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Meraki Location Analytics vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Meraki Location Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
24th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
327
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Meraki Location Analytics is 0.9%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 9.4%, down from 21.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI9.4%
Meraki Location Analytics0.9%
Other89.7%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

RB
Senior Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Locating equipment within facilities is now straightforward and efficient
We mainly use Meraki Location Analytics to locate equipment within our manufacturing facilities. We're not a public-facing organization, so our use case involves finding devices like printers or scanners that need maintenance The best aspect of Meraki Location Analytics is its ease of use.…
James Balbach - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network
Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements
Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The stability of the solution is excellent, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"I use Location Analytics to identify rogue hotspots and find the last location of missing devices."
"The pricing and licensing for Meraki are good, and I would rate it as a nine out of ten."
"In general, it is helpful because it allows administrators to see where the Wi-Fi and network services are being most used."
"I like Location Analytics' geofencing features for devices. You can manage thousands of devices with just a push of a button and deploy applications in seconds. For example, in schools, you can deploy an app update for thousands of iPads in just two clicks."
"The initial setup process is easy."
"Technical support has always been very good."
"Its seamless integration with Microsoft products, such as Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Excel, is the most valuable."
"It gives us, the ability to do a lot of analysis quickly, similar to ad hoc analysis."
"It seems stable. I haven't heard of any difficulties from my clients that utilize Power BI."
"Microsoft BI's most valuable features are the user interface, which is easy to use and light."
"I like data modeling. You can connect with your database, which is quite useful for me. It is a good tool if you have a large amount of data and you want to gather different data and interconnect it. The Power Query functionality is quite an interesting feature. If you have a query in Excel, you can also copy your query and run it in Power BI. Its dashboard is also very nice and not complicated. You don't need to be a developer to be able to use it. I am not an IT guy, and it is quite easy to use for somebody who is not an IT person."
"You can integrate Microsoft Power BI with various other solutions like Intune."
"With Power BI, you're able to store your data within spreadsheets and SharePoints, and then have Power BI pull the data out and report on it. So we actually saved a ton of money not needing to load the data into databases, which is a big prerequisite for many other reporting tools."
"It is good for us for onboarding the data. We can connect to multiple data sources, do transformations to make the data usable, and then model it within the transformation. Someone who has come from a Microsoft Excel environment will easily be able to use this solution. Power query and report modeling are easy to understand in this solution. Their technical support is very good. They are extremely responsive, helpful, and hands-on."
 

Cons

"The pricing is a pain point for us. It's a bit expensive."
"There are no specific areas for improvement as everything is working very well."
"The biggest issue is negotiating the price with a client. That's the most complicated part, but the product is worth it."
"I would like to see all of the features included in a single package."
"My biggest complaint with Meraki Location Analytics is the lack of visibility into the back end. Everything we do is through a customer GUI, and there's limited access to CLI functions."
"The technical support before implementation could be better for premium partners."
"I would like to see Machine Learning for Power Bi Pro users or an intermediate license to enable Machine Learning if you don't have access to a Premium account."
"The formatting template could be improved."
"Areas of Power BI that could be improved are the learning curve for developers who come from non-technical backgrounds."
"The solution's documentation needs improvement."
"From any improvement perspective, I want the product to be made available to users free of cost...The stability and scalability of the product can be better."
"I cannot comment on the stability as we haven't yet used it for a big project."
"Whenever you work on the same dashboard or on the same code, Microsoft Power BI doesn't have a good architecture that allows multiple people to work on the same project."
"If I have to update data automatically, where I have to pin the gateway, it doesn't update. There is a scheduled refresh functionality so that it refreshes automatically, but I find it very hard to make it work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is less expensive compared to other vendors for gold partners."
"They have different tiers of pricing including one-year, three-year, five-year, seven-year, and ten-year."
"Power BI is subscription-based, and you have three options. The Pro edition, which is the standard one, is about $9 per user. The Premium edition, which provides AI and cloud capabilities but at a limited size, is for small to medium enterprises. It is about $20 per user. For large enterprises, such as manufacturing facilities, there is an option for the capacity. The capacity subscription is about $4,000 per capacity level. They also have an option for the on-premises version, but it is not common to see someone going for the on-premises version. The on-premises version requires a specific license that is attached to SQL Server. I believe it is about $17,000, but I'm not sure about it."
"I'm unsure about the exact cost, but the Pro license comes out to around $10 per user. There are also additional costs for custom visuals that you can pay for."
"The only other cost, besides the licensing fee, would be to cover support."
"The price of Microsoft BI is reasonable. Other solutions such as SAP Cloud are more expensive."
"Microsoft Power BI has reasonable pricing."
"Pricing, that's where Microsoft beats Tableau. It is priced much cheaper."
"Its pricing is great."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis, but I am not sure."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise165
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Meraki Location Analytics?
The pricing for Meraki Location Analytics is comparable to other solutions in the market. When we moved to Meraki Location Analytics, we benefited from not needing to buy outdoor-rated AP enclosure...
What needs improvement with Meraki Location Analytics?
My biggest complaint with Meraki Location Analytics ( /categories/location-intelligence-platforms ) is the lack of visibility into the back end. Everything we do is through a customer GUI, and ther...
What is your primary use case for Meraki Location Analytics?
We mainly use Meraki Location Analytics ( /products/meraki-location-analytics-reviews ) to locate equipment within our manufacturing facilities. We're not a public-facing organization, so our use c...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ladbrokes, Neinver, Westwind School Division, The Salvation Army, Queensland Airports Limited
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Meraki Location Analytics vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.