Microsoft Power BI

RATING:

4.6

(1648)

About Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a web-based business analytics and data visualization platform that is suitable for businesses of all sizes. It monitors important organizational data and also from all apps used by organizations. Microsoft Power BI provides tools to quickly analyze, transform and visualize data, and also share reports. Microsoft Power BI offers SQL Server Analysis Services through which users can quickly build reusable models using the overall data. The software enables users to integrate their apps, so as to deliver reports along with real-time dashboards. Microsoft Power BI also provides self-service access to major third-party cloud sources such as GitHub, Zendesk, Marketo and Salesforce. Microsoft Power BI is available both in free and paid (Pro) versions. ...

Awards and Recognition

FrontRunner 2024
Software Advice's FrontRunners report ranks top products based on user reviews, which helps businesses find the right software.

Microsoft Power BI Pricing

Power BI Pro: $9.99 per user, per month Power BI Premium: $20 Per user/month and $4,995 Per capacity/month

Starting price: 

$10.00 per month

Free trial: 

Not Available

Free version: 

Available

Overview

Microsoft Power BI Reviews

Overall Rating

4.6

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4

Customer Support

4

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4.5

Most Helpful Reviews for Microsoft Power BI

1 - 5 of 1,618 Reviews

Eric

Mining & Metals, 11 - 50 employees

Used free trial

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

Reviewed March 2023

Makes Excel-based Data Pretty

User Profile

Michael

Verified reviewer

Tobacco, 501-1,000 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed June 2020

Ugly numbers to pretty pictures

Management loves it, I love developing with it but getting certain others to adopt it can be a bit of a challenge.

PROS

As the title says, it turns ugly numbers into pretty pictures. It is easy enough for a non-developer to use and turn a mess of data into an intelligent and understandable story.

CONS

It literally changes every three months. You just get used to it and with the next update a lot has changed. I don't really see this as a con though because this is more like a Christmas present waiting to see what they will have made better this go around.

Reason for choosing Microsoft Power BI

Cloud based, integrated with other Microsoft products and it was first to have a huge amount of AI integration and capabilities.

Reasons for switching to Microsoft Power BI

When preparing charts in MS Excel you wind up with too many human errors and you have to have someone who really knows excel to build great dashboards.

Katie

Retail, 11-50 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed November 2023

Our trusty BI tool for all-things data

I've been a huge fan of Power BI since we switched to it from Excel. We use it to create dashboards, set up automated reports, and anything else that requires reporting. In the years that I've used it, I've very rarely ran into bugs or performance issues. It's relatively easy to set up, has very advanced reporting capabilities, and tons of integrations you can set up pretty easily to pull data from different places. You can't fault it for BI.

PROS

We used to use Excel but switched over to Power BI for the more advanced features. And they've been very very handy for us. The data cleaning works a lot better, there's tons more cutomization options, and some integrations have been made much easier compared to just Excel.

CONS

The imterface isn't the best to be honest, especially compared to stuff like Tableu. But gets the job done nonetheless.

Reason for choosing Microsoft Power BI

We were already pretty used to MS tools, and Power BI looked like it would be easier for us to move to, so we decided on it.

Reasons for switching to Microsoft Power BI

Excel worked pretty well for us as well, but we decided to move to Power BI for the advanced charting options.

Anonymous

201-500 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: GetApp

OVERALL RATING:

2

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

1

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

2

Reviewed March 2017

A pretty reporting tool for some (!) Microsoft Products, but pretty much useless outside of the Microsoft Landscape

In light of the hype around this "Tableau destroyer" in recent months, I want to highlight some fundamental flaws in data connectivity and reports maintenance of Power BI, which the Product Team so far has turned down as "not in scope". In practice, though, this renders Power BI pretty useless for getting dara from any 3rd party products, in the cloud in particular. This review reflects Power BI as of mid March 2017. I have gathered my knowledge from testing, community interaction and a dozen tickets with Power BI Pro Support. The focus lies on getting data via Web Services, much aligned with Microsoft’s «Cloud First» Strategy. 1) Power BI Online is in the cloud, but does not allow for HTTP calls. Power BI Desktop allows for HTTP calls, but only with static authentication parameters. First of all, a distinction needs to be made between Power BI Online and Power BI Desktop. While Power BI Online is the "master" that ultimately allows you to share and publish your reports, user experience in design is diminished by HTML limitations (you may know from Word or Excel Online) and more importantly, data connectivity (Get Data) is limited to SQL Servers on Azure and about 20 to 30 plugins from 3rd party solutions at present. Take note that on Power BI Online, you cannot select or manage your Gateways, either. This brings the attention to the Power BI Desktop client. Updated every one to two months, the Desktop client brings data connectors necessary to connect to a larger number of data sources. With the Web connector, HTTP calls been configured, although with just static headers and parameters and Basic and Windows authentication only. Importantly, though, Power BI Desktop includes Microsoft Power Query, which you may know from Excel 2016 already. With M Scripts, you can script and customise in many ways and most interestingly, convert it into table form quickly. This is where Power Query shines. However, Power Query does not seem to call on methods for nonces and timestamps required in token based authentication (OAuth for example). (Should this be incorrect, please please let me know. I have been browsing the fora and nagging Support too long already.) What’s really amusing here is that Microsoft Azure uses OAuth 2.0 themselves. So, you cannot run any reporting on Microsoft’s Azure AD or Resource Manager database for example, a notorious blackbox. Back to Powershell. (Power BI does not accept Powershell feeds.) In short, while Power BI Online does not allow to get any data out of the web (except for those 20 to 30 plugins, mostly Microsoft Products), Power BI Desktop allows for Web calls, but only with static parameters and thus, basically with your user credentials. That’s a big limitation in Data Connectivity. 2) With Power BI Online being the master, the HTTP calls cannot be scheduled or refreshed in the cloud. Now that you have configured your HTTP call (with risky user credentials), you want to publish your report and have it refreshed on a scheduled basis, say every day. Tough luck. While you can publish your Report to Power BI Online and subsequently a broader audience, it’s a static image of your Desktop data. You cannot schedule a data refresh in Power BI Online (because there is no Web feature anyway) and you cannot even refresh the data manually as this requires republishing the Report anew. You risk your management looking at outdated data whenever you forgot to republish your report and sneak the new URL into your dashboards and iframes. 3) The On-Premises Data Gateway is pretty useless for Web Services. Yes, there is the On-Premises Data Gateway. Yes, you can configure Web Services in the gateway, although it’s pretty ironic to route web calls via on-premises infrastructure. But did you ever try it? That is, you cannot specify any HTTP headers fort he calls at all, lest writing a Power Query script. And thus, we are back at authentication via Basic and Windows only and writing REST scripts in the data source for every single HTTP call because with no Headers and Body, all parameters need to be coded in the URI. Will you do that? At the end of the day, Power BI is Microsoft's long overdue acknowledgement that Excel and some Dynamics Reports do not cut it for Reporting purposes. Indeed, for reporting on SQL Server, Dynamics 365 (if you want to afford it), and Excel and Access databases stored in your OneDrive, Microsoft Power BI does a neat job. However, as soon as you want to integrate with 3rd party systems or via web services in particular, Power BI presents so many limitations in authentication, Header and Body configuration, scripting, and scheduling that you need to configure an entire SQL Server environment (on Azure or On-Premises via feature poor Gateway) and write a SQL CRL interface or buy Azure Data Factory to get that data in. For some pretty reports, do you really want to buy and customise all that BI infrastructure on Azure? My advice to Microsoft: Work on Data Connectivity, especially in Power BI Online, rather than more visuals for those limited data sources. Your Microsoft clients will consider Power BI a given for the utter lack of reporting in Office 365, Azure, or Dynamics 365 (yes, pushing it there). My advice to Users: If the connectors are not listed, look somewhere else. (And make sure it’s your use case that is listed. Power BI announced an Azure AD connector, but rather than reporting on Users, Groups, or Enterprise Apps, you can only see on a nice map where the last logins happened.) Is it a Tableau destroyer? No. It’s a long overdue acknowledgement for necessary reporting with the potential of being a solid Business Intelligence solution ONCE focus comes to lie more on data.

PROS

pretty visuals Power Query On-premises Data Gateway responsible Pro Support

CONS

lack of data sources pretty useless for 3rd Party Web Sources

John

Fishery, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed January 2024

Our one solution for all-things data

MS Power BI has been a wonderful asset for our data side. We use it for all kinds of things from putting together a basic report for a presentation to designing dashboards with a dozen KPIs all being synced in realtime. It's hugely powerful and maintains good performance even with large data sets. 10/10 would recommend.

PROS

We used to be on Excel which was pretty good by itself, but Power BI takes it to a whole another level. It has tons of advanced features like better data connectors, embedded reports, better dashboards and worklows, the ability to handle bigger data, and more.

CONS

It would be good to have more dashboard and report templates to work off of, and we've had issues with cloud syncing in the past that caused us a lot of headache.

Reasons for switching to Microsoft Power BI

Excel is also pretty good but Power BI has a lot more advanced reporting features that Excel doesn't have.