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Pentaho Business Analytics vs Qlik Sense 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.9
Pentaho Business Analytics enhanced efficiency and output but faced ROI calculation challenges compared to alternatives like QlikView and Tableau.
Sentiment score
6.4
Qlik Sense provides quick ROI through enhanced data access, improved decision-making, cost-effectiveness, and reduced manual efforts.
In my organization, we moved from OBI to Qlik Sense due to limitations with OBI, resulting in very high ROI.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Pentaho receives mixed feedback on support, with strong community engagement but varying customer service and documentation quality.
Sentiment score
6.6
Qlik Sense customer service is excellent, but technical support receives mixed reviews; users often rely on the community for help.
While tech support is comprehensive, the stability of Qlik Sense means I generally do not need it.
Technical support requires improvement.
In Turkey, the consultant firms are very professional, and they support you.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Pentaho scales well and fits organizational needs but may require admin expertise for complex environments and large data.
Sentiment score
7.8
Qlik Sense excels in scalability, handling large data effortlessly, though licensing and integration issues may arise for some.
It performs well in terms of performance and load compared to others.
It is extensible.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
Pentaho Business Analytics is generally stable but has occasional Java caching, RAM, and subprocess issues with large databases.
Sentiment score
7.8
Qlik Sense is reliable, with minimal issues and strong support, efficiently handling large data volumes and earning high ratings.
It can handle large datasets.
The stability is very good.
 

Room For Improvement

Pentaho needs user interface, reporting, and visualization enhancements, along with better debugging, metadata management, and cost-effective licensing.
Users seek enhancements in Qlik Sense's integration, customization, analytics, and performance, alongside better interfaces, training, and collaboration features.
Pentaho Business Analytics is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical skills.
Power BI has better visualizations and interactions with updates in 2023 that provide ease of use.
Providing an API feature to access data from the dashboard or QEDs could be beneficial.
Maybe more AI or real-time analytics could be incorporated.
 

Setup Cost

Pentaho's Community Edition is cost-free, while the Enterprise Edition, offering enhanced features, can cost up to $250,000 annually.
Enterprise users find Qlik Sense pricing competitive yet high, with flexible licensing models requiring careful negotiation for cost efficiency.
Pentaho Business Analytics is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView and Tableau.
For small or large organizations needing many or few licenses, pricing varies.
Compared to Power BI, it is definitely costly.
Among the BI tools and data analytics tools, Qlik is the most expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Pentaho Business Analytics offers powerful ETL, user-friendly interface, customizable dashboards, and cost-saving, open-source analytics and reporting features.
Qlik Sense provides intuitive data visualization, rapid development, scalability, and customization with powerful analytics and seamless data integration.
It is a stable product, and it can handle large datasets.
From an end-user perspective, it's convenient and performance-oriented, providing something meaningful from all the organization's data.
It is a single product that I can use as an ETL database, BI, and more.
It has an interactive interface with Qlik graphs, pivot, and interactivity, which makes it easier to use than other tools.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Business Analytics
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (20th), Cloud Operations Analytics (4th), Reporting (16th)
Qlik Sense
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (2nd), Embedded BI (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Pentaho Business Analytics is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 0.5%, down 0.6% compared to last year.
Qlik Sense, on the other hand, focuses on Data Visualization, holds 7.4% mindshare, down 9.8% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Sayan König - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up
The repository should be improved. There should be the possibility to have versioning, to make it combinable with some Git repositories or something like that, to check out the processes and make sure it has a traceable history. The solution could really be improved. There are too many bugs in our version.
Vishal_Goyal - PeerSpot reviewer
In-memory data storage boosts performance
The advantages compared to other BI tools show architectural differences. The main feature is that it keeps all the data in memory. It doesn't retrieve the data from data sources when I need it on the dashboard; instead, it quickly provides the desired data, making it very fast compared to other BI tools. The ROI is very high using Qlik Sense. It offers many benefits of BI. It is flexible from a developer's point of view, allowing me to accomplish many tasks compared to other BI tools. From an end-user perspective, it's convenient and performance-oriented, providing something meaningful from all the organization's data.
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850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 10, 2013
Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition
Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Educational Organization
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
59%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
Pentaho Business Analytics is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView ( /products/qlikview-reviews ) and Tableau ( /products/tableau-reviews ). I usually use the community edition.
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
Pentaho Business Analytics ( /categories/bi-business-intelligence-tools ) is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical ...
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 Qlik Sense?
The most valuable features of Qlik Sense are its speed and seamless development of web technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qlik Sense?
Costs depend on the deal. They offer various licensing metrics based on our needs. For small or large organizations needing many or few licenses, pricing varies. For solutions used by many clients,...
 

Also Known As

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
QlikSense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Abbvie, Airbus, Barclays, BT Openreach, BMW, Daimler AG, HSBC, IKEA, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Mail Group, Sanofi, Siemens, Wendy'', Vodafone, Volvo
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: May 2025.
850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.