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IBM Cognos Dashboard vs Qlik Sense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos Dashboard
Ranking in Data Visualization
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Qlik Sense
Ranking in Data Visualization
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos Dashboard is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qlik Sense is 7.5%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Leslie Mavonyani - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-use and stable tool useful for its functionalities like analytics and AI
It is a scalable solution, and to provide its scalability a rating, I would say that it would depend on how much data we push at it. There are five users of IBM Cognos Dashboard in my company. Though it is extensively used in my company, we do not plan to increase its usage.
Vishal_Goyal - PeerSpot reviewer
In-memory data storage boosts performance
The advantages compared to other BI tools show architectural differences. The main feature is that it keeps all the data in memory. It doesn't retrieve the data from data sources when I need it on the dashboard; instead, it quickly provides the desired data, making it very fast compared to other BI tools. The ROI is very high using Qlik Sense. It offers many benefits of BI. It is flexible from a developer's point of view, allowing me to accomplish many tasks compared to other BI tools. From an end-user perspective, it's convenient and performance-oriented, providing something meaningful from all the organization's data.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The tool's valuable features are that it is easy to use and stable."
"It is a pretty stable solution."
"The product helps us update the KPI automatically."
"The main feature that is useful is the on-demand report generation through the dashboard."
"Qlik Sense is very stable. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. Even for rare issues, we receive good support from Qlik. It's a very stable solution."
"The changes in a dashboard are very easy."
"The number of visualizations that are present in Qlik is very useful for our developers to help our business partners tell stories with their data. Qlik continues to add to and enhance these visualizations with each release. We are also very excited to leverage the integration between Qlik Sense and Qlik Catalog as we roll that out soon."
"It is simple to develop, which is good."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The flexibility of Qlik Sense and the addition of 3rd party extensions allow us to extend the use of Qlik Sense beyond analytics and bring the platform to the core of our digital workplace, augmenting analytics with workflow, and team collaboration."
"What I found most valuable in Qlik Sense is its flexibility. It's a very flexible tool, and it has a lot of capabilities compared to Tableau and Power BI. In Qlik Sense, you can take data from any of the systems, and you can do data transformation, prepare the data, then present your KPIs. Data transformation isn't present in Tableau, Power BI, and other tools. In Qlik Sense, you're able to get the data and directly present that data. The presentation layer is also very good in Qlik Sense. My company is very happy with this tool."
"All the necessary information is available to everyone in real time."
 

Cons

"The price point is one of the major areas to be improved."
"Visualization is an area where the product lacks."
"They should include proper documentation to learn more about the product."
"The scalability of the product's on-premises version is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Appearance could be enhanced, especially when compared to Tableau or Power BI."
"The security rules should be made easier to use."
"I wish the product had the ability for slightly more customization. The out-of-the box charts and visualizations are fantastic, but I want to be able to tweak it without having to add outside extensions and widgets."
"There is a direction currently with feature releases within QLik Sense which are focused towards the SaaS or Cloud offerings of Qlik Sense. This leaves those who have invested heavily in on-premise enterprise deployments in a difficult position to gain the benefits of some powerful new features they have to look to reinvest further towards these SaaS or Cloud deployments or bring in a hybrid model. Qlik provides no real split between what features are available in each of the deployment options."
"In my opinion, collaborative development of the Qlik Apps is a bit tricky and difficult in the Qlik Sense Cloud."
"The only thing I would like to see is the ability to create a master app that opens when a user creates a new app that has all the master items, colors, logos, etc., that my organization uses. This would help with keeping master items the same across the apps and would make development a little quicker."
"Reload failure alerts on the application within the Qlik Management Console without any use of extensions. QlikView is able to handle these alerts directly through the QlikView Management Console. We would appreciate a similar solution that is easy to set up and use. Simple formatting options in the pivot and straight tables such as adjusting line thickness and font selection and size."
"They need to keep it as simple as possible but include as much advanced functionality as possible by positioning all the objects on the page, changing colors for all the objects, improving sheets actions, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is based on individual usage, and it is more expensive than other providers."
"The product is expensive for small businesses compared to other vendors."
"I would rate Qlik's pricing four out of five."
"For on-premise enterprise users, a number of additional features come at a premium cost."
"Start small with tokens. You can always buy more."
"Costs are a little high on the license/token side. However, if you look at the TCO, it is not too bad, particularly against Power BI."
"We have 20 licenses for Qlik Sense, and it is a special license that allows people in the whole company to use it over time. You buy this license and there are some minutes that can be used. For example, for the users that used only a few minutes in a month, we use this license. All the people have the ability to work with Qlik Sense. However, the number of licenses is not the number of users. The number of users that uses Qlik Sense is approximately 35 people."
"The costs can initially become quite high. Make sure you have a clear understanding of who will truly use the product as opposed to someone that will simply receive the end report."
"You will spend more time on educating your staff than licensing the product."
"The product is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
60%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Cognos Dashboard?
The product is expensive for small businesses compared to other vendors. Its pricing is fixed and depends on the number of licenses.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos Dashboard?
The tool is good enough to serve the purpose of what it is meant in our company. The scalability of the product's on-premises version is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are req...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
 

Also Known As

Cognos Dashboard
QlikSense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos Dashboard vs. Qlik Sense and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.