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Windward Core vs Yellowfin comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

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
20th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Document Generation Tools (2nd)
Yellowfin
Ranking in Reporting
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (34th), Data Visualization (22nd), Embedded BI (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Windward Core is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Yellowfin is 1.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Windward Core1.3%
Yellowfin1.8%
Other96.9%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

CH
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.
AC
‎IS Executive at SAINS
It is a central source of up-to-date data and information, but needs more charting capabilities
Management information Reporting Statistics Data analysis It reduces sending copies of different report/spreadsheet versions over email, which makes it difficult to access the right report. It is also able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout.  All management…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integration with MS Office is an advantage, creating a better user experience."
"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."
"For the designer we use AutoTag which is a Microsoft Word plugin. In general, it's easy to use, it doesn't have a very steep learning curve. It's not difficult, for people who know Microsoft Office well, to start using the AutoTag tool... It feels just like you're in a Microsoft Office environment with some extra functionality."
"We ended up going with Windward for the level of support we got from them during our proof of concept."
"The ability for users to have design and layout control is very important because it allows them control over the design and layout of their reports, without the help of IT."
"Now clients are quite happy as they get pretty much what they wanted."
"If you're looking for a document solution that is of high quality, that does what it's supposed to do 100 percent of the time, with a company that is a quality company, Windward is the company that you're looking for."
"The usually the response is within one hour. The technical support will WebEx with you. I rate them as a 10 out of 10."
"It is able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout."
"Yellowfin doesn’t try to do everything – it is a BI presentation and communication tool, and it does it brilliantly."
"It reduces time to reproduce reports, provides easy access to organisational data, and has the ability to generate a wide range of reports and analysis."
"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."
"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."
 

Cons

"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."
"Windward is very expensive when the volume of documents being generated is low and it is cheap when the volume is high."
"I would like to see examples included within the Wiki information to show how each function option could be used."
"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."
"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."
"One thing that frustrated us a little bit is that we have to use the Office PDF generation, because the native PDF generation is always slightly different compared to the one in Office."
"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."
"It needs more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."
"It needs more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."
"The first release was a bit buggy, but they seem to have gotten on top of that very quickly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"We negotiated our prices many years ago, and while they go up a little bit here and there, they've been pretty steady."
"Pricing is something I complain about. Production pricing is okay, but for a testing environment the pricing looks a bit high to me."
"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."
"I'm starting to hear clients squeal about the price of their software. The cost of the software has gone up."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
18%
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
No data available
 

Also Known As

Windward, Windward Studios
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
NCS, Universitat Konstanz, AT&T, PG&E, SingTel, InternetStores
Find out what your peers are saying about Windward Core vs. Yellowfin and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.