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Pentaho Business Analytics vs Qlik Sense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
5.4
Pentaho Business Analytics mixed ROI perceptions highlight efficiency gains but unclear returns compared to competitors like QlikView and Tableau.
Sentiment score
6.2
Qlik Sense delivers high ROI through faster decision-making, cost savings, and enhanced insights, boosting operations and revenue growth.
In my organization, we moved from OBI to Qlik Sense due to limitations with OBI, resulting in very high ROI.
Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Pentaho Business Analytics receives mixed reviews for customer support, with users relying heavily on forums and community assistance.
Sentiment score
5.4
Qlik Sense's customer service is praised for technical support, though response times vary, with community forums and partners being essential.
While tech support is comprehensive, the stability of Qlik Sense means I generally do not need it.
Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Technical support requires improvement.
Associate Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
In Turkey, the consultant firms are very professional, and they support you.
Business Intelligence Architect at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Pentaho Business Analytics is scalable with good performance but occasionally needs professional help for complex data handling.
Sentiment score
7.7
Qlik Sense is praised for scalability, efficiently handling large data sets and users, but requires careful licensing and server management.
It performs well in terms of performance and load compared to others.
Associate Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Qlik Sense helps analyze data and can handle larger amounts of data compared to other BI tools.
Solution Architect at Predoole Analytics
It is easily scalable with Microsoft, with other services Azure and other tools they provide.
student at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Pentaho Business Analytics is stable but may face Java caching issues, impacting performance and requiring careful cache management.
Sentiment score
7.6
Qlik Sense is highly stable, with users praising its reliability, effective support, smooth upgrades, and robust functionality.
It can handle large datasets.
DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia
The stability is very good.
Associate Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Pentaho Business Analytics lacks an intuitive interface, robust integration, self-service features, and requires technical expertise, limiting usability.
Qlik Sense users seek better customization, real-time features, data handling, visualization, ease of use, cost efficiency, and improved support.
Pentaho Business Analytics is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical skills.
DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia
Power BI has better visualizations and interactions with updates in 2023 that provide ease of use.
Business Intelligence Architect at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Providing an API feature to access data from the dashboard or QEDs could be beneficial.
Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
There should be more comprehensive documentation and explanatory videos available to help clients understand and calculate capacity-based pricing, making it easier to predict costs before implementing Qlik Sense Cloud.
Solution Architect at Predoole Analytics
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find the free Pentaho Community Edition cost-effective, while the Enterprise Edition offers value with support and features.
Qlik Sense offers flexible, albeit pricier, licensing options praised for easy setup and quick ROI, but requires careful cost analysis.
Pentaho Business Analytics is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView and Tableau.
DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia
It is just about how expensive it is to implement.
student at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Compared to Power BI, it is definitely costly.
Associate Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Among the BI tools and data analytics tools, Qlik is the most expensive.
Business Intelligence Architect at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Pentaho Business Analytics provides easy data integration, customizable dashboards, extensive connectivity, and supports efficient data transformation and delivery.
Qlik Sense provides intuitive dashboard creation, seamless integration, and robust data handling with powerful analytics and flexible development capabilities.
It is a stable product, and it can handle large datasets.
DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia
From an end-user perspective, it's convenient and performance-oriented, providing something meaningful from all the organization's data.
Director Software Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
The true power is in the ability to connect with any database, get the data, and work with the data.
Director at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
It is a single product that I can use as an ETL database, BI, and more.
Associate Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Business Analytics
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (20th), Cloud Operations Analytics (2nd), Reporting (14th)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (4th), Embedded BI (2nd), AI Data Analysis (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Pentaho Business Analytics is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 0.7%, up 0.4% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 5.1% mindshare, down 8.0% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Pentaho Business Analytics0.7%
Microsoft Power BI9.3%
Tableau Enterprise6.7%
Other83.3%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Data Visualization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qlik Sense5.1%
Tableau Enterprise11.0%
Domo5.7%
Other78.2%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

JB
Founder at SJT Consult
Solution enables effective ETL processes and exhibits high satisfaction
From an integration perspective, Pentaho Business Analytics is not the best tool on the market. There are things done by Apache that are better, though I am not the one implementing them, so this is based on what I have heard about novelties in the market. I do not see the need to extend the coverage of Pentaho Business Analytics's domain. For things that it does not do, there are better solutions on the market, and it would be costly to implement them. Pentaho Business Analytics is a very great tool for very specific standardized scenarios. If you need more complex elastic solutions because the process is different, there are better tools available.
SW
Solution Architect at Predoole Analytics
Unlocks actionable insights through user-friendly analysis features
The self-service capabilities that Qlik Sense offers are significant. They offer natural language processing, allowing users to ask questions in layman language, and Qlik Sense will create charts and narratives automatically. Users can access any dashboard developed in Qlik Sense from familiar portals such as Okta or other company portals through embedding features. The integration with chatbots, particularly Microsoft Teams, allows users to access dashboards and ask questions directly within Teams. The collaboration feature enables users to share analysis by taking snapshots and tagging team members within the Qlik Sense interface, eliminating the need for lengthy emails or screenshots. The storytelling feature allows users to create presentations directly in Qlik Sense using dashboard analysis, making it easier to answer questions during meetings. The subscription feature enables users to receive charts and sheets via email instead of navigating to the dashboard, facilitating monitoring purposes. Qlik Sense offers alerting capabilities where users can set thresholds for KPIs and receive notifications when these thresholds are reached. The platform also includes AI/ML features for predictive modeling through a no-code component, allowing business users to create and deploy AutoML models without depending on data scientists. The Qlik Answers component, featuring generative AI capability, enables users to get answers from unstructured data including Excel, HTML documents, or Microsoft Word documents by creating a knowledge base. The user-friendly interface operates on a drag-and-drop approach, with Qlik Sense suggesting appropriate charts based on selected dimensions and measures. The associative engine capabilities allow data association between tables, implementing selections across related tables. The platform uses a color-coding system (white, gray, and dark gray) to show related, excluded, and unrelated data selections, providing insights beyond traditional BI tools.
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Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-Founder at Helical IT Solution (Jaspersoft, Pentaho, Talend, Kettle, DWBI, ETL, Ctools, iReport, Jasper Report)
Jun 10, 2013
Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition
Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise87
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
Pentaho Business Analytics offers the best value for money. While improvements can be made in some areas, particularly with more cloud-based solutions, it is not in their domain because they do not...
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
From an integration perspective, Pentaho Business Analytics is not the best tool on the market. There are things done by Apache that are better, though I am not the one implementing them, so this i...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qlik Sense?
It is not about performance. It is just about how expensive it is to implement.
What needs improvement with Qlik Sense?
Everything depends on the use case, but I would prefer Power BI because of how mainstream it is. There is not much information available. It is not a mainstream tool that many companies use, so if ...
 

Also Known As

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
QlikSense, Qlik Analytics Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
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 Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: March 2026.
884,122 professionals have used our research since 2012.