Board vs Knowage comparison

Read 18 Knowage reviews

631 Views
423 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Board

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Knowage and Board are competitors in the business intelligence market. Data comparisons show a preference for Board due to its advanced features and perceived value.

Features: Knowage offers open-source versatility, integration capabilities, and customization, making it cost-efficient. Board provides comprehensive analytics, planning, and simulation tools with a robust unified platform.

Room for Improvement: Knowage needs improvement in simplifying its setup process and user interface. Its reporting capabilities could be enhanced. Board requires better data integration flexibility, more customization options, and a simpler interface for non-technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Board supports both cloud and on-premise deployments with extensive support ensuring a smooth onboarding process. Knowage, while flexible, demands more initial setup and technical expertise, potentially slowing down deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Knowage attracts price-sensitive businesses with lower setup costs. Board's higher initial costs can be offset by greater ROI from its enhanced features and integrations.

To learn more, read our detailed Board vs. Knowage Report (Updated: August 2025).

Board vs. Knowage

Download the complete report

Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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

Board

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

20th

Ranking in Reporting

16th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Performance Management (8th)

Knowage

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

35th

Ranking in Reporting

25th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Board is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Knowage is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Wiboon Thabsuwan

Senior Consultant at IMD Company Limited

Easy to use and requires less time to learn or understand its features

I think the product is good in terms of ease of use. The interface looks really nice and very easy to use. Every command appears in the icon. It looks like you don't have to understand everything about the command. You do not necessarily have to know more, or I would say that there is less time for our study about the products. Functionality-wise, it is quite easy to use and requires less time to understand or learn about the product. I am a software vendor, so I do not use the tool myself. I use it for my clients. My clients mostly use it for budgeting and timing purposes. I would say that's really less maintenance at all because they can do everything by themselves. It is good in terms of ease of use.

Read full review

AbdulshukoorMohammed

General Manager Information Technology & Enterprise Applications Manager at OXFORD HOLDING

Easy to customize, cross-platform capable, and very stable

The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills. When we come to the integration with the single sign-on facilities, that part is very challenging. In Power BI and other tools, it's very easy to integrate with active directory and single sign-on, and identity management is very easy in other business intelligence tools. However, when it comes to Knowage, it's a bit heavy, it's time-consuming sometimes, it's not very fast, and definitely not as fast as other business intelligence tools in terms of getting graphical reports. The solution could be cheaper.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Where it used to take me three days at the beginning of the year to create the new financial statement, now it is a matter of minutes because all the data is in the system."

"All the reports are prepared automatically."

"Instead of taking two people a week each month to perform our internal KPI reporting, the same two people can have it done in a day."

"The ease of being able to get the data into BOARD is what makes it nice for people with a semi-IT background."

"I think it's flexible. I chose this solution because, even though it wasn't out-of-the-box, you can customize it, and the long-term growth potential of the software is where I see the value."

"BOARD technical support is knowledgeable and helpful."

"It has definitely saved us time, especially in our budget and planning processes."

"By using Board we can do a lot of free analysis. We can change the layout of a table and even the end-user can change the layout of a table. And in Board 11.2 you can save the layout. That's very useful for the customer, it's a very good function."

More Board pros

"I can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage."

"We can easily do our own customizations."

"The embedding feature is great."

"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."

Cons

"I would like to see better relationships with the partners."

"Building similar models entirely from scratch could be made quicker with transfer abilities between databases and capsules."

"The initial setup was very complex for us."

"The product can be improved by making it possible to know where cubes are used."

"It's very powerful, but there is also a big learning curve. It should be a little more intuitive."

"We are looking at ways to improve how we deal with security in BOARD and other similar things. "

"It can have more functionality for narrative reporting. They should also improve their training courses, which are currently very lightweight. When you get into more complex things, it is quite difficult to figure out what you're supposed to do, and you have to look at a lot of videos before you actually understand, which is a bit frustrating. Their training can be more comprehensive."

"My analysts have used the technical support. Sometimes they have felt like they did not receive the answer that they needed, or you have to go and upgrade in order to address a problem. "

More Board cons

"The dashboard components could be better."

"It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products."

"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."

"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of the pricing, it was reasonable. BOARD is not the lowest in the market, but it was reasonable for us."

"Find a partner who will take responsibility for the implementation, and be available for support."

"The tool's price is a bit high compared to other solutions."

"It is not the cheapest product on earth, but you get so much. It provides good value for money."

"The solution is quite expensive, if it is made cheaper then we can have more clients. I rate it four out of ten."

"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."

"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Government

16%

Hospitality Company

13%

Insurance Company

11%

Marketing Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Is Board better than Anaplan as a Business Intelligence (BI) solution?

We've had several FP&A departments include Anaplan in their analytics discussions, and while BI information IS generated, the focus is generally on compiling input from various sources and simu...

See all answers

What do you like most about Board?

All the reports are prepared automatically.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Board?

Board's integration could be a bit more robust, but what we have works. If the design isn't right, the flexibility of Board can negatively impact performance.

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Anaplan vs Board

Compared 26% of the time

Pigment vs Board

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Board

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Board

Compared 8% of the time

Jedox vs Board

Compared 7% of the time

More Board Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Knowage

Compared 30% of the time

Procurify vs Knowage

Compared 26% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Knowage

Compared 18% of the time

Pentaho Business Analytics vs Knowage

Compared 14% of the time

OpenText Intelligence vs Knowage

Compared 12% of the time

More Knowage Competitors

Product Reports

Board

Download Board product report

Download Knowage product report

Also Known As

No data available

SpagoBI

Overview

BOARD International - headquartered in Switzerland - is a leading global provider of software for improving business results through better decision making. By unifying Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management into a single product, BOARD enables companies to achieve a shared vision of their performance across the entire organization, and thus a single version of the truth.

BOARD provides seamless solutions for • Reporting & Analysis • Budgeting, Planning & Forecasting • Profitability Modelling & Optimization • Simulation & What-if-Analysis • Scorecarding & Strategy Management • Financial Consolidation. Based on visual modelling, BOARD has enabled global companies to deploy BI and CPM applications without a single line of code in a fraction of the time and cost associated with traditional solutions.

Board International

Knowage (formerly SpagoBI) has a 14-years history. The actual release is the 6.3.

Knowage offers FULL ANALYTICAL CAPABILITIES, with a special focus on big data analytics and comprehensive support to rich and multi-source data analysis. Knowage provides different modules, each one focused on a specific domain but mutually combinable (Big Data, Smart Intelligence, Enterprise Reporting, Location Intelligence, Performance Management, Predictive Analysis). Moreover, Knowage is an OPEN SOURCE solution: the source code is freely accessible, everyone is allowed to join the community and build the own business solution to ensure strategic decision-making and improved productivity.

Knowage suite is supported by Engineering Group, the leading Italian software and services company, with about 10,000 people and more than 50 offices worldwide. Maintenance and support services (such as trainings, migration support, proof-of-concepts, etc) are provided by Engineering Group (KNOWAGE Labs) under subscription.

Sample Customers

Coca-Cola, Puma, Desigual, Ricoh, KPMG, H&M, Groupe SEB

FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital

Board vs. Knowage