10 Best Business Intelligence Tools (BI Tools) Of 2023

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In this review, I want to help you find the best business intelligence tools and other reporting software.

In order to help you pick what reporting software you need, I’ll share the business intelligence applications to include on your analytical tools shortlist and explain what web-based reporting tools are. I’ll go over what to look for in a comprehensive business intelligence dashboard and answer some basic FAQs about business intelligence solutions.

You may rely on business intelligence reporting tools for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to gaining insight into consumer behavior, turning data into actionable information, efficiency improvements, increasing sales through better marketing intelligence, and a number of other business-growth-oriented motivations. You’ll find software to undertake data discovery, make interactive reports, and drill down into your marketing analytics—there’s a tool for everything under the sun.

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1. User Interface (UI): How well-designed is it? Does it offer clear displays and intuitive navigation?
2. Usability: Is this easy to learn and master? Are there tutorials and training? Especially for enterprise reporting tools, the should offer various types of tech and user support to help onboard various members of your org.
3. Features & Functionality: How many of the key management reporting tools features and functions does it provide, and how powerful are they? Specifically, I looked for:

• Customizable Dashboards: the best BI solutions offer a single screen display with multiple visualizations, along with the ability to interconnect the visualizations (so any filters or selections will affect all the visualizations) or maintain each one as independent. It should reflect changes in real-time and allow you to create customized displays of key data.
• Drill Down and Data Filters: includes features such as drop-down menus, search filters and slicers, as well as the ability to drill down into the details and back up to data summaries.
• Web-based Interface For Clients: it’s simplest if reporting solutions that are client-facing offer web-based client interfaces, as it’s more efficient and easier to administer than desktop-based client interfaces.
• Scheduled and Automated Reports: the tool should help you easily monitor progress. This includes the ability to schedule automatic updates to be sent out to teams, send out automatic reports to clients, and set up automatic notifications to be made aware of key dates or thresholds.
• High Quality Diagramming: basic tools include bar, line, pie, area and radar chart types, and more advanced diagrams include heat maps, scatter plots, bubble charts, histograms, and geospatial maps. The best reporting tools let you mix and match to create diagrams that use a combination of these visualizations.

4. Integrations: Integrations offerings can be divided into three broad categories. 1) How well an app integrates into your software for seamlessly embedded BI visualizations? 2) And, does the software integrate with any third-party apps; does it offer plug-ins, connectors, and/or extension for your other workflow software? 3) What and how many different data sources can it connect to and pull from?
5. Value for $: How appropriate is the price for its features, capabilities, and use case? Is pricing clear, transparent and flexible?

Best Business Intelligence Tools Overviews

1

Zoho Analytics

Best business intelligence tool for small companies

Zoho Analytics is a great business intelligence tool for small businesses, given their large feature set, simple interface, and affordable pricing for a small number of users.

This tool lets you pull data from a wide range of sources and build out intuitive and functional reports in order to analyze the visualized data. AI assistant “Zia” will answer questions typed into a query box using the data collected, combined with machine learning and natural language processing technologies.

Zoho Analytics takes the prize for my favorite in features and functionality. While most of the software reviewed here can sport a robust BI system, Zoho goes above and beyond with features like their AI assistant, their focus on ease of collaboration, tons of third party integration options, and Android and iOS mobile apps.

A few minor cons for Zoho include that the SQL tutorials could be built out a little bit better. Additionally, the reporting pivot view/summaries would benefit from having an “OR” or “CONTAINS” command in order to better pull out the data that you need.

They have integrations with Zoho Analytics, SAlesforce CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Hubspot CRM, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Bing Ads, Zoho Surveys, Survey Monkey, Facebook, TWitter, YouTube,QuickBooks, Xero, Shopify, Zendesk, and more.

Zoho Analytics starts from $24/month for 2 users and has a free 15-day trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

4.2

145

15-day free trial + free demo available

From $24/month

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2

ClickUp

Best for BI tool integrations

ClickUp is a project management software powerhouse that has the functionality to pull tons of data from within the software and display it in the beautiful graphs you see on the screenshot above. Although not a BI tool by nature, it can definitely inform your decisions.

However, I have to say that ClickUp has recognized that it cannot compete with BI tools with the product as is. For that reason, they have an integration with Tableau. This integration allows Tableau to grab a screenshot of one of your ClickUp spaces and aggregate it on their end with all the rest of your business data.

ClickUp offers native integrations with Tableau, Slack, Google Suite, Dropbox, and many more tools, as well as over 1,000+ integrations through Zapier.

ClickUp is free with limited storage for an unlimited number of users. Paid plans start at $5/user/month and offer a free trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

4.7

4135

Freemium plan available

From $9/user/month

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3

NetSuite

Best customizable BI software

NetSuite is a cloud BI ERP business software solution. The tool combines financial information, dashboards, reporting features, predictive analytics, and other features to provide a complete set of BI functions.

NetSuite allows users to automate project creation when specific services are sold and automatically track percent complete, time budget, and time spent on project tasks. Reports for utilization and backlog help analyze employee workloads and efficiency for business users.

NetSuite’s Project Management module seamlessly integrates with the NetSuite accounting system. In addition to project management and time and expense tracking, you can create and issue invoices, compare project performance to budgets and other metrics. NetSuite Project Management module manages revenue recognition, expenses, unbilled balances, and other project-related financials.

Other key capabilities include Multiple Project Types, Automate Job Creation, the Project Center, Timesheets, Mobile Time and Expense, Performance Measurement, and Project Tracking Reports.

Pricing for NetSuite is available upon request.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

4

1

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

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4

datapine

Best business intelligence dashboards

Datapine is a great business intelligence software as it combines simple, intuitive usability with advanced analytics capabilities. The self-service BI solution empowers business users and data analysts alike to generate actionable business insights and make well-informed data-driven decisions.

Datapine is a comprehensive BI Suite, that offers all needed features within your analytics journey. First of all, you can connect literally any kind of data source (databases, flat files, CRM and ERP-systems, marketing, social media or helpdesk data, etc.) with a few clicks. Optionally, you can store connected data in their high-speed data warehouse to increase querying speed. The analyzer section in the screenshot above is the core part of the product, where data analysis and visualizations are done. Besides doing analysis and building charts by drag and drop, here you will find also advanced features like drill-downs, conditional formatting, trend identification, or predictions.

Additional strengths of datapine are their dynamic, interactive business dashboards. They offer a wealth of innovative dashboard features and have a large dashboard gallery, providing over 80 dashboard templates for different areas of applications (business functions, industries, platforms). Dashboards can be shared easily in multiple ways, including, among others, automatic email reports, sharing via URL, or advanced embedding options.

Datapine offers a 14-day free trial without any limitations with custom pricing starting at 250$ per account.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

4.6

27

Free 14 days trial

From $249.00/month

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5

Domo

Best for sharing analytics with external vendor portals

The Domo Business Cloud is a platform that lets you aggregate data from multiple sources and build custom workflow apps. Their features include dashboards and reporting, machine learning, predictive analytics, and external self-service reporting.

I like the focus that Domo places on your external relationships with vendors and other stakeholders. The name is Domo Everywhere, and it’s a feature that lets you build portals for your external partners. Therefore, they can analyze the data you decide to share with them on their own and draw their own insights.

Further, the data visualization boards are independent widgets that can be edited, filtered, and resized with a couple of clicks. Lastly, the platform allows you to set permissions on both internal and external users, regardless of the account (Domo or not Domo).

Domo integrates with external data sources through their 1000+ pre-built connectors, which include Shopify, Salesforce, Amazon S3, Adobe Analytics, Sharepoint, and Survey Monkey.

Domo has a free trial available, and prices can be quoted upon request.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

4.4

632

Free trial + free demo available

Pricing upon request

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6

Looker

Best database BI reporting tool

Create easy-to-read reports and visual oriented interactive dashboards that display data-rich actionable insight for defining business metrics, locating value, and discovering interconnectivity between tables. Resources and features include custom applications, embedded visualizations, data science workflows, the ability to host on Public Clouds (like AWS and GCP), and more.

They offer a free interactive training course and many other tutorial-like resources, which is why I was able to score them so highly in the usability section of the evaluation criteria. Beneath the “Getting Started” tab, you’ll notice that they have plenty of self-help resources for viewing raw data, building tools, and developing models.

The downfall of this software is that writing the queries is not incredibly user friendly. On top of that, data analytics tasks take a significant amount of time to render and run queries. When it comes to big data, it may get sluggish.

They connect with databases from Redshift, Snowflake, BigQuery, as well as 50+ supported SQL dialects like Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, MySQL, Oracle, Amazon Athena, Amazon Aurora, and more.

Looker starts at $3,000/month for 10 users ($50/additional user) and has a free demo.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

4.4

1082

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7

Tableau

Best enterprise business intelligence tool

Tableau is a robust, scalable analytics platform with desktop, cloud or on-site options. It boats an interactive, visual analysis style and allows you to securely consume your data via browser, desktop, mobile, or embedded into any application. They offer over 900 learning resources, including over 100 training videos.

They excel in a specific area of the features and functions evaluations criteria section: flexibility. Tableau is easily scalable; offered by server, desktop and/or cloud; available on all device types, be it PC or smartphone; and they have free analytics resources for students, educators and smaller not-for-profits. Whatever your niche, you are sure to find something that fits.

Tableau can join with data collection systems like ServiceNow, Splunk, and Google Analytics. Other integrations, or “Technology Partners as they call them, include 0xdata, AIMMS, Aircloak, AllSight, Amazon Web Services, Astera, Axiomatics, Birst, Datawatch,

Element Analytics, Google Cloud Platform, IBM, Microsoft, and many, many more.

The pricing is a bit steep to begin with and costs go up at the end of the year long contract. Multi-year contracts are not available, so they got dinged in our value for cost section because of the high and shifting price schema, which can come across as predatory.

Tableau starts at $70/user/month and has a free 14-day trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

4.3

1581

14-day free trial

From $70/user/month

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8

Sisense

Best business intelligence API for building analytics into your products and tools

A hybrid-cloud platform built to leverage all of your data together and make it available to you through interactive dashboards, self-service analytics, and/or white-labeled BI apps. They offer support, analytics, and reporting for business areas such as customer service measurables, digital marketing, finances, human resources, retail and eCommerce, IT analytics, and more.

As far as our usability and UI evaluation criteria expectations, I found that Sisense is easy to use, easy to instal and setup, and sports an intuitive interface and streamlined UX. The customer service team is responsive and adaptive so this would be a decent choice for companies with lower levels of technology experience who might need some extra assistance.

A few cons include that the marketing connector could be more robust. Also, some functions are so simplified that they get in the way, for example not having to write a query seems like a time saving mechanism until your needs don’t match their pre-existing data and you have to jump through hoops to find a creative solution to get what you need.

Use ODBC to connect directly to Sisense’s powerful back-end from any third party application you like, from Excel to popular data visualization and reporting tools. They also offer a marketplace for extensions and plug-ins that they or their partners provide for use. Some are available free and others are only available with a premium account.

Sisense offers custom pricing and has a free demo as well as a free trial.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.

4.3

729

Free trial + free demo available

Pricing upon request

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9

Exago BI

Best business intelligence reporting tool for beginners and non-technical folks

Award-winning ease of use as well as advanced functionality means that Exago is great for both non-technical users and experts alike. You can determine what set of features each user has access to, offering solutions like a library of standard customizable reports, a drag-and-drop ExpressView designer, and a spreadsheet-organized Advanced Report builder. Build, format and export reports at any technical skill level.

Exago perfectly balances our evaluation criteria needs for value for cost and stand-out usability. It is relatively inexpensive, very flexible, easy to deploy, and intuitive to learn and use for the end user.

They integrate with your software in what they call “stealth mode”, offering an open API, fully configurable CSS, single sign-on authorization, and programmatic extension points.

While great for small or static teams, Exago’s software can’t scale with you so it won’t do well for companies that expect to expand over time. Another con is that it is somewhat lacking features like a broader variety of data manipulation functions, multi selection in a parameter, and the ability to use mssql over mySQL.

Exago offers custom pricing and has a free 30-day trial.

30 days free trial

Custom pricing

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10

Metric Insights

Best enterprise BI portal builder

Founded in 2010, Metric Insights lets you engage users by bringing all your BI tools and data together into one easily searchable portal. It automatically identifies anomalies in your data, provides insights on your data in any application and on any device, and offers plenty of integrations and plug-ins in order to connect to the data that matters most to you.

Metric Insights definitely exceeds our evaluation criteria expectations for integration capabilities, as they integrate with a huge variety of popular databases in order to collect and sort actionable data from a variety of sources. If you need to connect to something infrequently services, Basecamp or iTunes for example, then Metric Insights is the obvious go-to.

Some places they lose marks includes pricing, as they are reportedly quite expensive compared to other competitors. They also have close to no online community to speak of for a company that has been around for a fairly long time, so if you are hoping to problem-solve and collaborate on forums with other users, you’re out of luck.

Metric Insights work with Tableau Server and Tableau Online as well as QlikView and Qlik Sense solutions. They offer plug-ins to pull data from popular platforms like 1010data, Adaptive Insights, Adobe Analytics, Basecamp, Becon, Business Objects, Facebook, Google Analytics, Google BigQuery, Google Sheets, Hubspot, iTunes, Power BI, Jira, Salesforce, Zendesk, and more.

Metric Insights offers custom pricing and has a free demo and free trial.

Free trial available

Pricing upon request

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Need expert help selecting the right Business Intelligence (BI) Software?

We’ve joined up with the software comparison platform Crozdesk.com to assist you in finding the right software. Crozdesk’s Business Intelligence (BI) Software advisors can create a personalized shortlist of software solutions with unbiased recommendations to help you identify the solutions that best suit your business’s needs. Through our partnership you get free access to their bespoke software selection advice, removing both time and hassle from the research process.

It only takes a minute to submit your requirements and they will give you a quick call at no cost or commitment. Based on your needs you’ll receive customized software shortlists listing the best-fitting solutions from their team of software advisors (via phone or email). They can even connect you with your selected vendor choices along with community negotiated discounts. To get started, please complete the form below:

Other Business Reporting Software & Applications

In my research, I found a few tools that didn’t quite make the list but that deserve a shout-out nevertheless. The following reporting tools list are my honorable mentions for this round:

1. AnswerRocket – A searchable database of statistics and reports that is designed to answer questions of the everyday user.
2. Improvado – 150+ integrations – like Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, YouTube and LinkedIn – to plot all marketing initiatives on one dashboard.
3. AgencyAnalytics – SEO, PPC, social, email, review and call tracking dashboards all-in-one system.
4. Klipfolio – Intuitive data visualization software for companies of all sizes.
5. Supermetrics – Marketing metrics with a focus on reporting automation tools for PPC, SEO, social and web analytics.
6. Tray – An iPaaS solution with API integration, CSV automation and an easy drag-and-drop workflow.
7. Funnel – Easy to understand and manipulate marketing and advertising data.
8. Adaptive Insights – Modernized planning, modeling, budgeting, and forecasting tools.
9. ClicData – A business intelligence platform complete with a data warehouse, processing and management, dashboard designer and automation.

Related Read: 10 Best Reporting Tools & Software Of 2023

Not looking for a reporting generator? Check out our other lists of top software to manage teams, resources, and projects:

1. Don’t need a full BI suite? Depending on what you want to measure, you might simply start with better time tracking software.
2. Want a portfolio-level overview of your projects that combines management, reporting, and more under one roof? Then you’re looking for project portfolio management software.
3. Turning your reports into visualizations and presentations? Check out the top mind mapping software for building all kinds of diagrams.

What is business intelligence?

Business intelligence is a technological solution for sorting, preparing, analyzing, and presenting data in a way that allows management and their teams to make informed decisions in the workplace.

Business intelligence tools are any software that collects, processes, analysis and displays large volumes of otherwise scattered data, which may come from sources like documents, forms, images, files, emails, videos, website code, and more.

Business intelligence tools can do many things, including but not limited to popular functions such as ad hoc reports, performance metrics, data visualization, data analysis, reporting dashboards, KPIs, and more.

Report software helps management and their teams make decisions based around marketing and advertising data. They help you build towards department KPIs by answering the questions “Where are we now?” and “Where do we want to be?” Teams can then use this data to determine, “How we will get from A to B?”

What’s Your Top Business Intelligence Tool?

Gone are the days when business intelligence systems were dominated by IBM and Siebel (now Oracle), as was the case in the late 20th century. Now, you have a whole host of data reporting tools available to you on a whim. Whether you need to sort, retrieve, visualize, or report data, there is something out there that best meets your needs.

I hope this reporting tools comparison helped you figure out what kind of software might work best for your business. It’s a work in progress and I’ll be updating it regularly.

Report generation software can amplify your marketing efforts by providing you with the data you need to make key decisions going forwards. Make sure you have the tools you need to back up these efforts so that you can continually grow your business operations based on real-world data that is relevant to you and your customers.

Did I forget your favorite reporting application software in this list? Feel free to share it with our community in the comments below.