Windward Core vs XLCubed comparison

Windward Studios and Fluence Technologies are both solutions in the Reporting category. Windward Studios is ranked #19, while Fluence Technologies is ranked #31. Windward Studios holds a 1.2% mindshare in RT, compared to Fluence Technologies’s 0.8% 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

1,032 Views
774 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

XLCubed

Read 2 XLCubed reviews

404 Views
271 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

Windward Core

XLCubed

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Windward Core vs. XLCubed

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,114 peers since 2012

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

19th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Document Generation Tools (1st)

XLCubed

Ranking in Reporting

31st

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Windward Core is 1.2%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XLCubed is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Windward Core	1.2%
XLCubed	0.8%
Other	98.0%

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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

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 fact that it uses Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel as base templates, so when you generate, it's easy for clients to upgrade, and maintain, and generate out either a PDF or an actual Excel spreadsheet."

"Some of our clients are looking at the nested filtering which is coming out. That's going to be a huge benefit for them because they're going to be able to nest and loop while they're also looking at filtering out certain data elements."

"Windward helped automate reports which otherwise would have needed IT to create and maintain."

"It has the ability to easily integrate into existing apps with little code. If you know how to use MS Office, you can create a report."

"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."

"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."

"From an integration perspective, they provide the code for you to easily integrate with existing applications."

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

More Windward Core pros

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

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

Cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It is software, so there are always times where things don't work. Most of the time issues happen when trying to move to a new version. There might be problems with reports that were created in an older version, so either we have to make a tweak to the templates or we report it to them and get them to make an adjustment to their software."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"The cost is reasonable."

"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."

"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."

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."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Performing Arts

Outsourcing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	19
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	8

No data available

Comparisons

SAP Crystal Reports vs Windward Core

Compared 21% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Windward Core

Compared 17% of the time

OpenText Intelligence vs Windward Core

Compared 13% of the time

Docmosis vs Windward Core

Compared 13% of the time

Domo vs Windward Core

Compared 12% of the time

More Windward Core Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs XLCubed

Compared 64% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs XLCubed

Compared 36% of the time

More XLCubed Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Windward Core

January 2026

Download Windward Core product report

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

January 2026

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

December 2025

Free Report: Windward Core vs. XLCubed

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Windward Core vs. XLCubed report.

See our list of best Reporting vendors.

We monitor all Reporting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.