For growth-stage companies, data-driven decision-making is a critical pillar of success. As teams scale, they need fast, reliable, and flexible access to insights across the business. But many organizations find themselves trapped by the very tools they rely on to deliver those insights. This is the story of one such company and how they broke free.
The Trap: Tableau and a Sudden Price Hike
In 2020, a mid-sized e-commerce company chose Tableau as their business intelligence (BI) tool. For three years, they invested in building reports and dashboards, training less technical team members, and integrating Tableau into their workflows. While the tool served their needs reasonably well, it came at a cost: every new team member required an additional license, and maintaining the system demanded increasingly more budget and IT resources. The team attempted to create “grouped” user accounts, such as customerservice@company.org, though they quickly received an email from Tableau stating that these accounts violated the agreed upon terms and conditions.
Then came the shock: a proposed 50% cost increase for their next three-year renewal contract.
With no built-in option to export their dashboards, data models, or custom visualizations, the team realized how locked-in they had become. The dashboards that powered daily standups, executive reporting, and marketing optimization were effectively held hostage.
The Pivot: Moving Toward Open Source
Determined not to be cornered again, the company began evaluating open source alternatives. Their goals were clear:
- No per-user pricing
- Full transparency and portability of their analytics stack
- Flexibility to grow without runaway costs
That’s when they found us.
The Solution: Driftwave's Open Approach
We offer managed hosting for powerful open source BI tools like Lightdash (a Looker-style interface built on dbt) and Metabase (a Tableau alternative built for fast exploration and sharing). More than just hosting, we delivers:
- Flat pricing per instance size: So adding new users or growing teams doesn’t mean growing costs.
- Exportable analytics stack: Every chart, table, dashboard, and setting is exportable giving companies full control over their data tools.
- A dedicated team for support: As a boutique analytics agency, we pride ourselves on making ourselves available to support you and your data needs.
For the e-commerce company, the transition wasn’t without work. They had to rebuild their dashboards in Metabase. But the team emerged with a stronger, future-proof, analytics stack.
The Takeaway
Vendor lock-in isn’t just a cost problem, it’s a risk to your agility. We help scaling businesses avoid proprietary traps and unlock the power of open source BI. Predictable pricing, full portability, and the confidence that you’re in control.