Tableau

Tableau Desktop was one of the first BI tools which I tried while searching for a BI solution for my company. Even though we did not use Tableau then, it has become my reference point when it came to evaluating any BI solution ever since. Gartner report puts Tableau as a market leader in an ever increasing competitive market. The simple UI design which supports drag and drop and ability to link with any data source you can think of, even a non-technical user can start creating visualizations and dashboards in an hour. If you get stuck you can always use the "Show Me" feature. A free to use Tableau Reader is a handy app for interacting with the data visualizations created with Tableau desktop and it's more productive and efficient way of sharing your data than using static PowerPoint presentations. Tableau offers multiple visualizations options and you can create compelling reports by using these visualizations in Stories. Stories contain a sequence of worksheets and dashboards that are brought together to form a story which conveys the point to the audience. Tableau sales team and customer support team have both been very helpful over the years. The sales person were not aggressive in pitching their product and offered full support during the initial testing period. The customer service team also responds quickly.

Tableau free version comes with limited capabilities for publishing and collaboration as compared to other solutions like Qlik Sense. Anything you share will be via a public cloud which will offer no privacy for a user handling sensitive data. The whole ETL process is a little bit complex and is not much of a use if you're not using a clean data source and the data format is not supported. It will also slow down over the time as data becomes more extensive. Tableau Online UI leaves much to be desired.

Before you decide to finalize any BI tool you need to write down your needs. If you are only looking for a data visualization tool then there are other free options available from MicroStrategy and Qlik Sense. And almost everybody has Microsoft Excel, so you have the option of using Power View. If you do not mind extra cash and your data will not outgrow significantly then Tableau is a good choice.