Geckoboard vs Klipfolio

Geckoboard is a London-based company that makes live KPI dashboards designed to be shown on office TV screens, shared in Slack or sent as snapshots. Its focus is visibility rather than analysis: a support or sales team should be able to glance at a screen and know how today is going.

Dashboards are built with a simple drag-and-drop editor that connects to around 80 data sources, including Zendesk, HubSpot, Salesforce, Intercom, Google Analytics, Google Sheets, Excel and SQL databases, plus a Datasets API for custom data. Widgets show numbers, goals, leaderboards, and line and bar charts with status colors, and a dedicated TV mode handles rotation, layout and readability at a distance. Scheduled Slack and email sharing pushes the same metrics to remote staff. Pricing is a monthly subscription by number of dashboards and features, starting with an Essentials plan for two dashboards; there is a 14-day trial but no free plan.

Geckoboard fits customer support, sales and operations teams that want shared, always-on metrics with minimal setup. It is not a BI tool: there is little room for ad hoc exploration, joins or deep drill-downs, and the cost per dashboard is high compared with free options. Databox connects more sources and adds goal tracking for agencies, Klipfolio is more flexible but harder to build in, and Looker Studio or Grafana are free if you can handle the setup yourself.

Klipfolio is a dashboard platform from Ottawa, Canada. It was founded in 2001 as Serence by Allan Wille, Peter Matthews and James Scott, and took the Klipfolio name in 2008 as it moved from consumer widgets to business dashboards. Today it sells two products: Klips, the long-running dashboard builder, and PowerMetrics, a newer metrics-layer analytics app with AI features. The company reports more than 25,000 customers in 82 countries. Klips pulls live data from many services into dashboards that teams and clients watch or receive by email.

Klips connects directly to 200+ services, including Google Ads, analytics, CRMs and social platforms, and can query SQL databases, REST APIs, Excel and Google Sheets. Data is shaped with spreadsheet-style formulas and shown in 30+ chart types with drill-down and white-label options. Plans differ by dashboard count and refresh speed, not users: Base gives 3 dashboards refreshed every 4 hours, Grow adds published links and scheduled reports, Team adds SSO and 15-minute refresh, and Team+ adds near real-time refresh and onboarding. All plans include unlimited users and a 14-day trial without a card; there is no free plan.

Klipfolio fits agencies and data-savvy SMB teams that want custom KPI dashboards without a data warehouse. The formula editor has a learning curve. Databox and Geckoboard set up faster, Looker Studio is free for Google data, and Power BI goes deeper.

Buying tip: count dashboards per client first; extras cost $8 each a month and the white-label bundle $299 a month (annual).