Tableau
What it is: Industry-standard BI and visualization platform. Drag-and-drop interface, no coding required.
What It Does Best
Business dashboards. Connect to any data source, create interactive visualizations, share with teams.
Complex data exploration. Drill-downs, filters, parameters. Powerful calculations and table calcs.
Enterprise analytics. Permissions, data governance, server deployment. Scales to thousands of users.
Pricing
Tableau Creator: $75/user/month (full authoring)
Tableau Explorer: $42/user/month (edit existing dashboards)
Tableau Viewer: $15/user/month (view only)
When to Use It
✅ You need business dashboards for executives
✅ Multiple data sources to connect
✅ Non-technical users need to build reports
✅ Budget for enterprise software
When NOT to Use It
❌ Small budget (Power BI or open-source better)
❌ Need version control and code review (Looker better)
❌ Custom web visualizations (D3.js better)
Bottom line: Gold standard for business intelligence. Expensive but powerful. If you have budget and need enterprise BI, it's the safe choice.