has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 88% when considering 1979 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.
SQL Server has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 7657 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.
Power BI has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 88% when considering 5246 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.
Domo has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 87% when considering 1818 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.
ClicData has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 92% when considering 294 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.
Users appreciate how Sisense creates large datasets from constantly evolving data sources to be seamlessly streamlined into actionable data, and presented easily in the form of graphs, bar and pie charts, scattergrams, line graphs, interactive maps and many more visualization types. Regarding customer support, users praise their prompt and informative responses - from implementation to handling subsequent queries — as high quality customer service that comes neatly packaged with pricing plans. Users mention that the implementation of this solution, though easy for basic setup, can be quite demanding in terms of scripting and configuration setup, especially for advanced analytics. Non-technical users might find it challenging to set up the data objects - ElastiCubes - without strong IT support. On the front-end, dashboard customization and formatting of visualizations can be tricky as these require basic knowledge of CSS, Javascript and development. Though a large number of users find this solution to be cost-effective, smaller businesses and startups that only need a limited number of licenses might find it expensive. Overall, Sisense is a strong BI solution with strong data capabilities, and its drill-down functionality empowers users to glean insightful and actionable analytics that drive business strategy by aiding in decision-making processes. To maximize its potential, businesses may require strong IT support for implementation and formatting of visualizations. It is certainly worth considering for enterprise BI needs, if the price is right!
SQL Server continues to be a popular choice for database management, with user reviews highlighting both its strengths and weaknesses. Reliability and performance remain key selling points. Users praise its stability, speed, and ability to handle demanding workloads, making it a trusted choice for mission-critical applications. However, licensing costs can be a significant barrier, especially for larger deployments compared to open-source alternatives like PostgreSQL. Security is another forte, with users appreciating its multi-layered approach to protecting sensitive data. However, its complexity can be daunting, requiring specialized skills for administration and maintenance, particularly in larger environments. While Azure SQL Managed Instance offers managed cloud services, some users find on-premises deployments less flexible for cloud migration. Users acknowledge its rich set of tools and features, including SSMS, SSDT, and SSRS, for efficient database management, development, and analysis. Yet, they recognize vendor lock-in as a potential drawback, as switching to other systems can be challenging due to its proprietary nature and T-SQL language. Overall, SQL Server's reliability, performance, and security are highly valued. However, its cost, complexity, and limited cloud flexibility are common concerns. Users compare it favorably to PostgreSQL for affordability and open-source nature, while acknowledging its less mature feature set. Oracle Database is seen as a competitor for large-scale enterprise deployments, but users note its even higher cost and complexity. Ultimately, the choice comes down to specific needs and priorities. For users prioritizing reliability, security, and integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, SQL Server remains a compelling option. However, those seeking flexibility, lower costs, or open-source options might find PostgreSQL or other alternatives more attractive.
Our researchers ranked products on a whole bunch of features. They include data management, querying and visualization, advanced and embedded analytics, mobile BI, and IoT and location analytics.In our rankings, Power BI scores 87 for connectivity, leaving behind Tableau, Oracle Analytics and Dundas BI. Robust Microsoft technology is one reason, for sure. Besides, intelligent techniques like DirectQuery and easy data modeling make it popular among users.In product reviews, some users mentioned a lag when sharing reports from the desktop to the cloud. For me, the platform was a tad slow to start, but otherwise, it stayed performant for my average-sized dataset.When dealing with sales data, total sales, the top-performing products, seasonality and period trends are common queries. Creating a sales KPI report in Power BI was an excellent way for me to answer them. My CSV files included sales, calendar, products and store data.Connecting to sources is straightforward with Get Data on the home screen and toolbar. Once I had pulled in the data, I clicked on Transform Data and opened the Power Query editor. It automatically detects the data type for strings and numbers but can get confused with dates and currency, which it marks as text. It involved some manual wrangling, but I had it sorted in no time. Read my article on KPI Reports to learn how I did it.But I wouldn’t call it a deal-breaker as it’s not a tedious task. I had the same experience with Qlik Sense, but Tableau was way better as it recognizes seven data types — string, number, date, date and time, boolean, geographic and cluster values.Tracking sales over periods required a greater level of detail, so I added new columns to the calendar data — start of month and start of week. Column statistics were immensely helpful in identifying unique, distinct and null values and correcting incomplete records. Clicking on the number of products selling at a particular price allowed me to see which toys sold at that price.Creating a relational data model by defining primary keys is a manual process and seems dated once you’ve used Qlik Sense. Adding calculated measures is where DAX shows its magic. For data workers well-versed with SQL, DAX is a ready-to-go tool they’ll be glad to have in their corner.Creating visualizations wasn’t as intuitive as Tableau as it involved drag-and-drop onto the canvas, and frankly, I felt like I was flying blind. I didn’t feel that way with Tableau, and it’s slicker.Power BI offers a paintbrush tool that lets you define the layout, the card arrangement and the maximum number of cards. You can define the canvas settings, background and headers and determine the filter pane settings. It took me longer to create a dashboard from scratch than it took in Tableau.Some users found the pricing structure too complex. While using Azure data in Power BI for basic queries is free, costs can add up when you go for text and sentiment analysis. With Microsoft Fabric, the pricing complexity is set to rise. Though Power BI is available separately too, you’ll need to rely on Fabric to manage users, licenses and other administrative tasks.About 31% of the users mentioning cost complained about onboarding difficulties, possibly because DAX introduces the complexity of learning syntax. It can daunt non-technical users initially, but guided formulas can make the task easier. That said, I agree with the majority of user reviews that training will speed up onboarding and help your team maximize the investment.Overall, Power BI has many powerful features and will give you value for your money. If you’re not a Microsoft user yet, it’s worth checking out for the baked-in vendor technologies like Azure and SSAS. If you are an MS user, Power BI might be a no-brainer, though be prepared to shell out a little extra for advanced functionality and additional modules.
Domo has everything data teams could wish for — self-service ETL, advanced analytics and data science. Its rich set of connectors makes users happy as they praise its robust integration APIs. Its scripting language is similar to Power BI, and knowing SQL will shorten your team's learning curve. The vendor offers daily refreshes, currently capping them at 48.On the flip side, the interface seemed a bit clunky to me. Dashboards don’t display in the edit mode by default, which was a tad annoying. The Getting Started documentation is dated and doesn’t match the new interface. I could find my way around with help from user forums.While the vendor earns praise for releasing frequent updates, quite a few users say some much-needed features lack depth. According to our research, Domo offers only 64% of the required functionality out of the box, which is much less than what Power BI and Tableau provide. It also underperforms in data querying, scoring only 53 in our analysis.Some reviews mention bugs and that performance can lag when handling anything complex than simple visualizations. The slowness could be due to the multitenant SaaS model that provides shared computing. As for the mobile app, it didn’t work in the offline mode for me. I should mention here that I had opted for the trial version. A proof-of-concept will help you check if the issue persists in the paid edition.Domo’s pay-as-you-go model is great for estimating usage but be prepared to pay more for workload spikes. According to our research, about 89% of users who reviewed the price found Domo’s consumption model expensive. Small organizations working with a lean team might find it challenging to handle billing.Here’s what’s great about subscribing to Domo. You can create as many reports and dashboards as required — there’s no limit or additional cost. Plus, Domo allows adding an unlimited number of users. Domo accepts external data models from OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Hugging Face, Databricks and Jupyter Workspaces.Despite a competitive market, Domo is an excellent product for organizations seeking data visualization and strong integration. Its flexible pricing model and recent AI updates make it a strong challenger to leading data platforms.
Clicdata is a robust platform with a multitude of data manipulation options and robust data processing capabilities. The cloud-based system is simple enough to get the results businesses need. Readymade connectors are available to connect and fuse data from multiple data sources. However, some users complained about connectivity issues with third parties. Users also complained about the lack of API integrations and plugins to pull data. Visualizations are stunning with customizable dashboards that are quick and easy to set up and have a great set of widgets. Users were generally happy with the customer service, stating that they were positive and reactive. Video tutorials and documentation could be improved. Some important features, such as roll back and database editing, are not available for all plans. Learning and getting used to the system can take time for the non tech-savvy. Overall, it’s a flexible, intuitive and cost-effective tool to visualize business data.
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