6 Best Business Intelligence Tools for Small Business

Business intelligence (BI) tools compile relevant data and provide insights from many different sources like sales data and web traffic. These insights can be used to make better strategic decisions. We looked at the best BI tools on the market and narrowed them down to the best overall six based on pricing and features.

Best BI Tools 2019

How We Evaluated Business Intelligence Tools

Business intelligence tools should offer a set of features for compiling data from different sources, including spreadsheets, SQL databases, and more. Services should be intuitive enough to use for workers of all skill levels. They should also be affordable enough for small businesses to adopt.

We evaluated BI tools based on:

• Pricing: We looked at the overall cost of each solution
• Ease of use: Services should be intuitive enough for small business users
• Point-in-time analytics: Most systems are able to provide reports on past metrics
• Real-time analytics: We looked at the live data tracking functionality of each service
• Predictive analytics: Projections based on past data can help business owners make strategic decisions
• Data connectors & Integrations: We looked at whether each service offered connectors to spreadsheets, databased, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, and more
• Visualization options: Seeing data as graphs, charts, and other visual graphics can help users understand important metrics
• Security measures: The majority of providers on the market offer encryption of all data
• Sharing tools: We looked at each service’s report sharing functionality
• Custom Fields: Being able to create custom fields and formulas can increase the usefulness of BI tools
• Customer Service: Services should provide help to customers in the event of a problem

Based on the above, we find that Zoho Analytics is the best BI tool for most small business users. The service is affordable, yet provides a powerful set of features such as quick visualizations and plenty of data connectors to databases, other business software, and more. The fact that it also offers integrations with other Zoho products furthers its usefulness.

Zoho Analytics: Best Overall BI Tool for Small Businesses

Zoho Analytics is a business intelligence tool that comes with standard features such as data visualizations, data alerts, and the ability for multiple workers to collaborate on a report simultaneously. It also offers connectors for CSV files, Google Drive files, and more. The service, which offers a free tier with paid plans starting at $22 per month, is one of the best BI tools available for most users because of its affordable pricing, ease of use, and feature set.

Zoho Analytics Pricing

Zoho Analytics offers a basic Free version. Paid editions start at $22 per user, per month for the Basic edition, which offers a wide range of connectors. The Standard and Premium editions cost $45 and $112 per month, respectively, and add collaboration and privacy features. This is one of the more affordable BI tools.

Zoho Analytics Tiered Features

*Pricing is on an annual basis

Free

Zoho Analytics Free supports up to two users at once and 10,000 rows of data in the system at any given time. It also supports connections to different file types, such as databases written in CSV, SQL, or HTML files, and includes a custom application programming interface (API) so that you can build your own integrations.

The Free version of the software does not offer integrations with other Zoho products like the paid versions do. It also lacks connectors to Salesforce, Mailchimp, or other popular business systems. Still, Zoho Analytics Free serves as a good choice for companies who are looking for an extended trial into the service.

Basic

The Basic version of Zoom Analytics costs $22 per month and offers data connectors to a wide range of services. For example, you can import raw data from an Excel spreadsheet or an SQL database. You can also integrate the service with cloud storage services like OneDrive or a CRM like Zoho CRM to analyze sales data. However, it does not offer a sales-oriented interface such as a deal success predictor like Salesforce Einstein Analytics.

This version is missing the group support functionality of the Standard version, so you won’t be able to easily share reports from within the app to other teammates. It is also limited to just two users, so you won’t be able to give your entire team access to the system. Still, this is a good fit for small businesses that are just getting started with business intelligence and want to gain valuable insights.

Standard

Zoom Analytics Standard edition supports five users and adds features like hourly syncing of all imported data, a centralized control panel for administrators, and alerts to users when data makes a significant change. The service also comes with data backup, which saves data from being lost in the event of a crash or other failure. This is helpful as it can potentially save teams from hours of work when it comes to reentering data.

This package has most of the business intelligence features you’d want for a small business. The only thing it is missing from the Premium edition is custom branding and private links. Still, at a fraction of the price of other systems, the Standard package serves as a great value for anyone that is looking for a comprehensive BI package.

Premium

For $112 per month, Zoho Analytics Premium supports 15 users at once and adds custom branding, so that you can add your company’s logo and colors to the app. It also comes with private links that can be shared securely with non-users of the system. This tier supports up to 5 million rows of data, so it is a good fit for teams that want to analyze many years’ worth of historical data.

At $112 per month, this version of the system is much more expensive than the entry-level plan. However, it is less expensive than the most basic version of Salesforce Einstein Analytics. This is a perfect package for teams that have grown out of the Basic and Standard editions and want to support a full data team of 15 people.

What Zoho Analytics Is Missing

Zoho Analytics is one of the best BI tools on the market due to its strong feature set, usability, and affordable pricing. However, it does not have as many data connectors as some of the other systems we looked at. If you want to analyze data from sources such as Microsoft Azure or Hadoop databases, we suggest looking at Microsoft Power BI Pro instead.

What Users Think About Zoho Analytics

Users appreciate the power analytic tools that Zoho Analytics offers, and they also like that it integrates with other products on the Zoho family. With that in mind, some customers have found that it has a steep learning curve.

“The different types of reports you can create with data from almost anywhere on Zoho Analytics is very powerful. It’s super easy to drag and drop the data needed into the report and choose from many different styles of reports. With that, existing reports can be easily modified, which is extremely useful.”

—Morgan Lathaen, Marketing and Brand Coordinator, Thumbprint.

Where to Find Zoho Analytics

Zoho Analytics is one of the most popular applications of its kind, and for good reason. It offers a wealth of features, plenty of data connectors, and is easy enough to use for small business teams. Click the button below to get started for free today.

Visit Zoho

Microsoft Power BI Pro: Most Connected BI System

Microsoft Power BI Pro, which costs $9.99 per user, per month, is a BI solution that offers cloud-based analytics of all of your most important business data. In addition to features such as data visualizations and encryption, Power BI comes with more than 70 different connectors for analytics. It is a good fit for businesses that have all sorts of data spread out across formats.

Microsoft Power BI Pro Pricing

Microsoft Power BI Pro is $9.99 per user, per month, which makes it one of the more affordable options available today. It is worth noting that you can also download Power BI Desktop for free, but it only allows you to create reports; you cannot share them with anyone.

Microsoft Power BI Pro Features

Microsoft Power BI comes with a full set of features for gathering data, analyzing it, and creating visualizations in the form of charts and graphs. However, what sets it apart from the competition is the fact that you can import data from lesser-used sources such as Hadoop, Amazon Redshift, and Snowflake databases. It also offers an API to build even more connectors.

Microsoft Power BI features include:

Data Connectors

Out of all of the services we looked at, Microsoft Power BI Pro offers the most impressive range of connectors we’ve seen in a BI system. In addition to Microsoft products such as Excel and Azure databases, the solution can also gather data from SQL data sets, GitHub repositories, Python scripts, and more. This is especially good for businesses that have data coming in from a wide range of sources.

Analytics & Visualizations

Microsoft Power BI Pro makes it very easy to import data and interact with it. In fact, it works in a similar fashion to creating a graph in Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet application. Once data is imported, the service will automatically create a graph or chart. Unlike most other systems, Microsoft even offers a visualizations marketplace where you can download third-party visuals such as 3-D heat maps, word clouds, and more.

Other Features

Sometimes, you may want the answer to a specific question without wanting to plug in data or pull up a report. Microsoft Power BI offers a search function that allows you to ask questions with natural language to pull up customer reports. For example, you can type “What were last year’s highest-selling items?” into the search bar, and the service will automatically create a graph with that information. This is great for users with little data science experience.

Setup & Ease of Use

Power BI Pro has a guided setup wizard when you first get set up with the service. Additionally, the company provides a lot of documentation for using features and troubleshooting problems. However, we find that the interface is a lot less friendly than Zoho’s when it comes to pulling information and creating visualizations. The service is still intuitive, but it’s only a more attractive product if you need to connect to different kinds of databases.

What Microsoft Power BI Pro Is Missing

Microsoft Power BI Pro allows you to import data from a range of sources including Google Analytics. However, if you only need to make sense of mobile and web metrics, then using Power BI might be overkill. Google Analytics works great as a standalone application for visualizing figures regarding web traffic and app usage.

What Users Think About Microsoft Power BI Pro

Microsoft Power BI Pro is popular with business users, especially those that were previously dependent on Excel for visualizing data. However, some customers have found that the default reports look very basic, and that the interface can be a bit confusing at times. They find that the standard collection of graphs looks outdated compared to other systems.

Google Analytics: Best BI Tool for Web Analytics

Google Analytics is a web-based BI tool designed to help businesses track and visualize web traffic. The service, which is free for small businesses, only requires you to insert a few unique lines of code into your website’s HTML in order to work. The process is easy enough that even non-developers should be able to set up the connection. It is ideal for small businesses that want to grab valuable insights from their web traffic.

Google Analytics Pricing

Google Analytics is free for small business use. There is a paid version, known as Google Analytics 360 that can cost as much as $150,000 per year for larger enterprises. However, it is highly unlikely that most small organizations will ever meet the volume that would necessitate paying for the service.

Google Analytics Features

Google Analytics is an application designed to track web traffic data, so it is not a comprehensive BI system that can track all sorts of different metrics like Zoho Analytics, Power BI, and other competitors. However, it is completely free and easy to use, so it is great for smaller teams that want to better understand who is visiting their website.

Google Analytics features include:

Data Connectors

Google Analytics is designed for web traffic metrics, so it is not going to serve your needs if you want to track things like sales, inventory, and other information like you can with paid systems. There is a version of the system available for tracking mobile app data, but it was scheduled to be shut down in October 2019. Still, this service is perfect if you are only looking to see web traffic activity.

Analytics & Visualizations

Once it is connected with your website, Google Analytics can provide live traffic reports detailing how many people are visiting your site, what keywords people use to find your page, and what sites they are coming from. This information is provided in the form of graphs, charts, and maps to let you know more about your web traffic. This is one of the more user-friendly analytic tools we looked at.

Other Features

Google offers its own guided training program for getting the most out of the Analytics platform. With the Google Analytics Academy, there are online courses available for everyone from brand-new users to data science experts who want to leverage advanced features. If you are new to BI, we recommend taking a look at these, as they are quite comprehensive. We like that Google offers such a helpful learning tool free of charge.

Setup & Ease of Use

Google Analytics only requires a free Google account. After a brief setup process, simply follow the instructions provided by your web hosting provider. After a few minutes, Google Analytics will begin tracking live web traffic data and showing it in your dashboard. This is one of the more intuitive systems on the market.

What Google Analytics Is Missing

Google Analytics is one of the best BI tools if you only need to track web traffic. However, it cannot help you make sense of other types of data, such as sales history, survey results, or anything else you might keep in a CSV or JSON file. If you want to visualize data from many different sources, we recommend looking at Tableau instead.

What Users Think About Google Analytics

Our readers appreciate that Google Analytics is a free tool for tracking the performance of their website. They find that it has helped them understand who is visiting their website and why. With that in mind, some users find that the sheer amount of data it provides can be overwhelming, resulting in a sort of analysis paralysis that is common with systems of this kind.

Where to Find Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free, fast, and easy tool for tracking web analytics. It offers a strong core set of features that make it one of the best business intelligence tools for understanding your website’s traffic information. Click the link below to get started.

Visit Google

Tableau Desktop: Best BI Tool for Data Visualization

Tableau Desktop, which costs $70 per user, per month bundled in the Tableau Creator package, is a BI tool that offers the ability to analyze data from many different sources, including SQL databases and Salesforce. What helps Tableau Desktop stand apart from competing systems is a wealth of visualizations and its VizQL module that translates your drag-and-drop actions into data queries and shows them in graphs and charts. It is especially great for visual learners.

Tableau Pricing

Tableau Desktop is available as part of the Tableau Creator package, which costs $70 per user, per month, and includes TableauPrep Builder for data flow management. It also comes with one server license that allows you to either host it on a cloud service or on your own network. It is a moderately priced system.

Tableau Features

Tableau Desktop comes with a full set of features for importing information from different sources, sorting that data, and visualizing it so that it is easy to understand. Its drag-and-drop interface allows even novice users to create complex reports quickly and easily. The system’s VizQL feature is unique in the sense that it lets workers manipulate data with a few button clicks without having to write a data query manually.

Tableau Desktop’s features include:

Data Connectors

Tableau Desktop allows you to connect data from a wide range of sources. In addition to CSV and JSON files, you can also import information from Salesforce, Oracle, and MongoDB-based applications. Additionally, you can import data from Google Analytics if you want to bring in your web data as well. This is evenly matched with other services we looked at.

Analytics & Visualizations

Tableau Desktop offers a wide range of visualizations, including charts, graphs, maps, infographics, and more. Not only that, but the system also comes with VizQL, a special feature that lets you instantly turn drag-and-drop actions into data queries. In basic terms, you can manipulate data on a graph or other visual and have that change take place in your raw data. This is great for those who aren’t data scientists who want to edit incorrect information.

Other Features

If you use a mobile device for work, you may be interested in Tableau Desktop’s device designer module. The device designer essentially lets you customize your reports to look good on a wide range of devices. Desktops, smartphones, and tablets all have different screen sizes, and you can alter your reports to be properly oriented for each one. This helps your company look more professional, even when someone looks at your reports on their phone.

Setup & Ease of Use

Tableau is one of the more long-standing players in the BI space because it has so many features. That is good, but it also makes for a steep learning curve. While there is both documentation and training from the company, users can expect to deal with a rough acclimation for the first few months of using the system. Its interface is not as simple as Zoho Analytics and other competitors.

What Tableau Is Missing

While Tableau Desktop offers the ability to connect data with Salesforce, it is not specifically designed for sales usage. If you are looking for a system that is built from the ground up to take existing data and help you close deals, you may be more interested in Salesforce Einstein Analytics. That system natively integrates with your CRM system and can provide quick predictions on your chances to close a deal and other sales functions.

What Users Think About Tableau

Tableau is popular with workers that want to make better business decisions by looking at existing data. Many of our readers love to make visualizations with the software and they say that the company’s support team is second to none. However, they also admit that it took them a while to get used to using certain features and navigating the interface.

Where to Find Tableau Desktop

Tableau Desktop offers some of the best data visualization options on the market. On top of that, it has plenty of data connectors and other modules to help you better understand your metrics. Click the button below to start your 14-day free trial.

Visit Tableau Desktop

Salesforce Einstein Analytics: Best BI Tool for Sales Teams

Salesforce Einstein Analytics is a BI platform that is designed primarily with sales usage in mind. The service, which starts at $125 per user, per month, features data connectors for Salesforce’s CRM information, CSV files, and more. Salesforce Einstein Analytics is especially good for sales teams as it provides specialized features to tell you things like your projected chances of closing a deal, how to increase those odds, and more.

Salesforce Einstein Analytics Pricing

Salesforce Einstein Analytics offers two pricing packages. The Growth edition starts at $125 per user, per month, on an annual basis and comes with a set of data connectors and visualizations. The Analytics Plus package adds artificial intelligence (AI)-powered features for $150 per month. This is one of the more expensive services we evaluated.

Salesforce Einstein Analytics Tiered Features

*Pricing is on an annual basis

Analytics Growth

The Analytics Growth version of Salesforce Einstein Analytics costs $125 per user, per month, which makes it one of the more expensive entry-level solutions on the market. However, it comes with a full set of data connectors and visualizations. It is clearly geared toward sales purposes, as its reports include sales forecasts and a lead scoring report that tells you your likelihood to close deals with a given prospect based on its unique algorithmic predictions.

Salesforce Einstein Analytics Growth is far more expensive than similar offerings from Microsoft and Zoho. The fact that it is so sales-centric might also be a turn-off to teams that want to track other things like survey results and budgets. Still, those who are focused on closing sales will love Einstein Analytics, especially if you already use Salesforce’s CRM solution.

Analytics Plus

Einstein Analytics Plus costs an extra $25 per user, per month, and has all of the same features as the Analytics Growth What sets the service apart is the inclusion of Einstein Discovery and Einstein Data Insights, which can automatically find important patterns in your data and let you know about them. For example, it could find that you make the most of your sales Wednesday so you can focus your efforts on closing during those days.

This system does not have as many connectors as Microsoft Power BI, and it isn’t as user-friendly as other services we looked at. This is also a more specialized BI tool than others that we looked at. It’s a great fit for staff that wants to have AI technology help them be better salespeople.

What Salesforce Einstein Analytics Is Missing

Salesforce Einstein Analytics is a fantastic, user-friendly system for sales teams. However, data scientists and other general managers with more demanding needs may find that it does not have enough features for them. If you want a feature-rich platform, we suggest looking at Chartio, which has one of the biggest features sets we’ve seen to date in a BI tool.

What Users Think About Salesforce Einstein Analytics

Customers like Salesforce Einstein Analytics’ sales-centric dashboards and integration with Salesforce CRM. They also like the sales target projections. Common complaints include the steep learning curve of the system and unclear documentation.

Where to Find Salesforce Einstein Analytics

Sales teams can benefit a great deal from the insights gathered via BI tools. Salesforce Einstein Analytics is built specifically to help sales teams analyze metrics through a user-friendly interface. Click the link below to try the solution free for 30 days.

Visit Salesforce

Chartio: Best Feature-Rich BI Tool

Chartio, which starts at $40 per user, per month, is a business intelligence tool that allows users to create visualizations from dozens of data sources. Chartio comes with a powerful processing engine that can quickly sort through millions of rows of data. It has one of the biggest feature sets we have seen in a BI tool to date, and we find that it is a good fit for experienced BI users who are looking for full control of their data.

Chartio Pricing

Chartio offers two small business packages. The Startup edition costs $40 per user, per month, on an annual basis and comes with a full set of tools for gathering and visualizing data. The Growth version costs $20 more per month and offers extra connectors as well as access to customer support via chat.

Chartio Tiered Features

*Pricing is on an annual basis

Startup

Chartio’s startup package costs $40 per user, per month, and comes with a wealth of default visualizations for your data. It also includes plenty of tools for joining different data sources together. Click on the name of a data source and it will pull up a menu of options to structure the data. Chartio also features a full range of tools for setting up data flows for different reports, which is great for data scientists but difficult for casual users.

This version is missing the ability to connect data from several sources, including Amazon RedShift and Google BigQuery. While these products aren’t used by many small businesses, the fact that those connectors are hidden behind a paywall could be a deal-breaker for some. The service is also a lot less user-friendly than competing systems. Still, it is good for expert users who want a full range of options for analyzing data.

Growth

The Growth package costs $60 per user, per month, and offers integration with Panoply, Amazon RedShift, and Google BigQuery. These are all cloud-based big data services that are often used with enterprises. What might be of more interest to small business users is the fact that it allows for customer support via chat. Otherwise, it has the same features as the Startup edition.

Unless you need connectors to large data warehousing systems, you probably don’t need access to the Growth plan. However, it is unfortunate that Alerts are locked behind this version, as they come in less expensive systems on the market. Charito Growth is ideal for companies that also use big data storage services.

What Chartio Is Missing

Chartio is one of the least user-friendly BI tools available. The fact that offers so many data configuration options is perfect for experts, but most small business users will probably find more to like in a service like Zoho Analytics. That system is an ideal combination of features, ease of use, and pricing.

What Users Think About Chartio

BI experts like the flexibility and feature set of Chartio. With that in mind, there are several complaints that charts can sometimes fail to load. There are also customers who’ve said that they find themselves getting “lost” when navigating the service’s features.

Where to Find Chartio

Chartio offers an expansive feature set for workers that are able to use it. It also provides plenty of data connectors so that you can import information from all your sources. Best of all, the company offers a 14-day free trial. Get started today.

Visit Chartio

Bottom Line

The best BI tools available today empower small business users with the ability to gather data from different places, combine them into a centralized location, and visualize them into helpful graphics. There was a time when these tools were reserved for large enterprises, but they have been made affordable enough for even the smallest organizations to use.

If you are looking for a business intelligence tool, we recommend Zoho Analytics. The system offers a free version, it is easy to use, and it comes with a wealth of features for sorting and turning data into graphs and charts. Click the button to get started today.

Visit Zoho