Good for embedded or distributed reporting, but Jaspersoft Studio learning curve is steep.
August 04, 2017

Good for embedded or distributed reporting, but Jaspersoft Studio learning curve is steep.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with TIBCO Jaspersoft

  • If you need a pixel-perfect report, Jaspersoft Studio makes that available in various formats. I can make a report and be confident that looks exactly as I want it.
  • Jaspersoft makes it easy to publish and schedule reports for distribution to users via email.
  • Jaspersoft Studio originates from an open source project, and it still has that feeling. The learning curve can be very steep. Making graphs is quite painful and not at all intuitive. I need to know about things like Java data types, casting of those data types. Sometimes the errors I see are just Java stack trace, which I don't expect from a licensed enterprise tool. Sometimes I encounter quirky issues that take hours to resolve.
  • The licensing structure does not work well for us. We need a licensing option that acknowledges where we are at in our company development. The starting price is way too high. We need a licensing structure that gives us an entry point for an early-stage company such as us, that is just starting to gain traction with customers. As a consequence, we use the lowest licensing level, that does not give us access to the web-based ad-hoc dashboard designer. I have used that in the past, and it is so much easier to deal with than Studio, but the hike in price is too much for us to swallow.
At the time, we selected Jaspersoft because we did not have a multi-tenant model, and we needed a reporting solution that offered a package with many licenses at a reasonable cost. Now our needs have changed, and the licensing model no longer makes sense.

Tableau is much easier to use, and has vastly superior data exploration capabilities, but if I want to distribute a report to a large number of users, the licensing model doesn't work as well. Tableau also doesn't have as many options for report distribution. The Tableau monthly licensing model works much better for us.

Yellowfin is similar to Jaspersoft, and has an entry point that makes sense for an organization like us (it is free to start).
For pixel-perfect reporting, distributed by email to a large number of users, it works very well if you can get to grips with Jaspersoft Studio. The Jaspersoft ad-hoc dashboard designer is good for making simple dashboards, especially if they are going to be embedded in another application.

Jaspersoft Studio is completely unusable for regular business (non-IT) users.

Jaspersoft is not well-suited for ad-hoc data exploration.

Jaspersoft Feature Ratings

Pixel Perfect reports
8
Customizable dashboards
Not Rated
Report Formatting Templates
Not Rated
Drill-down analysis
4
Formatting capabilities
6
Report sharing and collaboration
8
Publish to Web
7
Publish to PDF
9
Report Versioning
Not Rated
Report Delivery Scheduling
9
Delivery to Remote Servers
Not Rated
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
7
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
6
Multi-User Support (named login)
9
Role-Based Security Model
7
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
8
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Not Rated
Responsive Design for Web Access
Not Rated
Mobile Application
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated
REST API
Not Rated
Javascript API
Not Rated
iFrames
10
Java API
Not Rated
Themeable User Interface (UI)
Not Rated
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
Not Rated