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Looker Studio vs Zoho Analytics comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in Reporting
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th)
Looker Studio
Ranking in Reporting
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zoho Analytics
Ranking in Reporting
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (15th), Data Visualization (10th), Embedded BI (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.4%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.3%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho Analytics is 0.6%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department
I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.
Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
Available for free and can help businesses resolve their data migration problems
It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Google Data Studio is a cloud-based tool. With cloud-based tools, there can be two challenges, the first one being associated with the bandwidth of your data strength. If I run a report from my home because of the wi-fi connection, it may give an excellent response. When I run the reports, Google Data Studio develops reports from my home, and because of wi-fi, it works in an excellent manner. When I am on the road or at the wheel, if I use the internet data from my mobile to browse my reports, the performance may not be good, and this issue is not because of the product but because of the bandwidth. The second issue arises when you connect Google Data Studio to a source system to extract the data to do the visualization. If the source system is not responding as quickly as expected, it could be the reason why the report may be printed slowly. Considering the aforementioned aspects, the problem may not be because of Google Data Studio but because of the source system.
Yogesh Kumar Mali - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-set up solution that helps in the scheduling of reports and dashboards
A lot of integrations are available with Zoho Analytics. There is a limitation that we cannot create more than 300 columns in a worksheet on Zoho Analytics. The data can be in millions. There are some limitations on the reports that depend on the various combinations of data you get. So there is always an error that gets thrown out if you are building complex reports.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"I have worked on the features like dashboards and stories, and I do like them a lot."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."
"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."
"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."
"The solution is free so that is a good feature."
"The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, allowing us to compare revenues."
"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."
"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."
"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."
"It provides insights into leads, information about the team and about various sales activities. The graphical representations in the form of charts is excellent."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Ask Zia is a great feature that I use to quickly decide what improvements I need to make in order to present the data that I want to show."
"The integration interface is very easy to use and allows you to directly connect to a variety of APIs."
"It's a very strong analytics tool."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its dashboard."
"We can create advanced-level reports with the tool. We can get data from different Zoho applications and also from other third-party applications. We can create schedules for syncing data from third parties to Zoho Analytics. We can also use table queries for getting data from more than one table."
"We really like that it's user friendly and has a lot of combinations and charts. They're good compared to other tools. We used a free Elastic product, comparatively, this solution is good because of their support, UI, and connecting to databases is very easy."
 

Cons

"The charts and graphics are weak."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."
"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."
"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."
"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."
"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."
"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."
"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."
"I have a lower rating when it comes to Zoho Analytics. The tool has poor performance. It needs to improve the dimensions and measures."
"The navigation on the interface is not intuitive."
"There is a limitation that we cannot create more than 300 columns in a worksheet on Zoho Analytics."
"They should provide white labeling with a cheaper option. I know they have a white labeling feature in which I can white label Zoho Analytics with my company theme, logo, and URL, but it seems a little expensive. If they can make it cheaper, it would be great. The same is applicable to Tableau."
"The improvement needed is regarding the number of API calls. Currently, Zoho Analytics only allows us to update data hourly. It would be much better to have updates more frequently every half an hour."
"The customer service and support for this solution could be improved by faster response times."
"There should be more types of graphics available for use in the reports."
"The hourly pricing needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"It is pretty expensive."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."
"IBM Cognos price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."
"The tool is free."
"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."
"The product is available for free."
"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."
"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."
"It is very reasonable, and it gives me a good return on investment. Compared to other tools, it is the best choice in terms of pricing."
"This solution is reasonable as far as pricing is concerned."
"The price is high. The solution advertises that it provides products for 55 AED per user, but these products contain only the basic features. Most of the features are locked. The version of the product that includes Zoho Analytics costs around 199 AED per user per month."
"The product's licensing is reasonable."
"The tool's pricing is similar to other Zoho applications and is affordable."
"The product is expensive."
"The pricing is okay. It is fair compared to the market."
"I don't feel that price is an issue for this product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
7%
Educational Organization
79%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
2%
Real Estate/Law Firm
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ...
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?
I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...
What do you like most about Google Data Studio?
The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. W...
What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?
The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicati...
What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?
The solution is a visualization tool that helps to make dashboards.
What do you like most about Zoho Analytics?
Zoho Analytics's most valuable feature is the ability to provide excellent analytics through a single platform.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zoho Analytics?
I rate the tool's pricing seven out of ten. The licensing costs are yearly.
What needs improvement with Zoho Analytics?
The improvement needed is regarding the number of API calls. Currently, Zoho Analytics only allows us to update data ...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
Data Studio
Zoho Reports
 

Learn More

 

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.
Genesys, Shueisha
Suzuki, American Pacific Mortgage, KPMG, Air Canada, University of Michigan, BricozOr, WorldWide Express, The University of Melbourne, Novartis, SAIC
Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Zoho Analytics and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.