IBM SPSS Statistics vs. Microsoft Access

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM SPSS Statistics
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
SPSS Statistics is a software package used for statistical analysis. It is now officially named "IBM SPSS Statistics". Companion products in the same family are used for survey authoring and deployment (IBM SPSS Data Collection), data mining (IBM SPSS Modeler), text analytics, and collaboration and deployment (batch and automated scoring services).
$99
per month
Microsoft Access
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Access is a database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools.
$139.99
per PC
Pricing
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft Access
Editions & Modules
Subscription
$99.00
per month
Base
$3,610
one-time fee per user
Standard
$7,960
one-time fee per user
Professional
$15,900
one-time fee per user
Premium
$23,800
one-time fee per user
Microsoft Access
$139.99
per PC
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft Access
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft Access
Considered Both Products
IBM SPSS Statistics
Chose IBM SPSS Statistics
Capabilities like effective data predictive analysis production, Cloud data visualization and the ability to handle a large amount of different business data at once using IBM SPSS Statistics is nice and also the collaboration functionalities are the best. The platform helps …
Chose IBM SPSS Statistics
STATA is similar but, I believe SPSS is easier to learn and use compared to STATA especially for beginners.
Microsoft Access

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft Access
Small Businesses
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Posit
Posit
Score 9.1 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft Access
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(85 ratings)
8.1
(98 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(22 ratings)
10.0
(15 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(14 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Availability
6.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.4
(12 ratings)
6.4
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
5.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
5.0
(1 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM SPSS StatisticsMicrosoft Access
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
SPSS is well-suited for the following: 1) User Behavior Analysis: SPSS handles large datasets to analyze user behavior data. 2) Customer Satisfaction / Foundational Surveys: SPSS facilitates analysis of quant data from satisfaction surveys, keeping us informed about customer needs and preferences. 3) A/B test analysis: SPSS statistical tools for A/B test analysis, which helps optimize user experience of our products. Scenarios where SPSS are less appropriate: 1) Qualitative Data Analysis: I do not use SPSS for open-ended survey responses/qual data. 2) Live/in-vivo data analysis: SPSS is not ideal for real-time data processing. 3) Complex Data Integration: SPSS isn’t the best fit for complex data integration tasks
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Microsoft
Microsoft Access can be easily implemented with training. It doesn't require expert level skill for basic reporting functions - but can be scaled to a complex database with sophisticated users. Its appropriate to consider if excel needs to be used to create reports, or if there are data entry needs - with corresponding reports.
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Pros
IBM
  • SPSS has been around for quite a while and has amassed a large suite of functionality. One of its longest-running features is the ability to automate SPSS via scripting, AKA "syntax." There is a very large community of practice on the internet who can help newbies to quickly scale up their automation abilities with SPSS. And SPSS allows users to save syntax scripting directly from GUI wizards and configuration windows, which can be a real life-saver if one is not an experienced coder.
  • Many statistics package users are doing scientific research with an eye to publish reproducible results. SPSS allows you to save datasets and syntax scripting in a common format, facilitating attempts by peer reviewers and other researchers to quickly and easily attempt to reproduce your results. It's very portable!
  • SPSS has both legacy and modern visualization suites baked into the base software, giving users an easily mountable learning curve when it comes to outputting charts and graphs. It's very easy to start with a canned look and feel of an exported chart, and then you can tweak a saved copy to change just about everything, from colors, legends, and axis scaling, to orientation, labels, and grid lines. And when you've got a chart or graph set up the way you like, you can export it as an image file, or create a template syntax to apply to new visualizations going forward.
  • SPSS makes it easy for even beginner-level users to create statistical coding fields to support multidimensional analysis, ensuring that you never need to destructively modify your dataset.
  • In closing, SPSS's long and successful tenure ensures that just about any question a new user may have about it can be answered with a modicum of Google-fu. There are even several fully-fledged tutorial websites out there for newbie perusal.
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Microsoft
  • Very easy to create entity-relationship diagrams for various tables and designing mock layouts.
  • Really easy to navigate as it hold[s] the classic Microsoft UI. Another good thing is that it comes with the complete MS Office Suite.
  • It is really fast when joining multiple tables no matter what type of join.
  • Works on pretty much same SQL scripts so no need to learn a new language!
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Cons
IBM
  • It would be beneficial to have AMOS as part of the SPSS package instead of purchasing it separately.
  • It would be beneficial to have other statistical tests, such as PROCESS, be part of the standard SPSS tests instead of having the need to run a syntax to have it installed.
  • My dataset tends to be smaller, and I have never had any issues with using SPSS. I heard that SPSS may not be optimal when handling large datasets.
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Microsoft
  • Microsoft Access has not really changed at all for several years. It might be nice to see some upgrades and changes.
  • The help info is often not helpful. Need more tutorials for Microsoft Access to show how to do specific things.
  • Be careful naming objects such as tables, forms, etc. Names that are too long can get cut off in dialog boxes to choose a table, form, report, etc. So, I wish they would have resizable dialog boxes to allow you to see objects with long names.
  • I wish it could show me objects that are not in use in the database for current queries, tables, reports, forms, and macros. That way unused objects can be deleted without worrying about losing a report or query because you deleted the underlying object.
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
Both
money and time are essential for success in terms of return on investment for any kind of research based project work. Using a Likert-scale questionnaire is very easy for data entry and analysis
using IBM SPSS. With the help of IBM SPSS, I found very fast and reliable data
entry and data analysis for my research. Output from SPSS is very easy to
interpret for data analysis and findings
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Microsoft
I and the rest of my team will renew our Microsoft Access in the future because we use and maintain many different applications and databases created using Microsoft Access so we will need to maintain them in the future. Additionally, it is a standard at our place of work so it is at $0 cost to us to use. Another reason for renewing Microsoft Access is that we just don' t have the resources needed to extend into a network of users so we need to remain a single-desktop application at this time.
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Usability
IBM
Probably because I have been using it for so long that I have used all of the modules, or at least almost all of the modules, and the way SPSS works is second nature to me, like fish to swimming.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Access is easy to use. It is compatible with spreadsheets. It is a very good data management tool. There is scope to save a large amount of data in one place. For using this database, one does not need much training, can be shared among multiple users. This database has to sort and filtering features which seem to be very useful.
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Reliability and Availability
IBM
SPSS can tend to crash when I am trying to do a lot of data. This can slow me down when I need to do a lot of data
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Microsoft
I don't think the program has ever failed me. It is one of those programs where there is always a solution if you know where to look.
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Performance
IBM
SPSS does the job, but it can be slow. I do have to plan a lot of time to get through a huge amount of data.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
IBM
I have not contacted IBM SPSS for support myself. However, our IT staff has for trying to get SPSS Text Analytics Module to work. The issue was never resolved, but I'm not sure if it was on the IT's end or on SPSS's end
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Microsoft
While I have never contacted Microsoft directly for product support, for some reason there's a real prejudice against MS Access among most IT support professionals. They are usually discouraging when it comes to using MS Access. Most of this is due to their lack of understanding of MS Access and how it can improve one's productivity. If Microsoft invested more resources towards enhancing and promoting the use of MS Access then maybe things would be different.
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Implementation Rating
IBM
Have a plan for managing the yearly upgrade cycle. Most users work in the desktop version, so there needs to be a mechanism for either pushing out new versions of the software or a key manager to deal with updated licensing keys. If you have a lot of users this needs to be planned for in advance.
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Microsoft
there is no key idea, since it is easy to implement Microsoft Access
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
I have used R when I didn't have access to SPSS. It takes me longer because I'm terrible at syntax but it is powerful and it can be enjoyable to only have to wrestle with syntax and not a difficult UI.
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Microsoft
Crystal is easier for report writing, but isn't a database solution. Salesforce is lovely, but much more expensive than an old copy of Microsoft Office. For a small budget, [Microsoft] Access was really the only viable option. I only wish it was easier to write complex reports.
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Scalability
IBM
I am neutral because I have not had to look into scalability since I am using as a student.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
IBM
  • IBM SPSS has allowed me to quickly analyze data for research.
  • IBM SPSS has allowed me to complete analyses in order to submit research findings to conferences and complete manuscripts.
  • IBM SPSS has enabled me to meet research objectives set out in grant proposals.
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Microsoft
  • Not having to recreate queries or reports every time you want to use them.
  • Once an item is created and saved as part of the database, you save manpower by not having to recreate them.
  • ROI from a usability standpoint is great. Solid product with great functionality that requires low maintenance usually.
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