Looker Studio vs Windward Core comparison

Google and Windward Studios are both solutions in the Reporting category. Google is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.9, while Windward Studios is ranked #24. Google holds a 2.9% mindshare in RT, compared to Windward Studios’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Windward Studios users who would recommend it.

Looker Studio

Read 13 Looker Studio reviews

937 Views
242 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Windward Core

Read 36 Windward Core reviews

536 Views
99 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

Windward Core

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Windward Core and Looker Studio are competing in the data analytics and business intelligence space. Looker Studio holds an advantage in broader business intelligence capabilities due to its data visualization strength, while Windward Core is advantageous for organizations focused on document generation.

Features: Windward Core offers advanced document automation, customized document output, and robust reporting capabilities, making it suitable for enterprises needing document generation. Looker Studio provides interactive dashboards, data exploration, and smooth integration with various data sources, meeting diverse analytical requirements.

Room for Improvement: Windward Core could improve in integration flexibility, support infrastructure, and cloud compatibility. Looker Studio may benefit from enhancing document generation features, refining user customization options, and enabling more robust offline capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Looker Studio's cloud-based model and strong support options facilitate quick deployment and seamless integration across diverse data environments. Windward Core requires a more hands-on deployment approach, with support focusing on its document-processing needs.

Pricing and ROI: Windward Core's licensing fees may be justified by its document management strength, offering high ROI for document-intensive enterprises. Looker Studio's scalable pricing aligns with business growth, providing a valuable proposition through its comprehensive data analytics features.

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

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. Windward Core

June 2025

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Helped 860,592 peers since 2012

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

Looker Studio

Ranking in Reporting

9th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 July 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 2.9%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windward Core is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Vijay Subramanyam

Delivery Head at cblsolutions

The ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing

Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing. The seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets and custom filter creation features facilitate detailed trend reports and analysis. Looker has significantly improved productivity by reducing the time spent on creating summary reports from weeks to a day.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integration with Excel and Google Sheets is a valuable feature, making it easy to access and visualize data."

"The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn."

"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."

"The solution is free so that is a good feature."

"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."

"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."

"The product's initial setup phase is very simple."

More Looker Studio pros

"From an integration perspective, they provide the code for you to easily integrate with existing applications."

"The most valuable feature is the Rich Text or TinyMCE in fields. For example, you have a text field but it is not a regular text field, it is a link. Inside this link, you can copy/paste everything: images, text, and tables together. After saving this field, you can pull it into the document."

"Creating dynamic table of contents (TOC) based on dynamic data in different reports."

"The Windward solution was very fast to rollout, and it is proven."

"The quality of the layouts and designs is second to none. Windward's ability to help us generate templates, for which we can actually tag documents, is the key feature that we use."

"The most valuable feature is the fact that it uses Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel as base templates, so when you generate, it's easy for clients to upgrade, and maintain, and generate out either a PDF or an actual Excel spreadsheet."

"One of the things they added in the last two or three years is PODs, Portable Object Doclets. One of our clients said they wanted to use PODs. They're a good way to make some constructs modular and keep things in one place."

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

More Windward Core pros

Cons

"The performance of Looker needs improvement, particularly the report loading time, which is critical for business users."

"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."

"Insisting on forums, blogs and community outreach in communications, and posting videos on an established calendar would be useful."

"The tool should improve on live data integration for quicker data reflection."

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."

"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."

"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."

"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."

More Looker Studio cons

"They should add a document distribution solution on top of the document generation capability. It should allow us to send the generated document to a certain recipient (e.g. customer contact’s email address) based on a business-rules management system. That system would allow the end-user to manage a relationship between a document template and its recipient."

"AutoTag needs to be web-based, so our customers can create reports from our web."

"It needs the ability to drill down in a single report (i.e., interactive) into data."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The next release could benefit from a cloud-based environment."

"We would like to shrink these reports into one page, because there is a lot of free space on one page, but we cannot shrink it into the one page to be shorter. This is one thing we would like to change."

More Windward Core cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."

"The product is available for free."

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."

"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

"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."

"The only problem with the pricing of Windward is the limitation on the number of reports generated. It is costly in that sense. If you want to increase, you have to pay more, based on the number of reports generated per day. It is not the same with Crystal Reports. With the latter, you buy a license at one point in time and that's it."

"The pricing is very reasonable for what it provides. The report builder is about one grand per user... We are paying for a support contract, which is 20 percent of the price, but because the licenses are perpetual, I think the pricing is very reasonable."

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

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

"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."

"The cost is reasonable."

More Windward Core pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

University

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

11%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?

The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...

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What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?

From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio. I can ask our designers how they feel since they have expe...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

We use Looker and Looker Studio, as Looker licenses Looker Studio for data presentation and reporting. With GCP, we use Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Kubernetes, and we utilize BigQuery extensively. ...

See all answers

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Comparisons

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 44% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 18% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Looker Studio

Compared 5% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Windward Core

Compared 31% of the time

SAP Crystal Reports vs Windward Core

Compared 29% of the time

Longview Analytics vs Windward Core

Compared 21% of the time

Domo vs Windward Core

Compared 19% of the time

More Windward Core Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

June 2025

Download Looker Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

Windward Core

June 2025

Download Windward Core product report

Also Known As

Data Studio

Windward, Windward Studios

Overview

Google Looker Studio is a free tool designed to help users create visually appealing reports and dashboards, making data easier to understand. It allows you to connect to various data sources such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and spreadsheets. With Looker Studio, you can create charts and graphs to showcase trends and comparisons, build comprehensive dashboards that provide an overview of your data, and customize reports to match your brand or preferences. Additionally, you can share your reports online or export them as PDFs for wider distribution.

Google

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

Genesys, Shueisha

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

Looker Studio vs. Windward Core

June 2025

Free Report: Looker Studio vs. Windward Core

Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. Windward Core and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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