MicroStrategy vs GraphPad Prism

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Our analysts compared MicroStrategy vs GraphPad Prism based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Business Intelligence Tools, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

MicroStrategy is a data visualization and reporting platform that deploys on-premise and on the web. The cloud version runs on AWS or Microsoft Azure. MicroStrategy Library is the web edition, while Workstation is the desktop version.

It reigns supreme as the top analytics tool in our product directory and provides 91% of the required features out of the box. Regarding source data integration, it leaves very little to chance, winning our best-in-class award for connectivity. With over 200 connectors, there’s a high chance it’ll satisfy your data needs.

If not, you can build one using a software development kit. SDKs are also the force behind REST and embedding APIs, HyperIntelligence and data visualization. Plus, the semantic layer enables automating data prep and analysis and generating visualizations on cue.

Dossiers in MicroStrategy are like books; they have chapters further divided into pages, and each page has one or more visualizations. Every view is free-form — you can move charts around and organize them as you like. With write-back capability, you can update underlying databases from visualizations.

The vendor launched its unified cloud AI analytics platform, MicroStrategy One, with GPT-4o in September 2024. It’s twice as fast, digging into the selected data to produce dashboard summaries and answer user queries in seconds. Update 12 has auditing capabilities and shows details of active licenses, including their compliance status.

Its heart and soul is an Intelligence Server that manages metadata and processes queries. A mobile app is available. There’s a 30-day trial, but access to group permissions, KPIs and subscriptions requires a paid upgrade.

User reviews mentioned that the solution was effective, but the ecosystem and pricing were complex.

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Graphpad Prism is a statistics, data analysis and graphing package that simplifies powerful statistics to help users analyze smarter, not harder. Though specialized for scientific research, it doesn’t require its users to have programming knowledge in order to tell stories with their data and create a wide variety of data visualizations with ease.

It can be installed on Windows or Mac devices and is available through a group or personal subscription, which comes with free updates during the subscription term and is billed on an annual basis, or through a perpetual license, which does not include upgrades and guaranteed support for future operating system updates. For short-term projects, individual users can get a monthly subscription. Students can receive a subscription at a discounted rate.
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Product Insights

Our analysts ranked it best-in-class for the following attributes.
  • Visualize Metrics: Various chart types, templates and customization are standard fare in modern data tools, and MicroStrategy is no different. What’s notable is seamless map integration while staying performant. It gets our best-in-class award and a 100 score for versatility in visualization.
  • Share Insights: Conditional formatting, templates, custom reports, scheduling and bookmarks—MicroStrategy ticks all the boxes, and we give it a 100 and the top product award for reporting. It supports report versioning, leaving Qlik and Oracle Analytics behind in this regard.
  • Secure Data: The vendor provides the entire gamut of security features—role-based views, audit logs, row and column-level security, encryption, MFA, and SSO — making it the best-in-class tool in its category. We give it a 100 score, at par with Qlik, Oracle and Domo.
  • Stay Connected 24/7: It also gets top honors and a 100 score for mobile data access, beating leading products like Tableau and Oracle. With MicroStrategy technology, anyone can deploy mobile apps with custom workflows, branding and multifactor security authentication. Barcode scanning is available for retail businesses and app vendors.
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  • Perform the Right Analysis: With clear language and a checklist for each process, Prism helps users select the most suitable statistical analysis from its library while bypassing technical jargon.
  • Helps You Learn As You Go: At almost every step, users can access pages from Prism’s online help. Tutorial data sets help users understand how and why they should perform analyses, how to make graphs and how to interpret the results of their analyses.
  • Focus on Research: Because users can utilize the software and automate processes without coding, it allows them to spend more time researching and less time programming. The software also takes care of updating graphs and results, freeing up even more time for researchers.
  • Publish with Ease: The solution allows users to customize and save default settings to meet their publishing requirements so that they can export publication-quality graphics with one click.
  • Enhance Collaboration: All parts of a Prism project, including the raw data, analyses, results, graphs and layouts, are contained in a single file that users can share with others, who can then follow their work step-by-step and add value to their findings.
  • Educational Resources and Support: Graphpad provides extensive online help guides for doing statistical analyses with Prism, as well as video tutorials and sample data sets that users can practice analyzing with the platform. The vendor also provides online training center options and technical support for the product, offering users the assistance and tools they need to succeed.
  • Free Trial: Interested parties can try the platform with a free 30-day trial with no credit card or commitment necessary.
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  • HyperIntelligence: Learn about departments or employees by hovering over their names. To get ready information, add the HyperIntelligence extension to your Chrome instance and configure it to your MicroStrategy environment.
  • Auto Express: Shift the heavy lifting to AI bots — have them analyze your dashboards and suggest deep-dive questions, many of which you might not have thought of. Pull data from Amazon Redshift, Azure SQL Database, Databricks, Google BigQuery and Snowflake, among others.
  • Action Triggers: Update data in Salesforce CRM, trigger email campaigns in Marketo, or approve expenses in Workday from a MicroStrategy dashboard. Triggering workflows from dashboards is available in MicroStrategy One and Auto Express.
  • Intelligent Cubes Technology: Drive targeted marketing campaigns by digging deep into buyer demographics, purchase histories and engagement levels. Create an Intelligent Cube to store data in memory and reuse it for as many reports as desired.
  • Metadata Management: Organize data using a handy index that points to where everything is. It also gives contextual names to datasets so everyone uses the same terminology. Metadata management establishes data lineage by narrating its entire journey — where it started, how it was changed and which tasks use it now.
  • Role-Based Displays: Remember skimming through your course book a day before an important test? You read the important parts while you skipped the rest. If that’s what you feel when decisions are at stake, role-based views are what you need. CEOs can choose high-level overviews, while middle management might want detailed reports.
  • Free-form Subscriptions: This is a new feature that allows users to view updates as PDF or Excel files without signing in to MicroStrategy. It’s a great functionality for those who are away from their desks and for their teams in the field.
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  • Statistical Analysis: Prism offers a comprehensive library of statistical analyses, including nonlinear regression, t-tests, nonparametric comparisons, ANOVA, analysis of contingency tables, survival analysis and more. Users can confirm that they have chosen the appropriate test for their needs with a checklist that helps them understand the required statistical assumptions.
  • One-Click Regression Analysis: Prism allows users to select an equation and it will take care of the rest, including fitting the curve, displaying a table of results and function parameters, drawing the curve and interpolating unknown values.
  • Data Tables: Unlike spreadsheets or many other graphing programs, Prism has eight types of data tables that are specifically formatted for certain analyses, making it easier for users to enter data correctly and perform accurate analyses.
  • Real-Time Updates: When any changes are made to the data and analyses, those changes are reflected in the results, graphs and layouts instantaneously with updates in real time.
  • Customizable Data Visualization: Users can create a wide variety of visual representations of their data, including violin plots, box-whisker, bar graphs, subcolumn graphs, smoothing splines, scatter plots and more. They can also enhance these graphics with customization options that help them tell their data’s story in whatever way they desire; they can choose the type of graph, how the data is arranged, the style of the data points, labels, colors, fonts, look and more.
  • Prism Magic: Users can select one or more Prism graphs and apply a consistent look to the set with one-click simplicity, saving valuable time spent otherwise on standardizing the look of multiple graphics. 
  • Export Graphics: Users can export their graphs in high-quality and customize the file type, resolution, transparency, dimensions, color, space, etc. of their visualizations to meet the requirements of publication. To save time in the future, users can set their default export preferences.
  • Work Automation: Users can reduce the number of tedious steps needed to analyze data by setting up reproducible workflows that can create templates, duplicate families or clone graphs.
  • Tools for Teamwork: Prism allows for enhanced collaboration with other scientists, with all the information in a Prism project, including raw data, analyses, results, graphs and layouts, contained in a single, shareable file. Others can follow along with your work at every step, adding their insight and streamlining your collective research efforts.
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Product Ranking

#15

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#70

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

MicroStrategy
GraphPad Prism
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Advanced Analytics Augmented Analytics Data Management Data Pre-processing Data Transformation Data Visualization Embedded Analytics Capabilities Geospatial Visualizations And Analysis Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Reporting 94 66 100 100 97 100 100 100 100 96 100 0 25 50 75 100
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 973 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 202 reviews
84%
of users recommend this product

MicroStrategy has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 973 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

93%
of users recommend this product

GraphPad Prism has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 93% when considering 202 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

4.9 (24)
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4.2 (544)
4.6 (51)
4.3 (63)
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Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated MicroStrategy and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall Business Intelligence Tools available today and earns best-in-class honors for Data Pre-processing, Embedded Analytics Capabilities, Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis and Mobile Capabilities.

Analysts' Pick Award
Data Pre-processing Award
Embedded Analytics Capabilities Award
Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis Award
Mobile Capabilities Award

GraphPad Prism stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Data Visualization: Users were satisfied with its powerful dashboards and personalization options for self-service analytics.
Functionality: Reviewers praised the platform for delivering on capabilities and scaling with their data needs.
Ease of Use: User reviews appreciated its reusable objects and semantic layer for automating data wrangling and visualization workflows.
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Easy Data Entry: Users appreciate the intuitive interface that makes it simple to input and organize data, even for complex experiments. For example, users can easily import data from spreadsheets or directly enter data into the program.
Powerful Analysis: Prism offers a wide range of statistical tests and graphing options, allowing users to analyze data in depth and visualize results effectively. For example, users can perform t-tests, ANOVA, regression analysis, and more.
Customization: Users can customize graphs and reports to meet their specific needs, ensuring that data is presented clearly and effectively. For example, users can adjust colors, fonts, and labels to create visually appealing and informative graphs.
Collaboration: Prism allows users to share data and results with colleagues, facilitating collaboration and communication. For example, users can export data and graphs in various formats, including PDF, Excel, and PowerPoint.
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Cost: A majority of the users found the platform to be expensive.
Adoption: Most reviews said the platform had a steep learning curve.
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Steep Learning Curve: New users often find the interface and features overwhelming, requiring significant time investment to master. This can be a major hurdle for teams with tight deadlines or limited training resources.
Limited Data Handling: Prism struggles with large datasets, making it less suitable for complex analyses involving extensive data manipulation or integration with other tools. This can be a problem for businesses with large-scale data collection and analysis needs.
Lack of Collaboration Features: Prism lacks robust collaboration features, making it difficult for teams to work together on projects. This can be a significant drawback for businesses that rely on collaborative data analysis and reporting.
Costly Licensing: Prism's licensing model can be expensive, especially for larger teams or organizations. This can be a barrier for businesses with limited budgets or those looking for more cost-effective solutions.
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MicroStrategy is a patchwork quilt of products on the web, desktop and mobile. There’s MicroStrategy Library where you can access published content and Auto Express for dashboarding and bot creation. Anyone with basic data skills can feed information to a bot and gain insights in seconds.You don’t need a credit card to sign up for the free trial, but you won’t be able to publish content to the server without a paid upgrade. As for choosing which edition to use, there’s the web and the desktop instance. Which one will suit you? Maybe both?MicroStrategy Workstation is for developers and data analysts and is more robust for manipulating data. It provides administrative control, even when offline, and helps prototype content before it goes live. Combining multiple visualizations on a single page provided me with more context for the same data.On the other hand, the Workstation version lacks the same level of natural language processing as the web version.MicroStrategy Web is for delivering content to your clients. Being online, it’s open to seamless upgrades and customization, and identity management and collaboration are built in. If you have a small organization, the web version might suffice, but you might want to consider going for both if you deal with large data volumes.Metadata mapping was immensely useful to me when designing a bot using MicroStrategy Auto Express. All I needed to do was feed it the data, and it generated a slew of questions I might want to ask.With a semantic layer, Microstrategy is among the BI tools that work best with large data warehouses. If you’ve just started in business or haven’t got large data volumes yet, you might want to consider a simpler tool.An oft-repeated sentiment in user reviews was that this motley crew of products — web, desktop and mobile — didn’t always sync. The vendor positions MicroStrategy One as a unified solution that’ll, hopefully, eliminate these annoyances.On the flip side, quite a few users said it could be clunky for inexperienced users. Also, some reviewers said it slowed on occasion. Most people said the solution was expensive and found its learning curve quite steep.In summary, MicroStrategy is worth considering, especially if you’re a medium or large-sized company looking for a web reporting tool with a user-friendly interface.

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Is GraphPad Prism the real deal or just a statistical mirage? GraphPad Prism is a popular software choice for scientists who need to analyze and visualize their data. Users praise its ease of use, especially for those without a strong statistics background. They appreciate the intuitive interface and the clear explanations provided for each statistical test. The software's ability to generate publication-quality graphs is a major selling point, with users highlighting the wide range of customization options available. For example, one user mentioned using Prism to generate figures for publication in peer-reviewed journals, highlighting its ability to create professional-looking visuals. However, some users have expressed concerns about the software's performance, particularly on older or less powerful computers. One user noted that Prism can be resource-intensive, even on a computer with 8GB of RAM. This can be a significant drawback for researchers who need to analyze large datasets or work on machines with limited resources. Additionally, some users have suggested that the tutorials could be improved, particularly for specific analyses like IC50 calculations. They believe that more real-life examples and detailed explanations would be beneficial. Overall, GraphPad Prism is a powerful tool for scientists who need to analyze and visualize their data. Its ease of use, comprehensive statistical analysis capabilities, and ability to create publication-quality graphs make it a strong choice for researchers. However, its performance on older computers and the potential for improvement in its tutorials are areas that could be addressed in future updates. GraphPad Prism is most suited for scientists who are looking for a user-friendly software that can handle a wide range of statistical analyses and produce high-quality graphs for publications.

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