No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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
25th
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
6.6
Number of Reviews
331
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Meraki Location Analytics is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 7.5%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI7.5%
Meraki Location Analytics0.8%
Other91.7%
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.…
Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Interactive dashboards have transformed restaurant data into faster daily business decisions
Microsoft Power BI has many features and there is not a lot to improve. However, the licensing can be confusing. When deciding between Pro and Premium, I find it difficult to distinguish what features are offered by Pro and what features are offered by Premium, including the particular differences to choose between both licensing models. Additionally, some features such as DAX, which I mentioned previously, involve DAX calculations and complex data modeling, which are somewhat advanced and not easily understandable. Prior knowledge is required or you need to go through the documentation. If the documentation is made comprehensive so that anyone with no knowledge on DAX can easily use it by going through the documentation, it would be really helpful. Additionally, if the integration with non-Microsoft tools is improved and performance is optimized, then Microsoft Power BI can become a top-ranked visualization tool. The user experience with Microsoft Power BI is quite good. The intuitive user interface makes it easy for both technical and non-technical users to create reports. However, only the advanced features are somewhat complex, and if the documentation is improved, it can be easily accessible.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup process is easy."
"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."
"Technical support has always been very good."
"The stability of the solution is excellent, and I would rate it a ten 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."
"If you can afford this solution, it's worth every dime in terms of what you get out of it."
"In general, it's helping companies be more efficient, more productive."
"The most valuable features in Microsoft BI are the analysis using the feature drag and drop function. It's very easy to load and use different data sources."
"In contrast to what we were using before I think that Power BI has given us more extensive results."
"I would recommend Power BI as the best working solution."
"Most of the clients I am interacting with are looking towards Power BI because of the cost and simplicities, as it provides an entire feature set and a complete solution with tight integration with Office 365, Dynamics 365, the Microsoft Technology Stack, and datatypes like R and Python."
"It is a powerful tool that helps our data analysis processes."
"ou can pull reports, visualize them in real-time, and connect them to a variety of other data sources."
"Mostly so far what happens is that people really like Power BI due to the fact that it's easy for them to navigate around and work with it."
 

Cons

"I would like to see all of the features included in a single package."
"The technical support before implementation could be better for premium partners."
"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."
"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 pricing is a pain point for us. It's a bit expensive."
"The performance of Microsoft BI could improve for large datasets and it would be beneficial to have more visualization features."
"I would like to see the product offer more graphics to impact different audiences."
"The solution is not really stable. I've faced a lot of limitations especially in terms of some data flows updates."
"The limitations within Microsoft Power BI include the volume of data it can handle, as there's a cap on the number of rows you can keep. When you pull your data and build your models, you're restricted by this row limit. Additionally, certain SSRS features are deprecated, which can be a drawback for users who rely on those capabilities."
"If you look at the new tool, even though they promised that you could do data modeling, that you could do everything from the Power BI side, if your data is really large in volume, sometimes it doesn't work on the Power BI. More feature testing from their side would certainly help users."
"Its setup and support should be improved. We would like to see more material for developers that provides clear explanations about how we can do data mining by using Microsoft BI. It would also be good if we can connect a feature to other customized machine learning solutions."
"Visualization systems are still relatively young."
"The setup took a lot of tinkering with InfoSec to allow us to do stuff."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They have different tiers of pricing including one-year, three-year, five-year, seven-year, and ten-year."
"The product is less expensive compared to other vendors for gold partners."
"The solution's pricing is medium."
"Microsoft BI requires licenses."
"I think it's a good price, from what I've heard. I know it's competitive with other Power BI tools."
"The costs are small and the benefits are high."
"We have premium licenses, but you can use it for free. You can share the content with anyone else, so you can use it for free."
"The price of Microsoft BI is expensive. We found the price of Tableau to be less expensive."
"We view it as an expensive product."
"The cost of this product is very low, at approximately $8 or $9 per month for a developer."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Construction Company
26%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Insurance Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Construction 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 Business136
Midsize Enterprise59
Large Enterprise171
 

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: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.