Windward Core vs XLCubed comparison

Windward Studios and Fluence Technologies are both solutions in the Reporting category. Windward Studios is ranked #23, while Fluence Technologies is ranked #33. Windward Studios holds a 0.9% mindshare in RT, compared to Fluence Technologies’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Windward Studios users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Fluence Technologies users who would recommend it.

Windward Core

Read 36 Windward Core reviews

804 Views
531 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

XLCubed

Read 2 XLCubed reviews

311 Views
174 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

Windward Core

XLCubed

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Windward Core and XLCubed compete in the business intelligence and reporting solutions market. Windward Core holds an advantage in integration and flexibility, while XLCubed has superior data visualization and analytics capabilities.

Features: Windward Core offers flexible document generation, seamless systems integration, and extensive template design. XLCubed provides advanced analytics, interactive data visualization features, and detailed data exploration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Windward Core provides straightforward deployment and comprehensive support, enabling quicker adoption and issue resolution. XLCubed offers flexible deployment options but may require more technical expertise initially, better suited for environments prioritizing analytics.

Pricing and ROI: Windward Core has competitive setup costs and strong ROI for document-focused processes. XLCubed has higher initial costs but justifies this with robust analytics and high data visualization capabilities, appealing to businesses with complex analytical needs.

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

Buyer's Guide

Windward Core vs. XLCubed

July 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

Windward Core

Ranking in Reporting

23rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Document Generation Tools (1st)

XLCubed

Ranking in Reporting

33rd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Windward Core is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XLCubed is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Christopher Heinz

Sr. Systems Analyst at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

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.

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it_user1391316

Head of Finance Systems at NHS

Cost effective with great capability, performance, flexibility and visuals

In general, we're happy with the solution but we're always looking to see what else is out there. The thing we've struggled with is our partnership with Tagetik UK, the consultants, and the issue we had gaining access to consultants to develop the solution on our behalf. Thankfully we connected directly with XLCubed and now have a pretty close and good relationship with them so the earlier problem we had of actually getting resources to help us develop has now been solved. One of the things that we've been asking for and would like as an additional feature is a sort of benchmarking functionality. The ability to be able to benchmark, directly against the company digital corporate numbers. That said, there seems to be improved functionality within the latest release that could help us develop that further.

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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

"The most valuable feature is the Rich Text or TinyMCE in fields. For example, you have a text field but it is not a regular text field, it is a link. Inside this link, you can copy/paste everything: images, text, and tables together. After saving this field, you can pull it into the document."

"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."

"The integration with MS Office is an advantage, creating a better user experience."

"The usually the response is within one hour. The technical support will WebEx with you. I rate them as a 10 out of 10."

"The most valuable feature is that it provides good, dynamic document-generation performance and the documents are being generated reliably."

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

"The design tool, with all of its features and sample output fidelity tests, and being able to work with JSON data and output PDF and HTML, were also both crucial."

"Thanks to Windward, our documents need very few tweaks and are usually "customer-ready" right out of the box."

More Windward Core pros

"I am looking forward to testing their full graphics that are available, as they looked very interesting in the demo."

"Great capability, performance, flexibility, visuals, and the solution is also very cost effective."

Cons

"The reason it took us so long to get the system up and running is that the APIs could be improved a bit. It could be a little bit more interoperable with software, without having to do a lot of the heavy lifting that we had do to get it in."

"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."

"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."

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

"The tool does not support macOS documents."

"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."

"I'm still working in Office 2016, and we have had some issues, but Windward is very quick to react when there is a problem. We are also going to switch over to Office 365 and that will solve a few of the problems."

"I have to deal with VERY long lists of properties contained in our XMLs and it would be nice if Windward offered a way to alphabetize this property list."

More Windward Core cons

"There should be a better or an easier way to establish that connection to external sources."

"Would like the ability to be able to benchmark."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CapEx fits our requirements, OpEx is higher due to the 20% service and maintenance cost, where we normally pay 15%."

"The only problem with the pricing of Windward is the limitation on the number of reports generated. It is costly in that sense. If you want to increase, you have to pay more, based on the number of reports generated per day. It is not the same with Crystal Reports. With the latter, you buy a license at one point in time and that's it."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"Windward is very expensive when the volume of documents being generated is low and it is cheap when the volume is high."

"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

"I am still using the two-week trial, but at first sight, the price is reasonable."

"14,000 Pounds per year for licensing."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs Windward Core

Compared 23% of the time

SAP Crystal Reports vs Windward Core

Compared 22% of the time

Longview Analytics vs Windward Core

Compared 15% of the time

OpenText Intelligence vs Windward Core

Compared 15% of the time

Domo vs Windward Core

Compared 13% of the time

More Windward Core Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs XLCubed

Compared 69% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs XLCubed

Compared 31% of the time

More XLCubed Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Windward Core

July 2025

Download Windward Core product report

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

July 2025

Download XLCubed product report

Also Known As

Windward, Windward Studios

No data available

Overview

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

Produce insightful, interactive reports on, company-wide metrics for any business audience. Now all in Excel.
Pixel-perfect financial reporting with the skill sets you already have. No IT required.
Meet XLCubed: The data-connected Excel add-in for all your reporting needs.

Fluence Technologies

Sample Customers

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

Marshalls Ltd, BP Exploration and Production, Thorntons, Ted Baker, Bristol-Myers, Rank Group, ING Bank Genve, Cargill Value Investment, Chloride Power, Auchan, Erste, UEFA, Novartis, Porsche Informatik, Raiffeisen Bank International

Buyer's Guide

Windward Core vs. XLCubed

July 2025

Free Report: Windward Core vs. XLCubed

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

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