Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM Cognos vs NetSuite Business Intelligence 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

IBM Cognos
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (5th)
NetSuite Business Intelligence
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
34th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 2.2%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetSuite Business Intelligence is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Cognos2.2%
NetSuite Business Intelligence0.6%
Other97.2%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Robert Thorpe - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust platform delivers excellent reports and insights while needing improvement in self-service capabilities
Our clients utilize IBM Cognos mainly for static reporting, board packs, business reporting, and insights IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting. One of our customers can get a full company update on a Monday…
Antonio Lira - PeerSpot reviewer
Scripting is a great feature as is the ability to export almost anything
Scripting is a good feature if you have programming and scripting skills. It can be used without those skills but I think it's difficult to integrate them in PRISM. The best thing is that you can export almost anything whether it's graphics or data and you can change dates on the fly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Using custom controls, it is possible to extend the application with even more functionality and make the application intuitive and attractive."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"It is a stable product."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"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."
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"You can export almost anything whether it's graphics or data."
 

Cons

"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say, monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Some improvements in monitoring would be helpful. I'd like to see more monitoring of specific reports and fields. The way the auditing is now is very limited, so I'd like to see more of that - of the monitoring."
"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."
"The solution's support could be better."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."
"I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great flexibility in previous versions, is no longer available in IBM Cognos Analytics 12. These are areas that could be improved to enhance the product."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"Graphics are limited and could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."
"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."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.
869,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise83
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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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.
THE SECOND CITY, QUICKEN INC, LAND O’LAKES, LOVESAC, HELLO PRODUCTS
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: September 2025.
869,089 professionals have used our research since 2012.