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Pentaho Business Analytics vs Spot by Flexera comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 2026

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
7.6
Spot by Flexera enabled substantial savings in compute costs and enhanced efficiency, though ROI may take longer for some.
I have seen a return on investment as I was able to reduce my compute cost by 60 to 65% for some of my applications that needed light temporary processing tasks with ephemeral storage and stateless applications.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Our technology predicts demand, selects the cheapest instance mix, sizes the workloads appropriately, and scales it automatically based on policy, resulting in significant savings by reducing manual work and enhancing our flexibility, which has helped accelerate our deployments.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

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
8.4
Spot by Flexera's customer service is highly rated for its excellent technical support, responsiveness, and reliability, ensuring customer satisfaction.
I would rate the customer support a nine out of ten.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

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
7.4
Spot by Flexera is highly scalable, effectively supporting multiple users across environments, particularly with AWS services, boosting user confidence.
Spot's scalability is quite good, and it can be expanded to multiple environments.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
 

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
7.0
Spot by Flexera is mostly stable and reliable, though some users report occasional bugs indicating room for improvement.
 

Room For Improvement

Pentaho Business Analytics lacks an intuitive interface, robust integration, self-service features, and requires technical expertise, limiting usability.
Spot by Flexera needs OCI support, better multi-cloud integration, and UI improvements, though it's stable and mature.
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.
DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia
Continuously making advancements based on customer feedback.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
More guided onboarding would help teams adopt advanced features faster.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Spot could be improved by adding features that help identify data to optimize storage costs by detecting datasets within our environment based on criteria such as age and usage.
AVP DevOps and Product Support at a recruiting/HR firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find the free Pentaho Community Edition cost-effective, while the Enterprise Edition offers value with support and features.
Enterprise users praise Spot by Flexera's pricing and setup, with structured management of licensing, via AWS Marketplace.
Pentaho Business Analytics is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView and Tableau.
DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia
The pricing is reasonable and convenient, and the value it offers is completely in line with what I am spending.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
 

Valuable Features

Pentaho Business Analytics provides easy data integration, customizable dashboards, extensive connectivity, and supports efficient data transformation and delivery.
Spot by Flexera offers cost optimization, Kubernetes management, and security compliance with intelligent autoscaling, AWS integration, and AI-driven insights.
It is a stable product, and it can handle large datasets.
DBA at Federal University of Uberlândia
The fact that it can mix dozens of instance families dynamically is something which the AWS native autoscalers simply cannot do.
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Spot's automated cost optimization works by continuously analyzing the workload and applying policies to minimize cloud spend without sacrificing performance.
Global Hyperscaler Alliances Director at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
One use case we plan to implement within the next few months is the overall commitment savings, which we used to manage manually, but with Spot, it automatically helps us detect when and what kind of instances to purchase, making it easier for us to manage our overall commitment for the savings plan.
AVP DevOps and Product Support at a recruiting/HR firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in Cloud Operations Analytics
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (20th), Reporting (13th)
Spot by Flexera
Ranking in Cloud Operations Analytics
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (23rd), Server Virtualization Software (14th), Cloud Analytics (2nd), Compute Service (9th), Containers as a Service (CaaS) (4th), Cloud Cost Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Operations Analytics category, the mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 10.6%, down from 14.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Spot by Flexera is 24.5%, down from 28.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Operations Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Spot24.5%
Pentaho Business Analytics10.6%
Other64.9%
Cloud Operations Analytics
 

Featured Reviews

JB
Founder at SJT Consult
Solution enables effective ETL processes and exhibits high satisfaction
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 is based on what I have heard about novelties in the market. I do not see the need to extend the coverage of Pentaho Business Analytics's domain. For things that it does not do, there are better solutions on the market, and it would be costly to implement them. Pentaho Business Analytics is a very great tool for very specific standardized scenarios. If you need more complex elastic solutions because the process is different, there are better tools available.
KS
Dev Ops Engineer at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Intelligent autoscaling has cut compute costs and now manages ephemeral workloads efficiently
I think overall Spot is quite good. The UI is powerful, but it can feel a bit dense for some new users. More guided onboarding would help teams adopt advanced features faster, and deeper insights into Kubernetes resource usage would be beneficial. Overall, it is a really good platform that is quite mature and stable. I chose a rating of nine because it may sometimes be a bit overwhelming for newcomers, and there are also a few areas in which the EKS Kubernetes level granularity is a little missing. Overall, I think Spot is a really good and stable tool.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Operations Analytics solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-Founder at Helical IT Solution (Jaspersoft, Pentaho, Talend, Kettle, DWBI, ETL, Ctools, iReport, Jasper Report)
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
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
6%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise15
No data available
 

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 do you like most about Spot Ocean?
The solution helps us to manage and scale automatically whenever there is a limit to the increase in the application workflow.
What needs improvement with Spot Ocean?
Spot can be improved by adding deeper multi-cloud integrations, enhancing real-time security automation, and continuously making advancements based on customer feedback.
What is your primary use case for Spot Ocean?
I have been using Spot for five years. My main use case for Spot is cloud optimization.We use Spot for optimization by leveraging real-time optimization as well as auto-optimization. The company al...
 

Also Known As

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
Spot Ocean, Spot Elastigroup, Spot Eco
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Freshworks, Zalando, Red Spark, News, Trax, ETAS, Demandbase, BeesWa, Duolingo, intel, IBM, N26, Wix, EyeEm, moovit, SAMSUNG, News UK, ticketmaster
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Business Analytics vs. Spot by Flexera and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.