Tableau's pricing policy can be a bit confusing and, especially for corporate installations, it is necessary to understand the different types of licenses so that the company does not spend unnecessarily - instead taking full advantage of the possibilities for usage and cost savings that Tableau allows.
As a Tableau partner for the Czech and Slovak Republics, Revolt BI provides free consulting, invoicing and other benefits and discounts for companies that order Tableau through us.
The highest license that allows the user to do everything - in particular, set up data sources, create reports, etc. Each installation always needs at least 1 Tableau Creator user, just to be able to create something that can then be used by other users. It is the most expensive license, but usually very few are needed in a company (often just 1). A Tableau Creator user can use the Tableau Desktop application, can edit and clean up data using Tableau Prep Builder, and can manage Tableau Server.
Tableau Explorer is an intermediate license for users who create reports - they can do so with any report, dashboard, etc. using resources made available to them by a user with Tableau Creator privileges. It is therefore the most common license for workers who prepare reports for regular users - report consumers.
The Tableau Explorer user uses only the online interface, so he does not have the option to use the Tableau Desktop application and working with Tableau is a bit less convenient. Therefore, advanced analysts, for whom working with Tableau is their daily bread, tend to choose the Tableau Creator license. This is why many companies don't even have Tableau Explorer users, but only Tableau Creator for analysts and administrators and Viewer for users/data consumers.
As you will learn in the next chapter, you can run Tableau either on your own computer, server, or cloud, or in the cloud directly from Tableau - Tableau Online. If you are using Tableau Online, this user is more expensive.
Note: until February 2021, Tableau Explorer users had to be purchased in a bundle of 5 users.This is no longer the case and you can purchase as many of these users as you like.
Viewer is the base license for report "consumers" - regular users who use reports and dashboards created for them by users with a higher license. They can filter data, change time periods, etc. However, they cannot make any changes to the reports, they have to request them from the users with a higher license.
This is the most common license for ordinary users in the company, managers, etc. Again, for those using Tableau Online, the per-user license is slightly more expensive.
Note: until February 2021, Tableau Viewer users had to be purchased in a package of 100 users; this is no longer the case and you can purchase as many of these users as you like.
Tableau, as a visualization platform, can run on an individual user's computer as a Tableau Desktop application for Windows or Mac, through which the user adds data sources, sets up reports, etc. However, a company can also install a Tableau server - either on its own hardware or on a cloud platform (Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform).
Users can then connect to this server either using Tableau Desktop (if they have a Tableau Creator license) or online via a browser (with any license). So the installation and operation of the Tableau server itself is free (except for the cost of managing the server and or the cloud platform), you only pay per user (i.e. at least 1 with a Tableau Creator license).
The third option is for the company to use the cloud platform directly from Tableau - Tableau Online. In this case, it has no cost for the cloud platform or for its own hardware and its management, but it has slightly more expensive licenses for Tableau Explorer and Tableau Viewer users.
There are other specific types of licenses, e.g. if you make public reports available to anyone on the web, then you can publish such data using the Tableau Public platform and pay nothing for the user-consumers of the data. Similarly, there are discounted Embedded Analytics licenses for report users behind some sort of single-sign-on login - typically for reports available to external partners, clients, etc.
There are also add-on licenses if you use more advanced data management and analysis features - Tableau Data Management Add-on, Einstein Discovery in Tableau, and Server Management Add-on.
We'd be happy to work with you to set up a free plan tailored to your needs so that you don't pay unnecessarily more than necessary. Contact us.
The company wants to use Tableau for its business management. He wants to use many data sources - internal CRM, product database, invoicing, warehousing system as well as many external sources - data from Google Analytics, marketing channels (FB, AdWords, Eureka). She decided to use her own HW server, on which she will have all the data and perform all the calculations on it.
It has 1 server administrator / DevOps employee, 1 senior analyst who understands all data sources and is able to solve their connection, as well as 5 analysts who create reports according to the requirements of managers and other users. Tableau will then use 30 employees in the company to monitor the created reports - managers of individual departments (ceo, logistics, marketing, sales), key employees who need data analysis for their decisions. He does not have much experience with Tableau yet, he will need training of all employees and help with server installation.
