Microsoft Power BI vs Zoho Analytics comparison

Microsoft and Zoho are both solutions in the Reporting category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9, while Zoho is ranked #10 with an average rating of 7.6. Microsoft holds a 26.5% mindshare in RT, compared to Zoho’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Zoho users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Power BI and Zoho Analytics based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Reporting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Power BI vs. Zoho Analytics Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Zoho Analytics

November 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 816,406 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

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 Microsoft Power BI is 26.5%, up from 25.3% 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

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

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.

Read full review

Amol Rane

Solutions Architect M365 at Sogeti UK

Supports AI initiatives in terms of predictive analytics

The only issue is with permissions. Sometimes, despite granting granular permissions, dashboards are visible to people who shouldn't have access. It's difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. Sometimes dashboards are visible to stakeholders even though they should not have permission. It's a bit difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. The dashboards lack a user-friendly appearance, and the permissions should be easier to understand. At this point, we have to go through a lot of details. It takes a lot of time to understand the permissions, so if there were better options available within the Power BI setup, it would be quite beneficial, especially for admins. So, there should be a more user-friendly dashboard appearance and easier-to-understand permissions.

Read full review

Yogesh Kumar Mali

Managing Director at ALPHA LABS TECH PVT LTD

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."

"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."

"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."

"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."

"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."

"We use IBM Cognos for enterprise analytics and reporting."

"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."

"The initial setup is quite straightforward."

More IBM Cognos pros

"It's the analytic engine in terms of the interface on the Power BI environment, as opposed to pivot tables, and it's a mobile solution."

"The fact that you can visualize items is great."

"It's a pretty scalable product."

"Microsoft BI's dashboards are helpful."

"The most valuable feature is definitely the visual aspect and the DAX capabilities to virtually do anything."

"It gives us, the ability to do a lot of analysis quickly, similar to ad hoc analysis."

"Power BI, once made available, can connect to various data sources, irrespective of the application, whether it be HR or business applications. The bank has many applications, but all eventually need to generate reports for tracking, distribution, or problem-finding based on analysis. Power BI was made available as part of the productivity suite to all businesses, which can connect to their applications and provide the reports and analysis they require."

"Microsoft BI is easy to use and to design. I found Microsoft BI a lot easier than Tableau."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"The solution’s dashboard is very good."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its dashboard."

"It's a very strong analytics tool."

"The front end of this solution including the graph generation using SQL has been most useful."

"It provides insights into leads, information about the team and about various sales activities. The graphical representations in the form of charts is excellent."

"We moved the data from Zoho Creator to Zoho Analytics and created reports."

"Zoho Analytics's most valuable feature is the ability to provide excellent analytics through a single platform."

"Scheduling of reports and dashboards is the most valuable feature of Zoho Analytics."

More Zoho Analytics pros

Cons

"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."

"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."

"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."

"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."

"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."

"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."

"They should provide improved visual reporting."

"Chart quality: many other competitors have charts and graphics that look much better and that provide dynamic effects. Cognos doesn't."

More IBM Cognos cons

"My data is restricted to my DB and I'm not sure how this would handle an extremely large dataset."

"It is getting better but still, there are opportunity areas in some aspects, especially the Windows OS dependency."

"Microsoft Power BI can be confusing, because it has two languages that you need to learn if you want to use it, and this makes it more difficult for nontechnical users."

"Areas for improvement would be the construction of reports and the dashboard budget."

"I'm looking for something that can make it much easier to incorporate Power BI visuals or dashboards into, let's say, Power Apps – custom Power Apps or anything like that. The most important thing would be to seamlessly embed reports in applications. For example, to have buttons that can be navigated through multiple solutions – from Power Apps to Power BI to SharePoint – via links or something like that."

"You need to purchase upgraded support separately."

"Its price could be better. Its licensing cost is very high."

"Microsoft BI can improve some of the visual level filters or visual functionality, that are available in other BI tools, such as Tableau or Qlik Sense."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"The hourly pricing needs improvement."

"The navigation on the interface is not intuitive."

"I like the solution's Query Table feature which helps me write SQL queries. We can get data from different tables and then use it to create reports."

"This solution does not support manufacturing facilities."

"The platform's pricing needs improvement."

"The support for Zoho Analytics is pathetic."

"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."

More Zoho Analytics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."

"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."

"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."

"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."

"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"Price is the best feature of Power BI! You get a lot of value for the price. If you know how to use it, it's a great BI solution for your money."

"As far as I am aware you do not need a license for the solution."

"No comment."

"Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."

"The cost of licensing depends on the number of people that are going to be using the reports, and we are satisfied with it at $10 per user."

"The premium licensing is approximately $5,000 per month which is pretty expensive."

"Microsoft BI is very cost-effective and this is why we use it."

"The licensing can be complicated."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive."

"Zoho Analytics costs $ 4,200 per month, billed yearly."

"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."

"I rate the tool's pricing seven out of ten. The licensing costs are yearly."

"I would recommend looking at your usage and whether the Zoho One license model would work for your organisation. It is very cost effective if you use other Zoho tools."

"I don't feel that price is an issue for this product."

"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."

More Zoho Analytics pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

56%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Educational Organization

41%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

79%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Real Estate/Law Firm

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 ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...

See all answers

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 wou...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...

See all answers

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 7% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs IBM Cognos

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 17% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

MicroStrategy vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Apache Superset vs Zoho Analytics

Compared 28% of the time

Tableau vs Zoho Analytics

Compared 17% of the time

Looker vs Zoho Analytics

Compared 16% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Zoho Analytics

Compared 10% of the time

More Zoho Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

November 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

November 2024

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Zoho Analytics

October 2024

Download Zoho Analytics product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Zoho Reports

Learn More

IBM

Microsoft

Zoho

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Zoho Reports is a powerful, easy-to-use and highly scalable cloud-based reporting and business intelligence platform for small to medium-sized businesses. Its flexible pay-as-you-go pricing model and scope for customization allow businesses to tailor it to their unique needs.

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.

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

Suzuki, American Pacific Mortgage, KPMG, Air Canada, University of Michigan, BricozOr, WorldWide Express, The University of Melbourne, Novartis, SAIC

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Zoho Analytics

November 2024

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI vs. Zoho Analytics

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Zoho Analytics and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.

DOWNLOAD NOW

816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Microsoft Power BI vs. Zoho Analytics report.

See our list of best Reporting vendors and best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.

We monitor all Reporting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.