Jaspersoft Community Edition vs. Pentaho

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
Jaspersoft Community Edition is a free product that offers embeddable pixel-perfect reports for Java apps and small workgroups.N/A
Pentaho
Score 5.1 out of 10
N/A
Pentaho is a suite of open source business intelligence and analytics products, now offered and supported by Hitachi Data Systems since the June 2015 acquisition.N/A
Pricing
Jaspersoft Community EditionPentaho
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Jaspersoft Community EditionPentaho
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Jaspersoft Community EditionPentaho
Considered Both Products
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
FoxPro is a deprecated product and can no longer be downloaded or purchased. While it was a great report development tool, it is no longer a viable solution. While we do use Business Objects in very specific and limited implementations and for specific users, we find that …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
My company has some cooperation with TIBCO, so they want to push Jaspersoft.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
I cannot fairly answer this questions and I have not used other reporting tools. Other reporting tools seem to look like they are great via sales pitches and video previews etc. At end of the day, they struggle with the same issues that Jasper faces. Or they might have solved …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
I do not have solid knowledge on other products to compare them with Jaspersoft
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Our initial selection was based on the understanding of this product to be able to match up against other enterprise BI tools. However, the difficulty with the reseller and the technical issues with the RBAC make this an easy choice to eliminate against other products.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Pentaho and Cognos have been used and evaluated. Jaspersoft is similar to Pentaho, but has better support forums to answer questions. Cognos is slightly more intuitive, but at a higher licensing cost.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Cost and ease of use. We ultimately decided to use Jaspersoft because we didn't need to do anything complicated. At the time we were looking into Microsoft Business Intelligence. While we saw Microsoft BI having actual better reporting and tools, we choose to use Jaspersoft …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Spotfire - Better support. More intuitive. Works with our databases.
Tableau - great support. Very simple and intuitive. Works with our databases!
Infor ION - Really expensive. Works well with their products. A lot of work with other products.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
At the moment of evaluation, it looked like Jasper would be able to cope with our data model. This was achieved with product customization. Visualizations are largely the same.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft was chosen because it fitted our software cloud architecture the best and at a reasonable cost. The rest didn't tick all the boxes at the time or were far too expensive. However, the likes of Power BI seem to be a contender now.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
We have explored other reporting tools like IBM Cognos, Tableau, SQL Reporting, and Qlik along with TIBCO Spotfire (in-memory). FInally looking at all options, features, degree of flexibility, and then license cost, we decided to go with TIBCO Jaspersoft.

The expressions and …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
[TIBCO Jaspersoft is] Quicker, clearer and allows for more professional looking reports.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Usage of a JRS report is vastly superior to xls usage.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
In the past we have used Cognos. Jaspersoft was a better fit for us at this time.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Tableau and Qlikview reporting probably have better end-user experiences but can't be easily embedded in a Web app. Microsoft BI suite needs nearly a full stack of the latest versions of SQL Server, Excel and Sharepoint which an ISV can't assume its customers have. Other …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
We are using both of them. Elasticsearch is still in early stage and very expensive.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Tableau was way, way more expensive and wasn't able to be embedded and white labeled, so we didn't go with them. I think Tableau is stronger on the visualization and predictive side... but overall... if you can't afford them, who cares?
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Crystal reports is very expensive and does not integrate well with java based servers. Jasper also provides community edition, if we every want to downgrade the use, we always have the option of eliminating the server and using the reports as they are. Jasper also give you the …
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
SSRS: seems to be more performant at this point but we're still trying to figure it out
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
They each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses. We selected TIBCO for its pixel perfect reporting.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jasper seemed to be a little behind in features and usability, but had better pricing.
Chose Jaspersoft Community Edition
Of course, there are challenges in the evolution of Jasper and it may take some time to become a stable product. With Jasper 6.4 the stability is improvised a lot compared to previous versions(5.5). But I would recommend Jasper to any team for the following reasons.
Pentaho
Chose Pentaho
Tableau is having some technical limitations in terms of reporting and integration. But, in the case of Pentaho, it is very effective in terms of cost and also very high user-friendly. I would strongly believe that it will add more value to the organization. That's the reason I …
Chose Pentaho
With Pentaho and its open-source community version, we could start showing the power of the data process and the purpose of a data lake and data warehouse project in the company, without the need for any program language skills in the team or a developer team.
Chose Pentaho
Perhaps Snowflake and SalesForce have some components which align with the Pentaho tools. The Pentaho tools have integrations with these technologies to add more value to the final users. Perhaps the only weakness I can honestly find in the Pentaho tools right now is the lack …
Chose Pentaho
Variety of output of reports and data with clearer and more tangible visual charts. Pentaho has been able to give the user a better sense of visual reporting and a variety of charts. Good features of modules and user-friendliness along with agility and reasonable price and …
Chose Pentaho
I chose Pentaho because it is an open-source and free ETL tool. In addition, JSON and XML-based data migration and conversion operations are very successful. In addition, it works in compliance with all database systems. Finally, we can make ETL packages using the windows Task …
Chose Pentaho
The basic functionality of Pentaho is well matching the capabilities of some of the main competitors. We also selected Pentaho since part of the platform is open source and can be used without commercial licenses. Currently we use a mix of the open source components and the …
Chose Pentaho
Pentaho ranks #3 out of the four. I would always choose Qlik Sense overall since it is so incredibly fast and adaptable. It also has built-in ETL and has a much greater community. If you don't like Qlik, Tableau would be a second choice but the company is difficult to work …
Chose Pentaho
Since the Pentaho platform offers a range of broad functionality across data preparation and advanced analytics, it also can be easily integrated to support many data sources and machine-learning frameworks. Based on that fact, we selected Pentaho to be used in our internal …
Chose Pentaho
In comparison with Excel, that can also work with queries pivots and dashboards, Pentaho offers much more stability from a database point of view, more security options and provides a more stable table, pivots and dashboard designs. We are also completing the business …
Chose Pentaho
We evaluated many typical BI software vendors including Micro-strategy, JasperSoft and Tableau. Tableau would have been a top pick if it had better support for OEM. We had to compete against Tableau in many customers to try to get them to upgrade to use our analytics and found …
Chose Pentaho
I have used Tableau, which also does a great job and has better integration features, but as a report generation/ ETL/ BI tool, I'd recommend Pentaho. I also prefer Pentaho as it is best suited for the current client base that the firm has. It fulfills specific needs with great …
Chose Pentaho
I was not with the company when they selected Pentaho over any other tool. As per my experience, I would recommend Pentaho. One of the reasons are that it is open source. If you know JAVA, you can create your own plugins. I have found its customer support pretty good and quick. …
Chose Pentaho
Pentaho is not as robust or as reputable as Microsoft ETL tools, but it is great for simpler ETL solutions. It has limitations and often lacks the ability for fine-tuning, but it gets the job done and is consistently reliable. Cheaper than other products, it's a great place to …
Chose Pentaho
N/A, it's hard to say as this was what our vendor used and is using to load our data
Chose Pentaho
In terms of price, pentaho seems to be the clear winner for functionality that you get--especially with the community edition. If you don't need to license anything out, even the enterprise edition is fairly reasonably priced. With this in mind, it's a winner in the sense that …
Chose Pentaho
We have done extensive exploration of the BI marketplace but had to eliminate many of the BI vendors due our business model and their licensing model being incompatible or cost prohibitive. We provide reporting to hundreds of clients and hundreds of thousands of end-users and …
Chose Pentaho
Did not have any other products similar to what Pentaho offers out-of-the box for free. The closest was to write some scripts manually so in our case PDI has beat Python scripts.
Chose Pentaho
As previously stated, Pentaho is an excellent tool for start ups and where CTOs are willing to invest in staff training. It may not be user friendly as Tableau or SAS, but once staff master it, development of new solutions becomes limitless.
Chose Pentaho
We have experience with Informatica and Talend. I think that between Talend and Pentaho it's a close fight, although I prefer, personally, Pentaho Kettle (Larger community, more resources).
I think that you can say informatica is better than both of them but it is way more …
Chose Pentaho
Pentaho is more powerful than any other reporting tool that is commonly integrated with Odoo. The standard reports are in RML (report modeling language) but Webkit is also available. Both are good for particular types of reports. However, if you want to design a custom report …
Chose Pentaho
We evaluated Panorama, Cognos, MicroSrategy, Jasper Reports, Talend and homegrown solutions. Though each were awesome in their own right, none of them provided a end to end integration like we wanted. Pentaho did the job for us and more. Knowing that Pentaho was built by a team …
Chose Pentaho
Pentaho is more powerful with more functionality. Also it is Java based and is therefore platform independent.
Chose Pentaho
Of all the open source tools we looked at Pentaho was the only one with a full suite of tools (i.e. ETL, reporting, dashboards, etc). A lot of the open source tools were either ETL (Talend) or reporting (Jaspersoft).
Chose Pentaho
We used the Pentaho community edition because we were looking for an open source solution. There is a good community involved with Pentaho. I often found Pentaho to be more flexible than Crystal Reports or SSIS but sometimes less polished in the user interface.
Chose Pentaho
Talend and Pentaho have a lot of the same functionality, but Talend's interface is not as intuitive. Talend generates code that is then executed while Pentaho is an engine based tool with highly optimized Java code templates that are compiled at runtime.
Features
Jaspersoft Community EditionPentaho
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.3
Ratings
13% above category average
Pentaho
9.0
Ratings
10% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports9.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates10.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.3
Ratings
14% above category average
Pentaho
8.7
Ratings
8% above category average
Drill-down analysis9.00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Formatting capabilities10.00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages9.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.4
Ratings
12% above category average
Pentaho
9.7
Ratings
15% above category average
Publish to Web10.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Report Versioning9.00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling10.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.3
Ratings
15% above category average
Pentaho
8.1
Ratings
2% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization10.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Predictive Analytics9.00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.3
Ratings
9% above category average
Pentaho
9.1
Ratings
7% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model10.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.3
Ratings
17% above category average
Pentaho
8.3
Ratings
6% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access10.00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Mobile Application9.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile9.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Jaspersoft Community Edition
9.5
Ratings
20% above category average
Pentaho
8.6
Ratings
10% above category average
REST API10.00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Javascript API9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
iFrames10.00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Java API9.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)10.00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)9.00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
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Jaspersoft Community EditionPentaho
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Medium-sized Companies
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Score 10.0 out of 10
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Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Jaspersoft Community EditionPentaho
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.8
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Online Training
4.0
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.1
(0 ratings)
5.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Jaspersoft Community EditionPentaho
Likelihood to Recommend
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition is very powerful platform that has enhanced smooth running of workflows across our organization. The system operation has greatly created positive development infrastructure in our company due to excellent planning from the data analytics. The cost running this product is low as compared to similar software and easy to learn how it works. It provides comprehensive reports that affect each department and offers solution to most challenges affecting our systems.
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Pentaho is very well suited to perform data extraction & data mining from various cloud storage & transform that data using various available data models. However, the software struggles when it comes to visualizing the extracted data in an appealing manner & can be difficult for end-users to get an understanding of data tables created using those models.
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Pros
  • Custom design reports in Jaspersoft Studio. There is a lot of flexibility to customize reports. You can create easy reports in a quick time frame or complex report in a bit more time.
  • The company does not need a 100% developer to develop reports. Someone with some level of developer experience could use Jasper Studio
  • Jasper also provides a stand-alone web server to deploy your reports. This opens up a lot of Jaspersoft Studio files.
  • There is a lot of time and effort put into the software. Years of input that improved all levels of the applications. Jasperstudio, Jasperserver, a manual, the community, etc.
  • Flexibility is awesome, you can do almost anything. Having well-rounded REST API or you can use the Java Studio.
  • There is a lot out of the box functionality. Scheduler, stand-alone reports, report output formats, logging settings, customization of GUI to a degree, permissions, roles, and user setup Studio, etc.
Read full review
  • Integrate and synchronize with big data easily
  • Import data from any sources and different databases
  • Managing data in on-premise, hybrid and cloud environments.
  • Compatibility and flexibility of the platform with any type of scenario and any business or industry
  • Various tools in the software suite to transformation of data
  • Simple interface appearance and creative UI graphics
Read full review
Cons
  • Repository interface is a flat structure. Folder or other structure would be best for numerous reports for several different departments.
  • Should come fully equipped with all available properties for High Charts
  • Better user guides that includes more information about configurations for styles, conditions, etc. that aren't covered in the guide.
Read full review
  • I think the relative obscurity of the tool is a downside, not as many developers, consultants or peers you can tap into.
  • Lack of a solid user community held us back, looking at Power BI and Qlik, they have huge user communities that help each other out. Would have liked that here.
  • Smaller company means smaller sales force, and the lack of a local presence made it hard to only interact online with the account rep. Other companies have someone local who often stops by with pre-sales developers to just pitch in free of charge when they have time.
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Likelihood to Renew
Even though there are challenges with Architecture, sizing and other areas with Jaspersoft provided that Jaspersoft comes up with the right set of innovation, performance, scalability, and documentation in future it will be great expansion (win-win) situation for the clients and as well as Jaspersoft.
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I will use Pentaho until I find a better tool with a better, easier to use report designer client. For now, Pentaho has been the most powerful reporting tool for our clients because of its ability to connect to Odoo, integrate in Odoo (reports are accessible in Odoo) and the flexibility in report design and parameter integration
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Usability
The overall performance of this platform has been excellent. It is easy to work with the user interface. Creation of digital content and publishing on our social media platforms during marketing has been easy. Running our applications and upgrading our system to meet international standards has been successful. The user dashboard displays reports and performance of all departments effectively.
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Even if Pentaho requires less technical skills to develop a pipeline or ETL project, its learning curve can be a bit slow since there are many ways to do the same thing as in any other platform. However, in Pentaho, some things can be confusing some moments for non-technical teams.
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Support Rating
We have only had a couple of tickets to be open while using Jaspersoft. Each time we have a very prompte responses that would meet our expectations. We always felt that our issues were being address in a timely manner
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We are an Enterprise customer. They handle problems INSTANTLY when they are critical, including initiation an immediate WebEx screen share call when needed. Smaller/less-critical problems are handled within 1-2 days -- and NEVER fall off their radar, no matter how small. As needed, we can also leverage "professional services" from them -- much of which is included in our Enterprise contract. Finally, when a problem I have discovered turns out to be a bug..they create a JIRA for the fix, and make me a watcher. I love seeing notes come in showing me status updates of bugs filed because of something I found. They really are TOP-NOTCH.
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Online Training
While the training was somewhat beneficial, a lot of what was taught to us was what we managed to figure out in the weeks prior. It did provide some useful tips and reference material, but overall something more tailored to our requirements would've been better.
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Course Taken: DI1000 Pentaho Data Integration Fundamentals Setup A week before your class started, the instructor will start sending out class material and lab setup instructions. This is helpful so that you understand how the environment is laid out and can start reviewing the content. Ultimately it saved about a 1/2 day trying to setup with 10 other people online which was great! The Course The 3-day course was laid out like many other technical classes with 15-30 minutes instruction and 15-60 minutes of lab exercises. The instructor was very knowledgeable with the functionality from version to version and answered questions as we went along. I was amazed at some of the functionality that was available that I was not using at the time and quickly implemented changes to many existing transformations and jobs. The novice users seemed to catch on quickly and more experienced users explained how some of the functionality was used in their home environments. Towards the end there was enough time so that we were able to ask very directed questions about our own environments. Overall, I really found the class to be informative and deliver enough information to be dangerous. My skills improved and I was able to design better and efficient transformations for the HIE. Course Description: https://training.pentaho.com/instructor-led-training/pentaho-data-integration-fundamentals-di1000
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Implementation Rating
New releases can be very buggy, also lacking when it comes to standard time zones and formats that are outside the US. As a company we never feel comfortable implementing a new release for at least 3-6 months due to errors that are found
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Get the right people in before starting implementation. Start small and build as you go approach is time consuming and involves lot of rework. Evangalize within the organization the capabilities and limitations equally so that correct delivery expectations are set. Set expectations with the Customer that the tool cannot replace proprietary software in terms of stability/usability and that timelines could change given the new ness of the product.
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Alternatives Considered
Crystal reports is very expensive and does not integrate well with java based servers. Jasper also provides community edition, if we every want to downgrade the use, we always have the option of eliminating the server and using the reports as they are. Jasper also give you the opportunity to build BI on case by base basis including Dashboards.
Read full review
Perhaps Snowflake and SalesForce have some components which align with the Pentaho tools. The Pentaho tools have integrations with these technologies to add more value to the final users. Perhaps the only weakness I can honestly find in the Pentaho tools right now is the lack of a powerful web interface for data transformations. There is a web component from which you can access existing data transformations created with the Pentaho Data Integration tool. Still, the web component only allows visualization of the data transformation and remote execution. A complete web interface with remote execution would be excellent, and I'm sure that we might see something like this available at some point in the future.
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Return on Investment
  • Jaspersoft Community Edition has not had any significant impact on our ROI as we have purchased the commercial edition of the product.
  • The only impact on ROI is that when we bring on new developers, he or she can begin work using the community edition while awaiting the installation of the commercial edition.
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  • Pentaho has improved our overall business process.
  • Pentaho has helped the Managers and Directors to analyze the numbers going up and down from time to time.
  • We have a started a big project using Pentaho that is going to include all the business processes in the organization.
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ScreenShots