MicroStrategy vs Sigma Computing

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Our analysts compared MicroStrategy vs Sigma Computing 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.

Sigma Computing Software Tool

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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Sigma Computing is an analytics solution that directly connects to cloud warehouses and delivers real-time insights that drive data-informed decision making. With a spreadsheet-like interface, it provides a familiar experience for business users and analysts to utilize formulas to analyze and visualize their data. Through a self-service model, users can explore their data and ask and answer questions for themselves. It streamlines complex data analysis processes and promotes teamwork throughout a business with a balance of collaboration and control.

It is entirely cloud-based and enables data access without the risk of extracting, moving and storing data. Suitable for companies of all sizes, this SaaS runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Pros
  • User-friendly interface
  • Affordable pricing
  • Scalable for business growth
  • Cloud-based accessibility
  • Responsive customer support
Cons
  • Limited data analysis features
  • Less powerful than competitors
  • Occasional performance issues
  • Restricted data storage capacity
  • Lower customization options
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$25/User, Monthly, Quote-based
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$300 Monthly
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Product Assistance

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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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  • Fast Integration: Without coding experience, users can securely and directly connect to data warehouses and get started without wasting valuable time on importing their data. Analysts can lay the foundation for the entire organization to succeed with data in hours, rather than days.
  • Ease of Use: Users work with a familiar spreadsheet-like interface and formulas to generate insights, no code required. The system automatically translates all the front-end actions input by users into SQL on the back-end.
  • Real-Time Access: Users can leverage the power of the cloud to query data directly where it lives, allowing for live analysis of massive datasets and insights in real time. 
  • Keep Data Safe: Sigma never moves, stores, copies or caches users’ data, instead running queries against the data warehouses and passing the results back to the system, ensuring that data remains secure with robust data governance and platform security that exceeds industry standards. It complies with data privacy guidelines SOC 2 Type II, CSA, GDPR and CCPA.
  • Improve Collaboration: The system eliminates BI bottlenecks and inaccurate analyses by establishing a single, reusable and accessible source of truth for all users to query. Sigma transforms the data modeling process into a collaborative one; users can edit tables and create visualizations together, enabling better communication and decision making by forging a bridge between data teams and business users.
  • Self-Service BI: Users have the freedom to explore ad hoc analysis without waiting for IT teams to update models.
  • SQL Authoring: Users with SQL technical knowledge can create and edit reusable analyses to activate with one-click parsing.
  • Free Trial or Demo: Interested customers can try out the full platform for free for 14 days, or request a demo of the solution to try with their own data warehouse.
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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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  • Data Warehouse Connectivity:  Sigma connects directly with many popular data warehouses, including Snowflake, Google Big Query, Amazon Redshift and PostgreSQL, or users may pull their data from other partners like Matillion, Fivetran, Alooma and Stitch to create their central source of truth by indexing all the tables in those sources. 
  • Dataset Preparation: Sigma creates reusable datasets from individual or joined tables using one or more data sources. These Datasets can be edited either with a no-code worksheet-based interface, or with Sigma’s SQL Runner. 
  • Links: Users can add context to their Datasets by setting up the relationships between datasets in a guided, contextualized way. Non-technical users can preview and create pre-model joins without needing knowledge of the join creation process. The system also pulls pre-existing relationships in databases upon connection with a data warehouse.
  • Data Visualization: Users can create assorted kinds of charts and graphs from their worksheets, including bar charts, line graphs, pie graphs, tables and more. These visualizations can be formatted in various ways. 
  • Object Badges: Users can flag datasets and worksheets as Endorsed, Warning or Deprecated, guiding others to the most accurate and relevant data with a glance.
  • Shareable Workspaces: The platform has both individual and team workspaces, allowing for collaboration on data analysis. These workspaces can be shared externally, providing access to insights to partners or third parties who may benefit from them. The system also has an organization-wide workspace that everyone can search and explore through filters, descriptions and file names.
  • Role-Based Permissions: The system has tiered permission levels from highest to lowest for admins, authors and viewers, to allow different permissions and access settings on a role-by-role basis. Permissions may be granted on an individual or team level, allowing for organizations to add and remove users from access levels based on function, department or other categorization.
  • Data Security: In addition to role-based access control, the platform provides single-sign-on (SSO) and row-level security to ensure safe data analysis. The application has a secure infrastructure, with firewalls, credential and vulnerability checking, peer review, static code analysis, threat and anomaly detection and encryption in transit.
  • JSON Support: The visual interface enables business users to create views with JSON that unlock the value of semi-structured data. These strings of JSON can be stored, referenced and reused for analyses and visualizations across the ecosystem. 
  • Third Party Integrations: The system integrates with Slack and Google Sheets for enhanced collaboration.
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Product Ranking

#15

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#184

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

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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
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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.

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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

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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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User-friendly interface: Sigma's intuitive design and drag-and-drop functionality make it easy for users with limited technical expertise to get started and create insightful reports.
Affordable pricing: Sigma offers a competitive pricing model with a free tier for individual users and small teams, making it accessible to businesses of all sizes.
Scalable for business growth: Sigma's cloud-based architecture scales seamlessly to accommodate growing data volumes and user bases, ensuring your BI solution can grow with your business.
Cloud-based accessibility: Access your data and insights from anywhere, anytime with Sigma's cloud-based platform, eliminating the need for on-premise infrastructure.
Responsive customer support: Sigma provides responsive and helpful customer support via email, phone, and live chat, ensuring you get the assistance you need when you need it.
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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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Limited data analysis features: Compared to more robust BI solutions, Sigma offers a less extensive range of advanced data analysis capabilities.
Occasional performance issues: Some users have reported encountering occasional performance issues, such as slow loading times and data refreshes.
Restricted data storage capacity: Sigma's free and lower-tier plans offer limited data storage, requiring upgrades for larger datasets.
Lower customization options: While Sigma offers some customization options, its capabilities are not as extensive as other BI platforms.
Less powerful than competitors: Although Sigma excels in user-friendliness, it may lack the power and flexibility required for complex data analysis needs.
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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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While Sigma Computing receives praise for its user-friendly interface and affordability, some users feel it lacks compared to similar BI tools like Tableau and Power BI. One user noted, "Sigma is great for beginners, but I quickly outgrew its capabilities. It just doesn't offer the depth of analysis I need." Another echoed this sentiment, stating, "The lack of advanced features was a dealbreaker for me. While Sigma is easy to use, it's not powerful enough for complex data analysis." However, others find Sigma's strengths outweigh its weaknesses. One user commented, "For the price, Sigma is a fantastic tool. It's simple to use and allows me to create insightful reports quickly and easily. I don't need all the bells and whistles offered by other platforms." Another user praised its scalability, saying, "Sigma has grown with my business. As my data volume increased, Sigma seamlessly scaled to accommodate my needs." One differentiating factor is Sigma's focus on real-time data and collaboration. One user highlighted this, saying, "Sigma's ability to work with real-time data is a game-changer. It allows me to make decisions based on the latest information, not outdated data." Another user noted the benefits of collaboration, stating, "Sigma's collaborative features make it easy to work with my team on data analysis. We can share insights and brainstorm ideas in real-time." Ultimately, the suitability of Sigma Computing depends on individual needs and priorities. If you're a small business or individual user who needs a basic, affordable BI tool, Sigma is a great option. However, if you require advanced data analysis capabilities or extensive customization options, you may be better served by a more powerful BI platform.

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