13 Best Data Analytics Software

With the advent of the internet, you can now access data, analyze and use it to optimize your business performance.

But to ensure that you do this well, you need data analytics software that can provide you with all the features that you need.

A useful tool should also feature advanced algorithms and AI that can change your data into important insights. This way you can improve your business and ensure it’s in line with the modern trends.

To come up with the right tool, you should consider a number of factors. From checking how it integrates with other systems to considering its performance, searching for the right tool can be overwhelming.

To help you get the right tools, we’ve compiled some of the best software and also checked on their functionalities.

Looking at this list will help you get the best data analytics software.

1. Qualtrics Research Core

Developed to help you make market-driven decisions through machine learning, Qualtrics Research Core is one of the best data analytics platforms in the market today.

It’s not only used by several educational institutions and thousands of brands but is also equipped with all the tools that you need.

Coming with tools such as statistical research, and survey management, you can use it to carry out jobs such as statistical research, survey management, and data management.

This way, you’ll be able to know the trends so you can include valuable insights into your business.

Featuring an AI-powered interface, it has features to help you accelerate and simplify your research process. You can use it to create and take surveys.

Secure and easily accessible, it’s built in such a way that it will function as a repository for your reports and research data Since it’s secure, all your business information will be safe

Its multi-channel distribution options cover SMS, email, social media, websites, IVR, and QR codes. This allows you to reach your target and pass information to them.

Whether you are an expert analyst or a beginner, this tool will allow you to identify the trends, decipher data, and produce models without using excel, SPSS.

This feature will help you identify the most robust statistical data and translate them into simple language.

Furthermore, you don’t need to worry even if your research has some issues. Regardless of your skill level, they will take care of your research.

Qualtrics Research Core Pricing

• Comes with a free trial
• Contact the vendor for pricing
• Free account is $0

Pros

• Easy to set up and use
• It provides immediate and fast results
• It allows you to export data
• Building surveys with the tool is intuitive

Cons

Cancelling your subscription is very difficult

2. Looker

Looker is a data analytics tool that allows you to deliver data directly to your team, including customized ones.

It collects and extracts data from different sources before loading it to its database. From there, it’s modelled according to your business requirement and then made available to all users through shared insights and dashboards.

Since it’s browser-based software, you can conveniently access data in your system and then share it with everyone in your team. You can also export data both directly and locally to platforms such as Dropbox and Google drive.

Instead of locking your data, you can access the same through systems such as Salesforce and Slack.

Featuring the best scheduling tools, you can then deliver data to S3, webhooks, email, and chat. It features an integration tool that offers responsive web design.

If you have some little SQL knowledge, you won’t have any problems building your own modules or making Looker work for you.

With just a single code, you can design your own visualization and optimize your queries. Interestingly, even if you don’t have the knowledge, you can still use their videos and databases.

In addition to open API integration and flexible pricing plan, it will help you analyze both SQL and Web-hosted information.

In case you need a software that can help you end bottlenecks and data chaos, this is the right choice.

As one of the best business intelligence applications, it will enable you to turn traffic into valuable business and ensure that your customers are always satisfied.

Looker Pricing

• Up to 10 users, the pricing plan is $300-$500 per user per month
• After 10 users the pricing plan is $50

Pros

• It provides fully customizable charts, reports, and graphs
• Easy to build the best dashboards
• Functional enough to be used by all users
• Powerful tools for real-time data collaboration and exploration
• Live connection to any SQL database

Cons

• Customizing the visualizations can be difficult
• It can slow down complex and large queries

3. Minitab

Whether you want to drive efficiency or improve the quality of your work, Minitab is the right data analytics software for you.

Used by a variety of businesses, this software will help you take care of all your business issues.

With this tool, you don’t have to be an expert to understand your data and get insights that can help move your business forward.

You can also use its flagship product Minitab Statistical Software to carry out a smarter and thorough data analysis process. Even if you are not an expert, you can still use it to analyze a substantial amount of data.

Given that it’s easy to use, both colleges and universities can enjoy using it. To help you interpret your data with ease it has an Assistant feature.

Unlike other software, it comes with state of the art software that not only meets your goals but also helps to streamline your workflow. Plus, you can use its project Roadmap to share, rollout, and replicate projects throughout your business.

Armed with data on the areas that you should improve, you can come up with better measures so you can and upgrade the quality of your product.

Furthermore, with its Project Roadmap features, rolling out, sharing, and developing a product becomes very easy.

You can also expect the best customer service. You can, therefore, contact them through phone or email if you have any queries.

Minitab Pricing

• It has a free trial
• A single user is $1595
• Annual multiuser contact the vendor
• Academic pricing contact the vendor

Pros

• It has several formulas and tools
• It has what you need to customize your data
• It’s easy to export charts and graphs

Cons

• It’s not intuitive enough hence you need some training
• It may hang with complex data analysis

4. SAP Business Intelligence Platform

SAP Business Intelligence Platform is a data analytics tool meant for monitoring data and getting important insights for your business. Given that it’s very accurate it will allow you to eliminate any guesswork.

As a scalable and flexible platform, it will not only empower your business but also help you evaluate your business.

Unlike other tools, it uses the most innovative and newest tools that can easily adapt to the needs of your business.

It can also help you collect data from different sources. This will allow you to gain flexible and dynamic insights for your business needs.

Additionally, it’s fitted with several applications that allow you to automatically convert data into useful information and share them with the right group of people.

You can also use it to distribute data to your team so they can gain useful insights anytime they want.

Whether you want to spot the trends or know the main causes of your business issues, this is the right software.

With its ad hoc reporting tools, you can develop important business questions and get instant answers.

Furthermore, it’s built with mechanisms that are meant specifically to help you view and analyze data. For instance, with its self-service tools, you can perform trend analysis, aggregate your data, and get the best insights.

Once you generate those insights you can use its Sharing functionality to share them with your team. This extends decision-making to a wide range of people out there.

SAP Business Intelligence Platform Pricing

•  There is no free trial
• The pricing starts at $14000 per year

Pros

• It has a seamless user interface
• The sharing functions match those of Microsoft office
• Self-service tools are available for a wide number of people
• It’s flexible

Cons

• It’s a bit costly
• Memories may leak and servers may go down

5. Zoho Analytics

Previously known as Zoho Reports, Zoho Analytics is a unique software with components such as pivot tables, KPI widgets, and tabular components.

By promoting collaborative analysis and review and allowing you to work with colleagues and team members, it will help you generate very useful insights.

What sets it apart is that you can embed it on any dashboard or report on your websites, apps, and blogs.

Besides having state of art security practices, you can use it to integrate and build your reporting functionalities.

As an on-demand business intelligence solution, this software will help you get a detailed and powerful business intelligence engine. Even with no IT skills, you can get powerful reports within minutes.

Easy to set up and implement, this is a SaaS solution that will answer all your business needs. It’s also fitted with a spreadsheet-like interface, that’s easy to learn and use.

Since it’s a web-based tool, you don’t have to email your reports. Your workers and team members can always view them online. So long as you have an internet and browser, you can access and view it wherever you are.

Having been used by several businesses worldwide, you can rest assured that it won’t disappoint you. Whether you have a small or large business, it’s such a suitable fit.

The best part is that it allows you to carry out a myriad of analytical jobs including collecting the data and analyzing it.

In case of any issue, you can contact their support through online and phone

Zoho Analytics Pricing

• It comes with a free trial
• The basic plan is $22 per month
• The standard plan cost $45 per month
• The premium plan cost $112 per month
• An enterprise plan is $445 per month
• Personal on-premise is free
• Professional on-premise is $30 per user per month

Pros

• It has an easy to use interface
• Easy to set up links
• It has an AI feature
• Works well with most databases

Cons

• The dashboard may feel a little bit cramped
• Dashboard alignment feels a little bit off

6. Apache Spark

If you are looking for friendly data analytics software, Apache Spark is the right one for you. It not only supports batch processing and large SQL but also has everything that you need to get business insights.

To get the most from it, you need to run it on Hadoop and leverage its power so you can enjoy deep insights.

As a very fast analytics tool, it’s the go-to data processing tool of any business that needs to process data fast.

By using a query optimization tool and Acyclic Graph Scheduler it can quickly perform real-time data. You can also integrate its libraries into one application within minutes.

Besides, it’s a highly interoperable tool that you can use to process data from different sources and run on different systems out there.

Using standalone cluster mode, you can deploy it into single cluster machines or servers. Developed with a broad range of capabilities and features, you can use it to perform complex data analysis.

Regardless of how diverse your data sources are, Apache Spark will help you process your data fast and ensure that the insights are immediately produced.

With this data processing technique, you and your team will spot any issue and address it as quickly as possible so your business can remain on the right track.

Another feature that sets it apart is its high-quality machine learning algorithms. With this unique feature, you can easily compute and implement all your jobs and tasks 100 times faster.

These algorithms can also comfortably work on Python, Java, Scala, and R libraries. This way, you can process data and get insights faster.

Apache Spark Pricing

• It provides a free trial
• It’s free Software

Pros

• It’s the best tool for processing big data
• It supports multiple languages and advanced analytics
• Provides inbuilt fault tolerance
• It allows you to quickly build microservices

Cons

It requires an advanced ability to model big data

7. Apache Hadoop

Apache Hadoop is a data analytics tool meant for data collection storage and analysis. As a reliable and highly customizable tool, you can use it to process large amounts of data across clusters of computers, servers, and different machines.

Its key features are Hadoop Distributed File System and processing component and a programming paradigm.

While the distributed file system stores data and divides them into large blocks, the Map/Reduce system has a technology that you can use to handle job scheduling tasks and cluster resource management.

As a big data technology, it provides a framework, ecosystem, and technology meant to process large amounts of data. So, if you need to manage and process large data this is the right software for you.

It’s also a highly scalable solution that will automatically scale up as the number of your machines and servers expands.

The amazing thing about it is that you don’t need to rely on any hardware whenever you want to scale up. In case of failures or errors along the way, it will immediately detect them and provide the right solution.

Apart from its reliable distributed file system, it comes with a framework that uses the Apache YARN system to take care of distributed parallel computing across all clusters.

Furthermore, you can comfortably integrate it with software such as Couchbase, Presto, Azure Cosmos DB among others.

Delivered based on the Apache License, it comes with a liberalist license that allows you to use, modify, and share it for production, research, and even personal use. This means you can comfortably use it without any enterprise pricing plan.

Apache Hadoop Pricing

• It comes with a free trial
• It’s free to use
• You should contact the vendor for pricing details

Pros

• You can store large quantities of data in different machines
• It effectively helps you to process large data
• It’s quite easy to configure and install
• Some features are very easy to use

Cons

• It’s not the best for real-time processing of data
• Support is a bit limited

8. Reveal

If you are looking for innovative data analytics software, Reveal is the right option. Designed for small, mid-sized, and large businesses, it will help you create expensive dashboards so you can enjoy the best business insights.

With its drag and drop feature, you can develop stunning visualizations and share them with your clients and other team members.

Besides its analytics capabilities, you can use it to access content anywhere, anytime, and on any device. Since it’s simple and easy to use, anyone within your team can access and start using it.

Because of this, your organization will not only be data-driven but full of insightful decisions. If you want to try it and see what it offers, you can start with its comprehensive free trial.

It also allows you to leverage different functions such as time series focusing, linear regression, and predictive analysis so you can make sense of your data.

If you like, you can enjoy embedded analytics at additional costs. This feature will allow you to add visualization and data analytic capabilities on your SaaS and on-premise applications.

With its flexible architecture, you can easily embed the analytics and make them part of your software. Plus, you can make dashboards and responsive KPIs to give you a smooth scrolling experience regardless of the software you are using.

To ensure you remain on top of everything, it provides real-time dashboards that you can check using any device. From sales to operations, finance to marketing, it offers all the solutions that you need.

The best part is that it provides a range of support systems including phone, email, tickets, live support and training

Reveal Pricing

• It comes with a free trial
• The monthly cost is $9.99 per user per month
• The annual cost is $99.99 per user per month

Pros

• It’s easy to use and navigate
• Its drill option is quite easy to use
• It provides a visual presentation of data
• The obvious areas of the reports are differentiated well

Cons

It should provide more options in terms of aggregation

9. IBM Watson

IBM Watson is an analytics solution that streamlines predicting disruptions and boosts your research through the use of AI.

By providing you with the power you need to accelerate your research, it will ensure that you have complete control of what matters to your business- data analytics, insights, and intellectual training.

As compared to other software, it will help you make more informed decisions. Designed for sectors such as healthcare, finance, and IT, it’s among the best tools out there.

By comprehending and consuming different types of data, it will allow you to gain insights that are useful to your business. Plus it has one of the best AI workload optimizations.

Whether you want to conduct rigorous or faster research, it’s the right software to use. By constantly monitoring your system you can anticipate any disruptions and correct them before they mess up your business.

In addition, it’s meant to help you understand your customers so you can interact with them in the best way possible. As a matter of fact, you can use it to engage your clients on a more personal level.

Because it uses powerful machine learning and AI it will allow you to deploy some of the best chatbots. This way, you’ll be able to make informed recommendations and decisions.

You can also use it to leverage your employee expertise and have a powerful stream of knowhow for your company. By combining the industry’s latest trends and past experiences, it allows you to develop a deep source of knowledge for your business.

The best part is that you’ll always be updated about regulations, risks, and threats that may affect your business. For instance, you can finish your cybersecurity threat investigation faster and do what needs to be done to prevent any serious threat.

IBM Watson Pricing

• It does not come with a free trial
• Plus pricing plan is $30 per user per month
• The professional pricing plan is $80 per user per month

Pros

• Its very user friendly
• Comes with advanced modelling techniques
• Secure and can have federation security
• Its administration is very easy

Cons

• It does not have strong documentation
• Some businesses have found it a bit expensive.

10. IBM Cognos

When looking for a solution that can help you to make business decisions fast, IBM Cognos is the right tool to consider.

Featuring a set of smart self-service capabilities, this software will allow you to confidently and quickly make the right decisions.

The kind of experience it provides will help you configure reports and dashboards while providing you with a scalable platform that you can deploy in the cloud or on-premise.

With this software, you’ll get interactive dashboards with custom visualizations and highly scalable distribution. It also comes with a wide range of tools including analytical reporting, what-if-analysis, and trend analysis.

Its self-service functionality will also allow you to use your mobile devices whether you are connected or not. It also features a number of social networking tools to help you collaborate with your team and make the most of their intelligence.

By providing you with mission-critical analysis, this tool will ensure that you meet all your company’s requirements.

Whether you have the experience or not, you can comfortably use it to generate and share the insights with your team members. With its intuitive and interactive experience, you can make dashboards from anywhere and add a personal touch to your content.

It also has a self-guided approach that provides recommendations, automates analytics, and ensures that your business runs smoothly.

Whether you are using your mobile phone or desktop, you’ll enjoy the same experience. If you have any issue, you can contact the company through phone, email, tickets, and training.

IBM Cognos Pricing

•  It has a free trial
• Proof of Concept by Quote
• Workgrough starts at $1990 per month
• Standard starts at $10000 per month
• Enterprise starts at $19,950 per month

Pros

• It’s extremely quick and easy to use
• It’s very accurate
• You can share it with anyone who can access it
• It allows you to email all your reports

Cons

• Requires a lot of IT support
• Requires a steep learning curve

11. Yellowfin

Unlike others, Yellowfin is a unique company that will help you make a better sense of your data. Featuring the best collaboration tools, comprehensive features, and right learning capabilities, it will help you get insights that can boost the performance of your company.

You can use it to get the right predictions so you can make the best business decisions for your company. Having multiple visualizations features you can always present your data the way you want.

Whether you have a mobile phone or desktop you can access and integrate it with your business systems. This way you can design and use it based on what your business needs.

To streamline your workflow, you can also merge it with your other solutions. As a fully integrated data analytics tool, once you get it you don’t have to invest in other software.

You can use it to consolidate all your data and address several problems affecting your business. Also using its storytelling capabilities you can develop your presentations using different analytics and make use of your data.

By doing this, you can simplify how you use your data and present comprehensive reports. It will also make sure that your business is at its best. If there are any changes you’ll get the right notifications.

Whether you need data transformations or insights, this software has everything that you need. It even has features that allow you to use it while knowing that everything is safe.

One of its key features is that it’s easy to use. You can deploy it in either cloud or on-premise depending on what’s convenient for your business.

Furthermore, it provides phone, email, tickets and training support

Yellowfin Pricing

• It provides a free trial
• Yellowfin Data Prep you contact the vendor
• Yellowfin Analytics is $50 per user per month
• Yellowfin Analytics plus you contact the3 vendor
• Yellowfin Stories is $10 per user per month
• Yellowfin Signals you contact the vendor

Pros

•  It has an intuitive and easy to use UI
• It’s quick and simple to develop reports
• It allows you to easily create dynamic reports
• You can use it with several software

Cons

• It should provide you with more options
• Some users claim it’s a bit expensive

12. IBM Analytics

IBM Analytics is a tool that dwells on using the best insights to help you make business decisions. By simplifying how you collect and analyze your data, you get the freedom to run your business the way you want.

With this software, you build a strong foundation for your business and organize your data in the best way possible.

Also, it allows you to scale your business insights by gaining evidence-based insights that you could not get before.

Unlike other software it will help you boost your proficiency and efficiency in all aspects of data With IBM Analytics, you’ll gain the right insights for your business so you can be more confident in your decision-making process.

It will also provide you with prescriptive information that you can use to predict any future trends for your company.

It will help you improve your business performance and finances. It comes with applications such as financial management solutions to help prevent any risks and ensure that your company is always on the right track.

Apart from helping you know the problem, it will assist you to know why such a thing has happened and what you can do about it. With its features, you can detect relationships and patterns.

Instead of using guesswork, this platform will help you determine what could affect your company in the future so you can know what to do.

IBM Analytics Pricing

• It does not have a free trial
• You need to contact the vendor

Pros

• Easy to set up and customize
• Strong security protocols and data storage features
• You can use it to predict
• Provides you with integrated business planning

Cons

• Poor workflow
• It should come with getting started guide

13. Periscope Data

Periscope Data is a unique tool that combines analytics and business intelligence into a single platform that can help you collect data, analyze them, and share the same with your team.

It gathers different sources of data into one single platform and uses advanced tools to analyze and make the most of them.

It provides a range of charts and visualizations that you can use to create your own analysis and take the best course of action for your business.

With its predictive analysis feature, you can streamline all your unstructured data and ensure that your business remains proactive and competitive.

Since it recently merged with Sisence it will provide you with more comprehensive integrations. It also features an Ad Hoc query tool that will help you handle different types of queries that your business may be faced with.

Plus, it’s made in such a way that you can use it to analyze some of the most complex data solutions with relative ease.

If you have several departments to check it will provide you with dashboards to use. The dashboards are designed such that you can extract the most useful information and use them.

Further, its graphic interface includes charts and trends to help you understand how your business is progressing so you know what you are supposed to do.

You can also convert the dashboard information into reports and email the same to your customers and team members.

Periscope Data Pricing

• It comes with a free trial
• It has a quote based plan

Pros

• It provides you with many ways to visualize data
• You can easily share data and information among many people
• It has user-friendly charts and graphs
• Excellent on-demand support team

Cons

• Complex dashboard layouts
• You should have knowledge of SQL

How to Choose the Best Data Analytics Tools

1. Know Your Business Needs and Goals

One of the most important things to know is your business needs and goals. For instance, if your business requires reporting tools then the software should have the ability to present data in a format like charts and maps.

The right software should also help you to sustain and generate business dashboards and show the key performance indicators for your company. Furthermore, it should allow you to use them with other applications such as CRM to get valuable insights.

2. Choose the One with the Best Customer Support Options

Even if you are using the most user-friendly software you may be faced with difficulties once in a while. You should, therefore, check all the customer support and training and ensure that they are solid.

The best software should provide you with a 24/7 live chat, webinars, phone support, and online case submissions.

3. Make Sure It’s Easy To Configure and Administrate

While evaluating the simplicity of the software, you need to know your system requirements for configurations, installations, and continuous management.

You should also consider the security associated with the access rights and designation roles for both the incorporation of developed models and the analytics process. Make sure you understand the options it provides for authorizations and authentications.

4. Keep Your Team Members and Users In Mind

While shopping for the right software, consider the needs of other people. If your technicians will use the software, you must choose one that they will understand.

On the same note, if engineers will use the software, ensure you look for one that they can comfortably use. By keeping them in mind, you’ll make your business process run smoothly.

5. Consider the Scalability of the Data Analytics Tool

When it comes to selecting the right software, considering the scalability of the tool is also very important.

You need to get a solution that can handle all the requirements of your business even if you expand.

Although your business needs may remain the same for a long time, choosing a more scalable tool is the right thing to do.

You should consider things such as the number of users, data volumes, and depth of analysis.

6. Know the Ongoing Maintenance of the Software

Almost 90% of data analytics tools require some ongoing maintenance. You should, therefore, go for one that you can maintain with ease.

You don’t need software that will require a lot of money to keep in a good working condition.

7. Consider Free Trials

Before you commit your money to the software you should try it out to see whether it has all that you need.

Since most software provides free trials you need to take advantage of this. Try out a variety of visualizations, and dashboards and ensure that it meets all your expectations.

8. Choose One That Integrates Well

It’s also important to choose a tool that can integrate well with your other software.

If you want to change to another software, it should allow you to migrate your data with ease.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

The above outline illustrates some of the best data analytics software in the market today. The features and the values of each basically depend on what you want to achieve.

Before settling on any tool you must understand your business and ask yourself whether you can afford it. But instead of focusing so much on the pricing make sure you consider the quality.

When looking for one, you can start with the above software. The best part is that most of them come with a free trial.