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IBM Cognos vs ManageEngine Exchange Reporter Plus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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

IBM Cognos
Ranking in Reporting
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th)
ManageEngine Exchange Repor...
Ranking in Reporting
17th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 4.5%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ManageEngine Exchange Reporter Plus is 0.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

AMOL JAJU - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ad hoc analysis reports and good for operational dashboarding
There used to be many valuable features, but in the last three or four years, whatever IBM is doing with enhancements, it has taken a lot of time to build and develop. But the best usage of Cognos is the ad hoc analysis reports. I really like that. Our customers also like that. But now the usage of Cognos and OBIE is reduced by various business users because people and business users are now more focused on analytics, slice and dice, and the dashboard, and the widgets.
reviewer2017023 - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently keeps track of how many mailboxes are created, how many are deleted, and things like that
We can keep track of how many mailboxes are created, how many are deleted, and things like that. It's a necessity for auditing to use a tool to monitor email tracking. So, it helps a lot with compliance. We can use the dashboard to see which Exchange servers are currently having issues, their health, and other details. The GUI is very good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."
"IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting."
"The tool can join data from different sources, write back to databases, generate alerts, and be customized to our preferences. It's an enterprise BI tool that's more powerful than just visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau."
"In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager."
"The most valuable features are Report Development (Functionality) and Information Distribution (Flexibility)."
"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."
"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."
"We can use the dashboard to see which Exchange servers are currently having issues, their health, and other details. The GUI is very good."
"The email traffic analysis feature is very useful."
 

Cons

"The technical support team’s response time is slow and needs to be improved."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"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."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The solution's support could be better."
"There are some small features that are missing. It would be nice if the graphics were better. You can use external sources for charts, but it's quite complex to use and not easy to implement. If you want a new chart, you can download it from multiple tools and implement it into IBM Cognos."
"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"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."
"I am primarily interested in reporting and automation improvements."
"There is room for improvement in the reporting, maybe having more customizable reports would be good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."
"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
"I don't know the exact cost, but I believe Cognos is quite expensive, especially when it comes to the support consultants and the procedures that need to be applied."
"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
"The solution is affordable."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"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."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"The pricing of Exchange Reporter Plus is very reasonable."
"I would rate the pricing a four out of ten, where one is low price and ten is high price. It is affordable."
report
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
51%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Insurance Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
No data available
 

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 Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
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?
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
What do you like most about ManageEngine Exchange Reporter Plus?
We can use the dashboard to see which Exchange servers are currently having issues, their health, and other details. The GUI is very good.
What needs improvement with ManageEngine Exchange Reporter Plus?
There is room for improvement in the reporting, maybe having more customizable reports would be good. ManageEngine ERP could do custom reporting.
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
No data available
 

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.
Sunbelt Rentals, Inc, Life Management Center, IBTS 
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cognos vs. ManageEngine Exchange Reporter Plus and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,451 professionals have used our research since 2012.