Spotfire vs Yellowfin BI

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Our analysts compared Spotfire vs Yellowfin 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.

Yellowfin BI Software Tool

Product Basics

Spotfire is a software solution for business reporting and analytics. Ranked third on our product directory, it shines for data science and streaming analytics. Dashboards are customizable and interactive. Automation services help create and deliver reports on schedule. You can download it on Windows and access it through other operating systems via workarounds.

Organizations across the board find Spotfire helpful, be it pharma companies or oil and gas suppliers. Manufacturing and supply chain businesses also opt for it on account of its functions and formulas. Techniques like regression and what-if analysis support predictions. Reporting on inventory levels can help you anticipate and plan when to place the next order.

With a data tool, you expect to have data management built in, and Spotfire does an excellent job. It enables cleaning data from the user interface — inline data cleansing — and flags anomalies.

Geomapping is sometimes an afterthought in BI tools. Spotfire scores with excellent location analytics and companies with field machinery find it helpful. Plan maintenance by keeping tabs on machine performance and aging trends using Spotfire dashboards.

Spotfire has data management with anomaly detection and inline data cleansing. Geomapping is sometimes an afterthought in BI tools. Spotfire scores with excellent location analytics, which is why many companies with field machinery find it helpful.

Spotfire's robust calculations are due to TIBCO's runtime engine. Report templates are available, and you can create your own. Its Automation Services help manage routine reporting.

Users praise Spotfire for its connections with an active community that contributes additional connectors. They appreciate its visualizations and the freedom to customize data displays. The vendor provides exceptional support for mobile insights.

The latest edition, Spotfire X, has NLQ-powered searches, AI recommendations and model-based processing. A 30-day trial with 250 GB of storage is available. At $1,250 per year, a Spotfire Analyst license costs more than Tableau and Power BI, and users agree that pricing is steep.

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Yellowfin BI is an integrated platform that helps users transform their business through data by combining automated data analysis, interactive dashboards and storytelling. It also enables intuitive filtering of large amounts of data in real time. It facilitates organization-wide understanding through data sharing and collaborative action. It has a customizable architecture and has the ability to add an organization’s branding, such as its logo.

It offers either enterprise or embedded analytics and is deployable in the cloud or on-premise.
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Product Insights

  • Make Informed Decisions: Ensure you don't miss any data when performing analysis. Spotfire connects to over 50 sources out of the box and provides many more, thanks to its active community. When a connector isn't available, you can rely on TIBCO’s data virtualization capabilities. Users appreciate its expertise in capturing streaming data, which many data tools have yet to catch up with. Our analysts awarded it top honors for source connectivity.
  • Gain Accurate Insight: Make decisions with confidence, knowing you have quality data in your corner. Organize data using metadata management and build workflows in a dedicated wizard. Or use freeform SQL query building with autocomplete. Spotfire scores a perfect 100 in our analyst rankings for seamless data preparation and management. It’s mainly due to inline data correction, which not many platforms support.
  • Visualize Insight: Achieve your weekly, monthly and yearly goals. Put your data to work with interactive dashboards and visualizations that come alive thanks to animations. Get suggestions on how datasets relate and visualizations that fit your analysis. And don't worry about it going stale — you can set it up to refresh on cue. Our analysts give Spotfire the top award for dashboarding and visualization.
  • Stay Mobile: Spotfire wins our analyst recommendation for responsive mobile insights on iOS and Android. You can favorite views and search for them later and swipe left and right between pages on your phone. Share your findings via email, SMS or other communication channels. Map visualizations are available on mobile — Spotfire will show you relevant data based on your location. QR code scanning is available. Spotfire gets a 100 score in our assessment.
  • Add Location Data: If your data includes location coordinates, Spotfire can directly plot these points on a map. If it contains city, state, or country names, Spotfire can convert them into locations on the map. Geographic searches, functions and calculations are available. Our analysts give Spotfire a 100 for its mapping features.
  • Automate Reports: Its automation services earn Spotfire another perfect 100 for reporting. Report scheduling and alerts are no longer optional; every organization that wants its teams to own their tasks wants automation. And Spotfire wins hands down with another perfect 100 in our analysis. Readymade reports templates are available, and you can build your own. Apply filters, drill down or perform calculations with ease. Report exports are possible in standard file formats, such as PDF, Excel and CSV.
  • Stay Competitive: Spotfire supports cohort analysis and decision trees. ML algorithms can extract features from text data for model training. Built for data science, it has capabilities for neural networks and deep learning. Spotfire gets 99 in our machine learning rankings.
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  • End-to-End BI Stack: Its complete BI suite provides solutions to multiple data analytics problems. Businesses are equipped with critical tools such as automated insights, action-based dashboards and collaborative BI tools. Its robust enterprise governance tool allows businesses to integrate their platform with existing security features. 
  • Convenient Adoption: Its single, integrated platform is user-friendly and easy to adopt. It is deployable either on the cloud or on-premise. 
  • Engaging Data Stories: Users can share their data insights with dynamic, compelling reports and storyboards. 
  • Data Transparency: Yellowfin BI can present data in multiple ways and assimilate into business operations. It's built with various dashboards, including analytical, operational and strategic setups, that link interactive data, allowing users to understand information in real time and allow for the monitoring of crucial metrics. It also ensures data accuracy and can create timelines. 
  • Automated Insights: It combines machine learning with human insights to make use of the company’s data effectively. Its algorithms automatically scan through the company’s data and provide strategically relevant results. 
  • Explore Data With Ease: Its smart visualizations enable easy data discovery and exploration. It has over 50 chart types built-in, which helps users understand their businesses better. It also helps in spotting patterns, trends and outliers. 
  • Open Source Freedom: As a 100% open platform, it has no proprietary lock-in, which allows analysts to use their existing skills and knowledge to develop their own capabilities within the platform. It is open-source in nature, which makes the Yellowfin Marketplace, a digital catalog of many free or low-cost plug-ins, extend the suite’s capabilities even further. 
  • Scalability: It offers a scalable architecture that can adapt according to the growth of a business. Users can scale their data usage, without compromising on performance aspects. 
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  • Spotfire Actions: Decide what to do with and act instantly — no need to switch to your procurement application to pause new orders. This powerful feature allows you to run scripts within analytics workflows. You can also trigger actions in your external system through visualization. Spotfire can set up over 200 commercial connections and has 1800 community connectors.
  • Mods: Build reusable workflows and visualization components, much like apps in Power BI and Qlik Sense. They allow your users to tailor their analytical processes so they don’t have to start from scratch every time. Based on code, they run in a sandbox with limited access to system resources for security. Users can share them through the Spotfire library. Mods improve efficiency and collaboration.
  • Batch Edits: Make similar changes to multiple files in one go. Write custom scripts to call the Spotfire API that’ll make changes to the files. Update the IronPython version to the latest one or embed the Spotfire JQueryUI library instead of its references.
  • Recurring Jobs: Simplify event scheduling to better manage your time and tasks. Improve efficiency and deliver reports at the same time on the same day of the week or month. The latest Spotfire version allows you to set recurring automation jobs to occur every X hours, days, weeks or months.
  • Web Player REST API: Share insight with clients and partners without them needing to sign up for a paid Spotfire account. Engage them via data visualizations on the web browser, thanks to Spotfire Web Player. Update analyses on the web with real-time data in the latest Spotfire version.
  • Roles: Invest wisely — opt for licenses that align with user roles. Choose Spotfire Analyst for data analysts, scientists and power users who need deep-dive analysis. Get the Business Author license for enterprise users, analysts and power users to create and consume insights without deep expertise. Choose consumer licenses for users who’ll interact with and consume data. They include the C-suite and non-technical users within the organization.
  • Information Designer: Prepare fully governed data sources for business users in a dedicated wizard. Set up their preferred data sources and define in advance how Spotfire will query and import data into storage. Specify which columns to load and which filters, joins and aggregations to apply.
  • Audio and Image Processing: Add user feedback from customer calls and videos. Interpret public sentiment about your product by analyzing social media pictures and videos. Spotfire enables writing code to extract text from audio and image files. You can then import the data into the platform for analysis.
  • IoT Analytics: Gain insight at lightning speed; build microservices and deploy them at the edge. With Spotfire, you can add IoT data to your regular data for the complete picture.
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  • Automated Data Monitoring: Yellowfin Signals provides machine-based automated monitoring of live data. It highlights anomalies and data outliers, and its proactive warning systems keep business owners informed of changes as they happen and deliver insights faster.  
  • Data Storytelling: Yellowfin Stories and Yellowfin Present help users create data stories and presentations that add context to numbers. These presentations enable clear and concise understanding throughout the organization with accessible insights sourced from one centralized, automatically refreshed database. Data stories can be authored in blog format and supplemented with external media and attachments. 
  • Connectivity to Various Data Sources: It facilitates connection with numerous data sources, including Web APIs, spreadsheets and relational databases as either on-premise or hosted in the cloud. Data is then transformed and merged so that it is accessible by any analytics platform without proprietary lockouts. 
  • Data Analysis: It helps businesses accelerate the analysis of large chunks of data using databases, spreadsheets or online applications. 
  • Data Discovery: The Insight Wizard feature is a unique inclusion that helps users cut down on discovery times with the help of assisted insights. It comes packed with features that provide automated answers with the use of algorithms. 
  • Dashboards: Its customizable, interactive dashboards enable users to keep track of key performance indicators in real time. They drive action and let users make data-driven decisions for their companies. They can be customized with the company’s branding and their open-source code lets users create their own application experience. 
  • Embeddable Workflows: Out-of-the-box, Yellowfin action buttons allow users to integrate workflows to third-party applications, or develop their own custom workflows that allow users to take direct action from their dashboards. 
  • Mobile App: It comes with a mobile application that helps users track changes to their data on-the-go. The app is curated for a mobile-specific experience, which allows users to track changes and respond to them from internet-enabled devices. 
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Product Ranking

#9

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

#346

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

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Analyst Rating Summary

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80
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100
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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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Yellowfin BI
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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 80 45 100 90 90 90 75 100 84 83 100 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 1749 reviews
Great User Sentiment 182 reviews
86%
of users recommend this product

Spotfire has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 86% when considering 1749 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

85%
of users recommend this product

Yellowfin BI has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 182 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

4.3 (14)
4.2 (14)
4.2 (315)
4.4 (90)
n/a
4.59 (17)
4.4 (60)
4.6 (16)
4.4 (539)
4.1 (10)
4.3 (821)
3.5 (35)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Spotfire and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis.

Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis Award

we're gathering data

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Data Visualization: About 86% of reviewers were satisfied with the available options when designing dashboards.
Support: Around 74% of users praised vendor support for their timely response and helpful attitude.
Integration: Almost 72% of users were satisfied that it integrates with their preferred systems.
Friendly Interface: Around 68% of reviewers said the platform was easy to use.
Functionality: About 64% of users said it had a rich feature set.
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Intuitive Interface: Users praise Yellowfin for its user-friendly design, making it easy to navigate and build reports without extensive training.
Powerful Data Visualization: Yellowfin offers a wide array of charting and visualization options, allowing users to present data in a clear and compelling way.
Strong Customer Support: Users appreciate the responsive and helpful customer support provided by Yellowfin, ensuring they can get assistance when needed.
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Cost: Around 96% of the user reviews said it the price was high and licensing complex.
Adoption: 90% of reviewers said there was a significant learning curve and users would need specialized knowledge of data science and statistics.
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Difficult to Learn: Some users find the platform's interface and features difficult to learn and navigate, especially compared to other BI tools.
Limited Customer Support: Users have reported experiencing slow or unhelpful customer support, making it challenging to resolve issues quickly.
Data Visualization Limitations: While Yellowfin offers data visualization capabilities, some users find them less intuitive and flexible compared to other BI tools, limiting their ability to create compelling reports and dashboards.
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In online reviews, Spotfire emerges as a user-friendly big data platform. Most users found data exploration easy with a drag-and-drop interface. Some users said the UI was dated, though, and said it could use a revamp. Most users praised its interactive visualizations and dashboards, saying they helped them interpret data better. But, a few said they would love to have more visuals to choose from.A user mentioned they did the calculations in Excel and imported them into Spotfire for visualization. It's a common scenario when a steep learning curve slows down adoption, and teams fall back on Excel. Most users said Spotfire takes time to learn. You might have to opt for a balance of multiple platforms to balance your departmental and enterprise needs.Spotfire surpasses Excel in data management, especially data prep. Customizable visualizations and custom Mods give you enough freedom to work within the platform.Though 72% of reviewers were happy with the integrations, Spotfire lacks some standard connectors, such as for Apache Kafka, forcing users to rely on workarounds.A majority of users found its pricing structure complex, especially as users increased. In such cases, organizations often tend to opt for a cheaper alternative for less advanced use cases while using the pricier platform for the critical ones. We advise doing a deep dive into the vendor's pricing plans to avoid making your tech stack top-heavy.Ultimately, Spotfire's appeal lies in its balance. It's visually captivating and user-friendly for casual users while offering enough depth for seasoned analysts. However, its pricing and learning curve might deter organizations on a tight budget.

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Is Yellowfin BI the "gold standard" for your business intelligence needs? Recent user reviews suggest that Yellowfin BI is a capable business intelligence platform that shines in its user-friendly interface and robust feature set, making it a good fit for businesses of all sizes. Users praise its intuitive design, which allows even non-technical users to easily navigate and utilize the software. The platform's comprehensive suite of features, including data visualization, reporting, and automated insights, empowers businesses to gain a holistic understanding of their data. However, users also point out some drawbacks. A common gripe is the cost, which can be a barrier for smaller businesses or those with limited budgets. Some users find the software's learning curve steeper than expected, particularly when it comes to advanced features. Despite these weaknesses, Yellowfin BI differentiates itself through its focus on data storytelling and its ability to seamlessly integrate with a wide range of data sources. The platform's storytelling feature allows users to present data insights in a compelling and engaging way, facilitating better decision-making. Its broad data source compatibility ensures that businesses can connect and analyze data from various sources, providing a unified view of their operations. Overall, Yellowfin BI is best suited for businesses that prioritize user-friendliness and a comprehensive feature set in their business intelligence solution. Its intuitive interface and robust capabilities make it a valuable tool for organizations looking to leverage data for informed decision-making. However, businesses with budget constraints or those seeking a platform with a shallower learning curve may need to consider alternative options.

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