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Knowage vs MicroStrategy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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

Knowage
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
34th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (26th)
MicroStrategy
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
161
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Knowage is 0.4%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MicroStrategy is 2.9%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

AM
Easy to customize, cross-platform capable, and very stable
The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills. When we come to the integration with the single sign-on facilities, that part is very challenging. In Power BI and other tools, it's very easy to integrate with active directory and single sign-on, and identity management is very easy in other business intelligence tools. However, when it comes to Knowage, it's a bit heavy, it's time-consuming sometimes, it's not very fast, and definitely not as fast as other business intelligence tools in terms of getting graphical reports. The solution could be cheaper.
AJIN S L - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience has shown effective features for analysis, but needs interface improvements
The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis are those that cater to user needs. However, I find Power BI to be more useful when comparing some features, but my company does not choose Power BI due to certain code restrictions. The MicroStrategy interface is not as good as Power BI, especially concerning the user-friendly aspects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."
"The embedding feature is great."
"We can easily do our own customizations."
"I can't name the features the way the Knowage community calls them because I still don't know the lingo. However, I can describe them. I like the ability to join more than one report, set all fields on one end, and replicate that on the other reports. I like that a lot. I think it's one of the features that got me using Knowage. They have tables, and I like that too. They took SQL scripts and many other scripts and enabled them to even correlate with Python. That's also one of the best things about Knowage. You could also decide to get information per user role, and this is also a feature that I like in Knowage."
"It keeps BI in the hands of everyone, rather than a developer or an analyst."
"The solution is ideal for enterprise-level companies or corporations."
"Having the intelligence server sit in the middle is huge for us. It is going to save us a lot of time, make our work a lot simpler, make it easier for deployment, and getting the reports in the hands of our users sooner."
"MicroStrategy's data visualization capabilities are great, and I would rate them nine out of 10."
"We prefer having our analytics capabilities in a single platform, which MicroStrategy's offers."
"We are using it for operations analysis and sales data analysis."
"The drill-down functionality is also very good."
"It has landing pages, and that makes life easy for exhibiting things."
 

Cons

"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."
"It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products."
"The dashboard components could be better."
"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."
"The graphs available for the new dashboard of version 10 are weak."
"It is actually pretty complicated to use.​ It is complicated enough that user adaptation is sometimes difficult. We developed more experts rather than people using it.​"
"There might be opportunities for reporting or data analysis, perhaps even in the realm of simulation."
"This solution is missing enhanced features in the dashboards."
"​There are a lot of offerings, and we are not fully using everything to its advantage."
"Its price should be lower. In terms of features, what we have is quite encompassing right now."
"The UI seems klutzy with its manual entry."
"In the developer, there are things that you able to do in a document or a report that you are not able to do in the Dossier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."
"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."
"Additional costs are associated with maintenance."
"The pricing is fair."
"We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us.​"
"​The solution is scalable. A little expensive perhaps, but it is scalable.​"
"MicroStrategy's licensing cost is higher than that of other tools in the market. My company uses the enterprise edition of the product."
"They made a change in the licensing module some time ago and we can now use all the enterprise tools for free."
"They need to work on their license structure. They are not competitive against somebody like SAP BusinessObjects. We had a quote that was almost a third the price, coming from SAP BusinessObjects, and it's not a better platform. It's not cheaper. They do concurrent user licensing, while MicroStrategy does named user licensing, and that was literally the only difference. But it made a $500,000 difference. They've got to do something to make themselves more competitive. Maybe it's assessing your business users and what you really expect them to use, and maybe giving a reduced price on that. But they are already giving us a 60% discount and they were still a million or so above, over a three-year time period. That doesn't account for synergies as we get from on-site resources that are already available, but I thought that that was a big, big deficit for them."
"While initial cost of MicroStrategy is still on the higher side, the long-term benefits brings down overall cost of ownership significantly as compared to other tools like Tableau/Cognos."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
16%
Real Estate/Law Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Hospitality Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about MicroStrategy?
The stability of the product is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?
For larger businesses, I think the pricing is logical, but for smaller companies, it can be a bit costly.
What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?
Areas of MicroStrategy that have room for improvement include pricing because it is costly. Organizations that are well-established and have more money can afford MicroStrategy, but startups and mi...
 

Also Known As

SpagoBI
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital
Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.
Find out what your peers are saying about Knowage vs. MicroStrategy and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.