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Domo vs IBM Cognos comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.7
Domo enhances efficiency, decision-making, and revenue growth, though some face limited returns due to high costs or underutilization.
Sentiment score
5.8
IBM Cognos boosts efficiency, saves over $650k annually, improving data insights and operational performance, with varied ROI based on implementation.
If you're actually using Domo at a very limited case and you're being charged $20,000, we've seen ROI there, but once it goes really high, you really need to check your metrics and check your profit.
Founder & CEO at AI-OT
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Domo's customer and technical support is generally praised but needs improvement in responsiveness, especially for complex issues.
Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Cognos support quality varies, with competent tech support; costs and partner reliance are noted; ratings mostly 6-9.
No matter how complex the problem is, it can be taken care of by the support team.
Data Analyst at Anonymous
They were quite professional and in around three to five working days, they had identified where they suspected there was an issue and I was able to fix it.
Analytics Manager at KOKO Networks
It's very easy to get technical support from Domo.
Chief Technology Officer ☆ Chief Product Officer ☆ Fractional CTO ☆ Board Advisor at a manufacturing company with 1-10 employees
Our systems team, operating on a lot of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and maintaining long-term relations with IBM, benefits from good support coverage.
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
I rate technical support from IBM as eight out of ten, indicating a high quality of service.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.2
Domo supports large-scale data and user roles, but some users experience technical challenges with ETL processes and storage limits.
Sentiment score
7.4
IBM Cognos is generally scalable, handling thousands of users, though some face configuration challenges in distributed systems.
The fact that you're able to easily identify the pipelines or flows that have errors, and it notifies you when you're building a pipeline where you can run previews and tell where to fix issues, is helpful.
Analytics Manager at KOKO Networks
When fetching files larger than 100 MB from SFTP or any other portal, Domo becomes slow due to the heavy file size.
Assistant Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Everything comes under the same umbrella and it's pretty user-friendly.
Data Analyst at Anonymous
It can be scaled out to other teams, but requires building cubes and implementing policies.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
Domo is praised for reliable data handling, minimal downtime, and efficiency, though some encounter occasional server connectivity issues.
Sentiment score
7.2
IBM Cognos is generally stable, with occasional issues due to external factors, poor design, or large queries.
In recent years, I haven't had such cases. It's quite stable and I don't have any reservations on its stability.
Analytics Manager at KOKO Networks
In terms of overall stability of the platform, it's very stable.
Chief Technology Officer ☆ Chief Product Officer ☆ Fractional CTO ☆ Board Advisor at a manufacturing company with 1-10 employees
During that time, we faced issues from the project side as Domo was not visible in our portal.
Assistant Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
I rate the stability of this solution as nine out of ten, indicating it is highly stable.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
 

Room For Improvement

Domo users face data management and integration challenges, need better visualization, real-time processing, and improved UI and collaboration features.
IBM Cognos needs better data visualization, simplified database connections, enhanced interface, and improved performance to compete with Tableau.
End users require a license to run their own reports and dashboards, which are fairly expensive.
Technical Project Manager at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
Some technical aspects such as Beast Mode calculation could be improved in Domo, as it would provide more clarity and help in giving insights to clients or customer business team requirements.
Senior Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
One of the areas where we've had frustrations with Domo is the aesthetics. The aesthetics are quite limited compared to other BI tools such as Tableau and Power BI.
Analytics Manager at KOKO Networks
There is room for improvement in self-service analytics and predictiveness.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
Since IBM Cognos is a futuristic platform with many robust features, it takes time to grasp all the features and how they work, so there is a learning curve.
Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech
We are generally satisfied, but I am not certain if IBM Cognos meets every feature request from users since we only provide IBM Cognos as our standard and do not maintain infrastructure for other tools.
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Domo's pricing is higher but seen as valuable for its features, with flexible models and negotiable terms encouraged.
IBM Cognos is costly but valued for features; negotiate near fiscal year-end for discounts, especially through partners.
Domo's pricing is high compared to other BI tools, and it is costly.
Senior Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
For long-time users, it can become expensive, but the trade-off is access to the entire platform instead of licensing different components separately.
Chief Technology Officer ☆ Chief Product Officer ☆ Fractional CTO ☆ Board Advisor at a manufacturing company with 1-10 employees
They quoted approximately one dollar per KB.
Assistant Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
I rate pricing as a four, meaning it is more expensive compared to other solutions.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
 

Valuable Features

Domo is praised for ease of use, data integration, real-time insights, and collaboration, enhancing data accessibility for non-technical users.
IBM Cognos offers flexible reporting, interactive dashboards, AI insights, and comprehensive BI functions for enhanced decision-making and scalability.
App Studio is valuable because it allows all the customization we needed; we can decode it, with the view and grid which are all I need, drill-downs, and everything can be done the way I need it.
Senior Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
None of the other tools provide the kind of support that enables chatting and working on the same item simultaneously.
Senior Analyst at Blend360
I have been using it for four years and have been able to extract the information I need from it.
Technical Project Manager at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
The AI features in IBM Cognos helped me gain deeper insights into our business processes, enabling me to make data-driven decisions easily and understand which points need our attention and which areas of our business are performing well.
Senior Data Engineer at LTI LATAM and Toubro Improtech
IBM Cognos is a robust governed platform with significant security features and provides excellent graphics and reporting.
head of commercial at Assimil8 Ltd.
IBM Cognos is evaluated and complies fully with all our security standards.
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Domo
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
3rd
Ranking in Reporting
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Data Integration (14th), Business Performance Management (5th), Data Visualization (6th)
IBM Cognos
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
9th
Ranking in Reporting
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
136
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Domo is 3.0%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Cognos is 1.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Domo3.0%
IBM Cognos1.3%
Other95.7%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

RD
Assistant Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Have improved workflow efficiency through custom reports but encountered formatting limitations
The downsides of Domo are that we don't have a feature in the same column. When data comes in a time format, text format, and number format, we cannot segregate and create conditional formatting in that column. If in the future they develop this feature, it will benefit more users. Domo requires maintenance on my end, such as updates. I am maintaining some dashboards on a weekly basis and monthly basis daily reports. Because we need to upload in SFTP, we cannot schedule or auto-schedule due to rate purposes. We manually handle the data sets. If there were an option to reduce the cost, it would be easier to access.
reviewer2648136 - PeerSpot reviewer
EDW Manager at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
Centralized reporting has supported university-wide regulatory dashboards and secure data access
From my experience, we use regular dashboarding with IBM Cognos for producing scheduled reports and for mandatory regulatory reporting. All our departments use IBM Cognos, with each department developing their own reports while our corporate IT team provides the data. Some people use the interactive dashboards feature of IBM Cognos, and there are also other tools in use. I think some users utilize Power BI and Tableau, but our IT organization only provides IBM Cognos as an enterprise business intelligence and reporting tool. IBM Cognos is evaluated and complies fully with all our security standards. In my opinion, IBM Cognos is very stable. It has been around for many years and many users are familiar with it, ensuring it performs well in its intended capacity. The benefits of choosing IBM Cognos, aside from cost savings, include having institutional knowledge for maintaining this infrastructure and a reliable solution that enhances developer productivity, given our team's extensive experience with IBM Cognos.
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise87
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Domo?
All our client SLAs and daily and weekly dashboards are tracked on Domo.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Domo?
The pricing of Domo is too high. Six months ago, Domo increased their prices. We suffered because we could not maintain the old data in the old data set in Domo. We are creating multiple backups on...
What needs improvement with Domo?
I have experience with Domo and Microsoft tools. Domo is losing out in the pricing area. We tried pitching Domo to many of our clients, and they liked it initially, but the pricing point was someth...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
Since IBM Cognos is a futuristic platform with many robust features, it takes time to grasp all the features and how they work, so there is a learning curve. The more I use this platform, the more ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

corda
Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Capco, SABMiller, Stance, eBay, Sage North America, Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana, Telus, The Cliffs, OGIO International Inc., and many more!
More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
Find out what your peers are saying about Domo vs. IBM Cognos and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.