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SAP Crystal Reports vs Windward Core 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

SAP Crystal Reports
Ranking in Reporting
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Windward Core
Ranking in Reporting
25th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Document Generation Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of SAP Crystal Reports is 2.7%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windward Core is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

MVD Prasad - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps analyze your data by creating richly formatted, pixel-perfect, and multiple reports from virtually any data source, delivered in over a dozen formats
It has significantly enhanced security features, especially when compared to the standard security features of the earlier PeerSpot version I purchased. I've observed improvements in security, and overall, it's quite commendable. Regarding potential enhancements for the next release of this solution, I haven't closely examined SAP Crystal Reports 53. I've only encountered it briefly, perhaps once or twice. However, I anticipate that it likely offers advanced features distinct from its predecessor. I believe there may be notable improvements and additions in the latest version, and I look forward to exploring them further.
HM
It has streamlined a lot of our reporting processes
Their PDF needs improvement. We've run into some issues when we tried to generate a Word document. If we try to generate the same document in PDF, sometimes it doesn't look exactly the same. We have gone back to Windward support a couple of times on a few issues, e.g., we had some issues with reports that had barcodes on them. The barcode wasn't displaying properly. It was displaying as a skewed image as opposed to an actual barcode. Therefore, we worked with Windward support, having some daily calls with them. Then, within the next release, they were able to resolve the issue. They even gave us a pre-release, so we could implement it into our code before the actual official release on the website. It would be nice to have some sort of workflow capability within the product. Anytime you generate a document, nine out of ten times there is something which precedes that document, whether it's entering parameters in, e.g., if I'm requesting the status report for a project. The first thing that I usually want from a status perspective is which project is the status report for and which week is it for, as those are some of the things that I have to supply before I can generate a document. From a workflow perspective, it would be nice to say, "This project belongs to this person, and this person is okay with me pulling information out of this document for whatever need I have." From a workflow perspective, I would like a wizard interface that goes step-by-step, like a questionnaire, where there are a bunch of things that you have to answer, "Yes or no," before it knows what to do or how to produce the document. Right now, we write our own custom UI for this.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The overall environment is the best. Data management, graphs, and layout – everything is the best, in my opinion."
"The most valuable feature is that from a user's point of view, it is easy to use and requires just a simple click to generate a report."
"The initial setup of the solution is pretty easy."
"I find Crystal Reports very easy to use, even for a non-technical person."
"It is an user-friendly solution."
"We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a fantastic way of generating reports."
"SAP Crystal Reports offers a plethora of features, many of which were available much earlier than in the Crystal Reports we previously used. We extensively use its capabilities for generating general reports, working with Kaspersky data, and even incorporating images into our reports. The range of functions available in SAP Crystal Reports is diverse, and we leverage them across various systems for our needs."
"The two features that I like the best are the ability to generate Word and Excel documents, and the ability to create my templates directly inside those software sets. It's absolutely critical for me as a user to have design and layout control, because all of my reports are very, very customized. I have to have control over the ability to generate and to control what they look like."
"Some of our clients are looking at the nested filtering which is coming out. That's going to be a huge benefit for them because they're going to be able to nest and loop while they're also looking at filtering out certain data elements."
"The most valuable feature is that it provides good, dynamic document-generation performance and the documents are being generated reliably."
"It's easy to create templates and reports using Microsoft Word, so we don't have to learn something new to create a template. That makes it very user-friendly... they have integrated the product with Microsoft Word. People can easily start working on it without too much training."
"The quality of the layouts and designs is second to none. Windward's ability to help us generate templates, for which we can actually tag documents, is the key feature that we use."
"Technical support is ​very good. They reply immediately and follow-up with any questions.​"
"Thanks to Windward, our documents need very few tweaks and are usually "customer-ready" right out of the box."
"We ended up going with Windward for the level of support we got from them during our proof of concept."
 

Cons

"If at all possible, a little bit of improvement on the analytical side is needed."
"SAP Crystal Reports has some compatibility issues with third-party products."
"There could be improvements made to the analytics capabilities."
"It has significantly enhanced security features, especially when compared to the standard security features of the earlier PeerSpot version I purchased. I've observed improvements in security, and overall, it's quite commendable. Regarding potential enhancements for the next release of this solution, I haven't closely examined SAP Crystal Reports 53. I've only encountered it briefly, perhaps once or twice. However, I anticipate that it likely offers advanced features distinct from its predecessor. I believe there may be notable improvements and additions in the latest version, and I look forward to exploring them further."
"Maybe some Power BI-related features could be added, like dashboards or direct editing in reports."
"A real improvement would be a simpler system that allows users to play with the visualization without needing specialized skills and code."
"The financing part needs improvement."
"SAP Crystal Reports should provide better support for dynamic connectors."
"I have to deal with VERY long lists of properties contained in our XMLs and it would be nice if Windward offered a way to alphabetize this property list."
"The reason it took us so long to get the system up and running is that the APIs could be improved a bit. It could be a little bit more interoperable with software, without having to do a lot of the heavy lifting that we had do to get it in."
"The next release could benefit from a cloud-based environment."
"They could make the document creation performance faster. I'm not saying it's slow but it takes time to create the PDFs. If they could make it faster, that would be one area for improvement."
"It is software, so there are always times where things don't work. Most of the time issues happen when trying to move to a new version. There might be problems with reports that were created in an older version, so either we have to make a tweak to the templates or we report it to them and get them to make an adjustment to their software."
"About six months ago, we raised the possibility of improving the way they manage the HTML 5. Sometimes, when you insert a lot of data in the data source, you get an error because it is not managing HTML 5 features well. I believe they have addressed this in later versions of their product."
"​AutoTag needs to be web-based, so our customers can create reports from our web.​"
"One thing that frustrated us a little bit is that we have to use the Office PDF generation, because the native PDF generation is always slightly different compared to the one in Office. The formatting is just a little bit off here and there... This means that we need to have Office installed on the server to be able to generate these documents via API."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of licensing can be a significant factor to consider when upgrading or transitioning to a new version of SAP Crystal Reports. It's important to evaluate the benefits and features offered by the new version against the associated costs to ensure it aligns with your organization's needs and budget."
"SAP Crystal Reports is a very expensive solution."
"This product costs a lot of money."
"We pay fifteen hundred dollars as licensing fee."
"I feel that SAP Crystal Reports is a reasonably priced product."
"It is absolutely worth the value. They have flexibility, depending on what you're looking for from a buying standpoint. The current pricing models are quite flexible, with the ability to use it on an as-needed basis, or to get a perpetual license that covers a customer that might have extensive needs. I think it's pretty good."
"I can't advise anybody about pricing and licensing, but it was competitive. A lot of things we did look at were all volume-based, so it was a case of you buy a license to generate this many reports a year, and that's not something that I'm particularly interested in because it doesn't give you any idea - if we have future growth, or if we have a lean year - for budgeting reasons it's more difficult. With Windward it's a straight out license fee, whether we generate one page or we generate a million, it makes no difference."
"The cost is reasonable."
"Pricing is a bit higher than normal desktop applications, but it's well worth it. The ROI is simple to understand and the monthly payment for an annual license is affordable and worth it."
"Pricing is something I complain about. Production pricing is okay, but for a testing environment the pricing looks a bit high to me."
"For what you're getting, it's an extremely good value."
"CapEx fits our requirements, OpEx is higher due to the 20% service and maintenance cost, where we normally pay 15%."
"The pricing is fair. The way that they have it priced is the Windward Designer has a price that's associated with it. Then, depending on the number of cores that you're looking for, that is the price that you pay. The more cores that you want, the more expensive it is."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SAP Crystal Reports?
Maybe some Power BI-related features could be added, like dashboards or direct editing in reports. We use query language to build reports; this area could be improved more.
What is your primary use case for SAP Crystal Reports?
We use SAP Crystal Reports for reporting. We use it for financial reports like statements of accounts, trial balances, and other management reports, salary slips, and many other purposes.
What do you like most about SAP Crystal Reports?
We use SAP Crystal Reports for operational reporting.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

No data available
Windward, Windward Studios
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Buenos Aires, ASR Group, Citrix, EarlySense, Usha International Limited, Automotive Resources International (ARI), LivePerson, Coelba (Grupo Neoenergia), RZD Russian Railways, National Basketball Association - NBA, TALLY WEiJL, El Machetazo, Young Heroes, Mozzart, Mitsui Knowledge Industry (MKI) , Surgutneftegas Open Joint Stock Company, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, AL-KO KOBER GROUP
HAL, Inc., Axe Group, White Clark Group, Blueprint Software, Aspect Security, Nucleus Software, LeBlanc’s Food Stores, South Sound 911, Aegon, Barclays, Fidelity Investments, ArisGlobal LLC, USDA, RepLink, AON Hewitt
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP Crystal Reports vs. Windward Core and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.