Tableau + | A new "Premium" pricing tier for Tableau | Tableau Plus

0:00Hey it's Tim here.

0:01Tableau have just announced Tableau Plus.

0:04I didn't say Pulse, I said Plus.

0:07The pricing has changed in this video.

0:08I'm gonna break it down as ever.

0:10Let's get started

0:11So here we are on the blog post.

0:13Tableau plus new edition with premium AI, enterprise capabilities, and premiere success.

0:19Those are essentially the three core things they've added.

0:22What is Tableau Plus?

0:24Well, we'll just go straight to what's included here.

0:27So you can see that it's essentially the bundling of a bunch of capabilities that Tableau already kind of have or have announced, which is the critical bit.

0:35So

0:35The top one, Einstein Copilot for Tableau.

0:37I'll come back to this.

0:38Data Cloud.

0:40This is actually a capability that Tableau have talked about for quite some time, but that they're kind of finally here.

0:45Einstein AI request credits, advanced management, data management, data connect, premier success and e-learning for creators and explorers.

0:54If we go through this in a little bit more detail, Einstein Copilot for Tableau announced at Tableau Conference coming in 24.

1:012, only going to be in Tableau Plus.

1:04Data cloud, a new capability, of course, if I just bring out my sidebar here, we'll click on these.

1:09We'll actually go take a look at these.

1:11You can see that

1:12Some of these capabilities are things that we've all been sort of talking about.

1:15So um, you know, Ta Tableau have spent a lot of time in the in the last few

1:20Sort of let's say months, maybe even year or so, kind of announcing each of these things as separate things, right?

1:26Sort of getting people really excited about them.

1:29Einstein AI request credits.

1:31So if I click on that, you'll see that Tableau AI is the core capability around Tableau.

1:36I've covered this in my videos for Tableau Pulse.

1:40You can go ahead and check that out.

1:41But Tableau AI is essentially the core capability around that and it makes requests and those credits are essentially going to be made available to you here.

1:50So you kind of don't abuse the system on there

1:53on their cloud platform.

1:54If I go back, uh advanced management has existed before.

1:58Uh this is essentially the Tableau server or Tableau Cloud monitoring capability.

2:02It works slightly differently on both platforms.

2:05On cloud, it gives you more stuff.

2:06On server, it gives you more visibility.

2:09Data management, this is where Tableau Prep Conductor lives.

2:12This is where metadata capabilities live in the Tableau ecosystem.

2:15Some really powerful stuff in there as well.

2:17I I once did a session at a user group to ask 100 people to put their hands up if they use this.

2:22Uh two people put their hands up and one of them didn't even know they had it as a capability, even though they did know.

2:28Uh they had it because they had one of the features I just mentioned.

2:31They didn't realize some of the other capabilities that were in there.

2:33So data management's something that again I think people have, don't use that often, doesn't come up that often.

2:39Has been an add-on for quite some time.

2:40I'll come back to those two.

2:42Data Connect, this is it says new, but when you when you click on the blog post, it goes back to April 2025.

2:48So I don't know if it's new or what's going on here.

2:51I need to I need to sort of do my digging on this and just better understand it.

2:55It might be new as of Tableau Conference season, if that makes sense.

2:59But this is the release where it actually gets pushed out to everyone's machines.

3:03Premier Success, this is sort of the white glove treatment for I think what used to be sort of the Tableau Blueprint rollout system.

3:11But you get a little bit more of a tailored approach to how to fast track success with resources, guidance, and expedited support at every stage of your journey.

3:21This is sort of where the premium support comes in as well.

3:23And e-learning for creators and explorers, essentially, enablement out of the box.

3:28So that's what's in Tableau Plus.

3:31What is slightly sort of um interesting is

3:36There are two discussions to be had here.

3:38Number one, the pricing has changed and it seems that Tableau Plus is a new premium tier at the very top level.

3:44Okay.

3:45Number two, the way this has come out before 24.

3:492.

3:49So let me start with the first one, the pricing.

3:52The pricing has changed.

3:53Now

3:53Whenever we talk about pricing, I always go to the Tableau Pricing page.

3:57If you want to know how to go here, go to Tableau, go to Tableau Landing page, go to products, go to plans and pricing, and if you click on plans and pricing, it takes you to this page.

4:05Now

4:06Because I am in the UK, it does a little bit of a uh a UK twang on the website and it puts everything in pounds for me.

4:14But if you take that off, you'll see here that Tableau Plus

4:18is available.

4:19They don't always update the CMS globally at the same time, so the British one takes a bit longer.

4:23So that's why I've gone to the U US page here.

4:26On here, we see something that I want to call out.

4:297542.

4:3015.

4:31This is the Tableau Cloud pricing today, not the Tableau Plus pricing.

4:35There is no detail on the Tableau plus pricing, even though they've just announced it.

4:39So that is sort of thing number one.

4:41Thing number two, previously you used to be able to have Tableau Server available as a comparison on this page.

4:48And something they did.

4:50like four months ago is they made Tableau server more expensive to match the cloud pricing.

4:56So 75.

4:574215

4:58If you go down here and you click on this little link here, you actually are able to access the Tableau server pricing and you'll see it's the same, 7542.

5:0615.

5:07So there is this additional element that Tableau server gets updates less often, has not had things like Tableau Pulse added to it, won't have some of the cloud capabilities added to it.

5:20Even though that's definitely where the focus is going with the AI capabilities.

5:24Note all the AI capabilities I think will require Tableau Cloud by default.

5:29Things like Einstein Copilot might not.

5:32That might be available for server, but with Tableau Plus, you're going to have to pay a bit more to access that capability.

5:39And then here, you do get a bit of a breakdown for Tableau data management and Tableau Server Management.

5:44But it's pretty obvious here that they've just not updated this page.

5:47They've kind of forgotten about it because it's in the old

5:49Tableau sort of design style.

5:51This is hardly legible.

5:53But yeah, this basically needs someone needs to come in here and update this page.

5:56They've kind of forgotten about it.

5:58It's not important anymore.

5:59It's this Tableau server.

6:00This is the old thing.

6:00It's

6:01It's hidden away.

6:02It'd tiny little URL here, pricing here, and that you can get to.

6:06But that I just wanted to call that out.

6:07Like server and cloud are the same price.

6:09They moved up server pricing to match cloud pricing.

6:12It did used to be more expensive.

6:14So

6:14There's actually only one current price on the Tableau product suite.

6:19And with Tableau Plus,

6:22It's really hard to say that.

6:23I keep wanting to say Tableau Pulse and it's Tableau Plus.

6:26Literally the exact same letters apart from one character in the wrong order.

6:30Does not help my dyslexic brain.

6:32Anyway.

6:33Tableau Plus, when you click on this, if you click lend more, you go to this page.

6:37It's not really that useful.

6:39There's no transparency on pricing here.

6:41I think that's a fair criticism.

6:42You know, when you have something new like this, it's good to know how much more of a markup it is.

6:47Uh and then I think what you can do is you can comment on a question, hit submit.

6:50And because I'm logged in here, it's gonna send some details off to someone, and someone will call me tomorrow and talk to me about it.

6:56Okay, that's that's sort of something I just wanted to call out.

6:59The pricing page has not updated.

7:01It's not obvious to see what the pricing is.

7:04I'm assuming that will come out over time.

7:06Now, why I think that is important is this.

7:08Data management and advanced management used to be at around 20 to 25% markup on your total estate.

7:15So by estate, what I mean is when you get Tableau Server or Tableau Cloud,

7:18You bundle up the total price for your in your organization and then you would add 20 to 25% on top of that to get the price for data management or advanced management.

7:27It'd be an additional bump on top of your estate.

7:30Now that price used to be transparent, then it got removed from the website, and uh it was part of the sort of sales negotiation.

7:37So

7:38A dynamic you'd see a lot is the sales reps would actually add it on.

7:42And then when you'd say, oh, that's that's too much, they'd take it off to kind of act as a way of defending the core price of Tableau, if that makes sense.

7:50Um you can go to Reddit and read all about that kind of dynamic.

7:54There's lots of posts there if you if you sort of rummage around a little bit.

7:57But anyway, it's all there.

7:59And the thing about that pricing is because there is no one place to see what all of these things cost, it's really hard to know whether this is great value or not.

8:08It could be great value.

8:10There are some customers who have all of this and actually they're probably complaining about having to get an invoice with seven different things when they just want to go to their procurement team and go, here's one thing.

8:20It's called Tableau Plus and it has all of these things included great value.

8:24Because when you compare it to things like the way Microsoft bundle things

8:28Microsoft do exactly the same thing, right?

8:30Do it in slightly different ways with their cloud and Azure offerings, but it's it's all the same sort of trick.

8:35Um as you start to sort of dig into these bundles, you tend to realize the things in there you're gonna use a lot and the things in there you're not gonna use at all.

8:43So it's hard to critique this new offering and know whether it's great value because A, we don't actually know the price.

8:48You just saw we went to the pricing page, it's not there.

8:51Yes, I'm sure I could probably ring someone in Tableau and get the answer.

8:54But it's never a straight answer.

8:56It's always related to the customer.

8:57And then on top of that, um, you know, I just don't think that should be the experience that everyone goes to.

9:01I think it should just be on the homepage or not be there at all.

9:05um and and just sort of be upfront with that with people about that.

9:08There's a sort of a tiny thing here at the bottom saying, hey, if you want to know more about it, contact us, get in touch.

9:12Fine.

9:13Okay.

9:14That is the way that is uh that's that's that's true with lots of enterprise companies to be fair

9:19Um the the other element about this is it's also difficult to know how many customers had components of all of this, right?

9:27Because for all the new things, well, customers didn't have those things before, so they're not crying for them.

9:32Maybe they want them because they've heard about them at conference.

9:35I'll come back to that.

9:36But to have a price that now encapsulates all of that, they can only really look at data management, advanced management, and to be honest with you, that is it.

9:46E-learning for creators, those are the only things that have existed before

9:49Everything else is net new, and you can kind of look at that here and kind of see that's gonna happen.

9:5524.

9:562 will be the first time this is all available to everyone.

9:59If I scroll down, there is another element to this, which is, I think, more of a roadmap for where this pricing strategy is going.

10:07Instead of acting as a feature roadmap to things to get excited about, I think it actually acts as a

10:12a statement of intent about where tableau pricing is going to go with all these new things that we heard about at conference.

10:18And this is where it kind of leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because

10:21We came off conference very excited about lots of different things.

10:24And unfortunately, it looks like the majority of that is going to be in Tableau Plus.

10:29And the way these things work means that no one has Tableau Plus today.

10:34I don't know if many conversations are looking looking to increase the price of their current commitments at the moment.

10:42Um and so it does make it a little bit of a difficult discussion to be having, you know, with your with your sort of procurement team.

10:48So, hey, yeah, we already have Tableau, but actually they've released a bunch of these new capabilities and they're now part of this new pricing tier.

10:54Now, to be fair.

10:56Lots of companies who've released AI capabilities have started off with a free offering.

11:00In this case, I'd say that was Tableau Pulse.

11:03And then they've added a pricing or premium tier on top of that because all that AI work takes time and resources.

11:08So this is kind of the way of rewarding that uh

11:12Sorry, rewarding?

11:13No.

11:13Uh rewarding is not the right word.

11:16It's a way of uh clawing back that investment.

11:18Clawing back is what I wanted to say.

11:20And on top of that, what is really obvious here is that look, uh, premium pulse feature.

11:27So Tableau Pulse, the thing that we've all said, and actually many of the things people are asking for.

11:32All of this stuff is going to be in premium only.

11:36Einstein Copilot for Tableau Desktop.

11:39When they say authoring, this means Tableau Web Edit.

11:41And desktop.

11:42Okay, what I just said there is incorrect, and I've come to the Tableau 24.

11:47t page to clarify this

11:49My assumption up until now had been that the Einstein Copilot features that we see here on the 24-2.

11:55page were coming in Tableau Prep for desktop and the aforementioned Einstein Copilot for Tableau Desktop

12:03Which Tableau slated for 24.

12:053 would also be coming to Tableau Desktop.

12:08There's this thing that Tableau do where they always demo features in uh Tableau web altering.

12:13And I think in doing so

12:16in kind of inadvertently communicate that these features are available in desktop and in web editing.

12:22It's it's pretty consistent in their whole marketing guide.

12:24So it's not unreasonable to think that when you see this uh image here

12:29to expect this capability in um, you know, uh copilot um for desktop, if that makes sense.

12:37If I go to sort of Tableau prep here

12:39When you see this little window, um, you expect this to be available in Tableau Prep for desktop.

12:46And what I've found out, and this is why I'm sort of adding this bit to the video, is that that is not the case

12:51ISON Copilot will only be available through the browser.

12:55That is probably the better way to think of it.

12:57And so when you come to this sort of drop-down, if I actually go to Tableau Desktop, you'll see

13:02That there is nothing here for Tableau Desktop, and in fact, 24 2 had nothing for desktop anyway in terms of Einstein Copilot.

13:10If we go to Tableau Prep, you'll see here that we do get Einstein Copilot for Tableau Prep in here.

13:18And

13:19Apparently my understanding is that this is actually not the case.

13:22So this is somewhat misleading because if I go to Tableau Prep or I go to Tableau Cloud,

13:28It actually shows all of these capabilities as part of Tableau Plep or Tableau Cloud.

13:33But with that announcement of Tableau Plus and the fact that these Einstein copilot features are only going to be in that

13:39This whole marketing page is actually incorrect.

13:4124.

13:422 is incorrect.

13:43So um it kind of drives with that page, but it doesn't.

13:46It's kind of correct.

13:48Yes, these features will only be in cloud, but

13:51It the these drop-downs are not uh pricing segmentation drop-downs, they are product segmentation drop-downs.

13:59So it's technically correct, but you can now see why it's a little bit misleading.

14:04Um and yeah, I I totally missed this.

14:07I man, I would have said something during the Tableau conference uh sessions when we were talking about it.

14:13Yeah, when we see these sort of product marketing images, we we take them at face value, we go with the assumptions of what we've seen before, but it's it's you know

14:23There's there's a small detail here that definitely we need to dig into once Einstein Copilot comes out.

14:28So that will be an interesting journey, but I don't want to make this video about that.

14:31Let's get back to the video.

14:32I just wanted to make sure this detail was here

14:34And that correction was clear.

14:36To not have that as part of desktop, oh that's a stinger.

14:39To have that as an additional add-on, that's gonna be that's gonna be unfortunately a bit of a stinger.

14:43Tableau Cloud Manager with up to 50 slides.

14:46This was announced at the conference as well.

14:47Really cool.

14:48Allows you to have one set of licenses, but have multiple cloud instances around the world, which allows you to solve that problem that you had with Tableau Server.

14:57where you have sites, but Tableau Cloud doesn't have an equivalent.

15:00Now there kind of is with Tableau Cloud Manager, and it gives you one central place to manage your licensing across all of those different cloud instances.

15:08So these are this is the roadmap, and all of this is going to be coming to Tableau Plus only.

15:13So all those things, maybe a lot of customers over the last few months have gone on to Tableau Cloud.

15:18And um yeah, they've kind of seen this and they've gone, oh great, I'm gonna get onto the cloud train.

15:23Oh wait, okay, hold on.

15:24There's now a new thing I have to get over um uh to to get these capabilities.

15:29I do think that is a shame.

15:31You know, I've been saying for a while that 24.

15:332 is going to be the release for the ages.

15:35Like I've I've been waxing lyrical to lots of people, and they're all gonna laugh at me now, but hey.

15:40Um saying 2042 is going to be an absolute banger release.

15:44It has so much stuff for everyone, whether it's prep, desktop, or like so much stuff.

15:48And then this this this turns up and leaves a bit of taste in everyone's mouth.

15:53The thing that I think everyone wants to try will be Einstein Copilot and it's behind this Tableau Plus thing.

15:58It's just such a it's such a such a kicker to all the good work that's going on.

16:04Now

16:05I don't know how much it cost to build that capability.

16:07I don't know how hard it was.

16:08And I'm sure Tableau, you know, do their economics or Salesforce do their economics and um sort of bounce these things out.

16:14But nonetheless, it's just just for a little bit frustrating.

16:18I think it will it'll play into the skeptics arguments about, you know, Salesforce pricing and just just wanting to sort of ex you know extract more money from their customers.

16:27To be fair, like I've said before, all companies who've built AI investments have tended to release a premium product.

16:33To be fair, some of these capabilities people were already paying for on top of their standard tablet pricing.

16:39So advanced management, data management.

16:41uh enablement.

16:42Some of this other stuff, very bespoke, very sort of unique capabilities.

16:46They probably couldn't find a a way to add them to data management or advanced management.

16:51And they were kind of becoming a little bit heavy.

16:53But I would have argued that something like Data Connect would have been part of data management, you know?

16:57Data management's the same thing that has virtual connections.

17:00So you would have thought those two are basically the same bundle, but

17:04Apparently not.

17:05Um, it almost feels like Tableau wanted to do a new bundle.

17:09You could have call it AI management or something like that, which added all of these AI capabilities as well.

17:15And that would have been

17:16I think a little bit easy to understand, right?

17:19Um, but to have everything sort of pulling you up into this price tier is going to be um a little bit difficult.

17:25Now

17:26To to fully answer that question about the timing for 24.

17:292, um, there's not really much to say.

17:30I've kind of touched on it already.

17:32At conference, we kind of got really good sales pitch from Tabla.

17:36Even I think Ravi and I got excited about look at all these features coming up.

17:39It's an actual roadmap.

17:41Wowzers.

17:42Ah, this is why.

17:44This is why.

17:44Some of that stuff was not part of sort of the standard offering of Tableau.

17:49I should have known it was too good to be true.

17:52Maybe that's unfair of me.

17:53But nonetheless.

17:55Uh I think Tableau Plus should have been announced at conference.

18:01It probably was a discussion

18:04roundabout conference.

18:05Maybe it's moved so fast since conference they've realized it has to be a separate price.

18:10But you would have thought that

18:13Being upfront with people about the pricing at the same time as you announced the features would have been a good play.

18:19Um, maybe that's not the opportunity they had, and they've just kind of had to go with this as is, and the pricing had to come out

18:26Literally days before 24.

18:282.

18:29I I think it's days.

18:30I don't know when it actually comes out.

18:31I sit there.

18:32I something I do is I sit there pinging the CDN to see when they drop the Tableau installers in there

18:37And as soon as I see the tableau installers, I kind of get high.

18:40I know, okay, Tableau's about to drop in the next day or two.

18:43That's what I that's what I typically do.

18:45And I start queuing my video editing process and

18:48start sort of uh swatting on all the nodes that I've come across in the documentation to kind of get an early sight of of how that all works.

18:54Um my my hunch is Tableau24.

18:572 will probably come out this week or next week.

18:59It's imminent essentially.

19:00All the stuff has been out.

19:02Tableau cloud has been updated to match 24.

19:052.

19:05So if you're using Tableau Cloud, you can already go in and start to use this stuff.

19:09And you might be looking for Einstein Copilot and be like, hey.

19:12Where is it?

19:13Oh, okay.

19:14You need to have Tableau Plus enabled in order to be able to use it.

19:19So the timing is a little bit unfortunate.

19:25I don't know what to think.

19:26I don't know what to think.

19:27The skeptic of me thinks, ah, this could have been done better.

19:30The optimist in me does understand that, hey, sometimes when you build features, you do have to sort of

19:35claw back that investment and maybe this is their way of doing it.

19:38I'd love to know what you think.

19:39Let me know in the comments below.

19:41It's going to be an interesting one.

19:43I'm still excited about 24.

19:442.

19:44My job here is to teach you the features.

19:46Not to get so deep into this pricing malarkey.

19:50Let the CFOs and the pricing teams sort of handle this.

19:52But I think you're going to be approached to be asked, hey, what is Tableau Plus about?

19:57Hopefully this video has helped you get off the ground.

20:00All the links are in the comments so you can go ahead and look at that.

20:03If you happen to be in good contact with your Tableau sales rep, this is the time to get to know them very well.

20:09To understand how this is going to impact your own situation in your own organization.

20:13As for things like Tableau Public, these are unaffected by this.

20:16You know, none of these AR features really are coming to Tableau Public.

20:20That is a separate video for another day

20:22I was going to do this this thing about tableau pricing.

20:25I've kind of done it in this video and we've kind of talked about it.

20:28If you want to see me do something more deliberate about pricing, I can do if you want to share a story about pricing anonymously.

20:36Um uh um leave a comment.

20:40I don't know, find a way to reach out to me and let me know.

20:43I'll keep it anonymous to myself and we can kind of uh maybe start to paint a picture for what it's really like

20:48um when you are buying tablet.

20:50Anyway, thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one