What is Tableau+? | Is Tableau Plus Worth It?

Tableau Plus is the new premium offering from Tableau, a leading data visualization and business intelligence platform. It builds upon the foundations of standard Tableau's data cleansing, visualization, and dashboard layers, providing enhanced features geared towards scale, data integration, and - of course - AI features. Tableau Plus is designed to bring every part of the Tableau product suite, support offerings, and learning platform into one product SKU.

Before discussing the value behind Tableau+, let's take a look at what is included today and the planned future releases.

What's Included Today in Tableau+

Tableau+ is the highest of Tableau's three pricing and feature tiers and is only available as a Tableau Cloud deployment. Customers can not access Tableau+ features within a traditional Tableau Server deployment. For starters, Tableau+ includes all the capabilities of standard Tableau Cloud deployments.

• Tableau Desktop - connect and curate interactive dashboards
• Tableau Prep - connect and cleanse multiple data sources within a visual ETL flow
• Tableau Cloud - collaborative web platform for sharing and accessing insights
• Tableau Bridge - connecting on-premise data sources to cloud-based dashboards
• Tableau Pulse - AI innovation for creating and tracking key metrics in datasets

Additionally, Tableau+ also includes both (historically separately sold) add-ons of Data Management and Advanced Management.  Without doing a full feature list of the add-ons, both packages provide better cloud management controls, automated Tableau Prep workflows, data cataloging features, and expanded usage statistics beyond the entry-level SKU.

Tableau Pulse + Einstein CoPilot

Tableau Pulse was released to all Tableau Cloud customers in early 2024 as a reimagined data experience for non-technical audiences to easily set up, track, and deep dive into key metrics over time.  Powered by Tableau AI, Pulse metrics provide personalized, contextual visual into metric performance - automated insights in plain language.  While Tableau Pulse is available for all Tableau Cloud customers, future functionality ('Pulse premium') will be reserved for only Tableau Plus customers - including Dynamic Sorting & Grouping, Pulse Q&A - Ask for related Metrics, Metrics Goals, Digest Cadence, and AI-enhanced language.

Einstein CoPilot debuted at Tableau Conference 2024 as a built-in intelligent assistant directly in the Tableau suite (i.e. ChatGPT with extensive product knowledge).  The current version of Einstein CoPilot works within Tableau Prep and Tableau Catalog to support data preparation and documentation tasks for teams.  Einstein CoPilot is planned with additional functionality in future releases - all reserved for Tableau+ customers.

Data Cloud Credits

A large component of Tableau+ draw is access to Salesforce Data Cloud, advertised as the only data platform native to Salesforce. Data Cloud is marketed as a centralized data platform to bring disparate enterprise data sources together, provide metadata definitions, and drive AI use cases based on a single source of truth.

Tableau+ customers are provided Data Cloud access with 250k credits.

Included Success Plans and eLearning Access

Tableau+ plans also include resources, expert guidance, and expedited support plans from Tableau's Premier Success packages which is a great value for organizations with large audiences or customers without a robust bench of Tableau talent internally. 

What's Coming Next in Tableau+

New features are planned for rollout to Tableau+, particularly as Tableau Pulse and Einstein CoPilot release deeper functionality and integration.

Tableau Pulse Premium Features + Expanded Einstein CoPilot

Tableau+ has all the AI-oriented features of the Tableau product suite.  While Tableau Pulse is available to all Tableau Cloud pricing tiers, additional premium features are planned to be released such as Dynamic Sorting & Grouping, Pulse Q&A - Ask for related Metrics, Metrics Goals, Digest Cadence, and AI-enhanced language.

The newest addition to the Tableau suite in Einstein CoPilot integration to provide in-tool virtual assistance (think a smarter Clippy) for developers and end users.  Einstein CoPilot is planned to be integrated further directly into the Tableau authoring experience in Desktop and Cloud web-edit.  Einstein CoPilot integration is the most valuable part of the Tableau+ pricing tier - in my opinion.

Scale with Cloud Manager

Tableau Cloud has historically been a 1-site implementation, meaning organizations leveraged projects within a single site for managing and securing access to content.  With Tableau Server, organizations could use the concept of a 'site' to wall off content and access at an even higher level.  Projects and sites can accomplish the same outcomes with proper security and publishing practices, and now Tableau is rolling out multi-site options for Tableau Cloud customers. 

Within the Tableau+ tier, it has been advertised to control up to 50 sites with an ability to centrally manage users, permissions, etc. within a single administration tool.  This has been a big request for larger enterprise organizations and teams with external customers that would like to further refine the individual site setup that Tableau Cloud wasn't able to previously accomplish.

Is Tableau+ Worth It?

Tableau+ packs a lot of features—essentially all the prior add-ons (data management, advanced management), AI-packed features on Tableau's evolving product roadmap, the ongoing support of customer success managers, and access to e-learning for your team.  In my opinion, Tableau+ is designed for two scenarios - the enterprise deployment or an organization seeking to lean all-in as Salesforce Data Cloud + Tableau as their primary analytics technology stack.

For enterprise customers, the bundled offering of data management, advanced management, customer success plans, and Einstein CoPilot integration make it much more appealing for deploying Tableau at a large scale - having confidence that the large audience of developers and power users will be supported along the way.  Tableau+ bundled pricing also makes pitching a single SKU easier for more complex procurement processes.

For non-enterprise customers, the value of Tableau+ depends more on what features will be used.  For heavy Salesforce-centric organizations, access to Data Cloud through Tableau+ is really appealing if a centralized data warehouse isn't already in place.  Tableau+ bundled pricing also would make sense for organizations that are already considering Tableau's customer success plans and e-learning access - it's a bundled cost savings.

The challenge of Tableau+ is balancing all the features with an increased price tag at scale. The roadmap looks promising, particularly with improved AI integration like Pulse premium features and Einstein CoPilot, but there isn't much public information on how Data Cloud works behind the scenes and when new advertised Pulse/CoPilot features will be rolled out.  With the price tag on Tableau+, leveraging Data Cloud is how you would want to maximize your value in the deeper Tableau investment.

There is definitely value in Tableau+, particularly if your organization already has invested in the data management/advanced management add-on and Tableau's support plans.  It's enterprise-level value packed into a clearly-defined bundle.  For non-enterprises, the answer depends on how much you really want the premium features. 

Einstein CoPilot is the best value that is (unfortunately) reserved for only Tableau+ customers.  I wish non-Tableau+ customers could experience CoPilot's functionality.  If Tableau+ is too big of a price for an existing scaled deployments, the benefits of consolidated data warehousing with Data Cloud and support packages with Success Plans can often be found at a more flexible price point beyond the Tableau+ bundle.