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FME vs TIBCO Spotfire 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

FME
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (24th)
TIBCO Spotfire
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

FME and TIBCO Spotfire aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. FME is designed for Data Integration and holds a mindshare of 1.8%, up 1.5% compared to last year.
TIBCO Spotfire, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.1% mindshare, down 1.2% since last year.
Data Integration
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Alan Bloor - PeerSpot reviewer
Great for handling large volumes of data, but it is priced a bit high
When I do coding, I think about every single function. Some of these functions can be very elementary, like doing a substring or some capitalization. But FME removes all that coding because it's a transformer, so the time to develop an application to get to a point where you're producing results is decreased massively. It used to take weeks and months to develop software, and now I can use something like FME, and within one day, we get results. We can look at and validate data. We make minor subtle changes to the workbenches to improve it. We can share the workbenches. We don't have to use GitHub or anything else.
Mohsin Pathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, offers a single pane of glass, and is highly customizable
There's one area I see that specifically needs improvement. That is when you do the data loading. It is slow. For historical data, when you talk about gigabytes of data, terabytes of data, then it becomes prolonged. Loading could be improved. That's one part. That is actually there with every tool. I would not say that this is a specific problem with Spotfire. However, it is a problem with all the BI tools. That is one area which can be improved. When you are doing analytics, you see that the value has to come perfect. There was a missing feature of alerting out of the box within Spotfire. However, they have released this in version 12.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"All spatial features are unrivaled, and the possibility to execute them based on a scheduled trigger, manual, e-mail, Websocket, tweet, file/directory change or virtually any trigger is most valuable."
"It has a very friendly user interface. You don't need to use a lot of code. For us that's the most important aspect about it. Also, it has a lot of connectors and few forms. It has a strong facial aspect. It can do a lot of facial analysis."
"The most valuable feature of FME is the graphical user interface. There is nothing better. It is very easy to debug because you can see all steps where there are failures. Overall the software is easy to optimize a process."
"It has standard plug-ins available for different data sources."
"We make minor subtle changes to the workbenches to improve it. We can share the workbenches. We don't have to use GitHub or anything else."
"Live Query data on demand, R and Python integration, and the ability to write HTML and JavaScript text areas are all valuable features."
"The out-of-the-box features are simple and easy to use across the board."
"TIBCO Spotfire is easy to use. We initiated Spotfire as POC, with support from a tech team based in South Africa. While they assisted with the setup, we conducted the POC ourselves."
"From a scalability standpoint, I would say it's pretty fantastic."
"It allows users to quickly analyze data from a variety of sources and visualize it with powerful, interactive graphs, and charts."
"The flexibility, data preparation, and data wrangling abilities of the platform are exceptional."
"This solution allows us to integrate data from across all client departments, for effective reporting via a single dashboard."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
 

Cons

"Improvements could be made to mapping presentations."
"To get a higher rating, it would have to improve the price and the associated scalability. These are the main issues."
"FME's price needs improvement for the African market."
"The one thing that always appears in the community is the ability to make really easy loops to loop through data efficiently. That needs to be added at some point."
"FME can improve the geographical transformation. I've had some problems with the geographical transformations, but it's probably mostly because I'm not the most skilled geographer in-house. The solution requires some in-depth knowledge to perform some functions."
"I would like to see the visualization library in this solution expanded, so that I can increase what I can offer to our clients."
"We encountered difficulties connecting the special data sets, as the post data set did not contain any shared columns, making it difficult to establish a connection between the data sets."
"When it comes to data manipulation, there are features which are good, but one of the features which has really been missing in Spotfire is an offline ability for data manipulation."
"I would like more easy-to-implement analytical algorithms. At the moment they include things like forecasts and regressions. They need to add a lot more of these types of things to the product because not everyone is a data scientist."
"The solution might be generic."
"We would like an easier way to get the product to the cloud. Right now, we have the on-premise version, and we would like to find a way to make it easier to migrate it over to the cloud."
"We would like to see some improvement in the default properties of the solution, so that there is less need for us to spend our time coding."
"The data compression has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's price is reasonable."
"FME Server used to cost £10,000; now it can cost over £100,000."
"We used the standard licensing for our use of FME. The cost was approximately €15,000 annually. We always welcome less expensive solutions, if the solution could be less expensive it would be helpful."
"The ROI is nearly impossible to calculate."
"The cost is a few hundred dollars per user per year."
"This product carries a monthly licensing charge, with the amount depending on the features that are to be included. This costs also covers the use of technical support."
"The solution is affordable one."
"The pricing seems competitive and reasonable. The value delivered by the product far exceeds the cost."
"I would describe TIBCO Spotfire as an averagely-priced product."
"In comparison to other solutions such as IBM Cognos, TIBCO Spotfire is more affordable."
"The Tibco sales teams have been very difficult to work with - ignoring requests, misrepresenting level of demand, etc."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
30%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about FME?
We make minor subtle changes to the workbenches to improve it. We can share the workbenches. We don't have to use GitHub or anything else.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FME?
The pricing is really bad. Last year, they rebranded the whole pricing structure. It used to be moderately priced at about £400 per user per year. Now they've changed the whole thing, and it's expe...
What needs improvement with FME?
The one thing that always appears in the community is the ability to make really easy loops to loop through data efficiently. That needs to be added at some point. There must be a technical or comm...
What do you like most about TIBCO Spotfire?
TIBCO Spotfire is easy to use. We initiated Spotfire as POC, with support from a tech team based in South Africa. While they assisted with the setup, we conducted the POC ourselves.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Spotfire?
TIBCO Spotfire's pricing is high, particularly in traditional markets like Turkey, impacting market penetration. There is a lack of local support and distributors, making it challenging to sell.
What needs improvement with TIBCO Spotfire?
ClickView ( /products/clickview-reviews ) offered more visually appealing visualizations. TIBCO Spotfire and ClickView ( /products/clickview-reviews ) need improvement in scheduling, which is criti...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Spotfire
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shell, US Department of Commerce, PG&E, BC Hydro, City of Vancouver, Enel, Iowa DoT, San Antonio Water System
Allergan, ASSS de Montreal, Avantium, Blue River, Bank of Montreal, Citibank, FrieslandCampina, Hellmann Logistics, Merck, Novartis
Find out what your peers are saying about FME vs. TIBCO Spotfire and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.