Geckoboard vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Geckoboard
Score 6.2 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Geckoboard enables users to create real time dashboards using data from over 80 cloud services. It integrates with other products such as: AWeber, Basecamp, Campaign Monitor and HubSpot.
$35
per month
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$75
per month per user
Pricing
GeckoboardTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
Starter
$35
per month
Team
$159
per month
Team Plus
$275
per month
Company
$599
per month
Tableau
$75
per month per user
Tableau Enterprise
$115
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GeckoboardTableau Desktop
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GeckoboardTableau Desktop
Features
GeckoboardTableau Desktop
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
9.3
Ratings
13% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.3
Ratings
2% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Customizable dashboards10.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates10.00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
7.7
Ratings
5% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.7
Ratings
8% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
9.0
Ratings
8% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.1
Ratings
2% below category average
Publish to Web10.00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Report Versioning9.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
8.7
Ratings
9% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.4
Ratings
5% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)10.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization10.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Predictive Analytics6.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
7.8
Ratings
8% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.7
Ratings
3% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model7.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)6.10 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
9.5
Ratings
19% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.0
Ratings
2% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access9.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Mobile Application10.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile10.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Geckoboard
10.0
Ratings
25% above category average
Tableau Desktop
9.0
Ratings
14% above category average
REST API10.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Javascript API10.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
iFrames10.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Java API10.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)10.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)10.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GeckoboardTableau Desktop
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 9.0 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Score 9.9 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Kyvos Semantic Intelligence Layer
Score 9.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GeckoboardTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
6.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
GeckoboardTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
A beautiful UI, with visuals that interest even those that hate staring at data. It's well suited for small to medium-sized businesses/corporations in which high-level sharing of data between teams is required -- the larger the distance between teams, the better as it's a great tool for level-setting on complex data. It would be less appropriate for small businesses, or those that do not need to summarize complex data to share with those not familiar with the data source
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The best scenario is definitely to collect data from several sources and create dedicated dashboards for specific recipients. However, I miss the possibility of explaining these reports in more detail. Sometimes, we order a report, and after half a year, we don't remember the meaning of some data (I know it's our fault as an organization, but the tool could force better practices).
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Pros
  • Simple to use and configure.
  • A good set of pre-built integrations to pull data back and summarise on a dashboard.
  • Excellent support! They actually respond when you ask them questions and are very thorough with their response.
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  • The Visualizations graphics are really good and the color options help in designing attractive charts. They help to convey more information and can be made interactive.
  • You can add filters with offer you to plug and play with values and understand different outcomes.
  • You can drag and drop options while creating charts and dashboards. also it is a very fluid layout.
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Cons
  • Not a must have, but unless you are decent with CSS, some style options would be nice from the user end.
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  • Formatting the data to work correctly in graphical presentations can be time consuming
  • Daily data extracts can run slowly depending on how much data is required and the source of the data
  • The desktop version is required for advanced functionality, editing on [the] Tableau server allows only limited features
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Likelihood to Renew
My company did not renew due to changes in the organization.
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Because right now its the best option out there (disclosure: I haven't used Qlikview or some of the other direct competitors of Tableau). The big investment is in Tableau Server not desktop. For the cost of the license of Tableau desktop, its a pretty good deal. You can hook it up to pretty much any data source easily. You can easily share the visualizations with your team/colleagues easily. Tableau Desktop is generally easy to use for business users. But the more advanced stuff is better suited for a analyst or someone with a IT/CS background.
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Usability
With a simple interface and available templates, creating basic dashboards is easy. Obviously depending on the data you want to visualize, there may be higher learning curves. That being said, they have a huge amount of integrations and extensible frameworks. If you are using anything made in the past ten years there is an API function or integration that can get it talking to the platform. As such, it's pretty easy to hit the main data points you want and get it on a cheap display in front of your team.
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Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast
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Support Rating
The support levels vary based on the level of plan that you have but that's to be expected. Virtually everything except the Enterprise plan has basic chat/email support. While they are responsive they are not going to be much assistance in helping you figure out API calls or implementing 3rd party integrations. That is to be expected and the support community can pretty much get you in the right direction if you look.
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The Tableau Desktop's support team has been very helpful and tend to response very quickly. After all you have paid very premium price for the product and it goes to the services. This makes using the tool much easier for these who doesn't have such experience to get help quickly.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
I think the training was good overall, but it was maybe stating the obvious things that a tech savvy young engineer would be able to pick up themselves too. However, the example work books were good and Tableau web community has helped me with many problems
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Time needs to be spent ahead of implementation to make sure data sources are set up and ready. Consultants need to understand the data sources and the goals before setting foot on-site. Installation is easy, learning to use it takes time. The training resources available are great.
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Alternatives Considered
We are a Google shop and our Analytics and Reporting team have and use GDS. However, Geckoboard can output some of the same types of data (albeit maybe not as granular) and can be used by a wide swath of our users (including project managers, account execs, developers, etc.). We can also save and reuse boards for similar products and get our data in front of the eyes that need to see it quickly without a lot of fuss.
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Tableau Desktop is clearly one of the best in the business. It has incredible capabilities, and many features are extremely useful. The intuitiveness of the dashboards and the graphical nature of the visualizations are widely used features and super helpful. One of the other benefits is that both programmers and non-programmers can equally explore and create their own opportunities, and seamless integration is possible.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.
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Return on Investment
  • While we originally used this as an internal IS tool, we eventually have expanded it to be used by nearly every department.
  • Because pricing is monthly, we can grow or decrease our usage based on our current client needs.
  • Because it is low cost and easy to deploy, we can utilize it in place of considerable resources in analytics and reporting by delivering snapshots of data without pulling reports.
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  • Easy to share and manage viewer access on a different level to help identify fraud.
  • Faster report generation, increased revenue, better decision-making, and data storytelling.
  • One-click access to business health and the ability to build/maintain more effective and efficient reports.
  • It's easy to share and even manage access to viewers on a different level, and reports are done in a more visual and storytelling manner.
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ScreenShots

Geckoboard Screenshots

Screenshot of Create live KPI dashboards in minutes. No coding or training required.Screenshot of Easily pull in real-time data from over 80 different tools, including spreadsheets and databases, as well as popular business tools like Salesforce, Zendesk, Google Analytics and many more.Screenshot of Anyone can build custom dashboards that make data and KPIs look professional and are easy for everyone on the team to understand at a glance.Screenshot of Get important numbers in front of the team or stakeholders, whether they're in the office or WFH.Screenshot of Every part of your organisation can surface metrics that matter to them and show progress towards their goals.