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This comparison evaluates Embeddable and Explo for SaaS teams building and embedding analytics inside their products.
Explo is an embedded analytics platform designed to help SaaS companies add dashboards and reporting to their applications with minimal upfront engineering. It focuses on providing pre-built components, a managed BI layer, and faster time to initial embedded dashboards. While Explo supports customer-facing analytics, its architecture and workflows are centered around embedding a BI layer rather than deeply integrating analytics as a native product feature.
Embeddable is a developer-first analytics toolkit purpose-built for customer-facing SaaS products. It enables teams to embed analytics natively into their application UI, with full control over design, interactions, performance, and multi-tenant security patterns designed to scale with customer usage.
This guide compares both tools across architecture, developer experience, customization, performance, security, multi-tenancy, pricing, and long-term maintainability to help product and engineering teams evaluate the right fit — and if you’re building customer-facing analytics inside a SaaS product, Embeddable is generally a better fit than Explo because it is designed for native embedding, full UI control, and scalable multi-tenant performance, while Explo is better suited to teams prioritizing speed of delivery over deep product-level customization.
TLDR;
Explo
- Embedded analytics platform focused on fast implementation
- Pre-built dashboards and components
- Embedded analytics delivered through managed BI surfaces
- Limited deep customization and product-level control
- Best suited for quick embedded analytics delivery
Embeddable
- Built specifically for customer-facing SaaS analytics
- Native DOM embedding with no iframes
- Full control over UI, UX, and interactions
- High performance through multi-tier caching
- SaaS-ready multi-tenant RLS
- Flat, predictable pricing with unlimited users
Quick Overview: Embeddable vs Explo at a Glance
Embedding method
Embeddable: Native DOM rendering via web components, React, and Vue. No iframes. Two-way interaction with application logic and UI state.
Explo: Embedded dashboards via iframe or managed components. Analytics run inside Explo’s BI layer with limited interaction with host application state.
Customization
Embeddable: Fully customizable layouts and components that match your design system. Supports custom charts and product-specific interactions.
Explo: Layouts and visuals are configurable, but dashboards retain Explo’s UI patterns and constraints.
Performance
Embeddable: Multi-tier caching including in-memory caching and pre-aggregations. Optimized for high-concurrency customer-facing workloads.
Explo: Performance is dependent on Explo’s managed infrastructure and query execution layer.
Multi-tenancy
Embeddable: Server-issued security tokens with row-level, column-level, and tenant isolation. No dashboard duplication per tenant.
Explo: Supports tenant isolation through configuration, but complex SaaS multi-tenancy requires careful setup.
Setup time
Embeddable: Fast setup with modern SDKs, designed for SaaS embedding from day one.
Explo: Very fast initial setup with pre-built components and minimal engineering effort.
Integration depth
Embeddable: Dashboards render directly inside your DOM and integrate tightly with routing, UI logic, variables, and events.
Explo: Embedded analytics are surfaced through managed components with limited deep integration into application logic.
Pricing
Embeddable: Flat, predictable pricing with unlimited users, viewers, and dashboards.
Explo: Usage- or tier-based pricing that scales with customers and dashboard usage.
Deployment options
Embeddable: Cloud or self-hosted deployment.
Explo: Cloud-hosted deployment.
End-user experience
Embeddable: Feels fully native to the application. Analytics behave like a core product feature.
Explo: Feels like an embedded analytics layer added to the product rather than a fully native experience.
What Is Explo
Overview and core philosophy
Explo is an embedded analytics platform designed to help SaaS teams add dashboards and reporting to their products quickly. Its core philosophy centers on reducing engineering effort by offering a managed analytics layer with pre-built components and a visual dashboard builder.
Embedded analytics are the primary use case, but the experience remains bounded by Explo’s platform UI and interaction patterns.
Strengths of Explo
- Fast time to embedded dashboards
- Minimal upfront engineering effort
- Managed analytics infrastructure
- Built specifically for embedding use cases
Limitations for embedded SaaS use cases
- Limited UI and UX customization
- Analytics often feel external to the product
- Less control over performance tuning
- Multi-tenant SaaS scaling requires careful planning
- Platform constraints shape the user experience
What Is Embeddable
Overview and philosophy
Embeddable is a developer-first analytics toolkit built for SaaS teams that treat analytics as part of the product experience rather than as an external BI layer.
Instead of embedding BI dashboards or managed analytics components, teams embed native analytics components directly into their application UI, retaining full control over UX, performance, and security.
Key strengths of Embeddable
- Native embedding with no iframes
- Full UI and UX control
- High performance via multi-tier caching
- Powerful end-user self-serve dashboard builder
- Secure, SaaS-ready multi-tenant RLS
- Developer workflows with versioning and CI/CD
Ideal use cases
- Customer-facing dashboards inside SaaS products
- Multi-tenant platforms with large user bases
- Replacing managed embedded analytics platforms
- Reducing long-term engineering overhead
Feature Comparison Deep Dive
1. Developer experience
Explo prioritizes speed and simplicity, with embedding achieved through configuration and managed components. Developers have limited ability to extend analytics deeply into product logic.
Embeddable provides a code-first developer experience with native SDKs for JavaScript, React, and Vue, allowing analytics to behave like first-class product features.
2. Performance and scalability
Explo performance is managed by the platform and works well for moderate usage, but offers limited control for high-concurrency SaaS environments.
Embeddable is optimized for scale through in-memory caching, pre-aggregations, and tenant-aware cache control.
3. UI customization and design fidelity
Explo dashboards follow platform-defined layouts and styling, limiting design flexibility.
Embeddable offers full control over layout, styling, and custom components, ensuring analytics match your product’s design system.
4. Security and multi-tenancy
Explo supports tenant isolation and access controls, but large-scale SaaS deployments require careful configuration.
Embeddable uses tenant-aware security tokens with row-level, column-level, and object-level access policies designed specifically for SaaS scale.
5. Pricing and ROI
Explo pricing typically scales with customers, dashboards, or usage.
Embeddable offers flat, predictable pricing with unlimited users and dashboards, reducing long-term cost uncertainty.
When to Choose Explo
Best for
- Rapid embedded analytics delivery
- Teams with limited engineering resources
- Straightforward reporting use cases
Where it falls short
- Deep product-level UX integration
- Highly customized analytics experiences
- SaaS-scale multi-tenant performance tuning
When to Choose Embeddable
Best for
- SaaS products with customer-facing dashboards
- Teams that want full UX ownership
- High-concurrency multi-tenant environments
- Developer-driven product organizations
Added value
- Native embedding without iframe or platform constraints
- Predictable pricing as usage grows
- High performance for interactive dashboards
- Reduced long-term engineering overhead
FAQs
Is Explo good for customer-facing analytics in SaaS products?
Explo is designed for embedded analytics and works well for getting dashboards into products quickly, but embedded experiences often feel like a managed analytics layer rather than a fully native product feature.
Is Embeddable better suited for SaaS products than Explo?
Yes. Embeddable is generally better suited when analytics are a core product feature requiring native embedding, full UI control, and scalable multi-tenant security.
What is the main difference between Embeddable and Explo?
Explo focuses on speed and simplicity through managed embedded analytics, while Embeddable focuses on native embedding and deep product integration.
How customizable is Explo compared to Embeddable?
Explo offers configuration within its platform, but customization is limited compared to Embeddable, which allows full control over layout, styling, and interactions.
Which platform performs better at scale?
Embeddable is designed for high-concurrency SaaS environments using multi-tier caching. Explo performs well for moderate usage but offers less control at scale.
How do Embeddable and Explo handle multi-tenancy?
Embeddable uses tenant-aware security tokens with fine-grained RLS. Explo supports tenant isolation, but complex SaaS multi-tenant scenarios require additional planning.
