Domo is a business intelligence (BI) tool that has become increasingly popular over the last few years. As a cloud-based operating system, it is a great product for users who are willing to be fully integrated into the Domo cloud and are looking for a mobile solution.
Domo is a relative newcomer to the BI space, but one with an impressive technical pedigree. When first launched in 2010, the company had some big-name investors including Marc Benioff of Salesforce. Since that time, Domo has received several venture capital infusions to the tune of almost $715 million and went public in June 2018.
While Domo is a great product, there are many business intelligence tools out there, and some of them may be a better fit for users whose needs don’t exactly fit the Domo model.
A few of the things we’ve learned about Domo from customers who have either used them or gone through the research process with them lead us to caution potential customers about a couple of issues.
We present this with the caveat that it’s information we’ve heard from a few people, and those few anecdotal cases don’t necessarily make a trend. However, it’s something to keep in mind.
6 Reasons Users Look For An Alternative To Domo
Sales Promises
Customers have told us there are about three levels of qualification they’ve had to go through before they can even talk to a salesperson to get a pricing quote (pricing is not posted on the website; we’ll expand on that in the next section). We’ve heard of customers having to be vetted by a pre-sales person, being allowed to move onto a second person, and needing to get approved by that person before talking to sales.
Frustrating!
Additionally, during those steps, the salespeople do a heavy push on case studies as well as their reputation (that technical pedigree we mentioned is used prodigiously in the sales process). There’s nothing wrong with touting your strong points, of course, but some have felt it was a bit heavy-handed, and that they were being pushed to move too quickly to close the deal. It’s not unusual for a public company with a lot of venture capital (VC) backing to focus on monthly and quarterly sales quotas to create investor growth, and while this isn’t necessarily true of all sales reps, it’s worth keeping in mind.
We’ve also heard some customers say that after their free trial, the price of service was much higher than they were initially quoted – they were told afterward that their use case or requirements fell into a higher price tier.
Once again, we don’t think this is necessarily a consistent issue, but it is certainly advisable that, as a prospect, you do thorough research before signing a contract. You’ll find aggressive sales reps in all companies; just stay on your toes.
Cost
As noted, Domo is not at all transparent when it comes to pricing, and this is the main area we hear customers mention when they come looking for an alternative.
In the past, Domo has listed its prices on its website – it seems to be very sporadic. When first launched, potential customers actually had to sign an NDA regarding pricing.
Later, costs were listed on the website, only to be removed, put back, and removed again.
So while we don’t know what current costs are, we know that in the past there have been tiers based on data use and the number of users, and we’ve heard numbers that are anywhere from $50,000 to the mid-six figures per year (we break down what we know in this article).
Generally, this is a price point too high for small to midsize businesses – or if they can afford the lowest tier, they quickly outgrow it.
Architecture
Domo is cloud-only, so that’s great if all your data is in the cloud, but it can become a problem for on-premise data. We spoke with a potential customer that wanted to use data lake service Dremio with Domo, but architecturally, Domo couldn’t reference Dremio Views.
On-premise data sources require the setup of a gateway server or data workbench, which can cost up to $25,000 to set up and implement.
Refresh limits and amount of data factors into pricing, and that’s a hard thing to account for. Small companies with small budgets still tend to need real-time data and numerous refreshes.
And what happens to your data if you stop paying? You’ll lose access to your service and face difficult data migrations.
White label and on-premise deployment
Domo references OEM/white label features, but we’ve heard that the price is high, and it’s limited to embedded objects, charts, and graphs. And as mentioned in the architecture section above, it is not able to deliver on-premise.
And worst of all, there is no perpetual license offered, so if you stop paying, your end-user loses features.
Support
While we don’t know exactly what support features are available due to the lack of transparency in pricing, we’ve heard the basic level is insufficient for many users, and additional tiers get quite expensive.
Similar to the multiple levels of sales qualifications, we’ve heard it can be difficult to get through Tier 1 support to a more knowledgeable rep, and in many cases, users are referred to expensive Professional services.
Missing features and technical difficulties
Domo has received a number of awards and accolades over the years, and it is a great fit for some users – but there are others for whom it simply doesn’t work. What is a good fit for some environments isn’t for others – some users have issues with the complexity of permissions, administration of dashboard, quirks with mobile support, etc.
Some users have praised Domo for the ease of use and ability to quickly integrate and build widgets and dashboards, while others have complained it’s too hard to get raw datasets from, create custom formulas, and other power user activities.
No one BI platform that garners universal support – this is complex software with users that have unique requirements. It’s not surprising, then, that Domo isn’t right for everyone. Neither is DashboardFox – but sometimes we are the right fit for those looking for an alternative to Domo.
DashboardFox is an alternative to Domo
DashboardFox doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Domo, but it most certainly is exponentially less expensive.
But we don’t want to sell our features short. DashboardFox out of the box provides many features that Domo considers enterprise, data-level security as an example.
DashboardFox vs Domo is a little bit of apples to oranges comparison. While both are in the dashboard and business intelligence space, there are drastic differences in the approach.
- Domo is Cloud first and cloud-only. DashboardFox is self-hosted first, with a managed hosting option for those who want cloud-only.
- Domo pulls all your data into their 3rd party data storage and charges based on size. DashboardFox keeps your data tucked away securely in your own database, and provides real-time dashboards and reports.
- Domo is a subscription software (and expensive). DashboardFox is a one-time fee, no-subscription software (and affordable).
- Domo integrates with a lot of different data sources, both Cloud, on-premise. DashboardFox currently only supports databases and importing spreadsheets and CSV files. But stay tuned, we’re in the process of supporting direct API feeds (can you say game-changer).
- Domo has a beautiful interface with lots of cool visualization features. We think DashboardFox looks pretty good, but we’ll concede, we don’t have as much sizzle on the front-end, but giving the average small business what they need to have enterprise quality dashboards and reports at a fraction of the cost, we call that hot! 🔥
Contact Us To Discuss Your Requirements
Let’s talk. It’s the best way for you to learn more about DashboardFox and for us to give you an honest opinion if we’re a good fit or not. As a small business, we don’t try to oversell or promise, we want customers where they are happy and successful, right away. So it’s in our best interest to give you the honest truth.