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Pentaho Business Analytics vs ThoughtSpot 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
5.9
Pentaho Business Analytics enhanced efficiency and output but faced ROI calculation challenges compared to alternatives like QlikView and Tableau.
Sentiment score
7.1
ThoughtSpot users report improved time efficiency and cross-regional marketing, yet ROI varies with user count and onboarding ease.
Using ThoughtSpot has resulted in significant time savings and improved business sales by allowing us to identify sellers and buyers across regions, facilitating targeted marketing.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Pentaho receives mixed feedback on support, with strong community engagement but varying customer service and documentation quality.
Sentiment score
6.7
ThoughtSpot's support is proactive and responsive but has a limited knowledge base and lengthy feature integration processes.
I stopped opening tickets due to insufficient and untimely responses.
ThoughtSpot provides a dedicated customer success person and the ability to submit tickets online, with a response time of no more than a day.
The knowledge base for ThoughtSpot is less robust compared to others.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Pentaho scales well and fits organizational needs but may require admin expertise for complex environments and large data.
Sentiment score
7.1
ThoughtSpot's scalability is praised, enhanced by Snowflake partnership, despite challenges in managing roles for large user bases.
Tableau, Power BI, or Looker have separate tools for preparation, customization, and storytelling.
The platform does not have technical problems with scaling data or connections.
I do find ThoughtSpot scalable.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
Pentaho Business Analytics is generally stable but has occasional Java caching, RAM, and subprocess issues with large databases.
Sentiment score
7.2
ThoughtSpot is stable with rare issues, offers high performance on large datasets, but needs integration and resource improvements.
It can handle large datasets.
This workaround consumed a lot of resources and led to reduced performance, with pinboards loading for approximately two minutes for each filter criterion.
The upgrades are smooth with no downtime, which is super important.
I use it primarily for large datasets, and it performs faster than regular data visualization tools such as Power BI, which has limits on dataset size.
 

Room For Improvement

Pentaho needs user interface, reporting, and visualization enhancements, along with better debugging, metadata management, and cost-effective licensing.
ThoughtSpot needs improvements in visualization, customization, data handling, and usability, lagging behind competitors like Power BI and Tableau.
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.
Enhancing integration capabilities with other tools like DBT would also be beneficial as it would make our lives easier.
Currently, it is not as customizable as the options available on Power BI or Tableau.
Handling governance when there are many models and dashboards is complex.
 

Setup Cost

Pentaho's Community Edition is cost-free, while the Enterprise Edition, offering enhanced features, can cost up to $250,000 annually.
ThoughtSpot offers flexible pricing, often cheaper than Tableau but pricier than Power BI, with negotiable licensing models controlling costs.
Pentaho Business Analytics is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView and Tableau.
ThoughtSpot's pricing is reasonable and in line with other BI tools.
HubSpot is expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Pentaho Business Analytics offers powerful ETL, user-friendly interface, customizable dashboards, and cost-saving, open-source analytics and reporting features.
ThoughtSpot provides user-friendly, scalable data exploration with diverse database compatibility, enabling efficient, non-technical analytics and business intelligence.
It is a stable product, and it can handle large datasets.
Its compatibility with most databases, including the latest from FlexMovely and Redshift, allows users to create joins and worksheets easily.
This alerting feature is very beneficial for our company at the moment, and we use it extensively.
The main core of HubSpot is to create models, connect data pipelines, and create business models and dashboards on top of them.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Operations Analytics (4th), Reporting (16th)
ThoughtSpot
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (14th), Embedded BI (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThoughtSpot is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Sayan König - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up
The repository should be improved. There should be the possibility to have versioning, to make it combinable with some Git repositories or something like that, to check out the processes and make sure it has a traceable history. The solution could really be improved. There are too many bugs in our version.
Sushma Polavarapu - PeerSpot reviewer
Creates user-friendly analysis environments for large datasets
The tool is user-friendly for the end users. It is primarily a search-based tool. Users do not need a technical background to work directly on the dataset. Its compatibility with most databases, including the latest from FlexMovely and Redshift, allows users to create joins and worksheets easily. ThoughtSpot is fast, even with one to ten terabytes of data.
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848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView ( /products/qlikview-reviews ) and Tableau ( /products/tableau-reviews ). I usually use the community edition.
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
Pentaho Business Analytics ( /categories/bi-business-intelligence-tools ) is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThoughtSpot?
ThoughtSpot is expensive. When compared with Tableau and Sisense, it is around seven or eight on the expense scale.
What needs improvement with ThoughtSpot?
The visualization customization needs improvement. Currently, it is not as customizable as the options available on Power BI or Tableau. It mainly offers basic chart options.
What is your primary use case for ThoughtSpot?
I use ThoughtSpot as one of the visualization tools. I mainly create some live boards and provide access to the data sources and worksheets to users so they can create their own analyses and answer...
 

Also Known As

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Primary Capital Mortgage, Sterling Backcheck, RichRelevance, Rambus, Batteries Plus Bulbs
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Business Analytics vs. ThoughtSpot and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.