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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
23rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Document Generation Tools (1st)
Yellowfin
Ranking in Reporting
28th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (39th), Data Visualization (26th), Embedded BI (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 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 Yellowfin is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Windward Core0.9%
Yellowfin0.7%
Other98.4%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

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.
AC
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

"Managing templates through MS Word, as non technical users can manage output."
"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."
"Windward helped automate reports which otherwise would have needed IT to create and maintain."
"Thanks to Windward, our documents need very few tweaks and are usually "customer-ready" right out of the box."
"The Windward solution was very fast to rollout, and it is proven."
"The solution is very flexible, so you can create anything you want. Think of the possibilities you have in Excel or in Word, because these are the two document generators that are used the most. I only use Word, but I can use nearly every feature in Word, including making charts and tables, and produce those features in Windward, parametrically."
"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."
"Technical support is ​very good. They reply immediately and follow-up with any questions.​"
"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 able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout."
"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."
 

Cons

"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."
"​AutoTag needs to be web-based, so our customers can create reports from our web.​"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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. The formatting is just a little bit off here and there... This means that we need to have Office installed on the server to be able to generate these documents via API."
"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 more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​They are fair and flexible. They are willing to work with your current architecture to make sure you have the best deal.​"
"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."
"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 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."
"Windward is very expensive when the volume of documents being generated is low and it is cheap when the volume is high."
"Pricing is something I complain about. Production pricing is okay, but for a testing environment the pricing looks a bit high to me."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Performing Arts
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Educational Organization
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
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: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.