ThoughtSpot vs Sigma Computing

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Our analysts compared ThoughtSpot vs Sigma Computing based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Business Intelligence Tools, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

ThoughtSpot Software Tool
Sigma Computing Software Tool

Product Basics

ThoughtSpot is a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics platform that empowers users of all skill levels to explore and analyze data through a search-driven interface. It leverages artificial intelligence and natural language processing to simplify data analysis, making it accessible to a wider audience. ThoughtSpot is particularly well-suited for organizations seeking to democratize data access and promote data-driven decision-making across various departments. Key benefits include ease of use, accessibility from any device, and the ability to connect to diverse data sources for real-time insights. Popular features encompass interactive dashboards, AI-powered insights, and natural language search capabilities.

In comparison to similar business intelligence tools, ThoughtSpot stands out for its user-friendly interface and emphasis on search-driven analytics. While some users find its pricing to be on the higher end of the spectrum, many appreciate the platform's ease of use and the value it delivers in terms of improved decision-making and operational efficiency. ThoughtSpot's pricing structure typically involves annual subscriptions based on the number of users and data volume.

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Sigma Computing is an analytics solution that directly connects to cloud warehouses and delivers real-time insights that drive data-informed decision making. With a spreadsheet-like interface, it provides a familiar experience for business users and analysts to utilize formulas to analyze and visualize their data. Through a self-service model, users can explore their data and ask and answer questions for themselves. It streamlines complex data analysis processes and promotes teamwork throughout a business with a balance of collaboration and control.

It is entirely cloud-based and enables data access without the risk of extracting, moving and storing data. Suitable for companies of all sizes, this SaaS runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Pros
  • User-friendly interface
  • Affordable pricing
  • Scalable for business growth
  • Cloud-based accessibility
  • Responsive customer support
Cons
  • Limited data analysis features
  • Less powerful than competitors
  • Occasional performance issues
  • Restricted data storage capacity
  • Lower customization options
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$95 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
$300 Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Mobile
Cloud
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Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
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Videos
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Email
Phone
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FAQ
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Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
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Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Ease of Use: Make self-service analytics available to all via search-engine style natural language querying, intuitive and descriptive dashboards and visualization recommendations. Access data anywhere and everywhere through mobile support.
  • Data Security: Keep data safe from hacking and accidental leakage by restricting access via granular user privileges. Make onboarding easy by integrating with other single sign-on solutions and offering native support for company directories.
  • System Monitoring: Offer total visibility into the health of the system, including real-time and triggered alerts via pre-built administrative dashboards. Stay in the loop at all times by setting alerts on mobile devices or via email.
  • Collaboration: Easily share graphics, communicate about trends and discuss data models within the organization or with clients in real time via the one-click sharing feature.
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  • Fast Integration: Without coding experience, users can securely and directly connect to data warehouses and get started without wasting valuable time on importing their data. Analysts can lay the foundation for the entire organization to succeed with data in hours, rather than days.
  • Ease of Use: Users work with a familiar spreadsheet-like interface and formulas to generate insights, no code required. The system automatically translates all the front-end actions input by users into SQL on the back-end.
  • Real-Time Access: Users can leverage the power of the cloud to query data directly where it lives, allowing for live analysis of massive datasets and insights in real time. 
  • Keep Data Safe: Sigma never moves, stores, copies or caches users’ data, instead running queries against the data warehouses and passing the results back to the system, ensuring that data remains secure with robust data governance and platform security that exceeds industry standards. It complies with data privacy guidelines SOC 2 Type II, CSA, GDPR and CCPA.
  • Improve Collaboration: The system eliminates BI bottlenecks and inaccurate analyses by establishing a single, reusable and accessible source of truth for all users to query. Sigma transforms the data modeling process into a collaborative one; users can edit tables and create visualizations together, enabling better communication and decision making by forging a bridge between data teams and business users.
  • Self-Service BI: Users have the freedom to explore ad hoc analysis without waiting for IT teams to update models.
  • SQL Authoring: Users with SQL technical knowledge can create and edit reusable analyses to activate with one-click parsing.
  • Free Trial or Demo: Interested customers can try out the full platform for free for 14 days, or request a demo of the solution to try with their own data warehouse.
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  • Data Connectors: Draw data from a range of data sources via native connectors or by leveraging an existing ETL solution. Load large datasets at speeds of up to 1 terabyte per hour.
  • Embeddability: Deploy as a stand-alone platform or embed into other business software applications, such as CRMs or ERPs. Draw data and interact with it without switching interfaces to a separate login page.
  • Distributed Cluster Manager: Optimize workload distribution and scale it as the organization grows. Retain data and system usability at all times with built-in replication features, data redundancy assurances, as well as automated backups and node failovers.
  • Visualization Suggestions: Offers suggestions for best-fit visualizations based on data characteristics. Create intuitive graphics that help communicate patterns and draw insights.
  • Automatic Search Index: Indexes search history and data, then caches it for easier search performance. Provides search suggestions based on each character typed into the search feature.
  • In-Memory Engine: Performs all calculations in-engine. Assure query performance with built-in search result caches and retrieve results across various sources and records almost instantaneously. Organize data for efficient data exploration and retrieval.
  • Search Inspector: Explains how search terms are transformed into queries. Gain more transparency into the data exploration process.
  • Real-Time Calculations: Reduce the wait for insights; calculate answers in real time. Automatically joins, aggregates, filters and groups data into analytical results.
  • Drill-Down: Get a micro or macro view of data on an ad-hoc basis by drilling up or down across a data model without predefined drill paths.
  • Reusable Templates: Offers pre-built templates for data worksheets. Create and save a data model once, then recreate it for recurring reporting needs.
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  • Data Warehouse Connectivity:  Sigma connects directly with many popular data warehouses, including Snowflake, Google Big Query, Amazon Redshift and PostgreSQL, or users may pull their data from other partners like Matillion, Fivetran, Alooma and Stitch to create their central source of truth by indexing all the tables in those sources. 
  • Dataset Preparation: Sigma creates reusable datasets from individual or joined tables using one or more data sources. These Datasets can be edited either with a no-code worksheet-based interface, or with Sigma’s SQL Runner. 
  • Links: Users can add context to their Datasets by setting up the relationships between datasets in a guided, contextualized way. Non-technical users can preview and create pre-model joins without needing knowledge of the join creation process. The system also pulls pre-existing relationships in databases upon connection with a data warehouse.
  • Data Visualization: Users can create assorted kinds of charts and graphs from their worksheets, including bar charts, line graphs, pie graphs, tables and more. These visualizations can be formatted in various ways. 
  • Object Badges: Users can flag datasets and worksheets as Endorsed, Warning or Deprecated, guiding others to the most accurate and relevant data with a glance.
  • Shareable Workspaces: The platform has both individual and team workspaces, allowing for collaboration on data analysis. These workspaces can be shared externally, providing access to insights to partners or third parties who may benefit from them. The system also has an organization-wide workspace that everyone can search and explore through filters, descriptions and file names.
  • Role-Based Permissions: The system has tiered permission levels from highest to lowest for admins, authors and viewers, to allow different permissions and access settings on a role-by-role basis. Permissions may be granted on an individual or team level, allowing for organizations to add and remove users from access levels based on function, department or other categorization.
  • Data Security: In addition to role-based access control, the platform provides single-sign-on (SSO) and row-level security to ensure safe data analysis. The application has a secure infrastructure, with firewalls, credential and vulnerability checking, peer review, static code analysis, threat and anomaly detection and encryption in transit.
  • JSON Support: The visual interface enables business users to create views with JSON that unlock the value of semi-structured data. These strings of JSON can be stored, referenced and reused for analyses and visualizations across the ecosystem. 
  • Third Party Integrations: The system integrates with Slack and Google Sheets for enhanced collaboration.
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Product Ranking

#17

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Business Intelligence Tools

#184

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Business Intelligence Tools

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 492 reviews
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89%
of users recommend this product

ThoughtSpot has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 492 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

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4.2 (14)
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4.3 (145)
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4.0 (2)
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4.6 (162)
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4.4 (167)
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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Data Analysis: Citing the power of AI-driven natural language searches, approximately 86% of users say that this platform enables efficient self-service data visualization and analysis for better insights into business data.
Data Integration: Around 77% of users who review data source connectivity say that the solution integrates well with databases and data warehouses, both on-premise and cloud-based.
Functionality: Approximately 80% of users say that they are satisfied with the platform’s capabilities for fast and accurate self-service data analysis to display actionable insights.
Ease of Use: Approximately 94% of users reviewing its ease of use say that this solution is user-friendly and intuitive.
Speed and Performance: Citing speed and efficiency in handling large amounts of data, 96% of users say that they are satisfied with the tool’s performance.
Service and Support: Around 87% of users who mention customer support say that they are responsive and knowledgeable, and that the vendor is receptive to user feedback on new features and improvements.
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User-friendly interface: Sigma's intuitive design and drag-and-drop functionality make it easy for users with limited technical expertise to get started and create insightful reports.
Affordable pricing: Sigma offers a competitive pricing model with a free tier for individual users and small teams, making it accessible to businesses of all sizes.
Scalable for business growth: Sigma's cloud-based architecture scales seamlessly to accommodate growing data volumes and user bases, ensuring your BI solution can grow with your business.
Cloud-based accessibility: Access your data and insights from anywhere, anytime with Sigma's cloud-based platform, eliminating the need for on-premise infrastructure.
Responsive customer support: Sigma provides responsive and helpful customer support via email, phone, and live chat, ensuring you get the assistance you need when you need it.
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Data Visualization: Around 61% of users reviewing this feature say that customization options for features such as fonts, layouts, colors and graphs are limited.
Training: Around 50% of users who mention training say that additional learning tools and best practices documentation would help in driving user onboarding and retention.
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Limited data analysis features: Compared to more robust BI solutions, Sigma offers a less extensive range of advanced data analysis capabilities.
Occasional performance issues: Some users have reported encountering occasional performance issues, such as slow loading times and data refreshes.
Restricted data storage capacity: Sigma's free and lower-tier plans offer limited data storage, requiring upgrades for larger datasets.
Lower customization options: While Sigma offers some customization options, its capabilities are not as extensive as other BI platforms.
Less powerful than competitors: Although Sigma excels in user-friendliness, it may lack the power and flexibility required for complex data analysis needs.
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ThoughtSpot is a powerful and reliable solution with the capability to deep-dive into data with an impressive level of granularity to perform business data analysis. With its AI-powered offering, SpotIQ, this platform enables easy data querying with intuitive drop-downs and suggestions to retrieve relevant business data for analysis and presentation. In addition, users can save and share their queries with other users with one simple click. In-memory data caching makes for faster data retrieval and creation of data visualizations on the fly, though some users feel that the platform should have more formatting options for better dashboard customization. With the capability to transform massive amounts of data sets into real-time analytics in seconds, this platform has a user-friendly interface that affords even non-technical users the autonomy to use data to discover anomalies and trends with minimal effort. Astutely recognizing the latency inherent in moving data between data sources and analytics platforms, the solution now offers direct querying into the in-cloud data warehouse Snowflake via its offering - Embrace. Users praise the pricing model of this tool since the cost incurred depends on the storage space consumed, not the number of users. The solution does have its limitations, though. Quite a few users say that implementing natural language processing (NLP) requires a lot of pre-work and that AI-powered searches can slow systems down. Data models have to be specifically tailored to the platform, which makes them inflexible for reuse. Though the tool is supported by all major browsers, users can face UI or performance issues with using it on Internet Explorer. As uploading Excel files is still the best way to push data into the platform, data import can be time consuming. Users feel that updated technical documentation and reporting tool tips for the dashboard UI could help shorten the learning curve. Deployment can be challenging for small businesses without IT support. Some users who reviewed it based on cost feel that this tool can be expensive for mid-level businesses. To summarize, businesses can leverage ThoughtSpot’s excellent AI-powered capabilities to share dynamic, real-time data analyses with employees and clients to drive effective decision-making within their organizations.

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While Sigma Computing receives praise for its user-friendly interface and affordability, some users feel it lacks compared to similar BI tools like Tableau and Power BI. One user noted, "Sigma is great for beginners, but I quickly outgrew its capabilities. It just doesn't offer the depth of analysis I need." Another echoed this sentiment, stating, "The lack of advanced features was a dealbreaker for me. While Sigma is easy to use, it's not powerful enough for complex data analysis." However, others find Sigma's strengths outweigh its weaknesses. One user commented, "For the price, Sigma is a fantastic tool. It's simple to use and allows me to create insightful reports quickly and easily. I don't need all the bells and whistles offered by other platforms." Another user praised its scalability, saying, "Sigma has grown with my business. As my data volume increased, Sigma seamlessly scaled to accommodate my needs." One differentiating factor is Sigma's focus on real-time data and collaboration. One user highlighted this, saying, "Sigma's ability to work with real-time data is a game-changer. It allows me to make decisions based on the latest information, not outdated data." Another user noted the benefits of collaboration, stating, "Sigma's collaborative features make it easy to work with my team on data analysis. We can share insights and brainstorm ideas in real-time." Ultimately, the suitability of Sigma Computing depends on individual needs and priorities. If you're a small business or individual user who needs a basic, affordable BI tool, Sigma is a great option. However, if you require advanced data analysis capabilities or extensive customization options, you may be better served by a more powerful BI platform.

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