Knowing which licenses an organisation needs, as well as how many, can save said organisation a significant amount of money. It is also good practice to understand the differences between each license when it comes to setting up permissions on the server. There are three main types of license: Creator, Explorer and Viewer.

There are two options before deciding on which licence to purchase. Tableau offers 2 services, Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud. Tableau Server requires an organisation to host their own databases, which can be both helpful and problematic, depending on the type of organisation. Hosting private servers can be expensive and they are awkward to update, but the cost of the licence is lower. Whereas Tableau Cloud hosts all data in their own databases, resulting in a slightly higher cost, but all updates are done by Tableau.

The Creators licence has the most features, being the most expensive at £56 per month per licence. Most importantly, creators have the ability to design, clean, curate and create data sources. Creators will also have higher administration powers and manage the Tableau Server/Online.

The Explorers licence is the most common. Explorers may access and analyze published data, create and distribute their own dashboards, and manage content that they have built. The Cloud licences are £34 per month. Tableau Server is cheaper at £28.

The Viewers Licence is simply for viewing dashboards. Analytics can be made from this data by drilling down into dashboards, however there are not tools to do deep analytics. Viewers Licences on Server the are the cheapest at £10. Tableau Cloud is £12 per month.

Understanding an organisations needs and being able to suggest an optimum amount of licenses for these needs can save money and improve chances of selling the product. For a company of around 600 employees, a package of around 50 creators licences, 150 explorer and 400 viewer licences is around £150,000 for a year. Changing 25 creator licences to viewer licences would save £30,000. This illustrates how understanding specific needs of a user can save a lot of money. Especially in the long term.