IBM SPSS Modeler Reviews and Pricing

it_user766578

Product Team at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees

Nov 13, 2017

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It is easy to use and robust but does not offer a lot of variation

What is our primary use case?

I use it for research. It is able to do the basics but does not offer much variation. There are not a lot of options.

What is most valuable?

It is easy to use and robust.

What needs improvement?

When I do clustering, I want to try a different stream, but currently the only thing that I can really pick is averaging. There are no other options. I would like to see more options added and some modeling things.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good.

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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is good.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

JMP, because my team is moving toward SAS. I don't quite like SAS because of the user interface, but now they have JMP which is graphical and I like it.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend SPSS to someone who has just started trying to run a lot of modeling, it's a good starting point. It is very easy to use and will do the basics.

It does what it needs to do, but it's simple. If I want to modify things, then maybe I need to find something else.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user766575

Research Assistant

Nov 13, 2017

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The stability is good though there have been occasional crashes

Pros and Cons

"I think it is the point and drag features that are the most valuable. You can simply click at the windows, and then pull up the functions."

"If IBM could add some of the popular models into the SPSS for further analysis, like popular regression models, I think that would be a helpful improvement."

What is our primary use case?

I used it mostly for the PCA, the principal component analysis, and I have been using that for my bachelor's thesis. It performed pretty well for my task, for the goal of my task.

What is most valuable?

I think it is the point and drag features that are the most valuable. You can simply click at the windows, and then pull up the functions. What you need is then directly over there, and then you can select the parameters over the windows. Then just click and the results show up.

What needs improvement?

If IBM could add some of the popular models into the SPSS for further analysis, like popular regression models, I think that would be a helpful improvement.

I would also like have more options to manipulate the interface of the report, as well as to be able to customize it and make it more personalized. Right now, SPSS doesn't give me that ability to do that.

For how long have I used the solution?

Six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. There have been the occasional crashes, when the data goes all over or I have really messed up with the process and it just crashes.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is okay but has some limitations.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No, I wasn't using a different solution beforehand. Though it has become the number one option. Before that it was always Excel and Main Tab, but if you want to get a deep statistical report, I would go to SPSS.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

If you are in a university and the license is free then you can use the tool without any charges, which is good.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I don't think my university looked into any other vendors. We are providing licenses to students and faculty members.

What other advice do I have?

If I had a colleague that was looking for a status analyzer I would recommend that they get started with SPSS. And if they want to go further I would suggest another option like SAS. Because, once again, you'll have more power to develop the algorithms, to improve the algorithms.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

Buyer's Guide

IBM SPSS Modeler

June 2025

Free Report: IBM SPSS Modeler Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM SPSS Modeler. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: June 2025.

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856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Altan Atabarut

Founding Partner at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Oct 11, 2017

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A lot of jobs are tackled pretty quickly due to the automated reporting data preparation. Server installation was too hard and ineffective.

Pros and Cons

"Some basic form of feature engineering for classification models. This really quickens the model development process."

"Formula writing is not straightforward for an Excel user. Totally new set of functions, which takes time to learn and teach."

What is most valuable?

Automated data preparation
Some basic form of feature engineering for classification models. This really quickens the model development process.
Automated modelling, classification, or clustering are very useful as well.

How has it helped my organization?

Automated reporting data preparation: A lot of jobs, which were stuck in Excel due to huge numbers of rows, are now tackled pretty quickly.

What needs improvement?

Formula writing is not straightforward for an Excel user. Totally new set of functions, which takes time to learn and teach.
Automating procedures: Writing macros is not easy and very hard to learn.
Unfortunately, it’s not integrated with Qlik, Tableau, and Power Bi.
Expensive to deploy solutions. You need to buy an extra deployment unit.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been a user since 2010, when it was named Clementine, and worked with versions 15, 17, and 18.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This tool has a lot of bugs. The canvas gets crippled when you put on a lot of icons. You have to save, close, and open the stream from scratch.

When there is a change in regional settings, menus and so on don’t pop up, probably due to software developed with Java.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Server installation was too hard and ineffective. You need at least four to five concurrent users with huge data to benefit from a server, but the salespeople never tell you that and just try to oversell.

How is customer service and technical support?

Really bad local support. It took a long time for support to install a server.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user380952

Quantitative Researcher at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Sep 29, 2017

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Extremely easy to use, it offers a generous selection of proprietary machine learning algorithms with advanced tuning capabilities and integration with Python.

Pros and Cons

"Extremely easy to use, it offers a generous selection of proprietary machine learning algorithms."

"It would be beneficial if the tool would include more well-known machine learning algorithms."

What is most valuable?

Extremely easy to use, it offers a generous selection of proprietary machine learning algorithms with advanced tuning capabilities and integration with Python.

How has it helped my organization?

Customer related tasks, such as: lifetime value, acquisition, retention, cross-sell and up-sell, segmentation. Fraud detection, recommender systems, sentiment analysis, and many more.

What needs improvement?

It would be beneficial if the tool would include more well-known machine learning algorithms. However, IBM already started to include several of these algorithms by implementing Python code. Plus, each user is capable of implementing his/her own machine learning algorithm in either Python or R.

For how long have I used the solution?

Since 2009.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is very stable. There were however few instances when too intensive tasks were performed and the tool froze and the unsaved activity was lost. I understood that in the latest version IBM addressed this issue and an automated saving capability of the workflow is available.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The work can be easily scaled even without additional components offered by IBM, but it really depends on each organization. Some research is necessary in order to understand how to bypass those components, but in the end a substantial amount of money would be saved. IBM provides documentation regarding each component that SPSS Modeler could interact with.

How are customer service and technical support?

Based on the licensing purchased technical support is provided and is of great value. IBM SPSS Modeler offers a very comprehensive online documentation too.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used MatLab before and switched because of the ease of use and continued to use it because of the integration with Python.

How was the initial setup?

To local setup of each license is straightforward. If an organization plans on sharing workflows amongst team members or automate tasks, additional components need to be purchased and set up. I have not used other components provided by IBM, but most likely the setup of those would be straightforward too.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Having in mind all four tools from Garner’s top quadrant, the pricing of this tool is competitive and it reflects the quality that it offers. I am of the impression that the price can be adjusted depending on the plans that each organization has.

With respect to the licensing, there are different options available and it really depends on the needs of each organization. However, I believe the basic licensing is suitable for most of the cases.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I evaluated and tested SAS Enterprise Miner and KNIME.

What other advice do I have?

It is a great tool even for an individual with no or basic predictive modeling experience. Due to the very detailed online documentation and examples that IBM SPSS Modeler provides, even a novice employee can start using the tool and become productive in a short period of time. When it comes to advanced users that prefer to code in Python or R, IBM SPSS Modeler offers the capability to write Python or R code and create nodes for each specific task that can be easily reused just by drawing and dropping the nodes on the canvas.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user7347

CEO with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 30, 2013

First Look – IBM In-Database Analytics

IBM SPSS has been supporting in-database analytic modeling for a while now. Their objective is to make it possible for analysts to run the complete data mining process end-to-end in-database – from accessing the data to data transformation and model building/scoring. In particular, they try to enable analysts to push data transformation and data preparation into the database as these are typically a big part of data mining projects. To achieve in-database execution they provide three main features – SQL Pushback, direct access to a database’s own analytic modeling routines and model deployment/scoring options.

To build a predictive analytic model in IBM SPSS Modeler, an analyst creates an analytic workflow. This consists of multiple tasks or nodes to read, merge or transform data; split data into different test sets; apply modeling algorithms and more. SQL Pushback takes the nodes in this workflow that relate to data access and transformation and pushes them to the database. The tool generates the SQL you need for these steps and executes that SQL on the database from which you sourced the data. This SQL is specific to the database concerned for the main supported databases (IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Netezza, Oracle, Teradata) and generic SQL is available for many nodes for other databases.

IBM SPSS Modeler also reorders work streams to maximize the effectiveness of this SQL, particularly in terms of keeping the data in the database. For instance if multiple nodes that can be executed in-database are separated by one that cannot be then the nodes will be re-ordered to group the in-database nodes where this is possible.

When In-database execution is possible for a node in the workflow it is color-coded purple to show this – modelers with strong database servers will try and turn “all the nodes purple” so that everything is being done in database. Some customers write raw SQL to use more extended functions like statistics functions that would not automatically be pushed back. SQL Pushback can be turned off so that high load production environments don’t get slowed by in-database analytics and users can decide to cache intermediate results in a database table simply by selecting a node and asking for caching.

The second element of in-database analytic modeling is to build the model itself in-database. For this IBM SPSS Modeler Building use the analytic routines in Oracle (the ODM algorithms), Microsoft SQL Server, DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse as well as (since the 14.2 release in June) Netezza. These in-database algorithms are presented as new node types in the workflow, allowing a modeler to simply select them as part of their usual workflow. In addition IBM SPSS Modeler has its own algorithms that can be used on the modeling server. These in-database algorithms allow data in the database to be scored and some allow the model to be calculated live when the record with which it is associated is retrieved. These in-database algorithms are typically parallelized by the database vendor and IBM SPSS Modeler inherently takes advantage of this.

IBM SPSS Modeler supports a number of other deployment options besides the use of these in-database routines. A number of the standard IBM SPSS routines can generate SQL for scoring in-database – the model is built outside the database but the SQL allows the scoring to be done in-database once the model is built. Several of these routines support parallel execution on the modeling server. Models, no matter how they were built, can also be deployed using Scoring Services and made available using a web services interface for live scoring. Models can also be deployed using IBM SPSS Decision Management.

Don’t forget the Decision Management Technology Map

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user7347

CEO with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 30, 2013

First Look: IBM SPSS Modeler Update

It has been a while since I was updated on IBM SPSS Modeler and I got an update from IBM recently. IBM SPSS Modeler is, of course, IBM’s primary data mining and predictive analytics workbench. It uses a standard workflow metaphor, letting you string together nodes that process data, run algorithms, score data, etc. Both structured and unstructured data are supported, analytic tasks can be pushed back into your database or data warehouse and IBM SPSS Modeler produces the models that are consumed in IBM Analytical Decision Management. IBM SPSS Modeler comes in Professional and Premium editions, with the Premium version supporting unstructured data with text analytics, as well as entity analytics and social network analysis.

The most recent release is IBM SPSS Modeler 15. This added improvements in four areas:

Entity Analytics
This functionality identifies whether two entities are really the same or not. Organizations often struggle with multiple entries that should be linked, but are not – multiple CRM records, for instance. In some scenarios, like fraud, organizations often have to find links that someone is deliberately obscuring. Entity Analytics uses “context accumulation” – the consideration of the things around something – to make it more actionable. In IBM SPSS Modeler, the Entity Analytics engine maps various data sources into the repository (to identify that fields are meant to contain similar data, like a phone number or middle name) and then matches entities in the different data sources to create a resolved or composite entity. Nodes in the workflow can process new cases and update the repository or take all of the resolved entities and process them through additional nodes. Users can control how aggressive the mapping is (how much of a match it needs) and will continually reconsider as new data arrives.
Big Data Analytics
IBM SPSS Modeler is typically deployed as a client-server architecture and supports in-database mining using SQL pushback. The latest release added support for new databases such as SAP HANA and EMC Greenplum and allows users to leverage database UDFs in a model stream. Additional support for in-database algorithms from IBM Netezza was added in version 15, extending existing support (IBM InfoSphere Warehouse, Oracle Data Miner and Microsoft SQL Server algorithms are also supported). Release 15 also added more support for in-database scoring through generated UDFs using Scoring Adapters (previously only certain models could be pushed back for in-database scoring) with support for Teradata, IBM Netezza and DB2 for z/OS. Predictive Techniques and Visualizations
Social network analysis was added to identify groups and the leaders of those groups (group analysis) from connection data, such as call detail records. It can also use existing churn information to see who the churner might influence to also leave (diffusion analysis). Generalized Linear Mixed Models, previously supported in IBM SPSS Statistics, were added, as were various mapping visualizations (coordinates, regions, minicharts on maps).
Various Productivity Enhancements
Various usability improvements, improved functionality around stream parameters and data import among others, plus improved integration with IBM SPSS Statistics and IBM Cognos Business Intelligence.

IBM SPSS Modeler is one of the products in our Decision Management Systems Platform Technologies report and you can get more information on IBM SPSS Modeler here.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user6549

BI Expert at a university with 501-1,000 employees

May 19, 2013

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Great predictive analytics software, very powerful

Valuable Features:

The software is robust with advance statistical tools in hand from time series analysis to logistic regression, it can be used by banks for fraud detection, by convenience stores for market basket analysis, for cluster analysis on customer segmentation.

Room for Improvement:

The software is quite expensive and IBM is currently marketing its other digital dashboard tools such as IBM cognos, now we aren't sure on the plans of IBM integrating these two softwares.

Other Advice:

It's a great software for advanced users, users should have a background in statistics, sql server and strategic planning, preferably the software is for strategic planning offices and business intelligence units.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.