alteryx-vs-microsoft-power-bi

Alteryx and Microsoft Power BI are two flagship platforms in the business intelligence space. 

Alteryx is an expensive but complete analytics platform with strong data preparation and scrubbing abilities. Microsoft Power BI is a widely used tool with cheaper and even free options that allow individuals and businesses the power to manipulate and take control of large datasets. 

Both Alteryx and Microsoft Power BI are popular with enterprise-scale businesses, but Power BI’s much lower cost of entry helps make it appealing to individual users as well as small to medium-size businesses. 

Features

Alteryx and Microsoft Power BI are similar in many ways, but each displays a few standout features. 

Alteryx is built around a clean and simple user interface that allows new users to get up to speed quickly but also offers power users customizable views to speed up analysis. Alteryx features built-in tools for merging datasets and powerful data scrubbing capabilities. Alteryx also empowers users by allowing workflow and report automation. 

Since Power BI part of the Microsoft ecosystem, users who are comfortable with their other products will likely have little trouble adjusting to Power BI. Another major plus of Power BI is that it is available for free to individual users. This allows users without business accounts to learn and practice with the software on their own time or on their own projects. Another feature offered by Microsoft Power BI is the ability to use custom data visualizations downloaded from Microsoft Marketplace, further expanding the usefulness of the tool. 

Limitations

While Alteryx and Microsoft Power BI offer complete business intelligence solutions, there are some drawbacks to each application. 

The main downside to Alteryx is its cost. This application will likely only be used by large, enterprise-scale companies who can afford a customized business intelligence platform. Another drawback to the tool is the lack of a mobile application for viewing dashboards. Users also report being less than impressed with the program’s data visualization capabilities. More specifically, they wish they were of higher quality and that there were more options. 

Microsoft Power BI also has a few downsides. Businesses that want complete control of their data will have to upgrade to the premium version of the software to be able to keep their data in-house and off of Microsoft’s servers. Power BI is also very strict in how it handles table joins in a database. This can lead to problems for users who need multiple joins from a single table. Users also report some issues with performance when trying to manipulate extremely large datasets.  

Pricing

Alteryx business intelligence pricing starts at $5,195 per user per year. Additional packages can be included with prices ranging from $2,300 per user per year to $33,800 per user per year. These packages provide features like location insights and map data, demographic segmentation, and abilities for text recognition and drag-and-drop machine learning. 

Microsoft Power BI offers both free and paid options. Individual users can download a limited version of Power BI onto their machines for free. Business pricing starts at $9.95 per user per month for Power BI Pro. For businesses that need more options, Power BI Premium is available starting at $4,995 per year. Large businesses will need to request a consultation for full pricing options.