ThoughtSpot vs Qlik Sense

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Our analysts compared ThoughtSpot vs Qlik Sense 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.

ThoughtSpot Software Tool
Qlik Sense Software Tool

Product Basics

ThoughtSpot is a cloud-based business intelligence and analytics platform that empowers users of all skill levels to explore and analyze data through a search-driven interface. It leverages artificial intelligence and natural language processing to simplify data analysis, making it accessible to a wider audience. ThoughtSpot is particularly well-suited for organizations seeking to democratize data access and promote data-driven decision-making across various departments. Key benefits include ease of use, accessibility from any device, and the ability to connect to diverse data sources for real-time insights. Popular features encompass interactive dashboards, AI-powered insights, and natural language search capabilities.

In comparison to similar business intelligence tools, ThoughtSpot stands out for its user-friendly interface and emphasis on search-driven analytics. While some users find its pricing to be on the higher end of the spectrum, many appreciate the platform's ease of use and the value it delivers in terms of improved decision-making and operational efficiency. ThoughtSpot's pricing structure typically involves annual subscriptions based on the number of users and data volume.

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Qlik Sense is a self-service analytics solution that supports enterprise decisions and strategy. Its value lies in interactive dashboards and reports for exploring data independently. Embedded analytics lets your users work freely with data within their applications and websites.

Like QlikView, Qlik Sense has an associative engine. It links data tables in memory, keeping the information ready for when your users build models. Plus, its cognitive engine uses natural language for data tasks.

The Enterprise subscription includes Talend Data Integration and Qlik Advanced Analytics in Qlik Cloud. You can also choose Qlik Data Integration. Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS includes 5000 automations and 100 reports. It might be a good fit if your data loads are predictable and don't change much. The vendor charges for the data you move or the volumes you analyze; you can choose between the two.

Qlik Sense deploys on Windows, Mac, Linux and any phone device. By contrast, Tableau runs on Windows, Mac and mobile, while Power BI is available only on Windows and Android devices.

Individual users can choose the desktop edition, though they’ll need a Qlik Cloud account to download it. A 30-day trial period is available, after which it'll cost $30 per user monthly.

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$95 Monthly
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$30 Monthly, Quote-based
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • Ease of Use: Make self-service analytics available to all via search-engine style natural language querying, intuitive and descriptive dashboards and visualization recommendations. Access data anywhere and everywhere through mobile support.
  • Data Security: Keep data safe from hacking and accidental leakage by restricting access via granular user privileges. Make onboarding easy by integrating with other single sign-on solutions and offering native support for company directories.
  • System Monitoring: Offer total visibility into the health of the system, including real-time and triggered alerts via pre-built administrative dashboards. Stay in the loop at all times by setting alerts on mobile devices or via email.
  • Collaboration: Easily share graphics, communicate about trends and discuss data models within the organization or with clients in real time via the one-click sharing feature.
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  • Gain AI Insights: Qlik Sense wins our award for augmented analytics with the Insight Advisor that enables automation and text searches with an AI chatbot. You can query unstructured data with Qlik Answers using an LLM and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
  • Combine Data: Qlik Sense earns our top honors for wide source connectivity. It ranks at par with Oracle Analytics and Tableau with a score of 80 on a scale of zero to 100. While ingesting data is half the battle won, combining related information gives you the complete picture. Qlik Sense passes with flying colors for intelligent data linking and retaining even unmatched data, such as records of customers who haven’t made a purchase recently.
  • Ensure Data Security: Our analysts awarded Qlik Sense for its ability to keep data secure with regular testing. Plus, it maintains records of CPU, RAM and file usage. You can set up gated entry by having users authenticate their identities and include Qlik Sense into SSO.
  • Perform Advanced Analytics: Qlik Sense scored a 91 in our rankings for supporting cluster, regression and what-if analysis. Plus, it can analyze text data for buyer sentiment with server-side processing. Offloading data to the R server enables analyzing much larger volumes.
  • IoT Analytics: Our analysts gave Qlik Sense a score of 82, the highest among its competitors for analyzing edge and streaming data. Qlik has a robust API set for computing data in edge devices. Plus, it can capture streaming data changes as they happen.
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  • Data Connectors: Draw data from a range of data sources via native connectors or by leveraging an existing ETL solution. Load large datasets at speeds of up to 1 terabyte per hour.
  • Embeddability: Deploy as a stand-alone platform or embed into other business software applications, such as CRMs or ERPs. Draw data and interact with it without switching interfaces to a separate login page.
  • Distributed Cluster Manager: Optimize workload distribution and scale it as the organization grows. Retain data and system usability at all times with built-in replication features, data redundancy assurances, as well as automated backups and node failovers.
  • Visualization Suggestions: Offers suggestions for best-fit visualizations based on data characteristics. Create intuitive graphics that help communicate patterns and draw insights.
  • Automatic Search Index: Indexes search history and data, then caches it for easier search performance. Provides search suggestions based on each character typed into the search feature.
  • In-Memory Engine: Performs all calculations in-engine. Assure query performance with built-in search result caches and retrieve results across various sources and records almost instantaneously. Organize data for efficient data exploration and retrieval.
  • Search Inspector: Explains how search terms are transformed into queries. Gain more transparency into the data exploration process.
  • Real-Time Calculations: Reduce the wait for insights; calculate answers in real time. Automatically joins, aggregates, filters and groups data into analytical results.
  • Drill-Down: Get a micro or macro view of data on an ad-hoc basis by drilling up or down across a data model without predefined drill paths.
  • Reusable Templates: Offers pre-built templates for data worksheets. Create and save a data model once, then recreate it for recurring reporting needs.
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  • AI Integration: Ask and answer questions in natural language and automate processes using OpenAI and H2O.ai. Feed massive datasets to the LLM and watch as it summarizes the insight for you. Move beyond traditional analysis by working with the IBM Watson API for natural language.
  • Qlik Sense Management Console: Develop apps, manage tasks and connections, and track performance. With QMC, create content and consume data insights.
  • Reporting Service: Keep partners and clients on the same page by sending reports to everyone involved, even non-Qlik users. Download reports, subscribe to charts and sheets, or automate report delivery with its Reporting Service, available with Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS.
  • Apps: Create interactive dashboards and visualizations for separate tasks within Qlik Sense. An organization can use hundreds of Qlik Sense apps in its tech stack. 
  • Associative Recommendations: Save time defining how data tables relate with its intelligent suggestions, something Tableau and Power BI lack. Bubbles represent data tables and color-coded rings — green, orange and red — inside them indicate the possibility of links between the tables.
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Product Ranking

#17

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Business Intelligence Tools

#5

among all
Business Intelligence Tools

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Analyst Rating Summary

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87
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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

ThoughtSpot
Qlik Sense
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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 80 100 90 100 100 96 80 79 96 88 0 25 50 75 100
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88%
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

we're gathering data
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 492 reviews
Great User Sentiment 3168 reviews
89%
of users recommend this product

ThoughtSpot has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 492 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

87%
of users recommend this product

Qlik Sense has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 87% when considering 3168 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

4.2 (14)
4.8 (18)
4.3 (145)
4.5 (668)
4.0 (2)
n/a
4.0 (2)
4.5 (256)
4.6 (162)
4.5 (1233)
4.4 (167)
4.0 (993)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Data Analysis: Citing the power of AI-driven natural language searches, approximately 86% of users say that this platform enables efficient self-service data visualization and analysis for better insights into business data.
Data Integration: Around 77% of users who review data source connectivity say that the solution integrates well with databases and data warehouses, both on-premise and cloud-based.
Functionality: Approximately 80% of users say that they are satisfied with the platform’s capabilities for fast and accurate self-service data analysis to display actionable insights.
Ease of Use: Approximately 94% of users reviewing its ease of use say that this solution is user-friendly and intuitive.
Speed and Performance: Citing speed and efficiency in handling large amounts of data, 96% of users say that they are satisfied with the tool’s performance.
Service and Support: Around 87% of users who mention customer support say that they are responsive and knowledgeable, and that the vendor is receptive to user feedback on new features and improvements.
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Integrations: Approximately 86% of users reviewing data sources were satisfied with its wide connectivity.
Ease of Use: About 84% of users who cited usability praised the platform for self-service BI.
Functionality: Around 80% of the reviews that mentioned features praised it for ETL and data visualization.
Data Visualization: About 66% of the users discussing dashboards were satisfied with its interactive displays that allowed them to dig deep.
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Data Visualization: Around 61% of users reviewing this feature say that customization options for features such as fonts, layouts, colors and graphs are limited.
Training: Around 50% of users who mention training say that additional learning tools and best practices documentation would help in driving user onboarding and retention.
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Cost: About 87% of users who mentioned pricing found the tool expensive.
Performance: Around 86% of users citing speed said it lagged when processing large and complex datasets.
Training: Approximately 69% of users who discussed adoption said there was a significant learning curve.
Customization: Around 65% of users who mentioned the freedom to design dashboards said the tool offered limited options.
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ThoughtSpot is a powerful and reliable solution with the capability to deep-dive into data with an impressive level of granularity to perform business data analysis. With its AI-powered offering, SpotIQ, this platform enables easy data querying with intuitive drop-downs and suggestions to retrieve relevant business data for analysis and presentation. In addition, users can save and share their queries with other users with one simple click. In-memory data caching makes for faster data retrieval and creation of data visualizations on the fly, though some users feel that the platform should have more formatting options for better dashboard customization. With the capability to transform massive amounts of data sets into real-time analytics in seconds, this platform has a user-friendly interface that affords even non-technical users the autonomy to use data to discover anomalies and trends with minimal effort. Astutely recognizing the latency inherent in moving data between data sources and analytics platforms, the solution now offers direct querying into the in-cloud data warehouse Snowflake via its offering - Embrace. Users praise the pricing model of this tool since the cost incurred depends on the storage space consumed, not the number of users. The solution does have its limitations, though. Quite a few users say that implementing natural language processing (NLP) requires a lot of pre-work and that AI-powered searches can slow systems down. Data models have to be specifically tailored to the platform, which makes them inflexible for reuse. Though the tool is supported by all major browsers, users can face UI or performance issues with using it on Internet Explorer. As uploading Excel files is still the best way to push data into the platform, data import can be time consuming. Users feel that updated technical documentation and reporting tool tips for the dashboard UI could help shorten the learning curve. Deployment can be challenging for small businesses without IT support. Some users who reviewed it based on cost feel that this tool can be expensive for mid-level businesses. To summarize, businesses can leverage ThoughtSpot’s excellent AI-powered capabilities to share dynamic, real-time data analyses with employees and clients to drive effective decision-making within their organizations.

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Qlik Sense focuses on independent data analysis for enterprises with advanced tools that include AI, natural language processing and automation. User reviews praise it for its associative engine, interactive visualizations and sophisticated analytics.Its dataset-linking functionality gets my vote as the most significant differentiator since it makes data modeling seamless and saves time. In comparison, manually linking tables in Tableau and Power BI feels like a huge task.It supports fewer features out of the box (69%) compared to Tableau (72%) and Power BI (74%), but this could be intentional. Qlik has ready-to-go modules for analytics, automation and printing, so keeping it lean is a smart vendor move. Users should be aware that additional modules will cost extra, though.Qlik Sense SaaS is multi-cloud, so unless the admin assigns separate workspaces, your users won’t be able to create personal dashboards — everything is shared otherwise. Some users said the platform slowed when processing large workloads, which is a common issue with many other platforms. Assess your need for speed before committing to a purchase.If upgrading from QlikView, you’ll need to create new objects initially, as both platforms have different architectures. However, the vendor assists in seamless migration with the Qlik Analytics Modernization program.Overall, Qlik Sense is an efficient platform that offers many analysis capabilities worth considering. We recommend checking it out if you’re looking for an alternative to Power BI, entrenched in Microsoft technology, or Tableau, with its emphasis on visualization.

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