Tableau Server Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services Reviews & Insights

Score7.6 out of 10

878 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Tableau Server are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

Tableau Server has become an essential tool for organizations across various industries, offering a wide range of use cases that have proven valuable to users. Its ability to transform complex data into user-friendly visualizations has been particularly beneficial in emergency preparedness analytics within the healthcare sector. Additionally, dedicated analysts have utilized Tableau Server to create and deploy dashboards that are accessible to all employees, serving as the main repository for reporting needs. This versatility extends beyond healthcare, with organizations from IT to Human Resources leveraging the platform to address key issues such as device availability, performance tracking, and enterprise reporting.

Marketing teams have also found value in Tableau Server, using it to gain a better understanding of their customer base and track product ownership and usage trends. The platform's storytelling approach has been especially valuable for data scientists who use Tableau Server to present data to managers and executives, facilitating understanding and supporting decision-making processes. Furthermore, Tableau Server has been integrated into third-party applications and platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint, making it a convenient one-stop-shop for reporting needs.

Tableau Server's ease of maintenance from an administrator level and seamless integration with Active Directory for user permission management have made it a preferred choice for many organizations. It fosters secure and controlled sharing of work done by Tableau Desktop analysts and developers, enabling real-time data visualization and monitoring across the organization. This has led to increased adoption and expansion of its usage in various departments such as Finance, Supply Chain, and HR.

Overall, Tableau Server's ability to store, visualize, and share information effectively has provided organizations with leverage over other systems. Its versatility and ease of use have made it a trusted platform for reporting and analytics needs across different industries, enabling self-service analytics, cost savings through improved tracking capabilities, enhanced customer experience operations, and centralization of reporting.

Reviews

22 Reviews

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

Tableau is great for full funnel marketing analytics.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

May 19, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Tableau has allowed my team and cross-functional teams to build full-funnel marketing channel dashboards to monitor performance and daily trends. Before using Tableau, using in-house data sources was a siloed and long process. Tableau has enabled us to create robust dashboards, such as multiple-touch attribution and campaign-specific dashboards. The ease of use and automation have enabled my team and stakeholders to access data and make important optimizations across marketing channels easily.

Pros

Automation
Cross channel performance.
Integrations with marketing platforms.

Cons

Learning curve for some teams unfamiliar with UI.
Loads time for various larger data set/dashboards.
Real time data enablement.

Likelihood to Recommend

Whole funnel and specific channel performance from upper to lower funnel metrics. The ability to view full channel performance for some time, such as weekly, monthly, or quarterly, has truly been monumental in how my team optimizes specific channels and campaigns. Daily performance tracking is a bit overwhelming, with load times and having to refresh specific live views over time. It can be challenging to do so at times, as extensive dashboards take much longer to load.

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (Information Technology & Services company, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

The WORST company to do business with

Rating: 1 out of 10

Incentivized

June 30, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Tableau Server as a data visualization tool for our customers. Our proprietary data are delivered to our customers via Tableau Server. Tableau Server is installed on our servers and we provide our customers with an URL for them to engage with our data and analyze them. Seriously TrustRadius, I don't know what to write anymore.

Pros

Data Visualization
Data Interaction
Flexibility to find the best visualization

Cons

Handling of Licenses
The "Activation Key" business is a thing of the past millennium, in 2022 it is ridiculous
Customer Service is HORRIBLE
Just don't ever buy it, it will make your life miserable.

Likelihood to Recommend

The software is ok, but it was developed by people with their heads in the 80s and the Customer Service is so horrible that you don't want ever to do business with them. And since they have been acquired by Salesforce, things have only gotten worse, from ridiculous to plain farce.

Gianluca Ruggiero

CEO & Founder in Corporate at MASSIVE (Market Research, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile

Data Analytics with Tableau

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 14, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Tableau Server is an online platform to host and hold all the tableau workbooks, data sources, and related tableau data. Users should have a license in order to use Tableau server and its features. creating security, folder setup, automation, data refresh are some of the best features Tableau servers provides. Scheduling the data extracts and dashboard refresh is the main scope of our project

Pros

Security
extract refresh schedule
subscriptions to workbooks & Dashboards
download data in crosstab
download workbook as image, pdf, twbx

Cons

permissions should flow from primary folder if changes are made later.
download pdf content doesn't have scroll bar it just takes snapshot leaving some data
data cache issues should be resolved

Likelihood to Recommend

Ask data is one of the new and good feature that is available in tableau server. 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 visualization tools is outstanding.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (Computer & Network Security company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Pretty. Unstable product + poor support = operations nightmare.

Rating: 2 out of 10

Incentivized

November 16, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Tableau Server as an add-on service to our SAAS product. It's integrated via API, using "Trusted Tickets" functionality. Multitenant environments. It allows our clients some self-service reporting capability using pre-defined datasources which connect tableau to their SAAS product database.

Pros

It's pretty
Installs easily
Impresses decision makers

Cons

Support is costly and practically nonexistent
Their windows server application is fragile
Product not well designed for multitenant architectures
Licensing is convoluted in ways

Likelihood to Recommend

As a person responsible for administering their self-hosted product, I would never recommend this to a collogue. Fragile product + ineffective support = operations nightmare. It breaks frequently (upgrades, extracts, backups/restores, sometimes a service just stops during normal usage), and basic support (costing 5 figures/yr) with a 3 bizday follow-up SLA on downtime events is essentially useless for anything more than functionality questions (which take weeks to resolve). Stack restarts take over 15 minutes and are required for just about every configuration change. [I believe] the product was a poor fit for our use-case (add-on service for multitenant customer SAAS applications) for several reasons: - There's no supported method for changing datasource connections, which is a problem if you plan on publishing data sources from dev to prod environment without Tableau Desktop and manual effort. You'll have to make your own tooling to modify the XML directly (unsupported) - Trusted ticket implementation is secured via IP whitelist. If you want to use a modern SAAS product and not have to manage this IP whitelist (every change requires 15min restart), you'll have to write your own ticket-granting service over top of this API. - Security architecture offers poor segmentation between client databases. You can very easily provide customer A access to customer B's database. This danger is aggravated by the lack of a supported method for modifying data source connections in an automated fashion. - All users exist at a server level. This adds to the "poor segmentation between sites" argument, and also complicates things when you have 2 clients bound to different sites, trying to add the same username "jsmith". But hey, it's really pretty. Our product team bought it, infra team has paid for it since.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (Information Technology & Services company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Tableau - Good Viz, Poor Admin

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

March 18, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Tableau is being used as one of several reporting tools. Its primary use was for creating dashboards that could be leveraged by a large segment of the company. The web enablement allowed for broader user adoption than other tools adopted at the time of implementation. Navigation of the workbooks was also more palatable to users vs running individual reports.

Pros

Visualizations.
Simple deployment method.
Easy to navigate interface.

Cons

Server administration is cumbersome.
Recent changes (after 10.x) have required rewriting of admin scripts.
Cumbersome licensing management.

Likelihood to Recommend

Tableau may be well suited to non-Microsoft shops. Its methodologies, internal management, and overall approach seem geared more toward Oracle/Java shops. It also does require a decent amount of care and feeding. Backups, upgrades, etc., tend to be cumbersome and require some level of IT knowledge, despite how the product is often sold. Smaller shops that wish to pursue Tableau may be better off leveraging their SaaS offerings.

Verified User

Professional in Information Technology (Architecture & Planning company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

Intuitive and easy BI

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

January 2, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I used Tableau as another BI tool, by the client where the Tableau server installation was used and most production reports were accessible here.
Tableau has proven to be a great tool for the collection of data from multiple data sources, with varying complexity -- we used spreadsheets, SQL tables as well as Google Analytics connection. The tool was a standard platform in a multinational organization and was used for years, so the data was already linked, including the local eDWH solution, providing support for regular as well as ad-hoc reports.

Pros

Many available plugins, incl. the one I have used for regional analysis (data enriched with addresses / GPS attributes)
Narratives (story building) is a great tool for creating and sharing your analysis with your audience
Data visualization is one of the best you can get today
Supports mobile usage

Cons

Connection to SQL database: by connecting it to a database, one has to employ an SQL specialist to write the script
No autosave function
No automatized notification feature (e.g. alert based on value out of range, in a report)
Very expensive solutions

Likelihood to Recommend

If you have to quickly explore a large volume of unknown big data (really large tables), then Tableau is a great choice.
It is a great tool for any ad-hoc analysis that has to deliver an interactive story to management (client), it will not only deliver nice visualizations, but will also allow for drill-downs to the primary data and proof for your audience that your numbers in the presented graph are correct

Viktor Mulac

Senior Consultant in Information Technology at A.T. Kearney (Management Consulting, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

View profile

Tableau - A world of visualizations at your fingertips.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

November 1, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is being used to help our clients visualize their usage data from different angles. It is being used by a handful of people across the organization. It helps expose our big data hosted on Cloudera clusters to display them in a unique way.

Pros

Very easy to create neat visualizations in a professional way.
Easy to publish workbooks to Tableau server for global access
Different ways to group and slice the data

Cons

Custom SQL are not intuitive when dealing with Cloudera connections
Simple data tables are harder to create than complex visualizations
Large extracts are not very performant
Cubes are not supported on Tableau

Likelihood to Recommend

Group aggregates and stacked charts are some of Tableau's better visualizations.
Simple data sums and data points are not well suited for Tableau

Michael Tam

Lead Developer in Research & Development at HKEx (Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

View profile

Tableau fits our needs as a small company

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

October 31, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At Vinyl we use Tableau to develop dashboards for insight into our business. It houses most of our day to day reporting and we are now developing our KPI system on it.

Pros

Access to our data sources such as MS SQL and MySQL
Ease of use and administration
Relatively small footprint for hardware
Reasonable pricing

Cons

Better exposure of the engine components for diagnostics and reporting
Having to uninstall the product and reinstall to upgrade is odd and cumbersome
Bring the command line options into a modern web admin interface with better information like backup processes and history
Admin reporting on use of data sources and ability to search out dependencies in the database

Likelihood to Recommend

Tableau does a great job of providing a simple interface to access various dashboards by groups, and has powerful development tools, but they can be a little quirky. It would be much better if there were better admin tools to analyze data sources, the dependencies in the database, and who owns the various dashboards throughout the system.

Eli Massey

Database Developer in Information Technology at Vinyl Interactive (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

View profile

Tableau Server Serves Organizations Well!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 30, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

[It's] Used across the entire organization and for client-facing reporting. Solves the issue of centralized reporting and a-la-carte reporting using automation and predetermined data sources.

Pros

Centralized reporting
Role-based security
Data visualizations

Cons

Animated time series visualizations
Custom filtering
Easier D3 integration

Likelihood to Recommend

Tableau Server is extremely well-suited for centralized reporting within an organization, or for client facing reporting. There are some very useful visualizations that exist, but allowing for more advanced visualizations to be seamlessly integrated would be a huge benefit.

Yigael Chetrit

Senior Vice President, Media Technology in Information Technology at MDC Media Partners (Marketing and Advertising, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

View profile

Review by a technician that embeds reports in a web portal

Rating: 5 out of 10

Incentivized

October 16, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Across organization, augmenting our client-facing web portal that helps us optimize our clients' database marketing efforts.

Pros

Allows non-technical data scientists and analysts to approach and visualize data.
Allows reports prepared by non-technical analysts to be readily adapted by technicians into an always-live web portal.
Its "extract" capability, although imperfect, can help to digest and visualize larger amounts of data in a moderately performant way.
Consume hardware resources like crazy. It is implemented using a raft of heavy technologies, including Postres, Java, Apache httpd, and more.

Cons

It has decent support for tabular data, but this support is somewhat rigid.
It nags end users to upgrade their desktop versions frequently, even though this risks compatibility errors with the server.
It's a significant resource hog. To some degree this is understandable, but it is largely due to its use of many heavyweight technologies (Postgres, Java, Apache httpd, and more).
You can't change its use of port 443 when using SQL, forcing extra deployment complexity (e.g. proxy servers) in many deployment scenarios.
The look and feel of their "story" feature is surprisingly hard to customize (beyond basic style elements) -- it's "a row of blocky buttons" only.
It's geographic maps are fairly basic, and the UI controls for navigating them are clumsy.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited when non-technical analysts need to approach and visualize data sets. Poorly suited for shops that are well-positioned to do their own, more nimble web application visualization (e.g. using D3).

Verified User

C-Level Executive in Information Technology (Information Technology and Services company, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience