DOMO vs. Tableau — Round by Round
Let me be your BI consultant. Best yet, let me be your free consultant on the following question:
DOMO vs. Tableau — What should I use?
I’ve had the privilege of working in both BI tools, and I can say that both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses.
Tableau is definitely more widely used than DOMO, but is that because it is better than DOMO? On the other hand, DOMO has an insane and almost cult-like following with events like its yearly DOMOpalooza, but is it better than Tableau?
Time to hash this out. Gloves on. Let’s make this a clean fight.
Data consultants, are you ready?
Let’s Go!
Round 1: Connecting to Datasources
Winner: DOMO — No Contest
No contest. DOMO wins hands with its 1K+ data connectors. Tableau has the main integrations that you’ll want like Excel, Salesforce, PostgreSQL and such, but DOMO just has a MASSIVE amount of supported connections.
Easy. Round 1 to DOMO.
Round 2: Ease of Use
Winner: DOMO — Close Win
Tableau and DOMO are pretty user friendly, and you can easily connect your data sets and get creating dashboards quickly.
Both platforms provide point-and-click functionality and don’t require you to know how to do code, and both provide coding capabilities with SQL.
I found Tableau’s online dashboard creator to be a little clunky and hard to maneuver. DOMO’s cards and dashboards are just easier to manipulate in dashboards, and its stories capability just takes it over the line.
Round 3: Combining and Cleaning Data
Winner: DOMO
DOMO has an amazing ability to combine expert and easy to use ETL and data flow visualizations without requiring the user to know how to code in SQL. But if you want to get deep into your SQL joins and data cleaning, DOMO provides a nice MySQL workspace where you can do exactly what you want with your datasets.
DOMO also provides Beast Mode functions where you can do SQL functions like CASE WHEN queries to clean data right on a chart on a dashboard. It’s super neat, and I love it!
Tableau does have the ability to do SQL functions right on a chart, but it’s not as nice. It also has Tableau Prep Builder, but it is not as clean as DOMO’s user interface. In addition, I found that to do a lot of the data cleaning and matching between datasets, you’re going to need another add-on platform called Alteryx to really do all of what DOMO can do. Alteryx looks like a great platform as well, but it’s a whole other software that you’ll have to purchase to make Tableau function like DOMO.
In short, DOMO’s Magic ETL and Beast Mode features are more fun to use than Tableau’s. #roundtoDOMO
Round 4: Data Science Deep Dives
Winner: Draw — R Plugin Functionalities
This is where you make data scientists super happy. Both Tableau and DOMO connect directly to R, sending data to and from your favorite R development platform. What you can do with this is functionality is AMAZING!
Got year-by-year customer data and want to know who is most likely to purchase a new product based on past purchasing history? R is the place to do that analysis, process the predictions, and send the data to be presented in a Tableau/DOMO dashboard. When I did this in with DOMO, I used R Studio and had a data-wowing time.
Round 5: Dashboards for Public Data and Usage
Winner: Tableau — No Contest
Tableau has a free tool called Tableau Public where you can easily create and share your dashboards on public websites via their embed features. Free. Easy to set up. You just have to commit to the data being consumed publicly, so don’t publish your private data here!
As it currently stands, DOMO isn’t truly meant for publicly sharing data. It does have features like DOMO Everywhere and embeded cards enabling the public sharing of data, but from what I understand, it can’t compete with Tableau Public’s $0 price tag.
In short, if you’re sharing your data publicly, use Tableau Public or Google Data Studio.
Round 6: Price
Winner: Tableau — No Contest
This is the kicker.
DOMO’s price is not for the faint of heart, and they really don’t share their pricing model. But from what I’ve read online about the starter plan from 2018, you’re looking at about $6K for 5 users. For their premium plans, you’re looking at $20K+.
DOMO is a thoroughbred racehorse, no question. You pay for a great platform, you get a great platform.
Tableau charges $70/user for creators and $35/user for other analytics users (min of 5 users). This in comparison with DOMO’s 2018 standard plan reported prices would be about half the cost ($2.9K).
Fight Winner: DOMO, if you have the coin…
I’ll be honest; I’m a little biased towards DOMO here because its such a dream to work with, but it really is an enterprise-level software that only organizations with larger pockets can purchase. It probably will be price-exclusive for the near future because it is more of a niche player, but maybe it will drop its price in the future and open its market appeal.
Tableau is a great option, and it’s also super awesome to work with. It shines with Tableau Public and how quick it is to get off the ground, but it requires additional tools and isn’t as user-friendly as DOMO.
TL;DR: If you have the budget, get DOMO. If you’re on a budget, Tableau works great. If you need free, Google Data Studio #forthewin!
Note: I nor my data consulting company was compensated by DOMO or Tableau for this article. I just want to help other data scientists and companies have better insight in both platforms from an end-user perspective. Information can be hard to compare between the tools, and I hope my first-hand experience and analysis of both platforms can help inform your BI decision.
