In today's data-driven business landscape, having access to real-time insights is crucial for making informed decisions and staying ahead of the competition. This is where dashboard software comes into play. In this article, we will explore the concept of dashboard software, its benefits, and how to choose the right one for your business. More importantly, here is a detailed review of the 12 best free dashboard software and tools listed in this guide.

Dashboard software is a potent tool for displaying and organizing corporate data compellingly and flexibly. It gathers and presents essential data via interactive visualizations, enabling users to keep an eye on a business's health, investigate operational processes, track key performance indicators (KPIs), and reveal useful insights.
Using an effective business dashboard makes it easier to quickly create charts and generate automated dashboards, allowing your team to disseminate them to the right decision-makers with speed. Each team member gains the ability to explore, visualize, present, and distribute data most fittingly and appropriately.

Dashboard software enables more effective data connectivity, integration, and data display compared to conventional spreadsheets. The following 4 major advantages are the very minimum that a good dashboard software should offer you.

• Flexible data integration: Employing a dashboard system allows constant monitoring of business operations. However, when the system is versatile enough to simultaneously incorporate data from multiple sources, its effectiveness greatly increases. A flexible dashboard system ensures the presentation of credible information by merging diverse perspectives and supporting well-informed business decisions.
• Dynamic report generation: The system being utilized should offer effortless creation of required reports and dashboards. It should provide a wide range of tools and illustrations that allow data to be displayed in the chosen format, layout, or chart. Additionally, users should be able to customize where various reports and diagrams are displayed, resulting in a user-friendly interface for system users.
• Comprehensive performance evaluation: An advanced business dashboard system furnishes a comprehensive overview, presenting comprehensive information about the business from diverse angles. Additionally, it makes it possible to set up and measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for each department, making it easier to track performance in detail. As a result, this encourages efficient and knowledgeable corporate leadership.
• Enhanced decision-making process: With readily available and organized information and reports, decision-makers can promptly address business-related issues. An advanced dashboard technology speeds up data interpretation, enabling more swift and simple informed business decision-making. In the end, having immediate access to information enables business professionals to act more quickly and wisely.

Selecting the right dashboard software for your company is a time-consuming undertaking. Numerous factors must be considered, including budget constraints, user-friendliness, and more. Nevertheless, while selecting dashboard software made especially for small enterprises, there are a few important factors to take into account.

Consider the end-users’ comprehension capacity and opt for dashboard software that is intuitive and user-friendly. It should have a straightforward interface that allows for easy navigation and quick adoption by users of varying technical expertise.

Customization for small businesses sometimes means a high price and a more complex process. Consequently, certain prominent vendors may perceive it as unprofitable and be reluctant to accommodate extensive customization demands. In such circumstances, it is wise to look for industry-specific providers who are engaged and eager to provide tailored services.

Think about dashboard software that allows users to design reports and dashboards independently, reducing their reliance on IT staff or other technical assistance. Greater agility and flexibility in developing insights and making data-driven decisions are made possible by these self-service capabilities.

Make sure the dashboard application can easily combine data from many sources, including databases, spreadsheets, and outside programs. This makes it possible to see your company's operations in their entirety and eliminates the need for manual data consolidation.

A dashboard software that offers a variety of visualization options, such as charts, graphs, and interactive dashboards, is what you should be looking for. The ability to recognize trends, patterns, and outliers is made easier by these visual representations of the data.

Consider dashboard software that encourages teamwork by enabling the sharing of dashboards, reports, and insights. In your company, this encourages transparency, opens up knowledge sharing, and supports group decision-making. 

Evaluate the pricing structure and licensing options of different dashboard software solutions. The cost of the license, training, implementation, technical support costs, etc. should all be factored into the overall cost of purchasing the dashboard software. Check all these clearly in advance with the vendor. Remember to make sure the software fits inside your budget and offers a reasonable return on investment, taking into account both the up-front charges and any ongoing fees.

The technical support provided by the software provider becomes crucial when your IT team is small or the dashboard software is complicated. The availability of support, supported languages, and help channels offered by all the software suppliers under consideration must be carefully taken into account. The supplier should ideally be able to offer help in your native tongue and offer immediate assistance. Rapid and dependable technical help is essential for resolving any software implementation or usage issues that may occur.

Tableau is a flexible platform for data visualization and analytics that supports a wide range of operating systems, web browsers, desktop and mobile applications, and other platforms. Drag-and-drop dashboard components are automatically converted into backend queries using VizQL, a core query language, which leads to efficient queries and better end-user performance. Additionally, Tableau has developed cutting-edge Slack connection tools that let teams work effectively together inside well-known business software.
Tableau offers a free version, and paid plans start at $15/ month.

Pros: 

• Provides simple, unrestricted access to libraries at no cost
• Supports all kinds of data sources, including online and locally stored data sets
• User-friendly platform with mobile compatibility

Cons:

• Possibility of compromising personal security when storing data publicly
• Only 10 million records per data source and 10 GB of overall content per account
• Potential limitations in effectively handling intricate SQL queries

FineBI is a cutting-edge big data analytics and business intelligence software designed to meet the data analysis needs of users at all levels. It offers a user-friendly interface that makes it simple for anyone to develop BI dashboards of the highest caliber and carry out self-service data analysis, providing insightful data that promotes corporate expansion.
FineBI's simple drag-and-drop capability makes it easy to create visually beautiful dashboards. Additionally, FineBI provides numerous possibilities for data visualization, including over 50 chart styles and 15 self-developed chart options. Nevertheless, FineBI's intelligent chart recommendation tool automatically recommends appropriate chart types based on the current data fields and their properties.
FineBI provides a free version for private use that has no time constraints or feature restrictions. For enterprises, they offer a variable price structure depending on specific needs, ensuring that FineBI is still affordable for all users.

Pros:

• Support Multiple Data Integration
• Open APIs for customization
• Spider Big Data Engine
• Chart/Table/Filter component

Cons:

• Does not support direct connection to data sources
• No automatic analysis

Dasheroo is a completely cost-free dashboard software that consolidates crucial key performance indicators (KPIs) related to web analytics, business analytics, sales, and marketing into a single location. You can quickly begin utilizing this software with a pre-designed dashboard that includes a curated selection of valuable insights.
Pros:

• User-friendly and straightforward setup process
• Offers visually appealing designs and customizable options
• Impressive collaboration functionalities for team collaboration

Cons:

• Lacks extensive capabilities as a business intelligence dashboard
• Limited integrations with widely used platforms

Cyfe is a dashboard software that operates on the cloud, allowing users to effectively monitor various marketing channels from a range of integrated sources. These sources include SEO, SEM, email marketing, web analytics, social media, and more.
The free version of this tool offers complete functionality but has certain limitations, such as a restriction to two dashboards and one user. Additionally, the free version limits the dashboard's historical data to a 30-day period.
Pros:

• Abundance of prebuilt and customizable widgets
• Support for multiple marketing sources
• Available in 15 languages

Cons:

• Risk of unintentional data deletion
• A limited selection of widgets
• Restricted functionality

DataBox is a marketing dashboard software that offers a free version, providing marketers, CEOs, and analysts with a cloud-based platform to track market activities and generate reports. With DataBox, you can easily define, assign, and track progress toward SMART Goals in a single area, ensuring that everyone in your organization is aware of how the business is doing. Additionally, the software makes it easier to calculate critical metrics, conversion rates, and ROI, such as the visit-to-signup rate and signup-to-paid rate, enabling the quick detection of important trends.
DataBox offers a Free-forever option, with monthly payments beginning at $72. The free version of DataBox has limitations, including three data sources, three dashboards, and three users, with only one daily data refresh.
Pros:

• Features a user-friendly interface
• Offers a satisfactory range of integrations and pre-built templates
• Quick and easy setup process

Cons:

• Limited data source connections and dashboards available in the free plan
• May be confusing for beginners

Grafana is an open-source analytical and dashboarding solution that allows businesses to import, query, and present data through interactive visualizations. By enabling users to build thorough dashboards that combine data from various sources, the platform promotes a team environment where decisions are made using data.
Grafana offers a free version, and paid plans start at $29/ month.

Pros:

• Effortless collaboration on dashboards with team members
• Strong support from a vibrant community
• Ability to configure custom alerts and notifications
• Capability to establish threshold limits on graphs

Cons:

• Higher learning curve (best for coders and developers)
• Limited options for data visualization
• Occasionally laggy (could be a data source issue)

DashThis is a marketing data consolidation and sharing tool that enables users to centralize and share their marketing data in one convenient location. DashThis enables the generation of thorough reports by integrating multiple marketing techniques utilized across channels including SEO, PPC, social media, and email. Users may easily include the key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics desired by their team using the dashboard builder's drag-and-drop interface, and reporting templates are provided to speed up the process.
DashThis provides four business-specific pricing tiers, with individual tiers starting at $33 per month.
Pros:

• Intuitive drag-and-drop UI is very easy to use
• Integrates with popular tools like Google Analytics
• Covers marketing data from multiple channels

Cons:

• May have limitations when integrating with less popular tools
• Minimum of 3 dashboards
• No free version

Freeboard is an easy-to-use, open-source dashboard solution that enables users to design and customize interactive, real-time dashboards. It is mainly intended for use with IoT devices and is beneficial for businesses and individuals using online apps, external devices, or sensors. We like Freeboard's user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and the fact that it offers both free and premium-hosted alternatives for individual and group dashboard access.
Freeboard offers a free trial, and paid plans start at $12/ month.
Pros:

• Easy integration with any web-based API you use
• Functions as a single-page static web page, eliminating the need for a server
• Unlimited free dashboards that can be accessed across multiple devices

Cons:

• The free version lacks support for private dashboards
• Lack of data visualization capabilities in comparison to competitors

Google Data Studio is a free tool with dashboarding and data visualization features targeted at non-technical users. Integrating data into a single platform and letting users easily create reports without the use of code or queries, makes the process of making wise business decisions simpler. Teams, departments, and businesses can exchange real-time reports and automatic dashboards with Google Data Studio, ensuring that people regularly receive updates with the data they need to do their jobs well.
Pros:

• Strong integration with Google's ecosystem
• Granular access control and sharing mechanisms
• Completely free

Cons:

• Lacks real-time updates
• No support for Excel
• Hard to perform complex visualizations

Power BI is a dominant player in the field of data software, offering both cloud-based and desktop solutions. The company focuses on using dashboards to visualize data. Power BI gives consumers access to self-service analytics and enterprise business intelligence through its unified and scalable platform, enabling them to derive deeper insights from their data. Users can construct customized reports for visualization, link to multiple data sources, and model the data in numerous ways.
Power BI has become the standard option for many business users because of Microsoft's extensive dashboard offering. It offers a free trial, and Power BI's price, which starts at $10 per user per month.
Pros:

• User-friendly interface
• An abundance of graph and chart options
• Responsive support

Cons:

• Limited flexibility in formatting
• Some users find the reliance on Excel to be counterintuitive

Domo is a low-code data application platform that is hosted in the cloud. Users can create data apps using it to carry out tasks and fulfill corporate goals. Users can connect, integrate, and alter data with Domo to aid in analysis. The platform additionally enables the extension of data solutions as well as the delivery of analytics and applications to clients and partners. Self-service business intelligence, personalized notifications, and cross-device compatibility are further capabilities that allow for data access from any location.
Visit Domo's website to get a free trial and customized prices for their paid subscriptions.
Pros:

• Data tracking and reporting capabilities
• Dashboard sharing and embedding functionality
• Various graph and chart options

Cons:

• Customization may require IT involvement
• Can be resource-intensive in terms of computing power

QlikView is a visualization tool that excels in self-discovery by utilizing business intelligence to extract data from multiple sources. It effectively manages huge datasets and makes it possible for quick access, data capture, and analysis without the need for intricate modeling or coding. The analysis is then accessible to users via dashboards that they can customize. QlikView uses in-memory technology, which improves data insights for business.
A free trial of QlikView is available, and monthly fees for paid subscriptions begin at $30.
Pros:

• Allows for complex data analysis, interpretation, and sharing
• Utilizes in-memory technology for faster data comprehension and visualization

Cons:

• Requires a larger RAM capacity, making it more computationally demanding
• The user interface and dashboard design may be less intuitive
• Poor and unsatisfactory online and customer support

Dashboards are cutting-edge technologies that provide important data and KPIs in an aesthetically pleasing way. By using visualization approaches, they make information simpler. Effective dashboard software is necessary to produce effective dashboards.

We advise attempting FineBI for more effective dashboard building for professionals or small firms. For those that create personal dashboards, they provide a free version.

You can schedule a live demonstration with one of their product experts to discuss your unique needs and see how FineBI can assist you and your company in converting data into value.