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IBM Cognos vs Salesforce Einstein Analytics 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
IBM Cognos improves decision-making and efficiency, with substantial ROI, cost savings, and enhanced reporting capabilities for faster data processing.
Sentiment score
6.2
Salesforce Einstein Analytics offers varied ROI, showing quick returns for some users, while others face challenges due to implementation or company size.
I have seen a return on investment through improved decision making, as automated distribution and uptime, along with scheduled report delivery and bursting, have eliminated various manual emailing and delays, thereby saving time and cost.
Senior Project Manager at BD
I have seen a return on investment, as I mentioned earlier about time saving and productivity gains, with a consistent governed data model that reduces the risk of errors.
Sr. Project Manager at GlaxoSmithKline
Management can now drill down and view executive summaries for new products and fraud analytics quickly, resulting in less red tape during the decision-making process.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Cognos support receives mixed reviews, with feedback on responsiveness, complexity, solution speed, and service cost and personalization.
Sentiment score
7.1
Salesforce Einstein Analytics offers effective customer service, quick responses, knowledgeable support, though some experience slow issue resolution.
Our systems team, operating on a lot of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and maintaining long-term relations with IBM, benefits from good support coverage.
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The customer support has been proactive, solution-oriented, and helpful whenever I have needed to reach out.
Senior Project Manager at BD
I rate technical support from IBM as eight out of ten, indicating a high quality of service.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
Tech support for Salesforce Einstein Analytics is generally good.
Preseales And Solution Head at Tata Consultancy
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
IBM Cognos is scalable, efficiently handling growth with the right infrastructure, but may face performance challenges under heavy load.
Sentiment score
7.5
Salesforce Einstein Analytics is scalable, easily integrates, handles diverse user bases, and offers seamless expansion, despite cost concerns.
The scalability of IBM Cognos is very good, as it has continued growing with my organization's needs, allowing us to analyze and store a significant amount of data and handle our organization's growth efficiently.
Sr. Project Manager at GlaxoSmithKline
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
IBM Cognos is reliable with minimal downtime, though performance may lag under heavy loads; proper maintenance enhances stability.
Sentiment score
7.9
Salesforce Einstein Analytics is praised for its stability and reliability, with occasional minor issues swiftly resolved.
I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
In my experience, IBM Cognos is stable, as I have not experienced any downtime or lagging issues.
Senior Project Manager at BD
There are certain glitches, especially when the modules are upgraded or when there is a source code update, causing the entire tool to go offline.
Solution Architect And Senior Consultant at Keysight Technologies
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Cognos needs better data visualization, improved performance, real-time connectivity, simpler interface, and enhanced support for user satisfaction.
Salesforce Einstein Analytics needs improvements in support, data handling, user-friendliness, flexibility, and cost to boost adoption.
IBM Cognos could improve by introducing different role types, such as viewer roles, user roles, and admin roles, along with assigning minor modules to specific individuals.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Integration with Azure login makes trouble.
Sr. Project Manager at GlaxoSmithKline
IBM Cognos can be improved by addressing its limited real-time data connectivity, as well as enhancing the endpoint experience and mobility, which currently is not satisfactory due to limited data blending.
Senior Project Manager at BD
There are certain glitches, especially when the modules are upgraded or when there is a source code update, causing the entire tool to go offline.
Solution Architect And Senior Consultant at Keysight Technologies
There is a learning curve associated with Salesforce Einstein Analytics, particularly since users need to learn a new language.
Preseales And Solution Head at Tata Consultancy
 

Setup Cost

IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing, but enterprises should negotiate or use partners for better rates and licensing solutions.
Salesforce Einstein Analytics is costly yet valued for features, with negotiating licenses helping reduce expenses in enterprise environments.
Our central team negotiated a different price because multiple teams within our organization use IBM Cognos, bringing the price down to around $10 to $11 per user per month.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is positive, as the price is relatively competitive and affordable.
Senior Project Manager at BD
A benefit is that the pricing is available online, ensuring there are no hidden costs.
Preseales And Solution Head at Tata Consultancy
In general, I would rate it as a little bit on the expensive side compared to other available options.
Solution Architect And Senior Consultant at Keysight Technologies
 

Valuable Features

IBM Cognos delivers essential enterprise analytics with powerful reporting, integration, security, and AI-driven insights for improved decision-making.
Salesforce Einstein Analytics offers user-friendly, scalable analytics with predictive insights and seamless CRM integration for enhanced decision-making and productivity.
We have been able to save forty to fifty percent of our time with its auto-scheduling and report generation functionality.
Sr. Project Manager at GlaxoSmithKline
Our dedicated cybersecurity team ensures that sensitive data does not become public, making it crucial that data stored in IBM Cognos remains secure throughout the entire data cycle, which is where these enterprise-grade security measures prove invaluable.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The AI features in IBM Cognos helped me gain deeper insights into our business processes, enabling me to make data-driven decisions easily and understand which points need our attention and which areas of our business are performing well.
Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech
It allows for a personalized customer experience by providing insights.
Preseales And Solution Head at Tata Consultancy
Their machine learning model, which they have integrated, provides us with accurate data and creates projection maps.
Solution Architect And Senior Consultant at Keysight Technologies
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
139
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (3rd)
Salesforce Einstein Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 1.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Einstein Analytics is 1.1%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Cognos1.3%
Salesforce Einstein Analytics1.1%
Other97.6%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

RL
Senior Project Manager at BD
Data insights have transformed reporting speed and support faster, informed decisions
IBM Cognos makes it simple to create visually appealing products, and we are able to run about 1,000 reports on a daily basis while another 1,000 are run through the scheduler built into IBM Cognos Analytics. It offers triggering through the scheduler, which we use to confirm the completion of other processes needed to be available before the job is scheduled to run, allowing us to make data-driven decisions easily. Some of the best features that IBM Cognos offers are enterprise reporting, which enables us to create, customize, and run reports on sales trends, consumer sentiment, and many more; dashboard creation; and data exploration and analysis. We are able to use the drag and drop feature to create ad-hoc visualizations. Additionally, I find the AI-powered natural language query feature for data analysis and dashboard input to be very useful for a non-technical person to put queries around the spreadsheets data to get a quick answer. Building insights for accurate decision-making has been great. Moreover, we can package reports with data-backed insights for stakeholders in PDF and Excel format to support business ad-hoc cases, forecasting, and strategic recommendations on relevant tasks. Of all those features, the visual graphs, predictive analytics, and data cleansing feature makes the biggest difference for my team. IBM Cognos is deployed in my organization using a hybrid cloud setup with Amazon Web Services as our cloud provider.
Sunny Nair - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect And Senior Consultant at Keysight Technologies
Business insights improve with reliable integration but face occasional system downtimes
It is difficult to integrate the modules. The customization is also a little bit complex currently, but it is getting easier as they continue improving the market. There are certain glitches, especially when the modules are upgraded or when there is a source code update, causing the entire tool to go offline. There is downtime which still affects the particular product. I would provide a reliability rating of 70%, with 30% still having scope for improvement.
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise90
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
One area where IBM Cognos can be improved is that customer service sometimes is not very responsive, and I would love to see the user interface improved, especially to look somehow updated. In addi...
What do you like most about Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
The tool is valuable. It's one of the greatest programs I'm currently working with, and I believe it will continue to be crucial in the next four to five years. It's the future of our operations. I...
What needs improvement with Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
It is difficult to integrate the modules. The customization is also a little bit complex currently, but it is getting easier as they continue improving the market. There are certain glitches, espec...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
It is more of an integrated platform where marketing, customer service, and the ticketing system are integrated into each other as a SaaS-based solution, which is what we use. For Marketing Cloud, ...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
Einstein Analytics, Salesforce Wave Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
ADS Securities, Alstom Grid, American Express, Barclays Bank, Coca-Cola, CoderDojo, Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, Financial Conduct Authority
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. Salesforce Einstein Analytics and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,122 professionals have used our research since 2012.