powerbi overview and alternatives

Power BI is a powerful tool for turning data into visual reports and dashboards. Many find it easy to start with, especially for creating basic charts. It's great for combining data from different sources and making it interactive, which helps people understand information quickly.

For beginners, however, Power BI can be overwhelming. The interface is complex, and mastering advanced features requires learning DAX, a coding language that some find difficult. Also, some basic features that users have requested for years are still missing, which causes frustration.

People like that Power BI allows them to create personalized dashboards and collaborate with coworkers. It can handle large amounts of data and automatically refresh it, providing real-time insights. Integrating it with other Microsoft products is also easy.

However, there are downsides. The web version has limited editing options, and reports can take a long time to load, especially with complex visuals or large datasets. Security and access management can also be challenging. Sometimes, data doesn't update in real-time as expected, and performance can slow down with very large datasets.

Formatting options can be frustrating, and arranging fields can be difficult. The language used to manipulate data is considered clunky and proprietary. Also, sharing dashboards requires a paid version, which can be a drawback.

While Power BI is excellent for creating interactive reports and dashboards, especially for large organizations, it might not be the best choice for simple, one-off analyses or if the main goal is to export data to Excel. It’s a tool that requires time and effort to master, but it can be very valuable for those who need to visualize and analyze large amounts of data.

Alternatives:


What users say: real end-users reviews

Please add Dynamic Matrix Column Header Names and add dynamic matrix

For beginners, learning and navigating can be slow due to the complex structure.

Power BI offers the following advantages to its users and viewers which makes it a volatile product to be used 1) A non technical person can easily navigate , view , visualize and distinguish the dashboard. 2) A large number of raw , discrete data can be easily formalized into N numbers of formats , tables , charts for the end users to get a concise picture of the data to be presented. 3) Collaboration by creating workspaces created by the users with his/her coworkers where reports and dashboards can be accessed. 4) User can create more personalized dashboard which can prove interactive and pleasing to new audience. 5)Many software services , applications and connectors can work together to convert one's unrelated source of data into visually interactive insights which can be easily navigated and filtered and real time data can be represented. 6) Every few moments the data get refreshed automatically giving user a real time overview of data. 7) Can be integrated easily with other Microsoft applications with no or low maintenance and expertise. 8) No complex implementation , easy to implement and less support required.

The dislike can be categorized as - 1) User has limited editing options on a web interface application. 2) Loading of the reports consumes more time. 3) Access management and security issues are often faced. 4) Over complex visuals require more time to load. 5) Excess data tables cannot be pulled efficiently , one needs to apply proper filters to fetch the data. 6) Query performance is often slowed down due to poor data analysis expressions leading to slower user experience. 7) When the credential expires there in frequent interruption in refreshing the schedules . 8)There is challenge in lack of transparency in user access management , leading to auditing challenges.

Really disappointing to see that the basic functionality that's been asked for years is still not implemented. I just don't understand why the devs wouldn't direct the effort into that. Might be the lack of real competition. I am more than sure that implementing the basic things like being able to set column width all at once, dynamic matrix headers, slicer URL parameters, changing web page's name in PBI service (currently just Microsoft PowerBI") would require noticeably less time and effort than trying to implement all of this copilot unnecessary stuff."

Perfect Business Analytics Tool, Easy to Learn Hard to Master: Once you learn how to use it, its one of the best one out there.. also its expensive to get access to its complete features but the free version will get the jobdone.. the web version of this is good but you will need the paid version to get access to all its features

I Didnt like how much complex it can get for a new person who just started using it. also a lot of its features are difficult to access. Mainly its UI isn't really that great.. its hard to spot things from the side bar

For the love of what is holy, make it so we can ORDER FIELDS without having to create groups with space before the names!!!!

Needing to know DAX for advanced uses makes some options limiting for those of us who have trouble coding.

Of the well-known BI platforms, I think Power BI excels in connecting the user to an immersive experience through data modeling, transformation, and visualization within the Microsoft environment.

I think the learning curve for Power BI is steep, mostly because of the ability to utilize DAX and M-language well. There are built-in low-code/no-code alternatives, but to do some extraordinary visualizations, you must have some basic understanding of DAX.

Power BI sometimes fails to update in real-time as expected, which is one feature I dislike. Waiting for the most recent data to appear can be annoying, especially if dealing with larger datasets or slower refresh rates.

My favorite feature of Microsoft Power BI is its intuitive interface, which makes it simple to create visually appealing and interactive reports. Connecting to various data sources and gaining access to real-time insights has greatly enhanced decision-making and quicker business processes.

Power BI makes creating reports and dashboards easy. We use it to analyze data from different sources and turn it into meaningful insights for decision-making and reporting purposes. Its easy integration with tools like PowerApps allows us to build complete workflows.

The interface can be overwhelming for first-time users, especially if they lack data tool experience. The performance can sometimes slow down when working with very large datasets. Setting up more advanced features requires a bit of a learning curve.

Takes time to manipulate it very well and start enjoying the benefits of the software. It’s not a software for everyone I would say! But if you manage how to use it you’re in for big luck!

Power Bi is the cliche - jack of all trades, master of none. Has great potential, but many things that could improve it and on PBI wishlist are ignored by M$.

My least favourite thing about power bi is definitely the formatting options. In terms of making things the same size and auto aligning correctly it can sometimes be quite a hassle.

Good tool for standardising the presentation of data and simplifying access to it

Not particularly intuitive to use. Maybe this is inevitable given the complexity of the package. However I find it confusing at times to use filters and reset them as there seem to be several different ways in which filters can be applied.

Users need to have paid version to be able to see your dashboards / graphs

When manipulating data, the language and structures needed are clunky and proprietary. For example, to display a date in a new format conditionally, a new measure needs to be built, written with functions and syntax specific to Power Bi.

DAX is something that is not very easy to learn and its quite essential to make custom measures and columns

It's a strong product, it's easy to get started, and pull in data from Excel and SQL DB's (especially Microsoft SQL server)

You can combine data from different data sources, and create beautiful visual charts of all the data, and it's interactive for the end user to click and narrow down which data type they're specifically looking for.

Performing visuals on millions of rows of data with different tables and data that is routinely refreshed and distributed to a wide variety of stakeholders? Then PowerBI makes sense. Doing a one off analysis of a few thousand rows of data to get some basic insights, a few bar charts etc, then yeah, go bananas in Excel

What is PowerBI in a real day job like? Realistically, what is your day to do day Power BI work look like? Are you working for companies <500 employees or is it mostly 10,000+ employees organisations? Are you connecting to Azure or external databases, are you writing SQL?

The charts created can be easier to read. The x and y axis aren’t usually labeled so if we are looking at the chart without knowing what info it is charting it can be confusing

The ease of use allows for daily access of the stores information. It give us the opportunity to compare numbers to the previous year and see any trends

Some "simple" functionality is not yet implemented in Power BI comparing to other tools (e.g. sorting by specific measures)

We may experience some performance degrade when we work are working with big dataset. No. of data refresh is limited per day!

Uses of POWER BI: What are the purpose of power BI beside data visualization? I work in corporate and we use it for demographics, headcounts, TAT reporting. As a Power BI newbie, I mostly created graphs, charts, and other basic visualization of data. I felt like this was too easy?" I don't think I am using its maximum capability? "

Power bi is not a good tool if your output is just excel anyway. I have created dashboards and visuals that I had to downgrade because exporting to excel was the whole point. Power bi and Dax work great in a star schema, and for olap functions. If your system is oltp, and you are trying to use power bi to capture data in real time, it is going to be obvious that it is a poor tool. Power bi can be annoying in terms of sharing data and permission levels and pricing structures but you are on the why won’t it work stage as opposed to the why can’t I share this stage yet or why won’t it update stage.

Minus points over something like SSRS..... parameter support. People will tell you that you CAN use parameters in Power BI, but it's nothing like the flexibility of other reporting services