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Plotly vs Qlik Sense comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th), Reporting (4th)
Plotly
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (18th)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (2nd), Embedded BI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Reporting
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 27, 2022
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.
VenkateshJuloori - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 9, 2024
A flexible tool that offers an open-source version
My company builds products. With the help of Plotly, the dashboards and reports my company builds are used by our clients. My company uses Plotly to present our data to clients so that they can understand and improve their performance. My company uses Plotly as it is a very light and flexible tool…
Jennifer Sinn - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 26, 2023
Easy to use with robust reporting and great visualizations
I am not sure what improvements could be made. Qlik Sense is very user-friendly. The only thing I would like to see is the ability to create a master app that opens when a user creates a new app that has all the master items, colors, logos, etc., that my organization uses. This would help with keeping master items the same across the apps and would make development a little quicker. This feature would also make it easier for our business users when they want to create an app since they wouldn't need to worry about adding all the needed data sources to it, it they were already there, and they could just press load.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."
"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"Dashboarding, reporting, and ad hoc reporting are the valuable features of IBM Cognos."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report."
"When reviewing and interpreting data, I typically examine it in a tabular form to understand its structure. However, when explaining or presenting the findings to others, I often use visualization tools such as Plotly. These tools allow me to create visual representations of datasets."
"It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten."
"The level of interactivity that the product provides is valuable to me."
"Placing buttons on my sheets creates a unique user experience and clears up clutter at the same time."
"The overall ability to build quick wins with simple data to drive insights."
"Qlik has made life easier by visualising data."
"The time it takes to deliver a dashboard is real quick."
"The integration with R & Python for predictive modeling, and possibly machine learning in the future, is very valuable."
"For a deployment scenario, Qlik Sense is also very easy to use. I can start development from any platform, on-premise or cloud, and continue from where I left off."
"The ETL component allows us to pull from many different sources, making pulling data in easy."
"What I found most valuable in Qlik Sense is its flexibility. It's a very flexible tool, and it has a lot of capabilities compared to Tableau and Power BI. In Qlik Sense, you can take data from any of the systems, and you can do data transformation, prepare the data, then present your KPIs. Data transformation isn't present in Tableau, Power BI, and other tools. In Qlik Sense, you're able to get the data and directly present that data. The presentation layer is also very good in Qlik Sense. My company is very happy with this tool."
 

Cons

"It could have more options for themes."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"The tool needs to improve its pie charts. Regarding Plotly, I find the online documentation somewhat challenging to navigate, especially when dealing with many parameters. Searching through thousands of parameters can be a tedious and less straightforward process. While the documentation is available online and serves its purpose, I often encounter difficulties in finding the information."
"The solution cannot be deployed on the website and shared with others through its own platform."
"I believe that the prices of the tool's paid services could be on the premium side, so the pricing model can be considered for improvement."
"Reload failure alerts on the application within the Qlik Management Console without any use of extensions. QlikView is able to handle these alerts directly through the QlikView Management Console. We would appreciate a similar solution that is easy to set up and use. Simple formatting options in the pivot and straight tables such as adjusting line thickness and font selection and size."
"I wish the product had the ability for slightly more customization. The out-of-the box charts and visualizations are fantastic, but I want to be able to tweak it without having to add outside extensions and widgets."
"Ultra-customization: It needs no limits on which charts can have x amount of dimensions, y amount of measures, z amount of color expressions, etc."
"There are some tools like Alteryx, which are used for data preparation. These features can be built into Qlik to make the process smoother."
"Ad-hoc reporting capabilities would be ideal."
"Currently, we are not very happy with the iPad or iPhone app because it is not working as we want."
"Moving forward I would like to see more features that are currently available in QlikView, such as being able to better customize coloring within charts. I would also like to see the ability to add calculated dimensions to the selections tool in the page."
"The communication with the solution's sales managers in Europe is very bad, making it an area that requires improvement. My company usually gets no response from the tool's sales managers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"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."
"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."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"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."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"I only use the free tier of the product."
"It is an open-source tool. My company hasn't explored Plotly's premium services yet, but I believe the prices could be on the premium side."
"We have 20 licenses for Qlik Sense, and it is a special license that allows people in the whole company to use it over time. You buy this license and there are some minutes that can be used. For example, for the users that used only a few minutes in a month, we use this license. All the people have the ability to work with Qlik Sense. However, the number of licenses is not the number of users. The number of users that uses Qlik Sense is approximately 35 people."
"I believe pricing is similar to other products in the same category, if you have it on-premise."
"It is a little expensive for the Italian market. Normally, Qlik Sense has two types and costs. The medium cost is around 700 euros per year."
"You will spend more time on educating your staff than licensing the product."
"The license mechanism of Qlik is quite complicated and not exchangeable. Such as 2016, they charge licenses by token, 1500$ for a token / 1 user. 2018: they change to 2 kinds of licenses: professional 1500$ / user, analyzer 800$ / user. 2019: they support subscription with 70$ Monthly for professional, 40$ monthly for analyzers, but for those you’re using perpetual licenses, they don't support acquiring more subscription licenses. The maintenance fee yearly are also high, 20% of the perpetual license."
"You need to pay 5,000 Norwegian kroner per user. Microsoft Power BI is slightly more expensive than Qlik Sense."
"The solution is worth it."
"Licensing is quite good, easy, but slightly expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
57%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
13%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 Plotly?
It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Plotly?
It is an open-source tool. My company hasn't explored Plotly's premium services yet, but I believe the prices are on ...
What needs improvement with Plotly?
I believe that the price of the tool's paid services is on the premium side, so the pricing model can be considered f...
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...
What do you like most about Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qlik Sense?
Considering the deal that we have acquired, Qlik Sense is pretty good in terms of price.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

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.
Google, Goji, VIT, Smpl Bio, U.S. Air Force, C12 Energy, New York University
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, Oracle and others in Reporting. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.