Top MicroStrategy Alternatives & Competitors For 2024

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Looking for alternatives to MicroStrategy? Many users crave user-friendly and feature-rich solutions for tasks like Data Management, Reporting, and Data Transformation. Leveraging crowdsourced data from over 1,000 real Business Intelligence Tools selection projects based on 400+ capabilities, we present a comparison of MicroStrategy to leading industry alternatives like Cloudera, Sisense, InsightSquared, and Mathematica.

Cloudera Software Tool
InsightSquared 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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Cloudera is a multi-environment analytics platform powered by integrated open source technologies that help users glean actionable business insights from their data, wherever it lives. With an enterprise data cloud, it puts data management at analysts’ fingertips, with the scalability and elasticity to manage any workload. It offers users transparency into the whole data lifecycle and the flexibility of customization through its open architecture.

It is available on an annual subscription basis with three offerings: CDP Data Center, Enterprise Data Hub and HDP Enterprise Plus. Each edition offers different components and pricing varies based on computing power, storage space and number of nodes.

The company merged with Hortonworks in 2019 to provide a comprehensive, end-to-end hybrid and multi-cloud offering.
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Sisense is an end-to-end data analytics platform that makes data discovery and analytics accessible to customers and employees alike via an embeddable, scalable architecture. With a back-end powered by in-chip technology, it allows analysts to blend large datasets from a variety of sources into a single cohesive database for the entire company. On the front-end, users of all technical skill levels can craft visualizations, reports and dashboards to explore and share insights that drive businesses forward. Its AI-driven, cloud-native analytics offering, Fusion, embeds into business workspaces and empowers teams to view key metrics and data insights where they work.

Designed for companies of all sizes, it can be deployed on-premises, as a private cloud-hosted SaaS, as a fully managed SaaS or via a hybrid strategy. It is available via annual subscription pricing and offered in three packages: its main offering BI & Analytics Teams, its embedded analytics component Product Teams and code-driven cloud analytics through Cloud Data Teams.
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InsightSquared is a sales analytics SaaS platform that builds a path for revenue operations professionals from sales data to sales intelligence, empowering them to make better decisions informed by insights. It helps businesses dig deep into their sales pipelines to thoroughly understand what drives results. With AI-powered forecasting, detailed reporting, complete sales funnel visibility and employee performance tracking, it enables enterprises to track their key metrics and sales growth with precision and strategize for the future with confidence.

Suitable for companies of all sizes, it simplifies the sales process and helps businesses improve ROI and maximize their results. As each offering is customized to fit the client’s needs, pricing and functionality will vary based on the tier of plan and number of components selected.
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Wolfram Mathematica is a technical computing platform that can perform a wide range of computations and algorithms for mathematics and beyond. Primarily designed for research and academia, it enables users to create powerful scripts through a flexible, multi-purpose programming language. It allows users to analyze and visualize data in sophisticated ways and employ methods such as machine learning, data mining and deep learning to model and solve complicated problems.

It is available in the cloud through any web browser or installable on-premises on all desktop environments. Users can purchase licenses as individuals or under group or enterprise pricing for cloud, desktop or both versions.
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Product Assistance

Documentation
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Live Online
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Product Ranking

#15

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#72

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#11

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#116

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#47

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

90
we're gathering data
80
we're gathering data
we're gathering data
94
we're gathering data
82
we're gathering data
we're gathering data
66
we're gathering data
49
we're gathering data
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100
we're gathering data
100
we're gathering data
we're gathering data
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Availability and Scalability
Data Management
Data Pre-processing
Data Visualization
Embedded Analytics Capabilities
Availability and Scalability
Data Management
Data Pre-processing
Data Transformation
Data Visualization
Availability and Scalability
Data Management
Data Pre-processing
Data Transformation
Integrations and Extensibility
Availability and Scalability
Data Management
Data Pre-processing
Data Transformation
Data Visualization
Availability and Scalability
Data Management
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Data Visualization

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

MicroStrategy
Cloudera
Sisense
InsightSquared
Mathematica
+ Add Product + Add Product
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 82 49 100 100 97 87 93 68 47 83 87 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 973 reviews
Great User Sentiment 216 reviews
Great User Sentiment 1979 reviews
Great User Sentiment 797 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 305 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.

82%
of users recommend this product

Cloudera has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 82% when considering 216 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

88%
of users recommend this product

Sisense has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 88% when considering 1979 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

89%
of users recommend this product

InsightSquared has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 797 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

92%
of users recommend this product

Mathematica has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 92% when considering 305 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

4.9 (24)
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4.2 (544)
4.0 (26)
4.3 (720)
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4.2 (269)
3.4 (41)
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Awards

Analysts' Pick Award
Data Pre-processing Award
Embedded Analytics Capabilities Award
Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis Award
Mobile Capabilities Award
we're gathering data
Data Pre-processing Award
we're gathering data
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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Scalability: Cloudera can handle massive datasets and complex queries, making it suitable for large-scale data analysis and reporting.
Security: Cloudera offers robust security features, including data encryption and access control, ensuring sensitive data is protected.
Performance: Cloudera's optimized architecture and distributed processing capabilities deliver fast query execution and efficient data processing.
Integration: Cloudera integrates seamlessly with various data sources and tools, enabling users to connect and analyze data from different systems.
Community Support: Cloudera has a large and active community, providing access to resources, support, and best practices.
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Customer Service and Support : More than 92% of users mentioning customer support said that responses to their queries were prompt and informative, and that there’s good access to online user communities.
Data Integration: Approximately 92% of users who mention data source integrations express satisfaction with its ability to import, blend and streamline data from multiple sources into a cohesive database.
Data Visualization: Citing stunning dashboards with a range of visually powerful visual tools like widgets, graphs and scattergrams, 85% of users who mention data visualization say it’s a strong feature of Sisense.
Ease of Use: More than 93% of users mentioning the platform’s ease of use praise it as user-friendly, citing self-service BI features such as interactive dashboards and data visualizations.
Cost: Among users who comment on its pricing, more than 85% said that Sisense offers great value for its cost, with some reviews coming from long-time customers.
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Data Connectivity: Around 87% of the users who reviewed data integration said that the platform pulls data efficiently from a wide range of data sources.
Support: Support is responsive and knowledgeable, according to 87% of the users who mentioned contacting them.
Ease of Use: Citing ease of use to filter and pivot on key metrics, approximately 86% of the users said that the platform is intuitive and user-friendly.
Data Visualization: Approximately 82% of the users who discussed data visualization said that the platform provides a multitude of prebuilt and customizable dashboards to tell stories.
Data Analysis: Citing strong trend analytics based on historical data, around 74% of the users said that the platform provides seamless self-service analysis of business metrics.
Functionality: The platform has powerful features to present insights into sales and marketing pipeline health, according to around 74% of the users who reviewed its functionality.
Reporting: Reviewing reporting, approximately 63% of the users said that the platform provides a multitude of prebuilt charts and reports with visible, ready-to-consume insights.
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Symbolic Computation: Mathematica excels at handling and manipulating symbolic expressions, making it ideal for tasks that involve algebra, calculus, and other forms of mathematical analysis. This can be particularly useful for financial modeling, risk analysis, and other business intelligence applications that require complex calculations.
Visualization Capabilities: Mathematica offers a wide range of visualization tools that can be used to create high-quality charts, graphs, and other visual representations of data. These visualizations can be interactive, allowing users to explore data from different perspectives and gain deeper insights. This is essential for effectively communicating complex data to stakeholders in a business setting.
Automation and Scripting: Mathematica allows users to automate tasks and create scripts, which can save time and improve efficiency. This can be particularly useful for repetitive tasks, such as data cleaning and analysis. Automating these tasks can free up time for business intelligence professionals to focus on more strategic initiatives.
Machine Learning and AI: Mathematica includes a wide range of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can be used for tasks such as predictive modeling, classification, and anomaly detection. These capabilities are becoming increasingly important for business intelligence, as they can help organizations to identify trends, make better decisions, and gain a competitive advantage.
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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 Cloudera's interface and complex architecture challenging to navigate, requiring significant time and effort to master. This can be especially problematic for teams with limited technical expertise.
Costly Implementation: Cloudera's pricing model can be expensive, particularly for large deployments. The cost of hardware, software licenses, and ongoing support can be a significant barrier for some organizations.
Limited Scalability: While Cloudera offers scalability, some users have reported challenges scaling their deployments to meet rapidly growing data volumes. This can lead to performance bottlenecks and slow query execution times.
Complex Management: Managing a Cloudera cluster can be complex, requiring specialized skills and knowledge. This can be a burden for organizations with limited IT resources.
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Data Preparation and Modeling: About 50% of users who mentioned data modeling say that it is not as intuitive for non-technical staff, requiring strong IT support.
Training: More than 60% of users who write about learning how to use the platform say that with frequent new releases, a lack of sufficient documentation, coupled with the difficulty of using a programming language make this a tricky tool to master.
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Speed: Around 90% of the users who mentioned speed said that data refresh is slow, especially when processing large datasets.
Pricing: Approximately 60% of the users who reviewed pricing said that necessary customizations add to the overall cost, limiting adoption by small enterprises.
Training: Around 54% of the users who discussed training said that there is a learning curve due to lack of training and documentation.
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Price: Mathematica comes with a hefty price tag, especially for commercial use, which can be a significant barrier for individuals or small businesses.
Learning Curve: The software has a steep learning curve due to its vast functionality and unique syntax, requiring a significant time investment to master.
Closed Ecosystem: Mathematica operates within a closed ecosystem, making it challenging to integrate with other data analysis tools or programming languages commonly used in business intelligence.
Limited Collaboration: Collaboration features are not as robust as those found in other business intelligence platforms, hindering teamwork and knowledge sharing.
Visualization Capabilities: While Mathematica offers visualization tools, they may not be as intuitive or user-friendly as dedicated data visualization software, potentially limiting the ability to create compelling and insightful dashboards.
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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 Cloudera the answer to your data management woes, or is it just a bunch of hot air? User reviews from the past year paint a mixed picture of Cloudera. While some users praise its flexibility and ability to handle large datasets, others find it cumbersome and expensive. Cloudera's hybrid cloud approach, allowing users to deploy on-premises or in the cloud, is a major selling point for many. However, some users find the platform's complexity a barrier to entry, especially for those without extensive experience in data management. Cloudera's integration with other tools, such as Apache Hadoop, is a key differentiator, but some users report issues with compatibility and performance. Cloudera is best suited for large enterprises with complex data needs and a dedicated team of data engineers. Its robust features and scalability make it a powerful tool for organizations that require a comprehensive data management solution. However, smaller businesses or those with limited technical resources may find Cloudera's complexity and cost prohibitive.

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Users appreciate how Sisense creates large datasets from constantly evolving data sources to be seamlessly streamlined into actionable data, and presented easily in the form of graphs, bar and pie charts, scattergrams, line graphs, interactive maps and many more visualization types. Regarding customer support, users praise their prompt and informative responses - from implementation to handling subsequent queries — as high quality customer service that comes neatly packaged with pricing plans. Users mention that the implementation of this solution, though easy for basic setup, can be quite demanding in terms of scripting and configuration setup, especially for advanced analytics. Non-technical users might find it challenging to set up the data objects - ElastiCubes - without strong IT support. On the front-end, dashboard customization and formatting of visualizations can be tricky as these require basic knowledge of CSS, Javascript and development. Though a large number of users find this solution to be cost-effective, smaller businesses and startups that only need a limited number of licenses might find it expensive. Overall, Sisense is a strong BI solution with strong data capabilities, and its drill-down functionality empowers users to glean insightful and actionable analytics that drive business strategy by aiding in decision-making processes. To maximize its potential, businesses may require strong IT support for implementation and formatting of visualizations. It is certainly worth considering for enterprise BI needs, if the price is right!

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InsightSquared is a powerful sales analytics platform that helps users drive sales pipelines and access self-service data analytics through robust features and interactive data visualizations. According to many users who discussed data integration, the tool interacts seamlessly with other applications and data sources to enable predictive analytics that help forecast future trends. Most of the users who mentioned support said that they are responsive and knowledgeable. A majority of the users who reviewed the interface said that it’s user-friendly and easily navigable, though some users said that the versatility of the platform makes it complex to learn. Many users who discussed the platform’s visualization capabilities said that it provides a wide range of interactive and intuitive out-of-the-box dashboards. A majority of the users who discussed data analytics said that the platform excels in analyzing historical data to better forecast future trends, though some users said that the scope of predictive analytics should be wider to provide better insights. According to many users who mentioned functionality, the solution provides many ways to explore data-based insights through deep-dive and pivoting on key metrics, though some users said that the platform is not easily customizable. Many users who mentioned reporting said that the solution provides a plethora of out-of-the-box reports that can be customized and exported easily, though some users said that there is limited flexibility in report customization. On the flip side, a majority of the users who reviewed speed said that the platform is slow when moving between templates and can become CPU-intensive with large dashboards, though some users said that it can slice and dice data to present relevant information in seconds. Many users who mentioned pricing said that necessary customization modules add to the cost of the software, which makes adoption difficult for small businesses. Many users said that though training is needed to maximize the tool’s potential, lack of adequate documentation makes the learning curve steep. In summary, InsightSquared is a self-service revenue intelligence tool that provides a single source of truth for sales analytics and forecasting pipeline management. It boosts productivity across the organization, though its pricing can be cost-prohibitive for small businesses.

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Let's crunch some numbers and see what users have to say about Mathematica! Mathematica has garnered a reputation as a powerful computational tool, particularly in academic and research settings. Users frequently praise its symbolic computation capabilities, allowing them to manipulate and solve complex mathematical expressions and equations with ease. This strength sets Mathematica apart from competitors like MATLAB, which primarily focuses on numerical computation. Mathematica's notebook interface also receives positive feedback for its ability to combine code, visualizations, and text in a single document, facilitating reproducible research and clear communication of findings. However, Mathematica's steep learning curve and high price point are often cited as drawbacks. Users transitioning from other programming languages may find Mathematica's syntax and functional programming paradigm challenging to grasp initially. Additionally, the cost of a Mathematica license can be prohibitive for individual users or small businesses. Overall, Mathematica is best suited for researchers, scientists, and engineers who require a comprehensive tool for symbolic and numerical computation, data analysis, and visualization. Its extensive functionality and ability to handle complex mathematical problems make it an invaluable asset in these fields. However, individuals or organizations with limited budgets or those seeking a more user-friendly option may want to explore alternative software solutions. Keep in mind that software is constantly evolving, so it's always a good idea to check for the latest updates and user reviews to make an informed decision.

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