When each
medium wins.
This isn't an argument that custom web beats Power BI. It's an argument that BI craft is about choosing the right medium for the question — and that the answer depends on the question, not on the tool.
Two columns, no false equivalence.
Real strengths, not strawmen. Each medium does some things irreplaceably well.
Power BI wins
- Shared workspaces with governance and RBAC
- Scheduled refresh from data warehouses
- Excel/PowerQuery-native business users editing reports
- Embedding in SharePoint, Teams, Microsoft 365 stack
- Premium capacity for very large enterprise datasets
- Dataset connections to SQL Server, Azure Synapse, Fabric
- Audit logs, version control via Power BI Service
Custom web wins
- URL-shareable — no account, no install, no setup
- Mobile-first responsive from a single codebase
- Embeddable anywhere (iframes, blog posts, decks)
- Programmatic — Git history, CI/CD, code review
- Client-side data — full privacy, fully offline
- Domain-styling freedom (every Power BI report looks like Power BI)
- Engineering team owns the entire stack
Pick the medium per question.
A working BI engineer chooses Power BI sometimes and custom web other times — same engineer, same project, different question.
- 01Weekly internal sales report, 50 analysts edit it
Many editors, audit trail required, lives in Microsoft 365.
RBAC + collaborative editing + scheduled refresh = Power BI's home turf.
Power BI - 02Public-facing investor data room
URL shared with external stakeholders, no accounts.
No license barrier, embeddable, mobile-friendly, custom-branded.
Custom web - 03C-level dashboard, nightly refresh from Snowflake
Executives view on iPad; data team owns the pipeline.
Native warehouse connectors + governance + on-iOS Power BI app.
Power BI - 04Embedded analytics inside a SaaS product
Customers see their own data inside your product UI.
Power BI Embedded works but adds cost + UX friction; custom web fits the product.
Custom web - 05One-off case analysis presentation
A single deliverable: open URL, see the answer + the work.
This case. Sharability and explanation matter more than long-term editing.
Custom web
Judgment, not allegiance.
Mete's craft is exactly this — knowing when Power BI is the right answer. This project doesn't argue against Power BI; it argues that the right tool depends on the question. For this case as stated, custom web fits better. For many real BI contexts, Power BI is correct, and an engineer who claims otherwise is missing the point.
The reason this site exists is to demonstrate that judgment — not to declare a winner.
The medium is part of the answer.
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