FAQ
Product
What does Bistro Analytics do?
It's a web-based viewer + collaboration layer for analytical reports authored in the Bistro desktop app. Analysts publish from the desktop; their team consumes the report in the browser, with refresh, sharing, notes, and role-based access. Think of it as "Power BI's publishing side, simplified, with sensible per-seat pricing."
Who is it for?
- Internal analytics teams (finance, ops, RevOps) who want their work shared beyond their own laptop.
- Accounting and outsourcing firms recommending an analytical reporting tool to their clients.
- Small companies that find Tableau / Power BI Service overkill or too expensive.
Does the desktop app run on Linux?
Yes — macOS, Windows, and Linux are all first-class platforms. Linux isn't a port or an afterthought; it's built and tested alongside the other two.
What data sources do you support?
PostgreSQL and MySQL for live refresh. CSV files ship inside the report and stay static between republishes. Snowflake, BigQuery, and MSSQL are on the roadmap; ask if you need one urgently.
Where is my data hosted?
Singapore (Hetzner Cloud). Sub-50 ms latency for SE Asia / Australia customers. Encrypted at rest, TLS in transit.
Pricing & billing
How much does it cost?
$15 per Contributor seat per month. Viewers are free. See Pricing for the full breakdown.
Do I need a credit card to start the trial?
No. 14 days, no card. Add it when you're ready to keep the product or before you add your first Contributor — whichever comes first.
Can I cancel anytime?
Yes. Billing stops at the end of the current billing month. You keep access until then.
What happens to my data if I cancel?
Read-only access stays available for 30 days so you can export. After that, your bundles and metadata are removed. Backups are purged on the same schedule.
Do you offer annual billing?
Not yet — monthly only at launch. Annual billing with a discount is on the roadmap.
Security
How are upstream-database credentials stored?
Encrypted with AES-GCM at rest, keyed per-process. The plaintext only exists in memory during a refresh. Credentials are per-user-per-report — there's no shared service account that becomes a wide blast radius if a single account is compromised.
How are passwords stored?
bcrypt with the default cost factor. Plaintext is never persisted.
Can other customers see my data?
No. Reports are scoped to an organization; sharing requires explicit role grants within that org. There's no cross-org access path today.
Do you have a SOC 2 / ISO 27001?
Not at V1. We'll pursue compliance certifications once revenue justifies the audit cost (typically $20-40k/year for an early-stage SOC 2). Until then we're transparent about what's in place: TLS, encrypted credentials, bcrypt passwords, continuous backups, single-region with cloud-provider physical security.
Collaboration
Can Viewers download data?
No — Viewers can read reports and notes, but can't download the underlying bundle or trigger refreshes. Contributors and Authors can.
Can Viewers leave notes?
They can read notes others have left, but not write new ones. Note-writing is a Contributor-and-above privilege.
How does sharing work outside the org?
V1 keeps everything within an organization. Cross-org sharing (public links, email invites to non-members) is on the roadmap.
Operations
Do you have an uptime SLA?
Not formally. Targeting 99.5% in practice. We post an honest status page; we don't promise contractual numbers we can't audit.
Where do I report bugs?
Email [email protected].
How do I export my reports?
Contributors and Authors can download any report as a .bst
bundle from the toolbar — same format the desktop app reads.
You're not locked in.