No matter what kind of business you run, you will deal with different pieces of data that need to be managed and understood – whether it’s website analytics, customer information, or payments.
As your business grows, the amount of data you deal with will also grow, and you’ll also be dealing with data from different areas of the business, so it’s much easier to have it all in one place so that you can easily access it.
If you’ve previously used tools like Excel spreadsheets to store and manage data, you’ll know that they’re good to a point, but they’re not designed to store large amounts of data without becoming clunky.
With limited filtering and automation capabilities available in these tools, things can soon become quite chaotic and disorganised – which is not what you need when trying to run a business.
A popular online tool that solves the problem of data management and organisation for businesses is Tableau.
Although Tableau is a great solution, it comes with a relatively high price tag that is often out of reach for smaller business owners, sole traders or freelancers.
So, in this post, we will look at some of the top free alternatives to Tableau that can help you get started with managing and organising your business data better.
Looker Studio
If you already use any of the Google products, such as Google Workspace or Google Analytics, then this product is something you’ll get on with.
Like all Google products, Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) is completely cloud-based, so there’s nothing to download, and it can be easily shared across your team.
All of your data can be accessed and managed in one place using interactive dashboards to help compile reports based on various data sources.
Microsoft Power BI
Another cloud-based free alternative to Tableau is Microsoft Power BI. This tool helps users to compile and analyse data from various sources in one place, including Excel spreadsheets, SQL databases, and other cloud platforms.
Microsoft Power BI also allows you to create comprehensive reports and dashboards based on your data insights to share with your wider team.
QlikView
QlikView is a highly innovative and powerful tool that can help businesses of all sizes to collect, manage, and understand data better.
The self-managed side of this tool comes with a drag-and-drop feature that allows you to build customised, interactive dashboards and reports to view your data in a way that works for you.
Tableau Public
If you’re interested in using Tableau but can’t quite justify the cost at the moment, Tableau Public is a great free tool to help you get started with the basics until you need something more advanced.
Using Tableau Public, you can create and share interactive data publicly.
D3.js
This tool works as a Javascript library that allows you to compile data from HTML, CSS, and SVG that can then be used to create custom and interactive data reports.
We hope this post has helped you understand the various free alternatives to Tableau and how each differs. While they certainly all have their unique pros and cons, the one thing they share is that they’re free and powerful enough to help you move away from clunky spreadsheets and organise your data in an easier way until you’re ready to move up to the more advanced capabilities offered with Tableau.
