Plotly vs Windward Core comparison

Plotly and Windward Studios are both solutions in the Reporting category. Plotly is ranked #18 with an average rating of 7.7, while Windward Studios is ranked #25. Plotly holds a 1.3% mindshare in RT, compared to Windward Studios’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Plotly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Windward Studios users who would recommend it.

Plotly

Read 3 Plotly reviews

661 Views
576 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Windward Core

Read 36 Windward Core reviews

501 Views
160 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Plotly

Windward Core

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Windward Core and Plotly compete in the data management and visualization market. Plotly has a clear advantage with visualization, while Windward Core excels in document automation.

Features: Windward Core includes a powerful document generation engine, seamless integration with enterprise systems, and flexible template design. Plotly provides rich interactive visualizations, advanced analytical capabilities, and a strong community-support library.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Windward Core offers streamlined deployment for large-scale integrations and personalized enterprise support. Plotly emphasizes a cloud-based user-driven model with robust community support for troubleshooting.

Pricing and ROI: Windward Core is often preferred for its cost-effectiveness and significant ROI in document processes. Plotly may have higher setup costs due to its comprehensive visualization suite but offers long-term value through enhanced data insights.

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

Buyer's Guide

Plotly vs. Windward Core

April 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

Plotly

Ranking in Reporting

18th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Windward Core

Ranking in Reporting

25th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Document Generation Tools (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Plotly is 1.3%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windward Core is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Hassan Kamkar

Data Analyst at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

An interactive and easy-to-use solution that can be used to create dashboards

The solution cannot be deployed on the website and shared with others through its own platform. We need a third-party platform to share the application that we develop. In Tableau and Power BI, we can simply share the website with others as long as we use the paid version. However, for Plotly, we need to deploy our app on a cloud-based service like AWS or other third-party websites to share with others.

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Hit Mistry

Vice President at PSC Group, LLC

It has streamlined a lot of our reporting processes

Their PDF needs improvement. We've run into some issues when we tried to generate a Word document. If we try to generate the same document in PDF, sometimes it doesn't look exactly the same. We have gone back to Windward support a couple of times on a few issues, e.g., we had some issues with reports that had barcodes on them. The barcode wasn't displaying properly. It was displaying as a skewed image as opposed to an actual barcode. Therefore, we worked with Windward support, having some daily calls with them. Then, within the next release, they were able to resolve the issue. They even gave us a pre-release, so we could implement it into our code before the actual official release on the website. It would be nice to have some sort of workflow capability within the product. Anytime you generate a document, nine out of ten times there is something which precedes that document, whether it's entering parameters in, e.g., if I'm requesting the status report for a project. The first thing that I usually want from a status perspective is which project is the status report for and which week is it for, as those are some of the things that I have to supply before I can generate a document. From a workflow perspective, it would be nice to say, "This project belongs to this person, and this person is okay with me pulling information out of this document for whatever need I have." From a workflow perspective, I would like a wizard interface that goes step-by-step, like a questionnaire, where there are a bunch of things that you have to answer, "Yes or no," before it knows what to do or how to produce the document. Right now, we write our own custom UI for this.

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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

"When reviewing and interpreting data, I typically examine it in a tabular form to understand its structure. However, when explaining or presenting the findings to others, I often use visualization tools such as Plotly. These tools allow me to create visual representations of datasets."

"The level of interactivity that the product provides is valuable to me."

"It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten."

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

"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."

"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."

"The ability for users to have design and layout control is also critically important. Without this ability, procuring report designs would represent a huge bottleneck. Report design tools also enable upsell opportunities for customized reports, with quick turnaround times."

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

"The ultimate feature is the product it produces. The ROI around that saves hours and hours. It's probably about a hundred days per year. The time savings and the ability to turn it around quickly pleases our customers."

"The two features that I like the best are the ability to generate Word and Excel documents, and the ability to create my templates directly inside those software sets. It's absolutely critical for me as a user to have design and layout control, because all of my reports are very, very customized. I have to have control over the ability to generate and to control what they look like."

"It's very feature-rich. You can create tables, you can create graphs, you can import pictures, and those features are also easy to use."

More Windward Core pros

Cons

"The solution cannot be deployed on the website and shared with others through its own platform."

"I believe that the prices of the tool's paid services could be on the premium side, so the pricing model can be considered for improvement."

"The tool needs to improve its pie charts. Regarding Plotly, I find the online documentation somewhat challenging to navigate, especially when dealing with many parameters. Searching through thousands of parameters can be a tedious and less straightforward process. While the documentation is available online and serves its purpose, I often encounter difficulties in finding the information."

"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."

"It would be nice to have a black-and-white, ideal setup for servers, to maximize capabilities. We went through a lot of scenarios to get something that is scalable. An ideal AWS-package server setup could have saved us a lot of time. But I understand this is very company specific."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More Windward Core cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I only use the free tier of the product."

"It is an open-source tool. My company hasn't explored Plotly's premium services yet, but I believe the prices could be on the premium side."

"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."

"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."

"We negotiated our prices many years ago, and while they go up a little bit here and there, they've been pretty steady."

"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."

"The cost is reasonable."

"The pricing is fair. The way that they have it priced is the Windward Designer has a price that's associated with it. Then, depending on the number of cores that you're looking for, that is the price that you pay. The more cores that you want, the more expensive it is."

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

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

More Windward Core pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

University

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Healthcare Company

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Plotly?

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Plotly?

It is an open-source tool. My company hasn't explored Plotly's premium services yet, but I believe the prices are on the premium side. I rate the product price as five or six on a scale of one to t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Plotly?

I believe that the price of the tool's paid services is on the premium side, so the pricing model can be considered for improvement.

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Compared 41% of the time

Tableau vs Plotly

Compared 35% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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SAP Crystal Reports vs Windward Core

Compared 54% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Windward Core

Compared 46% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

April 2025

Download Plotly product report

Buyer's Guide

Windward Core

April 2025

Download Windward Core product report

Also Known As

No data available

Windward, Windward Studios

Overview

Plotly creates leading open source tools for composing, editing, and sharing interactive data visualization via the Web.

Our collaboration servers (available in cloud or on premises) allow data scientists to showcase their work, make graphs without coding, and collaborate with business analysts, designers, executives, and clients.

Plotly

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

Google, Goji, VIT, Smpl Bio, U.S. Air Force, C12 Energy, New York University

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

Plotly vs. Windward Core

April 2025

Free Report: Plotly vs. Windward Core

Find out what your peers are saying about Plotly vs. Windward Core and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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