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Pentaho Business Analytics vs Sisense 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
Pentaho Business Analytics mixed ROI perceptions highlight efficiency gains but unclear returns compared to competitors like QlikView and Tableau.
Sentiment score
6.6
Sisense offers time-saving benefits with cost-effectiveness, but experiences vary based on existing analytics systems and initial investments.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Pentaho Business Analytics receives mixed reviews for customer support, with users relying heavily on forums and community assistance.
Sentiment score
7.9
Sisense excels in customer service with expert support, responsive assistance, and a strong commitment to client success.
The support was very good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Pentaho Business Analytics is scalable with good performance but occasionally needs professional help for complex data handling.
Sentiment score
7.3
Sisense is praised for scalability, though some users report performance issues with large data volumes; security concerns exist.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Pentaho Business Analytics is stable but may face Java caching issues, impacting performance and requiring careful cache management.
Sentiment score
7.8
Sisense is stable and reliable, with minor slowdowns during data import, but users report no major stability issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Pentaho Business Analytics lacks an intuitive interface, robust integration, self-service features, and requires technical expertise, limiting usability.
Sisense users want enhanced large dataset handling, improved dashboards, better data connectivity, and reduced costs with more customization options.
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.
I would like to see an improvement in the live data connection, specifically making the process faster.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find the free Pentaho Community Edition cost-effective, while the Enterprise Edition offers value with support and features.
Sisense offers a subscription model with competitive pricing, ideal for mid-sized to large enterprises due to its robust features.
Pentaho Business Analytics is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView and Tableau.
There was no significant difference in pricing between Sisense and ThoughtSpot.
 

Valuable Features

Pentaho Business Analytics provides easy data integration, customizable dashboards, extensive connectivity, and supports efficient data transformation and delivery.
Sisense offers user-friendly deployment, rapid data integration, intuitive dashboards, and advanced analytics for enhanced data insights and visualization.
It is a stable product, and it can handle large datasets.
It offers two ways to access data: by cubing the data or hitting it live.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
19th
Ranking in Reporting
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Operations Analytics (5th)
Sisense
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
18th
Ranking in Reporting
13th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Analytics (6th), Data Visualization (14th), Embedded BI (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sisense is 1.3%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Excels in handling unstructured data, helping organizations navigate through different storage systems
Pentaho can help organizations by providing them an insight of their unstructured data using one platform(Pentaho Business Analytics). The features are almost identical to other BIS platforms but to me, customers can benefit as it has a community version with most of its Enterprise features. It also has a free limited-period trial version. The other feature that I would like to share here is, that users have access to a complete spectrum of data from different sources with the system’s adaptive big data layer, which takes the source of the data into account. The software is built on an open architecture and can be integrated with multiple systems. However, Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has been acquired by HDS which offers an Enterprise edition for organizations that also need to meet product compliance.
Wiboon Thabsuwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps businesses save time and offers good integration features
I would say that using Sisense on Linux's platform might not be advantageous for everyone. I am more familiar with Windows than Linux. With Windows, the system performs very fast. Even if your data size consists of like 10,00,00,000 loads or whatever, it works very fast. When using Sisense, it is better to have some people with a very good understanding of Linux. I need more technical people who understand about Linux OS. Only two people would be enough to operate the tool.
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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
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
University
7%
 

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 offers the best value for money. While improvements can be made in some areas, particularly with more cloud-based solutions, it is not in their domain because they do not...
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
From an integration perspective, Pentaho Business Analytics is not the best tool on the market. There are things done by Apache that are better, though I am not the one implementing them, so this i...
What needs improvement with Sisense?
I would like to see an improvement in the live data connection, specifically making the process faster. Additionally, incorporating more self-service capabilities would benefit the product.
What is your primary use case for Sisense?
I was looking into some of our business operations with tow truck companies. I focused on evaluating turnaround times for tow trucks to arrive on-site for accidents and how long it took them to cle...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sisense?
There was no significant difference in pricing between Sisense and ThoughtSpot. They were practically dead even from a pricing perspective.
 

Also Known As

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Ebay, WIX, Wave Accounting, ESPN.com, Magellan Luxury Hotel, Paylogic, Sony, Merck, EDA, One Hour Translation, NASA, Plastic Jungle, Philips, Yahoo
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Business Analytics vs. Sisense and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.