whats-best.ai

Business Intelligence & Dashboards

Zoho Analytics

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Zoho Corporation Private Limited · www.zoho.com

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Zoho Analytics: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Zoho Analytics: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Zoho Analytics at a glance

Vendor
Zoho Corporation Private Limited
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026
Free plan
Yes, per the vendor’s own page source, captured 1 Nov 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Zoho Analytics 3/5, the mean of 6 judges. Zoho Analytics is Zoho Corporation Private Limited's self-service BI platform, offered in the Zoho cloud, in public clouds or on-premise behind your own firewalls. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 1 Nov 2026; evaluated by the panel 1 Nov 2026. all sources

Zoho Analytics alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Skeptic

Weighted verdict

Has seen "connect any data source" on a tool with eight connectors and a CSV upload, "self-service" that ends with every department defining revenue its own way, "free viewers" that need a paid licence to open a shared link, and "AI insights" that never show the query. Asks where the extracts are stored, whether dashboards and definitions can be exported in a format another tool reads — and what leaving would cost.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Skeptic

Panel median The Skeptic This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Skeptic
Data sources, connectors & refresh 4 of 5 3.5 of 5
Dashboards, charts & interactivity 2 of 5 2 of 5
Self-service analysis & shared metrics 2.5 of 5 2 of 5
Sharing, scheduled reports & embedding 3 of 5 3 of 5
Access control, administration & portability 3 of 5 3 of 5
European sovereignty 2.5 of 5 2 of 5
Pricing transparency 2 of 5 2 of 5

Data sources, connectors & refresh

How this is scored

Which data the product can reach and how it stays current: native connectors to databases and warehouses (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, BigQuery, Snowflake), to business applications (accounting, ERP, CRM, shop, help desk, ad platforms) and to files and spreadsheets (Excel, CSV, Google Sheets), live queries versus imported extracts, scheduled and incremental refresh with its minimum interval, joining data from several sources, light data preparation, access to databases behind a firewall (gateway, SSH tunnel, IP allow-list), and a generic REST or custom connector for what is not listed.

0 — Not a reporting product, or data can only be typed or pasted in by hand.

3 — Spreadsheet and file uploads plus a handful of named connectors; refresh schedules, live queries and blending sources are basic or not described.

5 — A published connector list covering the common databases, warehouses, spreadsheets and several named business applications, scheduled refresh with its interval stated, live queries or extracts at the customer's choice, data from two sources combined in one report, and a documented way to reach a database behind a firewall.

8 — Hundreds of maintained connectors or a full SQL layer over every major warehouse, incremental refresh and caching explained, a built-in data preparation or modelling step, a gateway or agent for on-premise sources, a generic REST or custom connector SDK, and connector limits (rows, API calls, history) stated per plan.

10 — Connectivity an organisation can standardise on: every source reachable live or by extract with the trade-offs documented, refresh down to minutes with lineage from report back to source, source changes detected and reported, and connector behaviour, quotas and failure handling published.

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The Skeptic

The captured pages give different figures for reach — 500+ databases, SaaS apps and cloud platforms on one page, 250+ on another — but they document ready-made connectors across sales, finance, HR and help desk, file formats from Excel to Parquet and Avro, streaming from Kafka and webhooks, live queries that store no data, the Databridge agent for databases behind a firewall, and a preparation step with more than 250 transformations plus a no-code custom connector builder. What keeps me from going higher: sync intervals are stated (up to the minute for selected integrations, hourly to weekly otherwise) but incremental refresh and caching are not explained, and per-connector quotas beyond the row limits per plan are not published. 1 2 3 6 8

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Dashboards, charts & interactivity

How this is scored

What can be built and how readers use it: the range of chart types, tables and pivot tables, maps, KPI tiles with targets and comparisons, dashboard layout, filters and date controls that apply across a dashboard, drill-down and drill-through, cross-filtering by clicking a chart, templates for common sources, mobile and TV display, theming to the company's design, number formatting and localisation (decimal comma, currencies, German date formats), and accessibility of the result.

0 — No charts or dashboards; the product only stores or moves data.

3 — Standard bar, line and pie charts and a table on a dashboard; filters, drill-down and mobile display are basic or not described.

5 — A broad chart library with pivot tables, maps and KPI tiles with comparison to a previous period or target, dashboard-wide filters and date ranges, drill-down, templates for common sources, a mobile view, and number and date formats localised.

8 — Cross-filtering and drill-through between dashboards, custom visuals or a chart SDK, conditional formatting and annotations, dashboards themed to a brand, TV and presentation modes, pixel-exact or paginated reports for print, and accessibility of charts documented.

10 — Dashboards that a whole organisation reads daily: every interaction (filter, drill, cross-filter, parameter) available to readers without editor rights, performance on large data stated, accessibility conformance (WCAG) published, and every chart reproducible from a documented query.

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The Skeptic

The captured pages give different figures for the chart library — more than 50 visualizations on the product pages, more than 75 on the pricing page — and document pivot tables, widgets, tabular views, summaries, iOS and Android apps, presentations through Zoho Show, and prebuilt dashboards per business connector. We found no public information on dashboard-wide filters, drill-down, cross-filtering, KPI tiles with targets or prior-period comparison, localised number and date formats, or accessibility of the charts, so I cannot credit what the captures do not describe. 1 2 3 7 8

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Self-service analysis & shared metrics

How this is scored

Whether people outside the data team can answer their own questions and whether everyone gets the same answer: a visual query builder, a SQL editor for analysts, calculated fields and formulas, a semantic layer or data model where metrics such as revenue or churn are defined once and reused, metric definitions under version control (Git, dbt integration), questions in natural language with the generated query shown, forecasting and anomaly detection with the method stated, and notebooks or Python for deeper analysis.

0 — Dashboards can only be viewed; no one can ask a new question of the data.

3 — Charts are configured from a field list and simple calculated fields; shared metric definitions, SQL and a query builder are basic or not described.

5 — A visual query builder for business users and a SQL editor for analysts, calculated fields and formulas, saved questions reused across dashboards, a data model or dataset layer where joins and metrics are defined once, and natural-language questions that show the query they ran.

8 — A semantic layer with governed metrics and dimensions reused across every report, definitions in code under Git version control or synced with dbt, certified or endorsed datasets, forecasting and anomaly detection with the method stated, and Python or notebook analysis beside the dashboards.

10 — Self-service that stays consistent at scale: every metric defined once and traced to every chart that uses it, changes reviewed and tested before they reach readers, AI answers grounded in the semantic layer with their limits documented, and the model exportable in an open format.

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The Skeptic

Ask Zia answers natural-language questions as reports and widgets, an SQL agent generates complex queries on request, and AutoML and a Python Code Studio are documented — that is real self-service machinery. But no captured page shows the query behind an AI answer, the semantic models that would let revenue or churn be defined once appear only as an announcement of version 7.0, and forecasting and anomaly detection come with no stated method — the classic recipe for every department defining revenue its own way. 1 2 3 5 7

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Sharing, scheduled reports & embedding

How this is scored

How results reach the people who need them: sharing a dashboard with colleagues and with external parties, public or password-protected links, scheduled reports by email or chat (Slack, Microsoft Teams) as PDF, image or data, threshold alerts, comments and annotations, export to PDF, PowerPoint and Excel, embedding dashboards in an intranet, a website or the company's own software product, white-label options, and per-customer data separation for embedded use.

0 — Results cannot leave the editor; no sharing, export or embedding.

3 — Dashboards shared with other users of the account and exported to PDF or CSV; scheduled reports, alerts and embedding are basic or not described.

5 — Sharing with colleagues and by link, scheduled email reports with PDF or image, alerts when a metric crosses a threshold, export to PDF and Excel, and dashboards embedded in a website or intranet with an iframe or script.

8 — Reports delivered to Slack or Microsoft Teams, comments and annotations on dashboards, signed embedding with row-level filtering per viewer, an embedding SDK for a software product with white-label styling, client or guest portals, and an embedding licence model documented.

10 — Distribution as a product: multi-tenant embedded analytics with per-customer data isolation, theming and custom domains, end-user self-service inside the host application, every delivery channel automatable through an API, and usage of shared and embedded content reported to the customer.

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The Skeptic

Sharing with colleagues under fine-grained access controls, comments, custom client portals on web and native mobile, printing and emailing reports, smart alerts, row-level security, and white-label embedding into the company's own product are all documented, and an embedding-oriented API set with ISVs named as the audience is described. We found no public information on delivery to Slack or Teams, export to Excel or PowerPoint, password-protected links, or the licence cost of an embedded viewer — the first question I ask before trusting "free viewers". 1 2 5 7 8

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Access control, administration & portability

How this is scored

What a company needs before it gives the tool to everyone, and what leaving would cost: roles and folder or workspace permissions, row-level and column-level security, single sign-on (SAML, OpenID Connect) and user provisioning (SCIM), audit logs and usage analytics, content certification and lifecycle, environments for development and production, a public REST API for administration and content, export of dashboards and definitions in a reusable format, open-source code, and a self-hosted or on-premise edition the customer runs on its own servers.

0 — A single shared login with no permissions; dashboards cannot be exported or administered.

3 — Users with view and edit rights; row-level security, single sign-on, an API and export of definitions are basic or not described.

5 — Roles and folder or workspace permissions, row-level security documented, single sign-on on at least one stated plan, an audit log, a documented REST API, and dashboards and data exportable on termination.

8 — Column-level security and data permissions inherited from the source, SAML and SCIM provisioning, usage analytics for admins, development and production environments or content promotion, dashboards and definitions as code that can be versioned and moved, and a self-hosted or on-premise edition with its own documentation.

10 — Governance and an exit that can be verified: open-source code under a named licence that runs fully self-hosted with feature parity stated, every object (data model, dashboards, permissions) exportable in a documented format another instance imports, audit logs streamed to the customer's own systems, and deletion of every copy on termination documented.

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The Skeptic

Custom roles, row-level security, SAML single sign-on with LDAP and ADFS, customer audit logging, a REST API covering most web-client operations, and a documented on-premise edition running behind the customer's own firewalls are all evidenced — the on-premise route is what lowers the cost of leaving. We found no public information on column-level security, SCIM provisioning, development and production environments, or export of dashboards and metric definitions in a reusable format another tool reads, so the exit test is only half answered. 1 4 7 9 11 12

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting entity and the parent company are, where the connected business data is queried, cached, extracted and stored, and who the subprocessors are (hosting, query engine, AI model providers, email delivery of reports, support and payment tools). Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; a BI tool reads revenue, customer and employee data from many systems, so every place a copy or cache lands counts, not only the account database. A self-hosted or open-source edition the customer runs on its own European servers counts as the customer's chain, whatever the vendor's seat.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors unnamed, and no data processing agreement offered.

3 — A privacy policy and a data processing agreement exist, but hosting location is unstated or non-EU and the subprocessors are not listed.

5 — EU hosting available and an EU contracting entity or EU representative, but parts of the chain (query engine, extracts and caches, AI features, report emails, support, payment) run through non-EU providers without a stated safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessors listed with their locations, a data processing agreement published, where extracts and caches are stored stated, and security certifications (ISO 27001, SOC 2) stated — or a self-hosted edition documented that keeps every query and cache on the customer's own servers.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, hosting and every subprocessor including AI features, or a self-hosted open-source edition with no call home, data export and deletion documented, and certifications published with their scope rather than implied.

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The Skeptic

The contracting parent is an Indian company, and the captured pages give different statements about where data sits: the German product page says the data center is within the EU, while the privacy policy has personal information and service data processed, transferred and stored in the USA, the EEA and other countries where Zoho operates, with a data processing agreement based on model contractual clauses available on request and all Zoho group companies granted access to the data. Subprocessors are described as assessed but are not listed with names or locations, certifications are named only as "industry standards", and the OpenAI integration and Zia model training raise chain questions the captured pages do not answer; the documented on-premise edition is the one route that keeps queries and caches on the customer's own servers. 1 7 10 12

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Pricing transparency

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: price per creator or editor seat and whether viewers are free or paid, capacity or usage pricing (rows, refreshes, queries, AI credits), which features (row-level security, SSO, embedding, API, more connectors, faster refresh) sit behind a higher tier or "contact sales", the price of embedding for external users, the self-hosted edition's licence, the free tier and its limits, minimum term and setup.

0 — No public prices at all; every customer is a sales call.

3 — A starting price or a free tier exists, but how cost scales with viewers, data volume or features is unclear.

5 — Tiers are public with their seat price and main inclusions, but at least one commonly needed piece (viewer seats, row-level security, SSO, embedding, extra connectors or refresh frequency) is unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every tier priced publicly with its scaling rule (creators, viewers, capacity, rows), viewer pricing stated, add-ons and usage overage priced, embedded and self-hosted pricing stated, minimum term and VAT treatment stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given number of creators and viewers, data volume and feature set, with every add-on, embedding, setup, support and overage fee and the cancellation and data-return terms published.

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The Skeptic

The tier structure is public: a free tier with 2 users, 10K rows and unlimited reports and dashboards, then plans from 2 users and 0.5 million rows up to 50 users and 50 million rows, unlimited reports and workspaces in all paid plans, additional rows as an extension, viewers as an add-on in every plan, a custom plan for high volumes or dedicated servers, 20 percent annual savings, monthly billing without annual commitment, and VAT stated as charged in addition. But we found no public information on any monetary amount — no seat price, no viewer add-on price, no self-hosted licence — so a buyer cannot compute the real annual cost from these captured pages. 2 8 13

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 6 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Hosting location Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Hosting options Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Open source Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Data processing agreement Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Transfer impact assessment Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about Zoho Analytics

Is Zoho Analytics European?

No. whats-best.ai classifies Zoho Analytics as Rest of world.

Where does Zoho Analytics store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 1 Nov 2026.

Does Zoho Analytics have a free plan?

Yes. Zoho Analytics has a free plan, per the vendor’s page captured 1 Nov 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Zoho Analytics?

As of 1 Nov 2026, the panel rates Metabase (3.5/5), Preset (Apache Superset) (3.5/5) and Holistics (3/5) highest among the other 15 Business Intelligence & Dashboards products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Luzmo (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Zoho Analytics alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Sources (14)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Features page www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Features page (data integration) www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Features page (security and governance) www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Features page (embedded analytics) www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Integrations page www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Features page (on-premise edition) www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Pricing page www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  9. 9 API documentation www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  10. 10 GDPR page www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Security page www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  12. 12 Privacy policy www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  13. 13 Terms of service www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →
  14. 14 Imprint — found from the homepage www.zoho.com Checked 1 Nov 2026 Details →