10 Best Dashboard Software and Tools for 2023

Dashboard software enables business users to create a visually compelling report from a wide array of metrics and big data trends. These business intelligence (BI) dashboard tools — with pie charts and colored trend lines — offer an easily digestible data story from complex data analytics.

In this article, Datamation reviewed the top dashboard software and tools and ranked them with detail on the primary use cases for each. See below to learn all about the top software in the dashboard software market.

Best Dashboard Software And Tools

• Microsoft Power BI: Best for Overall Tool
• Tableau: Best for Dashboard Popularity
• Google Analytics: Best for the Value
• Zoho: Best for User-Friendly Dashboards
• Databox: Best for Large Datasets
• IBM Cognos: Best for Enterprises
• Klipfolio: Best for Customer Form and Style
• Mixpanel: Best for Predicting Trends in User Behavior
• Monday.com: Best For Ready-Made Templates
• Geckoboard: Best For Quick, Hassle-Free Dashboards
• Comparing the Best Dashboard Software
• Bottom Line: Dashboard Software

Best Dashboard Software & Tools

Microsoft Power BI: Best for Overall Tool

Microsoft offers such a comprehensive dashboard solution that it is essentially a default choice for many business users. The company’s Power BI solution is reasonably priced at $10 per user monthly. Additionally, it is bundled in a version of Office 365, which means a large swath of enterprise users already have it.

Add these factors to the broad functionality of Power BI and it’s clear why the analytics tool — excellent for tracking metrics and KPIs of all descriptions — is used by so many users. It features automated machine learning (ML) tools and artificial intelligence (AI)-fueled functionality. It can create and analyze visual narratives around image and text data. The interactive dashboard is a mature tool that benefits from Microsoft’s long-standing expertise in enterprise software.

“Power BI is a business intelligence tool that is one of the best tools available in the market today, and the overall experience of using it is awesome — training material and ease of use makes it easier than using Excel,” says a user of Microsoft Power BI.

Customer Type

Microsoft Power BI is mostly used by medium and large businesses.

Key Features

• Apply sensitivity labels
• Contains privacy and regulatory requirements
• Data governance and loss prevention with report sharing

Pros

• DAX data analysis function
• Flexible tiles
• Q&A question box

Cons

• Free version has limited storage
• Difficult to customize visuals
• Bulky user interface

User Reviews

Honors

• Top Rated,TrustRadius, 2022

Pricing

For Microsoft Power BI pricing, go to the pricing page.

See more: Best Business Intelligence Software and Tools

Tableau: Best for Dashboard Popularity

As the Tableau dashboard program grew in market share and sophistication, it caught the eye of some bigger players. Consequently, Tableau was acquired by Salesforce in 2019. It’s no surprise that the Tableau dashboard is favored by many users: its eye-catching, interactive dashboards are packed with data from many sources, from KPIs to cross-referenced metrics.

The Tableau portfolio is well regarded for its governance capabilities, in which the company has invested significantly. To prepare the data to be consumed in a dashboard, Tableau offers a variety of tools Tableau Prep. These tools and the advanced functionality of the platform help make Tableau a favorite of the enterprise crowd.

“Tableau has transformed the way we do business. Nearly every metric in our organization is passing through Tableau,” says a user of Tableau.

Customer Type

Tableau is mostly used by medium and large businesses.

Key Features

• Connects to many types of data sources
• Includes role-based permissions
• Querying in natural language

Pros

• Finds why with data-formed decisions
• Multi-layered security
• Recommends visualizations

Cons

• No custom visual imports
• Limited data processing
• Expensive pricing

User Reviews

Honors

• LinkedIn Top Companies
• Company of the Year, World Changing Ideas Awards, Fast Company, 2020
• Deal of the Year – IPOs & Acquisitions, GeekWire Awards, 2020

Pricing

For pricing, go to the Tableau pricing page.

Google Analytics: Best for the Value

Google Analytics is the best value dashboard software. For small and medium businesses, the tool is free, while still offering to analyze traffic sources, optimize website performance, and use ML models to enhance measurements.

Google Analytics analyzes data quickly for a company’s team using the interface and shareable reports. Google Analytics also offers tech support built into the system. Google Analytics also helps companies with automatic insights on changes, trends, and growth opportunities.

“One of our company’s primary reporting engines is Google Analytics. It instantly provides us with information on where our traffic is coming from, who is buying, and a complete, detailed sales history. The success of our company’s websites is measured using Google Analytics,” says a user of Google Analytics.

Customer Type

Google Analytics is used by small, medium, and large businesses.

Key Features

• Analyze traffic sources
• Optimize website performance
• Uses machine learning models

Pros

• Tag management
• Decision making with statistics
• Guides audience to business

Cons

• Needs manual adjustments
• Difficult to learn processes
• Customer service

User Reviews

Honors

• Top Rated, TrustRadius, 2022
• FrontRunner, Software Device, 2021

Pricing

• Freemium service for small and medium businesses: $0
• Google Analytics 360: $12,500 a month

Zoho: Best for User-Friendly Dashboards

In the market of data analytics dashboards, there tends to be a choice between complexity and ease of use, without any training in data science. Zoho comes down in the ease-of-use camp. It is competitively priced in comparison to other top choices in the dashboard sector.

Additionally, Zoho is known for solid customer support. Users report reaching out to tech support and expecting an answer promptly. Zoho offers KPI widgets, graphs, and visual themes to create a compelling narrative around a company’s data story — without requiring an enterprise budget.

“Easy to use, transferring data, and best for an organization or a firm to keep the documentation centralization process. Numerous customization options are available with Zoho,” says a user of Zoho.

Customer Type

Zoho mostly works with small businesses, but Zoho is also used by medium to large companies.

Key Features

• Forecasting
• Macro suggestions
• Supports data security and compliance

Pros

• Collaborate on reports
• Scales with company’s growth
• Report scheduling

Cons

• Difficult features
• Hard-to-learn processes
• No filtering records

User Reviews

Honors

• Leader, “CRM Technology Value Matrix,” Nucleus Research, 2022.

Pricing

For pricing, go to Zoho’s pricing page.

Databox: Best for Large Datasets

Databox gathers all of a company’s metrics in one business analytics dashboard to give the organization KPI data across many devices. Databox makes it easier for a company to monitor marketing activity and pulls vital data into a single dashboard for access and monitoring.

Data boards created with Databox are customizable, real-time, and have interactive reports. Databox allows companies to connect with multiple data sources and analyze results to see how to move forward.

“I really enjoy using Databox dashboards. They make it easy for me to see all of the important data that I need in one place. I can also customize the dashboards to show me exactly what I want to see,” says a user of Databox in a testimonial on Gartner Peer Insights.

Customer Type

Databox is often used by small and medium businesses.

Key Features

• Exporting data as a report
• Alerts when specific goals are met
• Device cross-compatibility

Pros

• Share data, not editing access
• Query builder
• Calculate KPIs for multiple data sources

Cons

• Occasional problems with editing tools
• Custom reporting expensive
• Lacks integration

User Reviews

Honors

• Leader, G2 Grid for Data Visualization, 2022

Pricing

For pricing, go to Databox’s pricing page.

IBM Cognos: Best for Enterprises

The Cognos dashboard enables collaborative enterprise teams to build upper-level visualizations of business metrics. Users don’t need to be coding pros or know SQL to create a dashboard. To its credit, a Cognos dashboard can be built by a user with mid-level data skills, then share that dashboard with a data scientist for a more in-depth treatment.

IBM has shown signs of commitment to its analytics dashboard solution. To a platform that already had enterprise-level reporting, it added the Cognos Analytics and Planning Analytics toolset, providing greater capability for a data scientist to query with a hypothetical scenario.

“The product does a great job with enterprise reporting, and it is becoming more useful for self-service. Our users have quickly adopted it and been able to gain insights from data faster than they have been able to in the past,” says a user of IBM Cognos in a testimonial on Gartner Peer Insights.

Customer Type

IBM Cognos is mostly used by medium and large businesses.

Key Features

• Generate personalized reports
• Mobile access
• Auto-modeling

Pros

• Relational display
• OLAP
• Ad hoc reporting

Cons

• Information on errors not clear
• Customer service
• Difficult to use

User Reviews

Honors

• IBM, “Change the World,” Fortune, 2022
• Cognos, Top Rated, TrustRadius, 2022

Pricing

For pricing, go to IBM Cognos’s pricing page.

Klipfolio: Best for Customer Form and Style

Klipfolio is a cloud-based dashboard that helps a business discover, visualize, share, take action, learn, and explore its data and dashboard options. Klipfolio’s products, both Klips and PowerMetrics, help businesses grow and track their KPIs and metrics.

If there’s a favorite form or style that a busy professional wants to see their business performance dashboard in, it’s likely available in Klipfolio: pie charts, colored scatter maps, tables, and more. To make these charts, Klipfolio offers pre-built templates. Additionally, the dashboard is updated in real-time for the latest data visualization.

“A single spot for all our company’s vital data saves time and effort, and we’ve found Klipfolio to be an excellent choice for this purpose. Our time is saved by being able to monitor data and analytics from a variety of sources on a single platform. In both organic and paid search marketing strategies, it has a big impact,” says a user of Klipfolio in a testimonial on TrustRadius.

Customer Type

Klipfolio can be used by small, medium, and large businesses.

Key Features

• Ability to make Faster Decisions
• Gives a view of business metrics
• Retrieve data at any time

Pros

• Data range and filters
• Auto-refresh
• Add context

Cons

• Minimum number of templates
• Difficult to use
• Limited API settings

User Reviews

Honors

• Top-Rated Business Intelligence Software, SoftwareWorld
• Best Feature Set, TrustRadius

Pricing

For Klipfolio pricing, go to their pricing page.

See more: Top Data Analytics Tools

Mixpanel: Best for Predicting Trends in User Behavior

Mixpanel is a dashboard tool that analyzes product usage data and helps makes decisions on how a company can build better products. Mixpanel gives customers easy access to user engagement data. Companies choose Mixpanel, because it has an interface with  deep analysis, allowing them to see monetization and long-term retention.

Mixpanel allows teams to see their data driving better decisions, identify the root causes of issues, and prioritize sensitive opportunities.

“Mixpanel is being used by our company to generate daily client outreach and strategize our campaign. Helps us to generate alerts in real time and organize weekly and monthly data more efficiently,” says a user of Mixpanel in a testimonial on Capterra.

Customer Type

Mixpanel customers are mostly medium-sized businesses.

Key Features

• Entry and exit page tracking
• Provides alerts and notifications
• Uses campaign management

Pros

• Anomaly explanations
• Signals correlation between events and properties
• User path history

Cons

• No mail reports
• Can be difficult to understand
• Limited data range

User Reviews

Honors

• Proddy Awards, analytics category, winner
• Top solution, ecommerce analytics and product analytics, G2

Pricing

For pricing, go to Mixpanel’s pricing page.

Monday.com: Best For Ready-Made Templates

Monday.com is a cloud-based dashboard tool and work management platform that helps companies follow their workflow, collaborate, and manage projects. Monday.com was developed to help a company work by creating tools and applications for managing workloads. Companies can choose to create their dashboards or use templates produced by monday.com.

Monday.com is not only a work collaboration tool, but also a versatile tool for managing customer relations, human resources, software development, and other  business functions. The platform helps a company organize its workflows.

“Monday software has helped a lot in managing different software development projects in a professional manner. It brought me back the feeling of being in control of every aspect going around me as a software team lead,” says a user of monday.com in a testimonial on G2.

Customer Type

Monday.com works best for small and medium businesses, but it is used by large businesses as well.

Key Features

• Provides calendar views
• Contains useful building blocks
• Visualized progress with Gantt charts

Pros

• Prioritizes people management
• Communication between users
• Assignment management

Cons

• Mobile app can have glitches
• Only English tutorials
• Expensive

User Reviews

Honors

• Webby Awards Apps, software productivity and collaboration, nominee, 2022
• One of the “World’s Best Workplaces,” 2022

Pricing

For pricing, go to monday.com’s pricing page.

Geckoboard: Best For Quick, Hassle-Free Dashboards

Geckoboard is a KPI dashboard platform that helps a company streamline their data from other sources. Geckoboard does not require a company to do any coding to make the user experience more seamless. The platform offers IP restrictions, screenshots, status indicators, widgets, and looped dashboards.

Geckoboard users can build dashboards directly into a browser that contains a drag-and-drop interface, important numbers, metrics, KPIs, and report spreadsheets. Geckoboard dashboards have visuals that can help a company understand operations and automatically update to make sure their dashboards stay up-to-date.

“Geckoboard has helped our business in keeping all employees up to date with all latest data from all employees. The software is very user friendly, and one does not need to be very knowledgeable on software operating. Dashboards can be adjusted to your needs, which is very effective,” says a user of Geckoboard in a testimonial on GetApp.

Customer Type

The majority of Geckoboard’s customers are small and medium businesses.

Key Features

• Provide scorecards
• Offers steps for answers
• Strong third-party integration

Pros

• Dashboard loops
• Status indicator
• Embeddable

Cons

• A fixed layout width
• Can have lagging errors
• Lacks customization

User Reviews

Pricing

Go to Geckoboard’s pricing page for pricing.

Comparing the Best Dashboard Software

See more: What is Data Visualization?

Bottom Line: Dashboard Software

The ideal dashboard tool should offer users a convenient way to keep up with, analyze, and act on critical company information for both growing and large teams.Dashboard tools become more important as a company’s data increases. From customization to layout and visualization to reporting, a dashboard tool is vital for a company to use their data to improve their organization.