Understand the distinctions between Tableau's Creator, Explorer, and Viewer license types to better plan your data visualization strategy. This article also compares Tableau Desktop with Tableau Public, detailing key features, limitations, and pricing models.
Key Insights
- Tableau's paid licenses are divided into Creator, Explorer, and Viewer roles, with Creators having full access to data preparation and visualization tools, Explorers limited to analysis of existing dashboards, and Viewers restricted to interaction with published content.
- Tableau Desktop provides robust capabilities like SQL server connectivity, cloud app integration (e.g., Salesforce, Google Analytics), unlimited data rows, and enhanced data security, whereas Tableau Public is limited to Excel and text files and caps data at 15 million rows per workbook.
- While Tableau is known for its linear workflow and is used by companies like Uber, Power BI offers more flexibility in its toolset and a completely free version, charging only at the point of publishing.
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Tableau has three general categories of users for the paid version. Creators. Creators can prepare and build content.
They can gather information, prepare it, read it, clean data, because they'll have Tableau Reader, Tableau Prep, they'll have everything. And they can create visualizations and dashboards from scratch. Any company that pays for Tableau needs to have at least one creator.
Explorers are a little different. Explorers can access and analyze the data created by creators, but they can't create visualizations from scratch. So they can do a little bit more than someone who can just view the information, but they can't create anything.
And then the final level is viewers. Viewers can view and interact with published visualizations and dashboards. The viewer license gives access to reader.
Now, I'll briefly click on this link and take you to the website where they talk about the three different levels. Ultimately, when you scroll down, they will get to it. This is what you're paying for creator, explorer, and viewer.
They tell you $115 per month, $70 per month. This is just Adobe Reader. I'm paying $35 for a reader.
Yep, welcome to big business. So this is their pricing plans. Please know this is not per month.
You have to pay for the whole year upfront. They just let you know if you break down the total amount per month, this is what it is per month. But you're paying over $1,000 if you're using creator.
And so that just comes right off the bat. I remember maybe like a year ago, this used to be over here. And then I think this used to be over here.
And then the viewer was less. Now they just pushed everything over. And now the creator, which used to be $70, is $115.
And then so prices increase. Thank goodness you have Tableau Public. Here is what it includes.
They tell you here, desktop, prep, pulse, server, cloud. So you can make your comparisons and then you can plan your purchase and so on. Looks like they're going to include AI and stuff.
We have this link in the PowerPoint. Tableau Desktop versus Tableau Public. Here are the advantages between the paid version and the free version.
On desktop, you can connect to SQL Server databases. That's a big deal. You can connect to data that's online on a server.
You can connect to a spreadsheet. That's not a big deal. But you can connect to cloud apps like Google Analytics and Salesforce, which is the company that owns Tableau.
Access and combine disparate data without writing code. The files are stored locally on your computer. Security is also increased here.
It's only accessible to others who are given access. You can create permissions and create a closed system. You have unlimited rows of data.
Very important if you're working with large datasets. Tableau Public. Excel and text files.
No SQL? No, just Excel and text files. Maybe you can use SQL to connect to large datasets, export it as a CSV in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Then you can use it in Tableau Public, but it won't connect to SQL directly.
One of the reasons you want to update, this was a recent update, and luckily for you, you didn't experience this time, but there was a time where you could not save your workbook locally. You could only save it to the cloud when you're working on it. I think you can download it after that point, but you would have to keep saving your work and saving it up to the cloud.
If you made a mistake, you'd lose all your work because if you didn't save it to the cloud and it crashed, well then you couldn't save it locally, so you don't have a local copy. But now you can save it on your computer and publish it when you want. You don't have to publish it to save the work that you've done.
Once published to Tableau Public, all files are accessible through Tableau Public website, but you can adjust what's visible. You're limited to a certain number of rows, 15 million rows per workbook. So people who work in Tableau can work with tens of millions, hundreds of millions of rows.
Tableau versus Power BI, this is general information. It's not 100%. People say Tableau is harder to learn.
This part, the stuff we're going to be going over, I think it's going to be easier to learn. But if you're already familiar with Excel, Power BI may be something that you can adapt to a little easier. It's more powerful than Power BI.
Sorry, Power BI. It's more linear. What does more linear mean? You follow several steps to get to your dashboards.
You do one step in front of another. Just like if you were taking a DUI test, one foot goes in front of the other, step by step. That's how you build your visualization.
It's also used by a big company called Uber. And I don't know, we just mentioned that. Power BI is more unified, but it's less linear.
You can go to Power Query. You can go to Power Pivot. You can use Excel.
You can go back and forth. There's a lot of flexibility. You don't have to do things one after another.
They have a free version. It's entirely free. So how do they make money? Well, it costs you when you go to publish it.
If you want to publish it, that's where they'll ask for money. But you have a free version that you can play around with. Mostly workflow used by New York State.
So that's a quick overview.