Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

MicroStrategy vs ThoughtSpot comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (4th)
MicroStrategy
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (3rd)
ThoughtSpot
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (11th), Embedded BI (7th)
 

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.
Pietro Saglietti - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust solution for powerful data analytics
I need some reliable references or resources because it's proven quite challenging to obtain information about MicroStrategy in Italy. It's frustrating not to have access to pricing details because, when discussing analytics tools in general and specifically mentioning MicroStrategy to potential customers, I can't provide them with essential information about pricing, licensing, cloud options, on-premises solutions, and more. Overall, it is a good product and I would rate it nine out of ten.
Anthony Fiorino - PeerSpot reviewer
You can drill down into any data right out of the box, with a straightforward deployment, and great support
The most valuable feature is probably the core functionality itself, which is the ability to search and drill down into any data right out of the box. Of course, there's data modeling needed, and things like that, but I can throw it at a set, and I can get up and running in a matter of hours. If a new group comes to me and says, "Hey, I've heard about ThoughtSpot. I have some data and I want to be able to do some analytics, do some profiling, do some BI against it." In a couple of hours, I connect to their source and I just do it. Now for a production product, we have to model and perform it over time, but at least I can get people up and running extremely fast with a tool that's intuitive and easy to use.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"In terms of functionality, MicroStrategy is alright. It's a solid BI tool and can handle most tasks you'd expect."
"It offers us a lot of out-of-the-box tools, which give us the ability to automate a lot of our administrative tasks. Some things become menial: user creation, restarting a server at 10 o'clock on a Friday - simple things that they really give you the tools to be able to do. That's one thing I really like about the MicroStrategy platform from an administrative perspective."
"Transaction Services, that was really the part of the tool that made it very compelling for us, because it gave the opportunity to drive action."
"The most valuable features of MicroStrategy are user-friendliness and integration with the different data warehouse systems."
"Reports are very easy to create. It takes a very short amount of time to build a report, which is very useful."
"It's an open platform. That's also important. You can create your own data connectors. There's everything you can do with APIs. It's not closed like, perhaps, an SAP system might be."
"You can build once and deploy to multiple operating systems. Also, it resizes in the way you want it to​."
"I really like the visualizations. I like how you can put large data sets in there, then the user can quickly go through the data and drill down at various levels to understand things."
"It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box."
"ThoughtSpot takes the modifying of existing reports out of our hands."
"The ability to do ad hoc explorations of data has been most valuable."
"It is easy to set up the solution."
"I like ThoughtSpot's search capabilities. You can also create custom analytics even if you aren't an experienced data analyst. We have users with no data analytics experience making some of the dashboards we've created, copying components, and customizing them to their specific use cases."
"The scalability is good."
"I would say the return on investment is good. Whatever we invested, we got results. We have been finding it easy to use and onboard new use cases."
"The initial setup was very straightforward."
 

Cons

"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"There are some problems with how Cognos handles huge data sets and when connecting with multiple sources and searching the data."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"I would like to see the enterprise version available in a demo or as a trial version."
"Data preparation-wise, it was not so straightforward with respect to getting different sources. Preparing or transforming the data inside and then bringing it onto the dashboard was a bit difficult, and the experience could have been better."
"The problem is the way that their metrics are designed. It can be difficult to understand what you're actually looking at. Then when you're comparing a document against the VI, you can't actually do that properly. So there are components, and there is a huge learning curve in the Enterprise Manager space. I think it would benefit them greatly if they were to exercise a significant amount of research and development in that space."
"I want to be able to have one report that's delivered to 30 different people and all 30 different people see something different. Now, you can do that today with metrics. You cannot do that with attributes. There's a component of that which, if an attribute is on granularity-one and another is on granularity-two, and you remove granularity-one, you're now going to be summing to a level that you did not expect before."
"I would like to see more integration."
"There are some challenges in our organization on how we store the data."
"Consolidate the functional offering to be more concise in the front-end for web reports, dashboards, and self-service."
"I would like to see more Writeback capabilities that would allow our IT department not to be worried about the wild, Wild West of Writeback."
"ThoughtSpot is a fairly new product, so some usability aspects aren't as mature as we'd like them to be. One example is their organizational methodology, like how objects are organized in their dashboards inside the product. They're all on a flat list, which works if you've got five or 10 dashboards. However, it's insufficient when you're a large enterprise with multiple groups looking at the same dashboards. It isn't organized well."
"A customized visualization is lacking in this product."
"In terms of features, I'd like to be able to pivot data - for example, going from rows to columns. It's not easy to do."
"The one area of the solution that I do hear needs improvement is on the visualization front."
"I would like to see more flexibility in adding the pins. Currently, we have four different sizes in which I can add pins, but I would like to be able to resize my pins."
"If I want to order columns, this feature is not there."
"The dashboards could give you more ability to fine tune the appearance. You get a great deal more control over how something looks in Power BI than you do in ThoughtSpot."
"The most difficult thing I found is that it only deals with the files and does not have direct connectivity to databases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"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 solution is affordable."
"It is pretty expensive."
"The pricing for MicroStrategy is always on the higher side. They should seriously start thinking about their pricing and licensing strategy."
"We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us.​"
"​The solution is scalable. A little expensive perhaps, but it is scalable.​"
"MicroStrategy's licensing cost is higher than that of other tools in the market. My company uses the enterprise edition of the product."
"It is expensive. We would like to extend it to many users, but we are currently restricting that because the cost is a constraint. If we are given a chance, we would love to expand it."
"For larger businesses, the pricing is logical."
"The pricing list itself is not publicly accessible, so it's a bit opaque."
"Now, the price is high."
"I give the pricing a six out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.
816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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 MicroStrategy?
The stability of the product is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?
For larger businesses, I think the pricing is logical, but for smaller companies, it can be a bit costly.
What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?
There is a need to improve the automatic generation of metrics in MicroStrategy, as currently everything must be done...
What do you like most about ThoughtSpot?
It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThoughtSpot?
I like the pricing structure. I get billed by how much data I put in, not how many people are looking at the data. It...
What needs improvement with ThoughtSpot?
We'd like more flexibility with the calendar as our fiscal year does not align with the calendar year. We have to loa...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
No data available
 

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.
Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.
Primary Capital Mortgage, Sterling Backcheck, RichRelevance, Rambus, Batteries Plus Bulbs
Find out what your peers are saying about MicroStrategy vs. ThoughtSpot and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.