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RStudio Connect vs Windward Core 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

RStudio Connect
Ranking in Reporting
20th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (21st)
Windward Core
Ranking in Reporting
24th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Document Generation Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of RStudio Connect is 0.4%, down from 0.8% 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

LM
Graphical learning experience needs improvement but handles large datasets effectively
RStudio Connect ( /products/rstudio-connect-reviews ) is very powerful statistically and can handle large datasets, even on a free version on a laptop. It offers excellent customer service and educational resources. KNIME ( /products/knime-reviews ) allows for visual data manipulation, with nodes representing operations, making it user-friendly and effective for statistical analysis and predictions. I appreciate its ability to integrate R or Python scripts, combining ease of use with powerful procedures.
CH
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"RStudio Connect is very powerful statistically and can handle large datasets, even on a free version on a laptop."
"Another thing our clients absolutely love is the ability to design templates within the Microsoft Office suite, because of how simple it is. They're building off of something that's familiar. When they can build off of that feature, on top of something that's very familiar, that's a plus for them."
"​A useful, ​easy to use product, which has a lot of features for designing reports."
"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."
"Windward helped automate reports which otherwise would have needed IT to create and maintain."
"Managing templates through MS Word, as non technical users can manage output."
"You can use Microsoft Office as your designer interface. There is very little programming. You can have nontechnical people create reports."
"Technical support is ​very good. They reply immediately and follow-up with any questions.​"
"​Creating dynamic table of contents (TOC) based on dynamic data in different reports."
 

Cons

"I rate my experience with RStudio Connect as average because I am not yet comfortable enough to provide a definitive assessment."
"The only thing I can think of, that we'd like it to do, would be the ability to "burst out" reports, meaning one section of a report could be sent out as an email to a manager of a department, say, without having to run multiple reports to do it. As it sits now, we have to do multiple reports to do it."
"Regarding AutoTag, we do notice that when you want to refactor a little bit of your template design or when you want to implement changes, sometimes you need a lot of clicks to get the change done. For instance... it would be helpful to be able to find all the identifiers with the old name and replace them with the new name. We haven't found a way to do that with the find-replace tool. Throughout the user-interface of Windward, you need a lot of clicks to get that done."
"They're not a gigantic company, so they just don't have all the capital to do whatever they would want to do. That's the only reason I would hold back even that one point. I know that if I do ask for something, I'll get it. I just know that it will take some time."
"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."
"A lot of clients who want to use this don't have the technical background for the SQL portion of gathering the data. If Windward were to make a more user-friendly SQL extract front-end, that would help a lot of clients to leverage the application a lot more."
"It needs the ability to drill down in a single report (i.e., interactive)​ into data."
"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."
"It needs better support for upgrades and more control over layout of elements. Upgrades tend to break existing output. Elements do not position where expected due to insertion of blank lines and page breaks. It takes time to fix these through trial and error."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Pricing is a bit higher than normal desktop applications, but it's well worth it. The ROI is simple to understand and the monthly payment for an annual license is affordable and worth it."
"Windward is very expensive when the volume of documents being generated is low and it is cheap when the volume is high."
"​They are fair and flexible. They are willing to work with your current architecture to make sure you have the best deal.​"
"I'm starting to hear clients squeal about the price of their software. The cost of the software has gone up."
"Pricing is something I complain about. Production pricing is okay, but for a testing environment the pricing looks a bit high to me."
"The cost is reasonable."
"From my experience in this field, the product is reasonably priced, at least with the RESTful engine implementation. It's definitely not a cheap option. People say, "That's a fair amount of money to pay for a document generation tool." At the same time, you do get good functionality and the support is 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for RStudio Connect?
Both KNIME and RStudio Connect are free to use on a laptop. However, if I want to use a big server version, it is subsidized.
What needs improvement with RStudio Connect?
It could work on visibility or improve that. In RStudio Connect ( /products/rstudio-connect-reviews ), the learning process is not as graphical as KNIME ( /products/knime-reviews ). Although I can ...
What is your primary use case for RStudio Connect?
I use the software primarily for statistics. I have used it on census data from the UK, which covers millions of individuals. Additionally, I have utilized it for surveys and educational purposes, ...
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Also Known As

No data available
Windward, Windward Studios
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ENERGETIC INSURANCE, PRECISION ANALYTICS, REDFIN, TWO SIX CAPITALSTACK OVERFLOW, LIBERTY MUTUAL, EDUCATION SUPERHIGHWAY, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
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
Find out what your peers are saying about RStudio Connect vs. Windward Core and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.