How Much Does Self-Service, Agile BI Software Cost?

At 5000fish, we believe in the power of self-service, agile BI and want people to be fully educated before purchasing a solution. This is not only beneficial to customers, but to the BI industry as a whole because educated buyers will make smarter purchasing decisions, which will leader to higher BI adoption rates.

The self-service agile business intelligence (BI) software market can be confusing, especially when it comes to costs and pricing. It’s challenging to determine whether you’re paying too much for what you’re getting, which is why we’ve decided to step in and help you out.

Why BI Pricing Isn’t Always Transparent

If you search for dashboard and report pricing with a vendor, you’re likely to be directed to a “contact us for pricing” page. This lack of pricing transparency among BI vendors is frustrating and is usually the result of one out of three things.

First, the vendor may just want your contact information so that its sales team can push you through its high-intensity sales process. Second, the vendor may want to know more about you and your company in order to determine the price tag. Third, the vendor may simply want to keep pricing hidden from competitors.  The counter argument a vendor typically gives to these reasons is that BI is a complex solution and varies greatly by use case and environment.

At 5000fish we think it’s our job as BI vendor is to simplify that process and make it easier. Regardless of the reason other vendors have a lack of pricing transparency, it doesn’t help you, the customer, make an educated purchase decision.

The True Pricing of Agile BI Software

We have learned a lot about self-service agile BI solution pricing through both our own competitive research and information provided by our customers. And in the name of transparency, we have decided to share our knowledge with you. (Please note that the below pricing information is for agile BI not traditional BI solutions such as Oracle or Microstrategy.)

Please take the information here as second hand sourced.  We have no insights into competitor pricing other than what they publish themselves and what evaluators of Yurbi and readers of our blog tell us.  So with that caveat, here is our most up-to-date pricing* for agile self-service BI providers in our industry:

• • Sisense: Sisense is a rapidly growing, agile BI solution with an excellent method of handling large volumes of data.  They were just recently (2016) added to the Gartner Magic Quadrant. Sisense has a great real-time dashboard and is offered both on-premise and hosted in the Cloud.  They are also well funded with VC money ($50mil raised in Jan 2016 alone). Previously, we had reported that Sisense’s pricing was comparable to Yurbi’s pricing, however, since Sisense’s influx of VC funding and growth, recent intel tells us their prices have increased greatly. The most current information we have as of December 2015, a five-user license for Sisense was quoted at $21,000.
  • Domo: Domo is a great cloud BI company with a huge amount of VC funding ($483 million as of 2015). According to multiple customers we’ve spoken to, Domo will cost customers…we can’t show you this information anymore,  read why here – Domo Sent Us A Cease and Desist Letter.

Click here to download “10 Signs You Need A New BI Solution”

• Microsoft Power BI: Microsoft is very transparent about Power BI’s pricing because it is priced very competitively. Microsoft has a free version of Power BI, and its pro license is only $9.99 per user, per month. However, Power BI is a more complicated product and customers should be aware of its features before purchasing it based solely upon its low pricing.
• Tableau: Tableau has amazing data visualizations, is the hottest product on the market right now (although they took quite a tumble on Wall Street due to future growth concerns), and is semi-transparent about pricing. Tableau has a personal desktop license for $995 per user, and a professional desktop license for $1,995 per user. However, Tableau’s server-based licensing pricing is not as transparent. From what we have learned, the server license comes with a ten-user minimum at $1,000 per user. Obviously, the more users you have the more expensive the server license becomes. We have also been told by many people that Tableau’s sales team isn’t generally willing to adjust pricing or contracts.
• QlikView: QlikView has great associative dashboards. Qlikview is currently selling two BI products: Qlik Sense, a modern, self-service and agile tool, and Qlikview, which is the more traditional product. Qlik Sense has a free personal desktop version, a free five-user cloud version, and an enterprise version with a price tag of $1,500 per token (which we believe means concurrent user license). However, the pricing for Qlikview’s traditional version is not as transparent, which is what most customers want. Qlikview’s pricing model for its traditional software is pretty confusing, but from what we have gathered the pricing ranges from $1,350 per named user, $15,000 per concurrent user, and $35,000 for the server license.
• Looker: Looker is a team-oriented BI tool that can analyze data where it sits. A recent evaluator of Yurbi vs Looker informed us they were pretty cost prohibitive for small business with a price of $3000 per month for 10-users. They did comment that the technology was amazing and modern, but at that price we’re going to re-evaluate our inclusion of them in our Best Cloud Vendors for Small and Medium Sized Businesses article.
• Chartio: Chartio is one of the newer VC-backed BI tools on the market. We don’t have a solid pulse on Chartio’s pricing, but from what we have heard Chartio runs customers about $1,000 per month. However, we’re unsure whether this is per user or for multiple users, or if there are any minimums.  Because they compete heavily with Looker, we suspect their price has increased to a similar level as Lookers.
• Yellowfin BI: Yellowfin BI has nice dashboards with geospatial mapping capabilities.  They also have a good embedded analytics offering, being selected as the BI solution for BMC Smart IT reporting offering. Yellowfin advertises a starter pack of five users for $3,000 on its website. This pricing seems to be pretty reasonable, but we are uncertain how Yellowfin’s pricing scales beyond five users.
• TIBCO Spotfire: TIBCO Spotfire tries to compete heavily with Tableau. TIBCO lists its personal desktop edition is $650 per year, and access to its cloud version is $2,000 per year. However, TIBCO refers back to the “contact us” method for its enterprise pricing. From what we have heard, TIBCO Spotfire costs customers around $300 per user per year, though this does not include all of the additional licenses users need to make the software work properly. From what we can tell, TIBCO Spotfire is pretty expensive according to its giant list of products cited in its GSA listing which range from $10,000 up to $80,000+.
• Yurbi: Our belief is that Yurbi’s pricing should be transparent, simple, and affordable for businesses of all sizes. We designed our pricing model so that companies can affordably scale our software as they grow, which means pricing per user decreases as more users are added. Our main user pricing is $499 per user, per year, per data source. Our concurrent user license starts at $2,495 per user, per year, and provides access to an unlimited number of data sources. Then, for companies that don’t require access to our full platform, we have a public view license that allows an unlimited number of views for specific reports, which we sell in packs of ten for $1,495 per year.  The minimum to get started with Yurbi is $2,495 per year, which means 5 named user or 1 concurrent.  We also have special OEM pricing, which we will write about in a separate article.

The Bottom Line

Pricing in the agile self-service BI space ranges greatly. For most of the companies listed above that require a “contact us” form, you can expect a high-pressure sales process when you inquire about pricing. Additionally, it’s important to note that software licenses are generally the tip of the iceberg regarding actual BI costs, which often don’t include implementation and training costs.

One trend you will definitely see in the BI space regarding pricing is that the companies receiving the most analyst praise and generating the most hype among media tend to be very expensive. This is primarily driven by hype cycles among consumers, versus supply and demand or value.

Therefore, companies in the market for agile BI software should proceed with caution, understanding that hype isn’t always an indicator of software value and that software licensing costs may only be one part of the company’s overall BI costs.

Your Turn

Have any updates you wish to share regarding pricing of this list or adding other tools and price?  Drop us a line here or leave a comment on this blog.  We’re always willing to update with most current (credible) information.

*Note: All pricing is as of January 2017.

Click here to download “10 Signs You Need A New BI Solution”