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Conga Composer vs Windward Core comparison

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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

Conga Composer
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (3rd), Document Automation Software (1st)
Windward Core
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (19th), Document Generation Tools (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

KS
Salesforce Application Support Specialist at Vectra AI
Document creation has become faster and more accurate but complex templates still need improvement
In terms of improvements for Conga Composer, we did start seeing a lot of requests related to customization, which were initially difficult. As people got to know that it's very easy to customize it, we started to get those more and more, and we saw fewer errors. Earlier, there were many requests to manually adjust the contract value, which was not possible with the CPQ quote documents. With Conga Composer, we can customize it to some level. For exception cases, we can modify the template and generate the contract in a way they want it. While we did not record any metrics, looking at the overall tickets and the reduction in errors we used to see, I think it has improved efficiency by a lot, and our stakeholders agree. However, I would say that despite being easy to set up these templates, there are limitations around looping. Some functionalities break when dealing with large templates, around 30 to 40 pages long. We jumped on their support, but we could not come to a resolution, so we ended up reducing the overall complexity of our template. I think Conga Composer could improve its adoption for Conga Composer Sign. Right now, the adoption is not very great. People use Conga Composer mainly for document generation and then go separately for DocuSign. To get a better hold of the market, Conga should definitely invest more into Conga Composer Sign.
CH
Sr. Systems Analyst at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Strong layout and design capabilities; leverages every aspect available in Word-native formatting
The licensing key is a little bit twitchy. I'd like to see more HTML formatting support in templates. It has a basic stock of HTML formatting capability, but it doesn't have a rich vocabulary. I have to work around that sometimes. The help documentation and blog posts are extensive, but not always up to date. The error reports also need improvement. If you don't key it in right, it's a little hard to find the root cause. It gives you information as much as it can, but it doesn't really hone in and tell you explicitly what you should do to correct the problem.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The declarative features and automatic API selections are great as they help with pre-built documentation, query generation, template generation, and articulation."
"Conga Composer is very easy to use. It's easy to debug if you have an issue."
"In my 2.5 years of experience with Conga Composer, I can say that it was one of the best document generation tools that I have used in a very long time."
"It's quite simple."
"The most valuable feature of Conga Composer is its user-friendly interface, which allows professionals to handle the product easily."
"The initial setup of Conga Composer is easy."
"I have never faced any issues with stability."
"What I like about Conga Composer is that it's much easier than Salesforce's native templating. It's simple to add merge fields, write queries to pull data and access up to four levels of related objects. This makes it very comfortable to get all the needed data into templates."
"We ended up going with Windward for the level of support we got from them during our proof of concept."
"If you're looking for a document solution that is of high quality, that does what it's supposed to do 100 percent of the time, with a company that is a quality company, Windward is the company that you're looking for."
"For me so far the Windward document generation software is the preferred solution for creating documents."
"This tool is great for tagging documents from different data sources such as XML, SQL, and other databases."
"The solution is very flexible, so you can create anything you want. Think of the possibilities you have in Excel or in Word, because these are the two document generators that are used the most. I only use Word, but I can use nearly every feature in Word, including making charts and tables, and produce those features in Windward, parametrically."
"From an integration perspective, they provide the code for you to easily integrate with existing applications."
"​Creating dynamic table of contents (TOC) based on dynamic data in different reports."
"The ultimate feature is the product it produces. The ROI around that saves hours and hours. It's probably about a hundred days per year. The time savings and the ability to turn it around quickly pleases our customers."
 

Cons

"The debugging skills could be improved as we need to stay alert for issues."
"Conga is getting more and more expensive."
"The only improvement I'd like to see is the ability to hide a single column within a grouped table, which I couldn't figure out how to do."
"One downside of Conga Composer is that it requires integration with other tools for the signing process. Apart from that, I find nothing major to be improved."
"Conga Composer can be improved because it has a steep learning curve, especially for new users."
"The query builder could use some updates."
"When setting conditions, it doesn't work as expected, requiring us to rework the code."
"However, I would say that despite being easy to set up these templates, there are limitations around looping; some functionalities break when dealing with large templates, around 30 to 40 pages long, and even after working with support we ended up reducing the overall complexity of our template."
"Some drawbacks we have come across are getting the output formatting to match exactly how it is implemented within Word."
"I would like to see examples included within the Wiki information to show how each function option could be used."
"The error reports also need improvement. If you don't key it in right, it's a little hard to find the root cause. It gives you information as much as it can, but it doesn't really hone in and tell you explicitly what you should do to correct the problem."
"The only thing I can think of, that we'd like it to do, would be the ability to "burst out" reports, meaning one section of a report could be sent out as an email to a manager of a department, say, without having to run multiple reports to do it. As it sits now, we have to do multiple reports to do it."
"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."
"Is there any way to avoid AutoTag loading in Word/Excel each time? I need to use it from time to time - quite rarely. AutoTag affects performance of Word/Excel. I do not want to install/uninstall AutoTag each time I need it."
"It is software, so there are always times where things don't work."
"​AutoTag needs to be web-based, so our customers can create reports from our web.​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the tool costs around six dollars per user."
"It's not cheap, but it's not overly expensive either."
"Regarding pricing, I believe it’s around fifty dollars, but I’m not entirely sure. Overall, I find the pricing reasonable and am quite satisfied with the product. The value we get from it justifies the cost, as it requires minimal maintenance and is straightforward to use. The functionality it provides aligns well with the investment."
"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."
"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."
"Pricing is something I complain about. Production pricing is okay, but for a testing environment the pricing looks a bit high to me."
"The only problem with the pricing of Windward is the limitation on the number of reports generated. It is costly in that sense. If you want to increase, you have to pay more, based on the number of reports generated per day. It is not the same with Crystal Reports. With the latter, you buy a license at one point in time and that's it."
"For what you're getting, it's an extremely good value."
"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."
"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'm starting to hear clients squeal about the price of their software. The cost of the software has gone up."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Transportation Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Conga Composer?
Not Sure, As i implemented the Quote Documents as per business need but client directly buy it for salesforce
What needs improvement with Conga Composer?
In terms of improvements for Conga Composer, we did start seeing a lot of requests related to customization, which were initially difficult. As people got to know that it's very easy to customize i...
What is your primary use case for Conga Composer?
One of the main use cases for Conga Composer would be to generate quote documents. We had different types of quote documents in our business process, so we used different kinds of Conga Composer te...
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Also Known As

Conga
Windward, Windward Studios
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Arkus, CollegeTracks, Colorado Creative Industries, Davies Office, Delta Air, Depersico, Diagnostic Innovations, Digital Dolphin, Finnzymes
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