Sigma Computing vs Dundas BI

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Our analysts compared Sigma Computing vs Dundas BI 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
Dundas BI Software Tool

Product Basics

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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Dundas BI is a self-service analytics solution with a keen focus on embeddability. With an eye on the end-user experience, the vendor provides options to design and embed dashboards into applications. Ranked five on our leaderboard, Dundas BI is a user favorite. The platform supports standard file formats and connects to cloud storage and enterprise systems.

Report templates and interactive visualizations make data accessible to all users. Some available graphics include bar and line graphs, scattergrams, pie charts, scorecards and maps. The system also suggests visualizations that fit the analyzed data.

Besides a long list of connectors, the platform has built-in ETL. You can switch from a data warehouse to live sources with the click of a button and write back to the warehouse from the interface.

The vendor, insightsoftware, offers it under the Logi Symphony umbrella, but Dundas BI remains a distinct product, and support is available. It supports multi-tenancy, and you can manage multiple clients with assured data security.

Roles include developers, power users and report consumers. The vendor provides shared concurrent licenses to keep pricing within reach. Unlimited data refreshes at no extra cost make it an attractive option.

Reviews praise its visual capabilities and ease of use, though most users say there’s a steep learning curve and performance can lag sometimes. Pricing starts from $2,500 monthly.

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$300 Monthly
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$2,500 Monthly, Quote-based
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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Email
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Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
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24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • 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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  • Gain Insight: Dundas BI wins our top honors for advanced analytics with a score of 92. You can write Python scripts within the platform and build clusters for customer segmentation. Forecast trends using regression and extract sentiment from buyer reviews.
  • Visualize Data: Dundas BI excels at dashboarding and visualization, earning our top award and a score of 100 in our JumpStart App. Its polished visuals embed perfectly into websites, apps and mobile devices. The vendor provides a lot of control over data displays. You can remove overwhelming menus and place navigation and selection options on dashboards. Animate icons to show data changes or display dashboards on a large screen in your office — the vendor has thought of it all. Though it can't compare with Qlik's associative power, Dundas BI remains an outstanding choice for professional dashboards.
  • Build Reports: Create paginated and pixel-perfect reports or design scorecards — the vendor offers many options to present data. Paginated reports have fixed page layouts for printed output, while pixel-perfect reports focus on precise design for a polished look. Version control lets you go back to the previous report and avoids the need to create local copies. The vendor’s focus on reporting UX and customization earns Dundas BI a top score of 100 in our rankings.
  • Manage Data: Define how datasets relate and apply joins during ETL. Explore new datasets without building a data model or generate data models with one click. Profile, correct and enrich data with simple selections. Analyze data from OLAP sources, such as Microsoft SSAS, Azure Analysis Services and Microsoft PowerPivot. Our analysts give it a 100 score for data management.
  • Embed Insight: Apply transformations, design dashboards and mashups, and analyze reports where you work. Embed the entire application or a screen into your business systems. Dundas BI is API-enabled and embeds without iframes. The vendor provides server and client APIs, SSO and authentication methods. It scores 100 in our rankings along with Power BI. But Power BI Embedded is priced separately from Premium and doesn't have the same customization levels.
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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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  • Data Visualization Sandbox: Create and test data visualizations before using them in dashboards. Experiment with different chart types, color schemes and data combinations without risk. It's an excellent learning tool for teams that want to start using data for decisions.
  • Pattern Identification: The Identify Clusters button is a tool within Dundas BI that examines your dataset. It helps you find patterns in your data by clicking a button rather than manually sorting it. The tool puts similar data into groups that can help spot trends or unusual patterns.
  • Small Multiples: They allow you to compare values on the same scale and axes but in separate charts and graphs. One example is comparing the prices of hotels on an aggregator site.
  • Mobile Insight: Collaborate with your teams through an HTML5 browser, whatever the device. Leave comments and annotations for colleagues on visualizations and share them as a PDF or link. Double-tap to zoom into views, and pinch in and out to see maps and charts.
  • Content Scheduling: Share content by setting a schedule or trigger. Dundas BI offers scheduled sharing via the notifications option. Select the content type from among Excel, CSV, PDF, PowerPoint and PNG formats. Choose from email or file delivery. More distribution methods are available if you install Dundas BI extensions.
  • Administrator Privileges: Create, edit and delete projects and configure security settings. Share projects among tenants and assign or revoke permissions as required. Set up and manage user accounts and view login history. Monitor system and warehouse performance and keep tabs on memory storage with application logs.
  • DundasScript: Do more with your data. Write custom formulas and expressions that aren’t possible with standard connectors or visualization tools. Apply conditional formatting and define how users should interact with visual elements, such as setting up drill downs and tooltips.
  • Contextual Views: View only the information that matters to your role. Dundas BI has a data connector override function that switches to a different data source or schema based on who’s viewing the content.
  • Architecture: Dundas BI has JavaScript, HTML and CSS on the back end with a patented in-memory engine. It’s a C#, Asp.NET application hosted on Microsoft IIS for Windows, systemd for Linux or a Docker or Kubernetes container. The platform is available in hosted and managed versions. Supported databases include Microsoft SQL or PostgreSQL. All screens, including dashboards and report designers, are built on a public API with JavaScript or a REST interface. It makes it easy to customize and embed. Tiers include the user, application and data layers. End users get a smooth user experience with drag-and-drop and select actions. It's open to plugins for adding new functions, formulas, controls, and security and tenant and export providers.
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Product Ranking

#184

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Business Intelligence Tools

#21

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Business Intelligence Tools

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User Sentiment Summary

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Great User Sentiment 467 reviews
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89%
of users recommend this product

Dundas BI has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 467 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

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4.2 (14)
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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

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: Around 88% of reviewers mentioning pricing said the platform offered value for money.
Data Analysis and Visualization: Around 86% of users reviewing dashboards said they helped in decision-making.
Service and Support: Almost 83% of users praised support services for being prompt and said they got the help they needed.
Functionality: Around 75% of users praised the solution's rich feature set for helping them accomplish their tasks.
Ease of Use: Around 72% of users citing user friendliness said they could use it without much difficulty.
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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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Training: Around 86% of users citing learning said there was a steep learning curve and documentation was inadequate.
Speed: Around 75% of users who reviewed performance said it lagged when handling large data volumes.
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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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Dundas BI is a web application that stands out for placing the buyer first with built-in ETL, shared licenses and unlimited refreshes. It surpasses market leaders like Power BI and Qlik Sense in native functionality. It’s feature-rich, with 77% of capabilities available out of the box.About 72% of users reviewing the interface praised the platform, whereas others felt it was confusing. An open API architecture might be one reason for the UI's clutter, but the vendor offers a way out. You can make onboarding easier by removing components that seem complex.Usually, reporting is a loose term for dashboards and static reports and not much else. However, the vendor packs these tools into a neat package at no extra cost. Dashboards are usually static, single-screen views, but Dundas allows embedding reports in them to complement your KPIs. The support team is responsive with clear SOPs and quick responses, and the documentation is detailed.On the downside, many users felt it slowed when handling heavy workloads. Performance is critical in business, but every data tool has accompanying tradeoffs, and sadly, it’s often speed. That said, keep in mind that many factors are at play here — the hardware, internet speed, data complexity and database efficiency. Consider them for your use cases when evaluating performance, as they significantly impact how a program responds to user interactions.Ultimately, it boils down to this — how much lag can you accept before it impacts your business? A proof-of-concept or, even better, a trial would be your best bet to assess how the platform fares.Due to its rich scripting options, the learning curve can be steep. Users felt the feature documentation should cover more information on Javascript and APIs. Most reviewers were satisfied with the pricing, saying it offers value for money.In summary, Dundas BI is a powerful tool if you need a high degree of customization, scalability and flexibility. It can handle complex data environments and supports many users concurrently. It would be a good fit for mid to large-sized enterprises as they have diverse data needs and are open to investing in training.Organizations with simple data requirements may find the tool a bit over the top and the cost excessive. In such a case, opting for a tool with basic functionality might be a good start. One non-negotiable would be frequent, stable updates. It'll ensure the tool grows with your business over time.

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