Microsoft Power BI vs. Sisense for Cloud Data Teams

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Power BI
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.N/A
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
Score 6.5 out of 10
N/A
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams (formerly Periscope Data) is a data visualization tool that allows users to connect to their SQL databases to create sharable, interactive dashboards. In addition to SQL, its analytics integrate with R and Python, allowing users to prep datasets, perform analysis, and create their own visualizations. Sisense acquired Periscope Data in mid-2019.N/A
Pricing
Microsoft Power BISisense for Cloud Data Teams
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Power BISisense for Cloud Data Teams
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft Power BISisense for Cloud Data Teams
Considered Both Products
Microsoft Power BI
Chose Microsoft Power BI
All others apps are enablers and Microsoft Power BI is the visual that end user sees which often adds more value to the end user to make strategic decisions from this. All are equally great but Microsoft Power BI is the end result
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI vs. Tableau Power BI cheaper and works well with Microsoft tools. Tableau has better visuals but is costly. Microsoft Power BII vs. Looker Looker is good for big data, but Microsoft Power BI is easier to use. Microsoft Power BI vs. Qlik Qlik is fast for big …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI provide a user friendly in many ways to analyse the data and visualization of the data .Stacking makes the works easier easily attach the table ,chart row and column through the various available tool ..it also reduces the work part and manpower mechanically …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is more flexible and it requires less effort in order to create a working environment. The results have an attractive and customizable display. The model is a star schema therefore it do not require specific database adaptation. Excel and csv files could be …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is free. If I didn't want to create a custom platform (i.e. my organization insisted on an existing platform that I *had* to use), I'd use Microsoft Power BI. For any start-up or SMB, I'd just use Claude & Grok to build it quickly, also for free. Would …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Same need to be large scale.
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is easier to learn, a lot of examples on YouTube, internet documentation books helps to the implementation and personalization of the dashboards easier to use than other platforms.
Chose Microsoft Power BI
While excel can be useful for a very quick data dump, Microsoft Power BI is able to bring that data to life, and show trends and the actual story of what is happening. Microsoft Power BI is the ultimate display tool, and allows us to share information quickly to the CORRECT …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Compared to this tool, Microsoft Power BI doesn't involve heavy coding and provides user friendly interface to visualize data. Microsoft Power BI reports can be shared and published without exposing your source code. Also, the reports are interactive providing drill down …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Power BI is much simple to use, and more modern than BusinessObjects, which has now been discontinued. It costs much less to license than Tableau which is perhaps more niche and designed better. It is also much more powerful for data analysis than excel, smartsheet, airtable, …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Some of the strengths are 1. User-Friendliness 2. Self-Service BI (Caters to all levels of the employees 3. Cost-effective. 4. Easy integration with Microsoft Suits. 5. DAX Calculations 6. Familiar Interface like traditional Excel. 7. Easier Self-Service platform for …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
It's got a larger user base and seems better supported. Personally it feels like alot more work getting comparable results from Tableau. Microsoft Power BI will be WAY easier to work with all your various data sources, if you are working in an environment with M365 already. …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
After several years using Google Looker Studio and BigQuery, Microsoft Power BI is a step-up in terms of visualizations. It is also much more powerful, leading to less errors and has a more intuitive interface. Looker studio has a focus on google analytics whereas Microsoft …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
NA - did not use any other software, yet. Happy with the services and features provided by Microsoft Power BI which helps us navigate through the client requests on a daily basis while also providing actionable insights / solutions with maximum efficiency and that too in a …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
It's the most widely used tool in most organizations
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Each has a different function. I think Microsoft Power BI is easier to use than Tableau and cheaper but SQL and databricks have so much more versatility
Chose Microsoft Power BI
We use Microsoft Power BI in addition to other software.
Chose Microsoft Power BI
I prefer Power BI because of its affordability and fewer complicated tools than Tableau. It's easy to use and compatible with other Microsoft products, which are mostly used in the IT industry. It's not limited to only one platform like Looker Studio, which is mostly used in …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is more flexible and can also handle more complex reporting scenarios. While Microsoft Excel is a great tool for analyzing data building visuals is not what it is made for. It is complicated to create Excel reports that will be interactive as a use wants to …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Qlik also builds dashboards upon your data. It's more expensive as Microsoft Power BI and needs as much training as Microsoft Power BI
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Being Microsoft environment it is extremely easy to interconnect the application with other Microsoft tools, such as power point or excel. On top of that, also communication through Microsoft teams is enabled which can result in very good collaboration and exchange of feedback …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
We actually chose both Power BI and Quantum Metric. We use them for different things, but they are very similar tools. Quantum does a good job of integrating with our website and app traffic, whereas we use Power BI for data analysis and importing data sets for further review. …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
We have used Microsoft Power BI for almost seven years. When looking for a reporting platform, remember that you are about to make a long-term choice. Moving reports to another system isn't easy. If you have, for example, more than 100 reports, the move to a different platform …
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
RStudio requires custom code from programmers and the decision was made to move to software instead of software developers. Microsoft Power BI didn't have the right data subscription capabilities for our customers.
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
Google Analytics works well but it does not have all of the bells and whistles that Periscope Data offers. Google Analytics is best used in a Google environment but if you are using other tools and programs outside of the Google universe, then Periscope Data is a much better …
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
Periscope is far more robust than these two similar products. For a start up just getting going they are fine alternatives, but as your business scales Google Charts becomes a hassle to manage and Keap becomes too much of a generalized product. While your business increases it …
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
Periscope is by far the best we looked at - I was evaluating as a user, not the primary decision maker, and user interface and ease of use was the primary factor in my decision. It is very easy to navigate and manipulate, and has an overall very polished view.
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
Periscope's lightweight footprint and customizable SQL-based reports make it a better choice for us than Tableau or Microsoft BI. We deal with millions of rows of transactional data in a SQL Server data warehouse, so having seamless front-end integration makes reporting seamless.
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
We use Jira here at SDC, as well as Periscope. These programs are use together and they work in tandem to get the issues resolved.
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
Sharing of visualisations and rapid prototypen/building, ease of use. UX is 20x better.
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
LookML was able to simplify development of views involving window calculations, but slowed down the overall development cycle as minor SQL edits required heavy code reviews.

Tableau has great interactive options but has proved non-performant with our database mix (MySQL, …
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
This is currently our primary visualization tool. There is no real option to do any meaningful math on your data, and you only have access to a very, very limited subset of information you stream into the cache. Periscope far exceeds this tool with the ability to combine data …
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
Different in the sense that you need to be able to manipulate data with Periscope while you just need to understand how data is manipulated with Amplitude (Periscope = you need to master SQL vs Amplitude = you need to understand the logic of SQL). Periscope is a more powerful …
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
Periscope Data enables data wrangling and is more familiar to SQL-savvy people - which are mostly analysts. Writing query is not really tedious for them, so it is not a huge problem. Quick and nice response from Periscope support is really helpful for the users.
Chose Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
I have not utilized any other tools like Periscope so it's hard to say how it stacks up against its competition.
Features
Microsoft Power BISisense for Cloud Data Teams
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.8
Ratings
8% above category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
9.2
Ratings
9% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.50 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Customizable dashboards10.00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.2
Ratings
2% above category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
8.8
Ratings
10% above category average
Drill-down analysis7.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.6
Ratings
3% above category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
9.6
Ratings
13% above category average
Publish to Web8.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Report Versioning9.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.7
Ratings
9% above category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
8.7
Ratings
7% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.00 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Predictive Analytics9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.6
Ratings
1% above category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
-
Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.0
Ratings
3% above category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
-
Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Application7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.4
Ratings
7% above category average
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams
-
Ratings
REST API8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Javascript API9.90 Ratings00 Ratings
iFrames8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Java API8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)8.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.40 Ratings00 Ratings
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User Ratings
Microsoft Power BISisense for Cloud Data Teams
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.9
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft Power BISisense for Cloud Data Teams
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power BI is great for sales tracking, financial reporting, and real-time operations monitoring. It integrates data from multiple sources, creating interactive dashboards for better decision-making. However, it's less ideal for real-time big data processing, offline access, or when deep customization is needed. It works best for structured reporting but struggles with highly complex data models.
Read full review
Sisense for Cloud Data Teams is suited so well for our project that works with lots of data and needs some ways to share data internally or externally with our clients. It's very easy to pull out the data from the sense in best and in a suitable format and moreover a huge number of options are available there to represent the data. All features of this Sisense for cloud data teams software can be taken advantage of if you have a team who are well versed in data analytics, data management, and programming.
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Pros
  • It is great at taking in large amounts of data and housing it all.
  • Microsoft Power BI is so user friendly and it's dashboards are very easy on the eye.
  • The ease of sharing dashboards makes it great for use across a large company.
Read full review
  • Rapid deployment of polished T-SQL-based data visualization charts and dashboards. Periscope supports a variety of database technologies, and allows users to write custom queries to display data.
  • Included caching to reduce server load.
  • Outstanding customer service/support, with expert advice as needed.
  • Constant updates and new features.
  • Built-in SQL formatters take the pain out of manipulating date/time objects.
Read full review
Cons
  • It would be easier for users could Microsoft Power BI and Excel used the same programming languages.
  • Would like to see the online version of Microsoft Power BI be as powerful as the desktop version.
  • Publishing a Microsoft Power BI file online and then having to save the file is somewhat redundant.
  • Would like to export each page or chart as an image.
Read full review
  • Some of the dashboards can be slow to load; especially when they have lots of features and widgets.
  • The software could be made a little easier for people that don't have a data or programming background.
  • It is pricey so not a great option for small companies or research/home projects.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft Power BI is an excellent and scalable tool. It has a learning curve, but once you get past that, the sky is the limit and you can build from the most simple to the most complex dashboards. I have built everything from simple reports with only a few data points to complex reports with many pages and advanced filtering.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Usability
Takes a little bit to get used to it. Not natively intuitive but fairly straight forward to pick up. Also docking it a few points because you can create a really clean, simple UI in Claude very quickly that's faster than building all of this yourself in Microsoft Power BI.
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My company has had Periscope for various use cases in the past and I think that this program opens up complex data reports to non-technical people in a really accessible way (even though the learning curve is a big one). We are now integrating Sisense for Cloud Data Teams at a larger level both for internal data exploration and for customer facing dashboards and reports.
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Support Rating
It is a fantastic tool, you can do almost everything related with data and reports, it is a perfect substitutive of Power Point and Excel with a high evolution and flexibility, and also it is very friendly and easy to share. I think all companies should have Power BI (or other BI tool) in their software package and if they are in the MS Suite, for sure Power BI should be the one due to all the benefits of the MS ecosystem.
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The user interface is just amazing and it's really very easy to use and navigate, even for a newbie. Mostly it provides us the accurate data.
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Implementation Rating
It was integrated with our erp easily and was accessible on cloud.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
All others apps are enablers and Microsoft Power BI is the visual that end user sees which often adds more value to the end user to make strategic decisions from this. All are equally great but Microsoft Power BI is the end result
Read full review
Periscope is far more robust than these two similar products. For a start up just getting going they are fine alternatives, but as your business scales Google Charts becomes a hassle to manage and Keap becomes too much of a generalized product. While your business increases it is generally best to get multiple specialized pieces of technology to help you maintain integrity in your data, and Periscope Data allows. Worth the money.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • We're still early in the adoption process at this company, but we've illustrated how bad data keeps us from being more productive. ~25% of a team's work week was dedicated to effectively cleaning up entries, but it was always seen as a normal to them.
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  • Very positive - has allowed us to glean insights quickly and in real time.
  • Definitely helpful for evaluating performance of accounts and employees.
  • Versatile - we even use it with recruiting metrics, our software team uses it to test feature deployment.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Microsoft Power BI Screenshots

Screenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Turns insights into impact for business usersScreenshot of Power BI integrates easily with Microsoft 365Screenshot of Microsoft Power BI - AI-Powered CapabilitiesScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Copilot can be used to create reportsScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Data HubScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Scales as organizational needs grow