Big data is like an elephant — it’s huge and knows us all. There are tons of free analytics software out there that can help you find meaningful insights in your data. With the advancement of technology, almost every enterprise today touch at least some sort of data analytic application/tool/platform/software. Some understanding of this tool is important for every business professional to understand the direction businesses are headed. Here I am trying to some best free business analytics software applications present
Have you heard of free business analytics software? It’s the best thing to happen to small businesses since… well… big businesses started using business analytics software. Now, any business can use the power of data analysis and visualization without breaking the bank. This list includes everything from web-based tools to open source software to professional Business Intelligence (BI) suites – all 100% free for any size business.
Tableau
Tableau Public, the freemium version of the vendor’s main offering, is a great option for users who want to create beautiful visual data representations without spending money. Its online gallery has a rich library of publicly available ready-to-use dashboards and data visualizations created and shared by a vast online community of data analysts and BI enthusiasts. Besides its free version, the tool is offered in the Tableau Desktop, Server and Online paid packages.
Tableau Public for Data Visualizations.
Free Features:
- Data Preparation: With this tool, it is easy to blend and join data, or split a column to structure data as needed. The tool’s Data Interpreter cleans up data discrepancies – whether in comments, headers, crosstabs, footnotes, blank rows or columns – directly in the sheet to prepare it for visualization and analysis.
- Data Visualization: Its data visualization capabilities with powerful animations enable users to create interactive visuals such as maps, graphs and live dashboards through simple double-click and drag-and-drop actions. The solution’s low-code approach enables easy calculations and statistical summary reviews. Seamlessly embeddable, the visualizations can be shared easily on websites, blogs and social media.
- Data Storytelling: Users can create dashboards from scratch or download and use any of the visualizations available online. They can then enhance them by adding text and images in a variety of formatting styles to tell visually compelling data stories.
- Community Support: Tableau Public is almost entirely community-powered, with a variety of learning resources that include videos, user forums, sample data, a visualization library and articles. The community hosts virtual challenges such as Iron Viz and 10x Data Viz frequently to promote user learning and participation.
Limitations:
Tableau Public provides all the functionality of the paid version, with the below exceptions.
- Publishing to Tableau: Unlike the more robust Tableau Server that offers secure storage of dashboards and a privately manageable Tableau site, Tableau Public does not support publishing to Tableau Server or Tableau Online. Instead, free users can only publish their workbooks and dashboards publicly.
- Data Connectors: The free version lacks most data connectors and it can pull data only from certain sources, such as Excel, CSV, text files and Google Sheets. To have wider data source connectivity, you might need to opt for the paid version.
- Data Security: Tableau Public doesn’t offer much data security; all workbooks are public once published to the Tableau Public Server. Though users can disable downloads of their workbooks and underlying data in their profile settings, their visualization URLs are still in the public domain and thus, discoverable. The paid version might be a better bet if data security is on your must-have list.
- Data Storage: The solution doesn’t provide more than 10 GB of data storage space per user, which can be limiting if you have large amounts of data. It also allows for only up to 10 million rows of data per workbook. Users can’t work without the internet, as all reports are saved to the Tableau Public Server, not locally.
Price: $$$$$Deployment:
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Zoho Analytics
Zoho Analytics is an online data analytics and reporting platform that helps users analyze historical and current business statistics to identify and display trends in the form of dashboards and reports. Also known as the Always Free plan, Free+ is quite robust and provides basic features for small organizations and individuals with light data reporting needs. Anyone can sign up for a Zoho account for free, no credit card required.
Advanced Analytics for Zoho Creator Using Zoho Analytics.
Free Features:
- Workspaces: The tool silos data views and sorts dashboards and reports based on this data into separate workspaces. A Workspace displays information on how the various elements are related to each other and offers suggestions on metric creation for data analysis.
- Data Import: It includes strong data connectors to pull data from cloud databases, files, web feeds and relational databases. Data import can be automated and scheduled to run at specific intervals.
- Reporting: Based on a high-performance reporting engine, the tool makes Excel users feel right at home with its intuitive “spreadsheet-like” interface. The free version offers unlimited reporting formats, such as dashboards, charts, pivot tables, summary views and tabular reports, buildable with easy drag and drop. Only basic reporting features are available in the freemium version.
- Mobility: Mobile BI is free, and includes mobile apps for iOS and Android devices for users to access dashboards and reports on the go. They can interact with reports and drill down into data at any time and from any device.
- Data Modeling and Analysis: The tool enables relational data modeling through SQL querying of large datasets into query tables. Users can apply joins and filters or split columns to create metric-specific reports.
Limitations:
- Unlimited Usage: Free users don’t have access to more than five workspaces and more than three users per account.
- Scheduled Processes: The free version doesn’t allow for more than three scheduled imports. If your role demands automation of repetitive tasks to free you up for tasks that need your attention in real time, you might want to consider opting for a paid plan. Paid plans offer unlimited data imports and scheduling of backups, report sharing and emails.
- Integrations: The free version doesn’t access the Zoho Analytics API, so it can’t integrate with many external applications, such as social media sites, CRM applications, email hosts and other Zoho suite offerings. If you need to connect to any of these, upgrading might be a better option for your specific integration needs.
- Collaboration Features: It doesn’t provide role-based permissions management or collaboration features such as slideshow presentations and private link sharing to free users.
- Logo Rebranding: Rebranding through white-labeling isn’t available with Zoho Analytics Free. However, subscribers to the Premium and Enterprise plans can customize the Home page and reports with their company logo.
- AI-Powered Recommendations: The free tool doesn’t include workflow suggestions and recommendations by the AI-powered analytical assistant, Zia.
- Technical Support: Customer support, though available to free plan users, can be contacted only during business hours. Support via phone is available only for subscribers of paid plans.
Price: $$$$$Deployment:
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Qualtrics Research Core
Cloud-based research software Qualtrics Research Core is a built to empower businesses of different sizes to make informed decisions. The platform provides powerful tools that enable businesses to uncover customer insights like satisfaction rates as well as transactional and relational NPS. Besides, it streamlines product research, marketing research, brand research, and aid planning.
At its core, Qualtrics Research Core makes it easy to design surveys, distribute surveys for speedy data collection, and analyze results to predict market trends. Most importantly, it helps businesses break up data silos and collect information and vital feedback across every channel in one place. With the platform, it’s easy to pull data from the third party systems like Zendesk, Salesforce, Freshdesk, HubSpot, Zapier, Tableau, and more. Should you want to test the premium features of this product, be sure to try the Qualtrics Research Core free demo.
Try out Qualtrics Research Core with their free trialVISIT WEBSITEFREE TRIAL
Freemium features:
- 10 questions per survey
- 7 question types
- 100 responses
- Summary reports and filtering
- Online reporting
- Survey logic
BIRT
[Source: BIRT]
Features
- Huge Database
- Data Customization
- Project Management
- Internationalization
- Project Organization
- Java Event Coding
- Data Accessibility
BIRT is a simple yet powerful business intelligence software tool that functions seamlessly to provide less complicated data clusters by making them more visual and making data customization and consolidation simpler. BIRT consists of a huge database to support and process complex data clusters. BIRT is great at managing projects and forming reports and queries related to projects and its results. Project management and organization is the most effective feature of BIRT. If aggregating data and forming quick reports is extremely important to you, BIRT is the go-to software to achieve this in extremely less amount of time. BIRT also offers coding events and code customization, which makes data processing simpler.
Conclusion
These are the best free business analytics software for businesses of any size. Whether your business needs Business Intelligence, Data Visualization, or Reporting Software, you can find what you need here while saving time and money.