We are aware of how challenging it might be to locate the best free BI Tools. There is no shortage of free business intelligence tools available; the key is to identify the one that best suits your requirements. For this reason, we have compiled a list of the best free business intelligence tools in this post to assist companies in navigating the complex and perplexing world of complex software terminology and data.
Since business intelligence software has typically been very expensive, many people are forced to make compromises on features like a user-friendly interface or multiple degrees of functionality or settle for a program that only partially meets their needs. The other group comprises of ‘freemium’ BI tools.
These tools seem to be free, but they require “premium” upgrades that are very expensive. The other option is to use open-source BI tools, even though we might prefer to avoid such solutions.
Though it’s simple to become misled, open-source and free BI products are very distinct. First of all, developing open-source software demands a great deal of technical expertise. Even if we do possess this expertise, the firms that hold such software frequently attempt to upsell us. Either offering more features or granting access to their support services—both crucial components of open-source development—is the catch.
Where should we turn if open-source and freemium products are frequently deceptive and commercial tools are pricey?
In order to facilitate your study and make it simpler for you to locate the list of the greatest free BI software currently on the market, we have put up a list of free BI tools. Reviews that are objective and beneficial have been supplied with these free business intelligence tools to assist in making an informed choice.
Table of Content
- Zoho Analytics
- Qualtrics Research Core
- QlikView
- Microsoft Power BI
- Heap Analytics
- Domo
- SimilarWeb Pro
- Hootsuite
- IBM Watson Analytics
- Tableau Public
1. Zoho Analytics
Zoho Analytics is our top free BI tool. This upgraded version of Zoho Reports is a powerful self-service BI platform. It offers one of the industry’s best data analytics and online reporting solutions. For instance, it can easily track core business metrics as well as identify obvious and concealed trends. What’s more, this tool is user-friendly and even non-tech-savvy staff can generate critical reports on their own.
This BI tool, likewise, supports close collaboration and provides industry-grade security. This means all your work teams can closely collaborate on projects or in meeting sales targets, etc. Even reports generated from multiple users can be easily shared with each other and with external partners or clients. What’s more, Zoho Analytics automatically sends smart notifications for updates, etc. You can also test-drive the premium plans for free.
2. Qualtrics Research Core
Cloud-based research software Qualtrics Research Core is built to empower businesses of different sizes to make informed decisions. The platform provides powerful tools that enable businesses to uncover customer insights like satisfaction rates as well as transactional and relational NPS. Besides, it streamlines product research, marketing research, brand research, and aid planning.
At its core, Qualtrics Research Core makes it easy to design surveys, distribute surveys for speedy data collection, and analyze results to predict market trends. Most importantly, it helps businesses break up data silos and collect information and vital feedback across every channel in one place. With the platform, it’s easy to pull data from third-party systems like Zendesk, Salesforce, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Zapier, Tableau, and more. Should you want to test the premium features of this product, be sure to try the Qualtrics Research Core free demo.
3. QlikView
QlikView is a BI data discovery solution that allows you to build your own guided analytics applications as well as dashboards designed to address business challenges. The solution enables you to unravel data insights and relationships from various sources utilizing unique data discovery and natural global search.
This robust tool offers both default and custom data connectors, letting you import data from popular databases. In addition, its open API means applicability for all sorts of software systems and usability for a wide range of analytics requirements and scenarios, regardless if you are a small business or a large corporation.
With QlikView, you get unprecedented control over analytics experiences, top-down control of analytics apps, and granular control of dashboards, layout, and design. QlikView can be deployed through its API, on-premise or via the cloud.
4. Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI offers a suite of business analytics tools built to help businesses systematically scrutinize data and share insights. It allows you to transform your company’s data into attractive and comprehensible visuals, letting you easily collect and organize information and craft effective business strategies.
This BI tool is designed to identify trends as they occur, track your performance, and get answers fast through comprehensive dashboards that support any device. Originally planned as an add-on for the Microsoft ecosystem, the BI solution has transformed into a fully functional standalone product to serve the self-service BI market.
Read Also: What is The Best Business Intelligence Tool?
Among the benefits that Microsoft Power BI provides include unlimited access to on-premise and cloud data, shareable interactive visualizations, and quick data interaction. Finally, being part of Microsoft’s lineup of business products, it can be integrated with other widely used Microsoft business tools like Excel, Azure, and SQL Server.
5. Heap Analytics
Heap Analytics utilizes an innovative approach in business intelligence—capturing all user interactions. It does this by automatically capturing every click, tap, gesture, page view, and form submission done by all your users. Thereafter, it analyzes these user interactions without tracking codes and tags or waiting for data. This provides you with agile insights and helps you make better and faster decisions for your business.
Its insight automation infrastructure is loaded with features such as data capture, event visualizer, user search and interactions, and funnels, among others. Heap makes it easy for you to identify users in-depth, monitor custom events, and generate reports based on real-time data, resulting in accurate and timely reports.
In instances where events are not automatically captured by Heap, you can make modifications and assign custom events with a specific number of properties to thoroughly drill down on these events to give you the information you need. With Heap, you can get real-time insights in the quickest way possible without compromising the accuracy of your data.
6. Domo
Domo is a business intelligence platform that boasts of the widest data set and connector support as well as a unique set of social collaboration features. Connecting all your people to all your data and systems has never been easier.
You can pull data from everywhere, integrate everything, and connect everyone with over 500 data connectors that can bring in data from any third-party source whether in the cloud, on-premise, or proprietary systems. It allows your employees to engage with real-time data, and decision-makers to easily act on data through more than 300 mobile and desktop interactive charts and dashboards.
Business leaders can run their businesses from their phones and have anything they need wherever they are. Domo’s native mobile app enables employees to quickly manage their tasks using their mobile devices while adding context to data, getting predictive notification alerts and having a holistic view in order to make more informed actions. Only a free trial is offered together with three premium plans.
7. SimilarWeb Pro
SimilarWeb Pro is a BI solution that offers website analytics tools that enable you to see traffic statistics for any of your websites and provide complete visibility on your business health. This helps you track opportunities, review your performance against competitors, and make smarter business decisions.
Meanwhile, its capabilities make it an ideal solution for agencies, business analysts, marketing teams, and sales teams looking for ways to boost their traffic, broaden their audience, and discover new growth opportunities. A SimilarWeb browser extension is offered to allow you to gain insights into any website’s statistics and strategy with the click of a button, all in one tab.
With SimilarWeb, you’ll be able to identify emerging trends and new players as well as understand consumer intent and journey. Likewise, it allows you to explore new opportunities, discover your competition’s analytics and online strategies, and benchmark against your competitors and industry.
8. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social relationship software platform that helps you easily find, schedule, manage, and report on social media content. Think of it as your social media intelligence and communications platform to aid you in crafting your social media strategies and transforming messages into meaningful relationships.
This BI tool lets you simplify social media reporting by quickly finding and scheduling effective social content and quantifying conversions, all in a single secure platform. You can also find and filter social conversations by keyword, hashtag, and location in multiple languages to learn what people are saying about your brand, competitors, and industry.
Moreover, Hootsuite streamlines many processes including automatically scheduling hundreds of social media posts at once across your social accounts, managing, and pre-approving social content that your teams post. It also allows tracking and measuring the impact of your social media campaigns through comprehensive reporting.
9. IBM Watson Analytics
IBM Watson Analytics is a one-click data discovery and predictive analysis solution, letting you enjoy the benefits of advanced analytics without the complexity. All you need is a web browser or an iPad app to quickly understand what your data is telling you.
You can explore relationships, test correlations, develop outlooks, search for insights, and instantly get answers. Its automated predictive analytics and cognitive capabilities, as well as smart data discovery, enable you to interact with data conversationally.
Harnessing the power of Watson Analytics is as easy as loading a spreadsheet or connecting to relational data and choosing a recommended starting point or typing a question, and you get instant visualizations. Hence, if you need to spot a trend fast or your team wants to view insights in a dashboard, Watson Analytics can provide it quickly. You can likewise find business drivers to create a target and quickly see its top influencers, and select a template to drag and drop data into and create a dashboard.
10. Tableau Public
Tableau Public is the free offering of the Tableau Software Company that develops an array of products for visual data preparation, best-in-class analytics, and secure collaboration to support your end-to-end analytical workflow. From connection through collaboration, Tableau gives you a secure and flexible end-to-end analytics platform for your data.
You can match the skills of any data worker with the capabilities they need as well as prepare, create, explore, or view trusted data with Tableau’s governed self-service analytics platform. With Tableau Public, you can create and share interactive charts and graphs, stunning maps, live dashboards, and fun applications in minutes, then publish them anywhere on the web.
What’s more, the software accurately shows you changes in discreet data and emphasizes levels of changes and durations in values. You can also design, customize and publish a single dashboard with optimized views on any device.
Bottom line
It can be restrictive to use free business intelligence software. You should take into consideration premium solutions if you require instant access to the complete power of business intelligence. In the long run, it might prove to be a wise investment and a more lucrative choice.
According to a 2014 Nucleus Research research, businesses received an average return of $13.01 for each dollar invested on analytics solutions, such as BI software. That represents a whopping 1300% ROI! An additional benefit is that high-quality BI solutions are now offered in affordable packages.
This is your first step into the world of business intelligence with a free solution. It can only offer you so much, though, much like other freemium programmes. Freemiums are intended to serve as your gateway to more feature-rich premium options that fully utilise company intelligence.
Increasing your company’s level of performance is important, and it all begins with making informed judgements. One of the primary benefits of business intelligence (BI) is the ability to make decisions based on qualified and quantifiable information obtained from data that has been gathered, cleaned, analysed, and visualised.
