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IBM Watson Explorer vs Salesforce Einstein Analytics 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 Watson Explorer
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (9th)
Salesforce Einstein Analytics
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Watson Explorer is designed for Data Mining and holds a mindshare of 3.3%, up 1.1% compared to last year.
Salesforce Einstein Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 1.1% mindshare, down 1.1% since last year.
Data Mining Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Watson Explorer3.3%
IBM SPSS Statistics16.2%
IBM SPSS Modeler16.0%
Other64.5%
Data Mining
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Einstein Analytics1.1%
Microsoft Power BI7.5%
Tableau Enterprise5.8%
Other85.6%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1319820 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
A data analysis tool that is scalable and includes keyword search functionality
The solution is used for a government company for data collection and analysis I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer. I have been using the solution for five…
Sunny Nair - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect And Senior Consultant at Keysight Technologies
Business insights improve with reliable integration but face occasional system downtimes
It is difficult to integrate the modules. The customization is also a little bit complex currently, but it is getting easier as they continue improving the market. There are certain glitches, especially when the modules are upgraded or when there is a source code update, causing the entire tool to go offline. There is downtime which still affects the particular product. I would provide a reliability rating of 70%, with 30% still having scope for improvement.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I really can't talk enough about the team."
"I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer."
"Implementing the solution really helped with manual labor, it takes care of a lot of FT work."
"Ease of use is pretty good as is the standardization of not actually having to have my own natural learning algorithms, just to use the Watson APIs."
"What impressed me more about Watson is that it is easy to use it, not for the technical people, but for business people."
"We take natural language that was happening in our repositories and our application and then feed it to the Watson APIs. We receive JSON payloads as an API response to get cognitive feedback from the repository data."
"The main use case is FAQ for the user; it works for almost 80% of the use case coverage."
"The ability to easily pull together lots of different pieces of information and drill down in a smarter way than has been possible with other analytics tools is key. Watson is all based on a set of AI and deep learning, machine-learning capabilities, and it is looking behind the scenes at some relationships that you likely would not have spotted on your own. It's pulling things together, categorizing some things, that are not something that you might have seen on your own."
"The insights it provides about customers are valuable; we get insights about the market, what they are doing, and what they're planning, and it is a comprehensive solution with everything in it so I can easily find what I need."
"Tableau CRM is a very capable solution. It is easy to use, user-friendly, and integrates well."
"I find Salesforce Einstein Analytics valuable because it is easier to use within Salesforce."
"The ability to put together a very interactive dashboard with a very good, graphical presentation has been very helpful."
"The most valuable feature of Salesforce Einstein Analytics is the reporting tools."
"The solution scales extremely well."
"Einstein Analytics provides insights into what we are doing and how we are doing it. It tells us what benchmarks we need to hit consistently to achieve our goals. In sales, there is sometimes a disconnect between actions and objectives. We aren't necessarily going to close a deal because we call X number of people. There are some underlying skills that add nuance to these metrics."
"The way Salesforce Einstein Analytics is structured in terms of the work assignments and the user profile is very good."
 

Cons

"It is a little bit tricky to get used to the workflow of knowing how to train Watson, what can be provided, what can't be, how to provide it, how to import, export, and what it means every time you have to add a new dictionary or something of the like."
"Stability is actually one of the areas that could use improvement. Setting it up is always tough. Setting Explorer requires experts, but also the underlying platform is not that stable. So it really needs a good expert to keep it running."
"Sometimes the service stops."
"I think we'll get it to a 10, but I think at the moment it's got to be a good eight or nine out of 10 at least."
"Much of IBM operates this way, where they have sets of tools that are in the middleware space, and it becomes the customer's responsibility or the business partner's responsibility to develop full solutions that take advantage of that middleware. I think IBM's finding itself in that spot with Watson-related technologies as well, where the capabilities to do really interesting and useful things for customers is there, but somebody still has to build it. Is that going to be the customer? Are they going to be willing to take on that responsibility themselves"
"Small businesses will probably have a little harder time getting into it, just because of the amount of resources that they have available, both financial and time, but it really is a solution that should work for them."
"We haven't used it in production yet so I can't answer this."
"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."
"If I could improve Tableau CRM I would make it as powerful as Tableau. Tableau CRM is more integrated and it's on the web, but it has less functionality. It is lacking functionality at this time."
"If a user leaves your organization, you shouldn't lose the visibility of all of the records."
"Einstein Analytics could incorporate something like SFIA 8 to help users understand the underlying skill sets."
"There are some offerings like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud that have very useful online learning options. There need to be more avenues for self-learning with this particular solution. That would be useful."
"I would advise others not to customize because they rolled out the newer versions, which are every six months. There had to be some significant testing and verification that happened. It is important to have a strong third-party provider that is very experienced. We used Deloitte, but we evaluated Accenture, KPMG, and IBM, but we decided on Deloitte and that was a good decision for us. Having a partner who has a center of excellence or experts that could give you a lot of the tips that they've learned could jumpstart your deployment and stick to the standards."
"The tool needs to simplify its features."
"Improvement-wise, I feel the solution must be more robust since it is not exactly ready to handle large data."
"They can add more intelligence to it, especially for the markets outside the USA."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The biggest challenge we had was the cost and the licensing. We ended up getting an enterprise licensing agreement(ELA). That took a lot of negotiations and a lot of pressure. We were able to receive a good price for the community licensing they bundled Salesforce Einstein Analytics. They bundled a lot of capabilities with us with the ELA."
"Salesforce Einstein Analytics can be considered somewhat expensive, depending on the company's needs. If they want the complete package with all the features, it's pricier. It all comes down to what the company requires from the platform."
"The solution is expensive."
"Salesforce has a subscription-based licensing structure, where it's between $20 to $75 per month, per user."
"Price-wise, Salesforce Einstein Analytics is an expensive tool."
"I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"Although it was deemed slightly expensive and failed the cost analysis we conducted in our company, we proceeded with the purchase because we desired to have a leading CRM system in the industry."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
It is difficult to integrate the modules. The customization is also a little bit complex currently, but it is getting easier as they continue improving the market. There are certain glitches, espec...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
It is more of an integrated platform where marketing, customer service, and the ticketing system are integrated into each other as a SaaS-based solution, which is what we use. For Marketing Cloud, ...
What advice do you have for others considering Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
We use portions of Teams if I am not wrong, though it is managed by a different team and we do not use it much. On a scale of one to 100, I would say at least 70 to 80. I rate Salesforce Einstein A...
 

Also Known As

IBM WEX
Einstein Analytics, Salesforce Wave Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

RIMAC, Westpac New Zealand, Toyota Financial Services, Swiss Re, Akershus University Hospital, Korean Air Lines, Mizuho Bank, Honda
ADS Securities, Alstom Grid, American Express, Barclays Bank, Coca-Cola, CoderDojo, Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, Financial Conduct Authority
Find out what your peers are saying about Knime, IBM, Weka and others in Data Mining. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.