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Meraki Location Analytics vs Tableau 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
22nd
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
306
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Meraki Location Analytics is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 16.2%, down from 19.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Mike Scofield - PeerSpot reviewer
Location analytics helps in finding rogue hotspots and locating missing devices
I use Location Analytics occasionally to identify a rogue hotspot or to find the last location of a missing device. In some cases, if there is an interference issue, I might be able to determine the location. However, such instances are unusual I use Location Analytics to identify rogue hotspots…
Nattawat Choosuwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time data connection enhances workflow and decision-making process
An area for improvement in Tableau is the Explorer license type. It is not as useful, and the product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role. Additionally, the frequent updates with many versions available for download can be confusing and could affect stability. They should avoid providing access to older versions on their website.

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 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."
"In general, it is helpful because it allows administrators to see where the Wi-Fi and network services are being most used."
"I use Location Analytics to identify rogue hotspots and find the last location of missing devices."
"The stability of the solution is excellent, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"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."
"It is very good for data visualization. It has very powerful visualizations and is easy to use."
"It is definitely easy to use. It is intuitive, and more or less, everything can be done from the front end. As such, there is no concept of metadata. You can just take data from a database and start building your own stuff, such as OLAP data warehouse. You don't need extensive metadata modeling like Oracle BI."
"Since Tableau is on the cloud, we haven't faced any challenges around scalability."
"Data Interpreter: Which can identify issues or potential errors with your imported data."
"Provides a very good sound analysis quotient."
"The action feature which Tableau has is very useful for us. If we click on one visualization, it will pass the value to another visualization. That interactivity within different visualizations is the most valuable feature of Tableau."
"The solution has great features which nobody can beat, you can do a lot of customizations, such as use different dimensions and colorize them. Additionally, you can use the numeric values for the customization, which is an exceptional feature."
"It has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view."
 

Cons

"The technical support before implementation could be better for premium partners."
"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."
"Some of our clients are looking for better UI when using Tableau as they often work with this solution directly."
"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."
"Tableau could be improved by introducing a data manipulation layer within the tool itself. Currently, data manipulations require using additional tools like Alteryx. If Tableau included these capabilities, it would reduce the need for external dependencies. The tool gets slower when we feed huge amounts of data."
"Tableau is an end-to-end analytics platform, and it is doing a pretty good job in terms of connecting to the data and analyzing it. It can, however, do better in terms of data management and the ETL features, which are not on the advanced analytics or machine learning side. Tableau Prep is where users would want to see more advancements. They can improve Tableau Prep, which is an analytic platform tool for data cleansing. People who work with data spend most of their time curating the data. Cleaning up the data and getting it ready for analysis is what takes the most time. If Tableau can invest more time in improving the Tableau Prep platform, it would be great. Previously, Tableau didn't have the functionality for writing to a database. So, you couldn't really alter the database tables and write to your database, but they fixed that in one of the very recent releases. However, it isn't really advanced and should be improved."
"The user story model is the most deceptive part of Tableau. It is a big marketing option, however, the reality is that it is not enough."
"The visualizations should be user-friendly and allow for more custom visualizations."
"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. The other thing that I never liked about Tableau is its ability to handle large sets of data. To present the data in the dashboards, we have to stage it up exactly like it is going to come into the dashboard. We use another tool called Alteryx that does that for us. So, we manipulate the data, get it staged, and then push it into Tableau. Tableau is terrible at handling large data sets, and we knew right away that we couldn't use Tableau to do data manipulation."
"The price of Tableau is too high."
 

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."
"Buy 50 at a time. Project your use base every three months, and project your requirements forward."
"It is a bit overpriced."
"We pay for the enterprise license for Tableau. The licensing could be cheaper and more flexible."
"Tableau is an expensive solution, though it comes with its advantages."
"The price of Tableau is high, although there are different types of licenses available."
"Tableau is free."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Tableau's prices are relatively high for our market. I am from Serbia, so many companies in this market don't have the ability to pay for expensive software. My clients are quite satisfied with a lot of Tableau's qualities except for the prices."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
29%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ladbrokes, Neinver, Westwind School Division, The Salvation Army, Queensland Airports Limited
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Meraki Location Analytics vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.