Google Charts vs. Tableau Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Charts
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Google Charts provides a way to visualize data on your website - for free. From simple line charts to complex hierarchical tree maps, the chart gallery provides a large number of ready-to-use chart types. The most common way to use Google Charts is with simple JavaScript that you embed in your web page.N/A
Tableau Server
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Server allows Tableau Desktop users to publish dashboards to a central server to be shared across their organizations. The product is designed to facilitate collaboration across the organization. It can be deployed on a server in the data center, or it can be deployed on a public cloud.
$12
Per User Per Month
Pricing
Google ChartsTableau Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google ChartsTableau Server
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google ChartsTableau Server
Features
Google ChartsTableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.8
Ratings
8% above category average
Tableau Server
9.5
Ratings
15% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.10 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.50 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.80 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
9.3
Ratings
14% above category average
Tableau Server
9.1
Ratings
12% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.60 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.50 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages9.50 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.60 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
9.0
Ratings
8% above category average
Tableau Server
8.4
Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web9.50 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.60 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Report Versioning8.60 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.70 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.80 Ratings5.10 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.8
Ratings
10% above category average
Tableau Server
8.7
Ratings
9% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.90 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.80 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.80 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.8
Ratings
4% above category average
Tableau Server
8.3
Ratings
2% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.80 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.80 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.80 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.80 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
9.0
Ratings
14% above category average
Tableau Server
8.4
Ratings
7% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access9.50 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Mobile Application9.60 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.70 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.8
Ratings
12% above category average
Tableau Server
7.2
Ratings
8% below category average
REST API8.90 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Javascript API8.80 Ratings9.00 Ratings
iFrames8.80 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Java API8.90 Ratings5.50 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)8.80 Ratings6.10 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.80 Ratings4.60 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google ChartsTableau Server
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
Google ChartsTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.3
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(0 ratings)
5.2
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.0
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
5.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google ChartsTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Google Charts is perfectly suited for most presentations that are data oriented. There's not much of a limit on the type of table or chart you can create, and being able to integrate with Google Sheets just makes things even easier if you've already got the data stored somewhere. It works well on desktop browsers, Iphones, and Android phones. The only drawback I've been able to find is for those that prefer to have a desktop application.
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Tableau Server is well suited for a data warehouse build and handling big data. Tableau data aggregation, transformation, clustering capability is powerful and easy to implement. The choice of charts and visualisation tools is outstanding. Customisation and dynamic data visualisation capability is superb. The user interface takes some time getting used to.
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Pros
  • Google Charts is free so a terrific tool for universities and students
  • Provides new users that need charts an inventory and gallery of potential charts and types to visualize data
  • The software is useful to add charts and data for websites with limited effort but with success
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  • It's good at doing what it is designed for: accessing visualizations without having to download and open a workbook in Tableau Desktop. The latter would be a very inefficient method for sharing our metrics, so I am glad that we have Tableau Server to serve this function.
  • Publishing to Tableau Server is quick and easy. Just a few clicks from Tableau Desktop and a few seconds of publishing through an average speed network, and the new visualizations are live!
  • Seeing details on who has viewed the visualization and when. This is something particularly useful to me for trying to drive adoption of some new pages, so I really appreciate the granularity provided in Tableau Server
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Cons
  • I would like a couple more introductory videos or a live chat option for when you run into an issue. I think this is a Google-wide problem, not only linked to Google Charts.
  • I have run into some issues with the Dynamic Data but also admittedly could potentially dive in deeper and investigate.
  • It would be great if Google Charts made it possible to integrate Google Chat into the platform.
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  • While it took little time for our data analysts to crank out visualizations, it did take some time(longer than I expected) for our technology operations team to configure the server to share the sizes.
  • The server update process is rather cumbersome -- requires a full uninstall/re-install.
  • Again, while it took our data analysts next to no time to start creating, I've been in other organizations that have struggled with the feature-rich interface and complexity of the Tableau client. So, it requires the right personnel, with dedicated time, to fully leverage the tool.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google Charts is a good product. It's widely supported with deep documentation and a large community. But for me, it wasn't customizable enough. When we started with simple charts, it was great, but as we got deeper and more complex, our needs outgrew the library. If I was going forward, I would choose a more barebones library with more freedom and extensibility.
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It simply is used all the time by more and more people. Migrating to something else would involve lots of work and lots of training. The renewal fee being fair, it simply isn't worth migrating to a different tool for now.
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Usability
Requires knowledge of Javascript, which can be difficult for a beginner. A business analyst often isn't as technically minded as a developer so collaboration is often required to produce a correct chart for the purpose required. However, the customisation capable due to this creates much better looking charts compared to other tools.
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User experience is the most important factor to consider whenever considering capabilities for non-technical business users. If the learning curve is so steep business users must be advanced users to be productive, you hit the wall of diminishing returns, this is exceptionally true when it comes to analyzing data. Transforming data analysts into BI development experts shifts the focus of the analyst from analyzing data to mastering software. Tableau does a masterful job at minimizing the technology and maximizing the users understanding of their data.
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Reliability and Availability
Google charts is always available and provides fast output.
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Our instance of Tableau Server was hosted on premises (I believe all instances are) so if there were any outages it was normally due to scheduled maintenance on our end. If the Tableau server ever went down, a quick restart solved most issues
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Performance
Connectivity is occasionally very slow.
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While there are definitely cases where a user can do things that will make a particular worksheet or dashboard run slowly, overall the performance is extremely fast. The user experience of exploratory analysis particularly shines, there's nothing out there with the polish of Tableau.
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Support Rating
Google Charts has a very good documentation that we can just go in there and find the stuff we need to implement our solutions on Google Charts. Plus, if we get stuck, we can also email the support and they are very responsive. So overall, the support is very satisfying.
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I think the folks that work in support are generally pretty good at what they do (when you get them on a WebEx). But the process of reporting issues to them and waiting for a response (via email only) is a hassle. I never understood why you can't just call them up and discuss the issues with them. It would take a handful of email exchanges before they would agree to a WebEx session. That was frustrating.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
In our case, they hired a private third party consultant to train our dept. It was extremely boring and felt like it dragged on. Everything I learned was self taught so I was not really paying attention. But I do think that you can easily spend a week on the tool and go over every nook and cranny. We only had the consultant in for a day or two.
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Online Training
The online training was solely done through self training on google's guide to charts.
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The sales consultants do an amazing job of introducing the tool and its capabilities. They are also helpful in explaining the layout of the desktop client and its different functionality. Keep in mind that they use a sample data source (MS Excel) with a very small amount of data to show off what it can do. What you have to remember is that you are buying the tool so that you can connect to large amounts of data (and possibly blend data together from different databases).
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Implementation Rating
Easy to implement
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Implementation was over the phone with the vendor, and did not go particularly well. Again, think this was our fault as our integration and IT oversight was poor, and we made errors. Would they have happened had a vendor been onsite? Not sure, probably not, but we probably wouldn't have paid for that either
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Alternatives Considered
In comparison to Microsoft Power BI, Google Charts has more ease of use for businesses who simply need a way to visually display their data from their reports. Although Power BI may be more robust in more complicated data compilation, Google Charts can still be able to do some of the basics that Power BI delivers.
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Looker and Tableau are quite similar products. I think Tableau's ability to view data visually is more comprehensive. The different breakdowns in UTM level versus first touch and last touch are shown in a visual format, making it much easier to view and interpret the results. Tableau also has faster load times compared to Looker for larger datasets.
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Scalability
Google Charts is essential for quick, easy, reporting. There are opportunities for advanced features.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • teams were easily able to create charts and find out progress on our learning courses and thus take actionable insights to their managers, professors
  • students could also know their progress on various courses from one single view, same for instructors in terms of imparting education
  • sales team could learn which kind of courses sold more to focus more on those areas
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  • Tableau Server has had a huge positive impact. It has allowed us to quickly distribute complex dashboards across the company
  • Tableau Server has allowed us to easily manage our entire employee base at the company and control the dashboards they view and interact with
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ScreenShots

Tableau Server Screenshots

Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 2.Screenshot of Tableau Server permissions view.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 2.