Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Anaplan
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Anaplan is a transformative way to see, plan, and run your business. Using its proprietary Hyperblock™ technology, Anaplan lets you contextualize real-time performance, and forecast future outcomes for faster, confident decisions. Anaplan enables connected strategy and planning across your enterprise to move your business forward. Based in San Francisco, Anaplan has over 200 partners and more than 2,000 customers worldwide.N/A
Planful
Score 8.3 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Planful is a cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM) suite. It includes financial applications for modeling, planning, consolidation, reporting and analytics.N/A
Pricing
AnaplanPlanful
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AnaplanPlanful
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AnaplanPlanful
Considered Both Products
Anaplan
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan provided a much more flexible backend that allows for modeling out any use case.
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan is much more advanced and robust tool compared to its competitors
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan works well where you have a requirement for complete flexibility, such as in business structure, or in calculation methodology that is bespoke. You can tailor the system to your exact requirements, whereas some products come with pre-built modules that you might …
Chose Anaplan
Ease of use, intuitive design, business user friendly, quick implementation time
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan always comes out top for me for its ability to meet any client's needs
Chose Anaplan
We selected Anaplan for its intuitive design and our desire to get away from excel. It also enabled us a sandbox of usability to tailor the experience directly to our needs. Other systems compartmentalized areas into one format and did not allow us as much customization.
Chose Anaplan
Planful offers a great solution, however, they have significantly underperformed on their annual growth rate. The solution has a lot to offer, however, it is split across two solutions and is not True connected planning.
OneStream is growing on a fast trajectory and has an …
Chose Anaplan
Flexibility in modeling capability sets Anaplan apart from other competitors. You are tied to cookie cutter solution, which needed to be customized for others. Once customized, it does not change as business changes. It requires them to come in and changes. We needed a …
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan is one of the better cloud-based EPM solutions out there. While it doesn't come with a lot of features/modules out of the box, once you get it up and running it's really powerful. There is a steeper learning curve than some other EPM tools out there which are …
Chose Anaplan
I have used all of the above tools in previous companies. I have seen the limitations and what makes each tool shine. I have seen exactly why Anaplan beat the competition, and why the tool is critical for any FP&A team. From the things I mentioned previously, there is no reason …
Chose Anaplan
I've used Anaplan, Host Analytics, and Adaptive Insights. Anaplan is by far the superior tool. Anaplan has much more flexibility, a slicker UI, is light years faster, and is much more user friendly.
Chose Anaplan
We ultimately picked Anaplan because it allowed us the flexibility that we needed as well as we could see how there were other use cases for the tool.
Chose Anaplan
We had Adaptive before Anaplan and did not like the service at all. Host Analytics was more of a lift and shift from Excel which we didn't want. The look and feel was also too familiar with Adaptive.
Chose Anaplan
Anaplan provided a whiteboard that allowed us to set up our unique business as we saw fit. Other programs had built-in forecasting modules that we needed to adapt to. Our company is retail but also collections so flexibility was the key when making the final decision. Plus, …
Chose Anaplan
Overall better, quicker process. Lack of space in Anaplan is a pain point as compared to Host where we have been able to keep prior years worth of data with no problem.
Planful
Chose Planful
Host is a lot more user friendly to build out models. We do all of our model building in-house whereas when my company was using Anaplan, we were required to hire outside consultants to build out or even modify various models that we needed built. Host allows for a lot more …
Chose Planful
I have very very very little experience (approximately 1 hour) with Anaplan.
Chose Planful
We decided on Planful because while all of these products had some of what we need, and maybe a bit more advanced, none had all of the items on our wish list except for Planful. We are very happy with our decision because the importance of having all of the company data …
Chose Planful
Planful (formerly Host Analytics) can be quick to implement and does not require an army to administer. It's multi-dimensional technology also allows for a lot more flexibility in it's design and use. It's reporting suite is the most intuitive that I have seen in the industry. …
Chose Planful
We selected Host Analytics due to (i) strong out of the box feature set, (ii) best excel integration among cloud tools, (iii) no model size limit, (iv) simple pricing, (v) solid customer references
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
AnaplanPlanful
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
7.7
170 Ratings
9% below category average
Planful
8.3
30 Ratings
1% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports6.41 Ratings8.314 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.1170 Ratings7.826 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.724 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.7
2 Ratings
4% above category average
Planful
8.0
54 Ratings
4% below category average
Drill-down analysis8.82 Ratings8.452 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.62 Ratings7.453 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.62 Ratings8.249 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.7
176 Ratings
5% above category average
Planful
7.8
45 Ratings
5% below category average
Publish to Web9.11 Ratings7.011 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.6175 Ratings8.141 Ratings
Report Versioning8.9153 Ratings6.826 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.33 Ratings9.229 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.1
2 Ratings
4% above category average
Planful
7.5
18 Ratings
4% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.82 Ratings7.712 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.62 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics6.82 Ratings7.314 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
9.2
178 Ratings
5% above category average
Planful
8.7
53 Ratings
1% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.12 Ratings9.447 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model9.4178 Ratings8.445 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.12 Ratings8.546 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control9.129 Ratings7.54 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.12 Ratings9.939 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.0
169 Ratings
0% above category average
Planful
7.6
25 Ratings
5% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access8.7161 Ratings7.823 Ratings
Mobile Application8.2149 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.3156 Ratings7.515 Ratings
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting
Comparison of Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
9.1
280 Ratings
8% above category average
Planful
8.8
101 Ratings
5% above category average
Long-term financial planning9.4255 Ratings8.788 Ratings
Financial budgeting9.5259 Ratings9.2100 Ratings
Forecasting9.2268 Ratings8.893 Ratings
Scenario modeling9.2270 Ratings8.280 Ratings
Management reporting8.3269 Ratings9.397 Ratings
Consolidation and Close
Comparison of Consolidation and Close features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
7.2
235 Ratings
13% below category average
Planful
8.3
75 Ratings
2% above category average
Financial data consolidation8.5218 Ratings9.967 Ratings
Journal entries and reports7.0178 Ratings9.051 Ratings
Multi-currency management6.211 Ratings9.144 Ratings
Intercompany Eliminations6.08 Ratings8.543 Ratings
Minority Ownership6.07 Ratings5.723 Ratings
Local and consolidated reporting8.6204 Ratings8.155 Ratings
Detailed Audit Trails8.2216 Ratings8.154 Ratings
Financial Reporting and Compliance
Comparison of Financial Reporting and Compliance features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.7
252 Ratings
4% above category average
Planful
8.2
101 Ratings
2% below category average
Financial Statement Reporting8.8231 Ratings8.484 Ratings
Management Reporting8.5243 Ratings9.394 Ratings
Excel-based Reporting8.6224 Ratings8.293 Ratings
Automated board and financial reporting9.013 Ratings8.268 Ratings
XBRL support for regulatory filing00 Ratings7.13 Ratings
Analytics and Reporting
Comparison of Analytics and Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.9
271 Ratings
9% above category average
Planful
7.3
58 Ratings
10% below category average
Personalized dashboards9.0266 Ratings7.850 Ratings
Color-coded scorecards8.5250 Ratings7.629 Ratings
KPIs8.619 Ratings8.637 Ratings
Cost and profitability analysis9.1229 Ratings9.139 Ratings
Key Performance Indicator setting9.3239 Ratings7.729 Ratings
Benchmarking with external data9.113 Ratings3.18 Ratings
Integration
Comparison of Integration features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
9.0
277 Ratings
6% above category average
Planful
7.9
93 Ratings
7% below category average
Flat file integration9.4267 Ratings9.566 Ratings
Excel data integration8.7250 Ratings8.085 Ratings
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources9.0229 Ratings6.260 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AnaplanPlanful
Small Businesses
IBM Planning Analytics
IBM Planning Analytics
Score 8.4 out of 10
IBM Planning Analytics
IBM Planning Analytics
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cube
Cube
Score 9.1 out of 10
Cube
Cube
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
Score 8.5 out of 10
OneStream
OneStream
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AnaplanPlanful
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(289 ratings)
8.7
(110 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.5
(22 ratings)
8.5
(16 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(13 ratings)
8.2
(15 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(5 ratings)
8.2
(4 ratings)
Performance
8.9
(5 ratings)
7.7
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(14 ratings)
8.5
(15 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.5
(4 ratings)
6.4
(2 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(4 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.3
(19 ratings)
2.3
(7 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(4 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.9
(5 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.5
(3 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.2
(3 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AnaplanPlanful
Likelihood to Recommend
Anaplan
Anaplan is well-suited for complex, planning processes involving multiple areas of the business. For companies that want to put the software development into the business user's hands vs running up IT development costs. Great for scenario and driver-based planning. Data Hub allows for all data to be pulled into a single source of truth within Anaplan and allows for faster development of additional models utilizing existing data hub data. Anaplan can be expensive for mid-sized companies to use with only one use case. Designed for enterprise planning.
Read full review
Planful
Scenarios where it would be well-suited: - Creating actual versus planned dashboards for budgetary and FP&A purposes - Exporting or creating reports to examine vendor details, KPIs by a certain parameter, etc. Scenarios where it is less appropriate: - Creating very very intricate charts and graphs - I use Tableau for this if I want to easily interact with charts and tables - Linking it to a database and making it more "alive" - for instance, in Tableau, I connect that to a database. I can't tell you how many times I've wished that I could do this with Planful.
Read full review
Pros
Anaplan
  • Anaplan is great at unifying enterprise data and facilitates a very fast way of updating data from source systems which reduces (or eliminates) inherent risks associated with traditional MS Excel based reporting.
  • Anaplan enables forecasting processes to be streamlined and be collaborative making it easier for users to share data and insights that assists in improving communication and decision making across an organisation.
  • Anaplan can scale easily so that businesses can start with one use case and then easily add more users as other parts of the business decide to allow Anaplan to be used to solve their business problems.
Read full review
Planful
  • Support: They assign a technical expert to your team, which we have used extensively. They are always very responsive.
  • The spotlight XL add-in is a great tool and has made reporting extremely efficient. So easy to update with changes in your data.
  • Continued enhancements in leading-edge technology - Ex. AI
Read full review
Cons
Anaplan
  • Multi-user reporting. You can make individual filters, but if you need different people to compare different versions, then you have to complicate the architecture and waste cloud space (not always efficient). This limits your analysis capabilities.
  • There is a lack of some visualizations. The addition of the bubble chart was very timely, but even years later Donat differs from Pie only in the presence of a "hole". It is impossible to make two Donat in each other for comparison. Sometimes there is not enough flexibility in text formats.
  • The basic integration tool Anaplan Connect has no visual interface and it is difficult to get adequate load logs with it. Its configuration is chosen from the general logic of the ease of working with Anaplan. You will probably need help from IT to set up the integration, access certificate, and so on.
Read full review
Planful
  • User security control could be more centralized on the platform, where you may need to navigate to multiple screens to ensure the access granted is what it should be, depending on your system setup.
  • Dynamic planning (while certainly powerful and can help fulfill special use cases) does have more of a learning curve vs. other areas of Planful, especially if you are not using it frequently. That being said, Planful does have training and resources to help acquire that knowledge.
  • Out-of-the-box intercompany reporting in the consolidation module can be tricky depending on how balances are booked in local source systems. Building reports using the intercompany dimension can be challenging depending on your specific company (entity) structure, but it can be done with some testing and validation.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Anaplan
In any line of work, a tool that is flexible and would allow different departments of your company to easily interact and exchange valuable insights, is highly anticipated and needed. For me, what Anaplan provides to a business, be it a smaller one or an enterprise customer, is an easily scaling, agile planning and modeling platform that can meet almost any need and give a high-end solution to the problems any company faces on a daily basis.
Read full review
Planful
Our new Comptroller understands the value of Planful, and we plan to utilize it further in the organization to enhance external reporting. Strangely enough, Planful had not previously been embraced by the former CFO, who argued that we were running two sets of books (of course, we were not). Fortunately, the before mentioned reconciliation of EBITDA to Net Income demonstrated that to the banks.
Read full review
Usability
Anaplan
There is a dependency in this rating - in that I find Anaplan extremely easy to use, but I've spent the necessary time developing a strong understanding of the platform. Once you understand how to use it, the platform is flexible, easy to use, and fun to use.
Read full review
Planful
Planful is very easy to use for end users. The budget templates can be customized to meet the business needs. They just released business user experience functionality which you to take a complicated budget template and filter it down to meet departmental needs to avoid sending more lines than needed
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Anaplan
In nearly 3 years, I have only had 1 issue of being unable to access my model for an unplanned maintenance. Even planned maintenance windows are handled during low traffic hours on the weekend.
Read full review
Planful
I only give a 9 rating rather than a 10 rating because it seems that every day around 2pm we see a slowdown in the use of Planful. I have requested our internal IT department verify that it is not an internal issue and have been assured it is the tool. We have not yet reached out to Planful to do extensive research to solve this issue.
Read full review
Performance
Anaplan
Everything is calculated in memory in the cloud. It's nearly instantaneous updates when you make changes. The only time things get a little slow is when you have a massive model with very intricate calculations...but "slow" for Anaplan is not what I would call "slow" for something like Hyperion. We used to have Hyperion calcs that ran for 60 mins before you could use data. The equivalent would be 60 seconds in Anaplan.
Read full review
Planful
Again, the system is very reliable and, for the most part, runs very quick and smooth. When running larger queries, it does take some time, and during budgeting season our users experienced slower loading times, but nothing that raises concerns outside of normal network issues. Occasionally, as with any software we use, it will crash and you have to restart, but that does not happen very often.
Read full review
Support Rating
Anaplan
1. Anaplan has separate 24/7 customer support channel to help with queries, 2. Customer Partner from Anaplan to support vendor with their queries like license purchase, use case implementation support, customer advocacy 3. Anaplan Learning Platform to help learning new product features free of cost and Yearly Anaplan connect across globe to share success stories of various companies.
Read full review
Planful
Sometimes we get great help when using Planful's support team and other times we don't. In particular, there is one person that often responds to our support tickets who is less than helpful, hence the reason for the 5 out of 10 rating. As a result, most of the time we reach out to our Planful consulting group as they provide faster and better support
Read full review
In-Person Training
Anaplan
The in-person training is simply not worth the cost. After a few weeks of playing in Anaplan, I went to the basic training and knew more than the person teaching it. a year down the road, I was the first person to complete the advance training, and again could have been teaching the class better than the person running the session. Spend some time on your own trying out different things and you will get all the understanding you need to be successful.
Read full review
Planful
I have made a point to attend the Planful Perform conference and it, by far, offers so much more information than "other conferences". Planful does an amazing job including their customers (other users) in their conference to ensure their customers are getting the most out of the information provided. It is truly a wonderful LEARNING experience for their customers!
Read full review
Online Training
Anaplan
Anaplan training materials are clear, simple, easy to understand and to follow. Visuals are excellent. The vendor is good at updating training materials in a timely manner and encouraging users and administrators to keep coming back to Academy site for refresher courses or new feature courses. I really like their interactive diagrams
Read full review
Planful
A few years ago I participated in a lot of their online learning. Their references have grown over the years and continue to get better and better. We use it throughout the year to update the information we hold internally for documentation and to educate ourselves on all of the new release notes and features within Planful.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Anaplan
Agile methodology and breaking the work down into sprints was very helpful. Implementation required a deeper dive into our data than expected for the consultants to be able to construct the data model. But once it was in place, the focus on knowledge transfer enabled us to be able to use the product effectively after the team rolled off.
Read full review
Planful
After going through the initial implementation with Host Analytics and a re-implementation with Cervello (due to an ERP change, not due to a poor initial implementation), I've learned that you really must rely on your internal staff to bear most of the implementation burden. Use the vendor or partners for ideas and best-practice suggestions, and some of the easy-but-time-consuming work. Since you will ultimately be using and maintaining the application, you should be able to do most of it yourself.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Anaplan
Anaplan is a market leader but Pigment is the new kid on the block. Pigment is cheaper than Anaplan. Pigment has more flexible feautures. Pigment is aimed at medium enterprises. Pigment doesn't have the scalabiluty that Anaplan has proven it has. Overall Anaplan is my tool of choice but if Pigment makes improvements there could be some competition
Read full review
Planful
Planful is nice for the reporting option. SAP Concur doesn't so much have an option where you can see physical reports. You can easily report on the tool and send reimbursement requests and such, but you have to use multiple tools if you use Concur and want to see any sort of account history and/or detailed report information.
Read full review
Scalability
Anaplan
It's going to handle most of what you can throw at it. The problem lies in the sparsity of some datasets. When you have over 5ish dimensions of sparse data, the size of the model gets bloated for not much value. In several cases, I have had to adapt my model to account for sparsity in a way that minimized use of space, but also made interacting with the data more cumbersome.
Read full review
Planful
I give this rating simply because I have first-hand knowledge of the scalability of Planful when working across departments in our company that use different financial systems. We have one team on InEight and another using SAP. When we implemented it, we only customized the system to accommodate one of these financial platforms, but when we considered expanding the use of Planful to other departments, we were able to make the necessary adjustments to accommodate our needs.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Anaplan
  • We've been able to perform allocations relatively quickly in the platform where we didn't have enough resources on the systems team. This allowed us to view our business at a finer granularity and make decisions to support our long-term growth.
  • Having our forecast in Anaplan has saved us countless hours originally spent in Excel and emails. The workbooks were extremely large and now it's all consolidated into 1 platform for the whole planning organization to view.
Read full review
Planful
  • We have saved a large amount of time on reports that we previously manually compiled in Excel via MS Dynamics. Planful was linked to Dynamics through automatically scheduled DLR's, reports were created, and now our manual processes are as simple as accessing and refreshing a report.
  • Dashboards have improved our budgeting process specifically with our production leaders as they can visualize their P&L's, their current actuals, current budget, and see where they are forecasting with their proposed budget for the next year
  • With the use of templates, structured planning, and the Simulation Engine, it has added a lot of value and automation to our annual budget process, allowing for plug-and-play type data loading and viewing various scenarios easily
Read full review
ScreenShots

Anaplan Screenshots

Screenshot of Platform: The Anaplan platform is a unified cloud-based solution that connects people, data and plans to enable complex scenario modeling and drive growthScreenshot of OpEx Planning: Review revenue-target-setting goals by brand, season, and capacity all on one, unified, highly-visual dashboardScreenshot of Supply Planning: Break down costs across assembly production to project profitability and align your supply chain to market opportunitiesScreenshot of Territory and Quota Planning: Keep track of sales goals and quotas across territories and industries to optimize sales performanceScreenshot of Headcount Planning: Easily align workforce plans with your strategic plans and quickly see where the best qualified talent resides to fit your organization’s staffing needsScreenshot of Marketing: Eliminate spreadsheets to drive efficiency across planning and manage budget against planned activity

Planful Screenshots

Screenshot of Planful Planform DashboardScreenshot of Planful for FinanceScreenshot of Planful for MarketingScreenshot of ReportsScreenshot of Capacity Planning TemplateScreenshot of Integrations