Chartio vs Einstein Analytics

Chartio is a SaaS BI tool that rates quite highly with its user base, thanks to a myriad of unique benefits and features that help companies save time and increase productivity. Most significantly, many reviews focused on its ease of use — not only is the platform user-friendly and intuitive, with a clean, drag-and-drop interface, but it’s also designed to help users build SQL queries without coding knowledge. Easy to pick up, it’s also easy to master, with a remarkably short learning curve due to built-in tools and tips, as well as an abundance of vendor-provided documentation, online resources and proactive customer support. Many users reported that this tool increased organization-wide data literacy and reduced reliance on their IT, R&D and analyst departments by providing truly self-service BI. In addition, it facilitates smooth collaboration and painless sharing of insights. Users also praised its data analysis functionality, which gives insight into overarching trends while inviting deeper exploration at a granular level through flexible filters, slice-and-dice tools and drill-down capabilities. This tool’s data visualization and dashboarding features, while lacking in some customization compared to competitors, help users track KPIs and see metrics from all of their data sources in one place. However, some reviews mentioned that this solution suffers from slow loading times and refresh rates, especially with larger data sets. Another con cited by several users is its cost: while some say that it’s affordable, others say that it’s too expensive for what it provides and that the price hike associated with adding embedding to pricing plans is too high. For businesses specifically looking for a mobile app, this tool may not be the right fit, as there is currently no mobile app. Though it lacks some advanced features needed by power users or provided by other alternatives, some reviews said that this is a trade-off for its ease of use with business users. Overall, Chartio is a great fit for businesses seeking to empower all their employees with data-driven decision making and encourage them to discover their own insights, while reducing the burden on their IT department.

Einstein Analytics from Salesforce is a predictive analytics BI tool that uses the power of AI and machine learning to glean insights and create visualizations and reports to drive business decisions. All users who reviewed its analytics capabilities said that it excels at augmented analytics. Many users who reviewed data visualization said that templates and dashboards are easy to customize for deep-dive data exploration. With a range of reporting options and intuitive drag-and-drop functionality, the platform empowers business users to create their own reports without needing to code. Being part of the Salesforce suite, the platform integrates well with other SF offerings, as expected, as well as with external data sources. As for the tool’s data management capabilities, some users said that ETL functions are self-contained in that they replace the need to write code, however others said that data needs to be cleansed before the ETL engine can consume it for data analysis. Commenting on the software’s functionality, around 68% of users said that it is easy to drill down into KPIs with little training in analytics, whereas some users said that the platform is sparse in terms of features and does not have the same reporting capabilities as other Salesforce tools. Mentioning the interface, a majority of users said that it is clean and interactive, though quite a few users said that they preferred the classic version to the new one. A majority of the users who reviewed pricing said that, in addition to expensive per-user licenses, other costs can quickly add up, since implementation is not easy and often requires professional vendor support. Many users who discussed setup said that the platform struggles when processing large amounts of data, and plugins are needed to process heavier data sets, which further compounds costs. Quite a few users said that the platform performs well within the Salesforce ecosystem; however, it does not have the robustness and flexibility of Tableau. Overall, Einstein Analytics is a BI tool with strong out of the box ETL and data visualization capabilities that glean deeper insights into business metrics and seems to be suited for organizations with lightweight data analysis needs or those that already implement Salesforce solutions.