Knowage vs Windward Core comparison

Knowage and Windward Studios are both solutions in the Reporting category. Knowage is ranked #26, while Windward Studios is ranked #24. Knowage holds a 0.8% mindshare in RT, compared to Windward Studios’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Knowage users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Windward Studios users who would recommend it.

Knowage

Read 18 Knowage reviews

430 Views
63 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Windward Core

Read 36 Windward Core reviews

526 Views
97 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Knowage

Windward Core

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Knowage and Windward Core are competing solutions in the business intelligence and reporting domain. Knowage appears to have the upper hand due to its scalability, integration capabilities, and attractive pricing, while Windward Core's advanced feature set might justify its higher cost.

Features: Knowage offers an open-source structure, comprehensive integration options, and seamless data analysis across diverse systems. Windward Core provides powerful document generation, rich formatting capabilities, and superior data presentation options.

Room for Improvement: Knowage could enhance its user interface, expand documentation, and improve compatibility with third-party tools. Windward Core might benefit from simplifying its configuration process, expanding data source support, and enhancing its integration capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Knowage is known for its simple deployment and strong customer support. Windward Core, although more complex to deploy, offers pre-configuration services and responsive support to alleviate this complexity.

Pricing and ROI: Knowage is recognized for a competitive pricing model with lower initial costs, offering a positive return on investment. Windward Core, despite its higher upfront costs, promises significant ROI over time due to its robust features and streamlined processes.

To learn more, read our detailed Knowage vs. Windward Core Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Knowage vs. Windward Core

June 2025

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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 Reporting

26th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (34th)

Windward Core

Ranking in Reporting

24th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Document Generation Tools (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Knowage is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windward Core is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

AbdulshukoorMohammed

General Manager Information Technology & Enterprise Applications Manager at OXFORD HOLDING

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.

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Christopher Heinz

Sr. Systems Analyst at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Strong layout and design capabilities; leverages every aspect available in Word-native formatting

The licensing key is a little bit twitchy. I'd like to see more HTML formatting support in templates. It has a basic stock of HTML formatting capability, but it doesn't have a rich vocabulary. I have to work around that sometimes. The help documentation and blog posts are extensive, but not always up to date. The error reports also need improvement. If you don't key it in right, it's a little hard to find the root cause. It gives you information as much as it can, but it doesn't really hone in and tell you explicitly what you should do to correct the problem.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The embedding feature is great."

"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."

"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 has the ability to easily integrate into existing apps with little code. If you know how to use MS Office, you can create a report."

"The most valuable features are the ability for it to be integrated into our software solution and the AutoTag tool that allows us to quite quickly create and update the templates themselves."

"The design tool, with all of its features and sample output fidelity tests, and being able to work with JSON data and output PDF and HTML, were also both crucial."

"Some of our clients are looking at the nested filtering which is coming out. That's going to be a huge benefit for them because they're going to be able to nest and loop while they're also looking at filtering out certain data elements."

"We ended up going with Windward for the level of support we got from them during our proof of concept."

"Another thing our clients absolutely love is the ability to design templates within the Microsoft Office suite, because of how simple it is. They're building off of something that's familiar. When they can build off of that feature, on top of something that's very familiar, that's a plus for them."

"For the designer we use AutoTag which is a Microsoft Word plugin. In general, it's easy to use, it doesn't have a very steep learning curve. It's not difficult, for people who know Microsoft Office well, to start using the AutoTag tool... It feels just like you're in a Microsoft Office environment with some extra functionality."

"Managing templates through MS Word, as non technical users can manage output."

More Windward Core pros

Cons

"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."

"Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there."

"The dashboard components could be better."

"The only challenge here is that it's a Java-based platform. It requires very high technical skills."

"They could make the document creation performance faster. I'm not saying it's slow but it takes time to create the PDFs. If they could make it faster, that would be one area for improvement."

"I'm still working in Office 2016, and we have had some issues, but Windward is very quick to react when there is a problem. We are also going to switch over to Office 365 and that will solve a few of the problems."

"There are some Excel formatting things that you lose when you implement a template: some default Excel validation scripts, macros. You could create them in Excel if you were just using Excel, but in creating a template that generates a report, some of those validation things are lost."

"There is always room for improvement in the speed, especially with the complex, multi-line Excel spreadsheets. They made some improvements in the last version that are quantum-fold faster than when I first started. But there is always room for improvement there. You always want reports faster and faster."

"Is there any way to avoid AutoTag loading in Word/Excel each time? I need to use it from time to time - quite rarely. AutoTag affects performance of Word/Excel. I do not want to install/uninstall AutoTag each time I need it."

"A lot of clients who want to use this don't have the technical background for the SQL portion of gathering the data. If Windward were to make a more user-friendly SQL extract front-end, that would help a lot of clients to leverage the application a lot more."

"About six months ago, we raised the possibility of improving the way they manage the HTML 5. Sometimes, when you insert a lot of data in the data source, you get an error because it is not managing HTML 5 features well. I believe they have addressed this in later versions of their product."

"One thing that frustrated us a little bit is that we have to use the Office PDF generation, because the native PDF generation is always slightly different compared to the one in Office. The formatting is just a little bit off here and there... This means that we need to have Office installed on the server to be able to generate these documents via API."

More Windward Core cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."

"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."

"For what you're getting, it's an extremely good value."

"It is absolutely worth the value. They have flexibility, depending on what you're looking for from a buying standpoint. The current pricing models are quite flexible, with the ability to use it on an as-needed basis, or to get a perpetual license that covers a customer that might have extensive needs. I think it's pretty good."

"From my experience in this field, the product is reasonably priced, at least with the RESTful engine implementation. It's definitely not a cheap option. People say, "That's a fair amount of money to pay for a document generation tool." At the same time, you do get good functionality and the support is good."

"The cost is reasonable."

"I can't advise anybody about pricing and licensing, but it was competitive. A lot of things we did look at were all volume-based, so it was a case of you buy a license to generate this many reports a year, and that's not something that I'm particularly interested in because it doesn't give you any idea - if we have future growth, or if we have a lean year - for budgeting reasons it's more difficult. With Windward it's a straight out license fee, whether we generate one page or we generate a million, it makes no difference."

"I'm starting to hear clients squeal about the price of their software. The cost of the software has gone up."

"CapEx fits our requirements, OpEx is higher due to the 20% service and maintenance cost, where we normally pay 15%."

"They are fair and flexible. They are willing to work with your current architecture to make sure you have the best deal."

More Windward Core pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

16%

Real Estate/Law Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Hospitality Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

12%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs Knowage

Compared 51% of the time

Procurify vs Knowage

Compared 32% of the time

Tableau vs Knowage

Compared 16% of the time

More Knowage Competitors

SAP Crystal Reports vs Windward Core

Compared 38% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Windward Core

Compared 36% of the time

Longview Analytics vs Windward Core

Compared 26% of the time

More Windward Core Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Knowage

June 2025

Download Knowage product report

Buyer's Guide

Windward Core

May 2025

Download Windward Core product report

Also Known As

SpagoBI

Windward, Windward Studios

Overview

Knowage (formerly SpagoBI) has a 14-years history. The actual release is the 6.3.

Knowage offers FULL ANALYTICAL CAPABILITIES, with a special focus on big data analytics and comprehensive support to rich and multi-source data analysis. Knowage provides different modules, each one focused on a specific domain but mutually combinable (Big Data, Smart Intelligence, Enterprise Reporting, Location Intelligence, Performance Management, Predictive Analysis). Moreover, Knowage is an OPEN SOURCE solution: the source code is freely accessible, everyone is allowed to join the community and build the own business solution to ensure strategic decision-making and improved productivity.

Knowage suite is supported by Engineering Group, the leading Italian software and services company, with about 10,000 people and more than 50 offices worldwide. Maintenance and support services (such as trainings, migration support, proof-of-concepts, etc) are provided by Engineering Group (KNOWAGE Labs) under subscription.

Knowage

What is Windward Studios?

For over a decade, Windward has been a leader in the software development industry by creating the most innovative and advanced document automation and reporting software on the planet.

Data-Driven Document Automation

Generate stunning documents that incorporate relevant data easily and seamlessly.

Visually Striking Designs

Our software provides innovative tools and features to build beautiful designs and stunning layouts, all within the familiar Microsoft Office Suite. Your imagination is the only limitation.

Agile Document Logic

We offer the best document automation software for the new millennium. With our conditional logic functionality, you can swiftly personalize the document content to gratify your end users.

Huge Time Saver

Looking for faster template creation that enables you to keep pace with your business? With our software, template creation takes minutes and you do not need any programming experience to get it done.

Exceptionally Intuitive Interface

Our program's design offers documents that can be edited, customized and designed using MS Office. Enjoy a stress-free document automation experience in programs you already know.

Efficient Savings

Significantly reduce the resources and time required for template development by using our streamlined template design and document automation tools.

Windward Studios

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

HAL, Inc., Axe Group, White Clark Group, Blueprint Software, Aspect Security, Nucleus Software, LeBlanc’s Food Stores, South Sound 911, Aegon, Barclays, Fidelity Investments, ArisGlobal LLC, USDA, RepLink, AON Hewitt

Buyer's Guide

Knowage vs. Windward Core

June 2025

Free Report: Knowage vs. Windward Core

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