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IBM SPSS Modeler pros and cons

Vendor: IBM

4.0 out of 5

40 reviews
86% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

IBM SPSS Modeler offers ease of use with proprietary machine learning algorithms, a point-and-click GUI, and visual modeling capabilities, making it scalable for technical and non-technical users. However, it lacks popular algorithms and integration with tools like Qlik and Tableau. Users report stability issues and long processing times when handling large datasets, needing improvements in regression and time series analysis automation. Non-integration with programming languages like MATLAB limits its flexibility.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM SPSS Modeler offers a wide selection of proprietary machine learning algorithms, which simplifies feature engineering and accelerates model development.

It ensures seamless handling of large data sets, outperforming tools like Excel and Access, and effectively scales to meet business needs.

Users experience improved productivity and reduced project timelines, with tasks such as segmentation now taking significantly less time than traditional methods.

The platform remains flexible and adaptable, integrating well with technologies like R and Python, and supports third-party apps for expanded functionality.

Automation and organization of data handling make IBM SPSS Modeler a preferred choice for analyzing data without writing extensive code.

CONS

IBM SPSS Modeler lacks well-known machine learning algorithms and more popular regression models should be included.

It does not support integration with Qlik, Tableau, and Power BI, limiting its compatibility with other analytics tools.

The platform needs improvements for supporting open-source features like embedding R or Python scripts.

Time Series and forecasting features should be easier and more automated, similar to logistic regression capabilities.

Performance issues persist, with data extraction sometimes causing server crashes due to memory leaks.

IBM SPSS Modeler Pros review quotes

Business Intelligence Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 21, 2018

The ease of use in the user interface is the best part of it. The ability to customize some of my streams with R and Python has been very useful to me, I've automated a few things with that.

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IT Specialist at a government with 51-200 employees

Mar 21, 2018

We have integration where you can write third-party apps. This sort of feature opens it up to being able to do anything you want.

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Associate Professor of Statistics at KAU

Feb 4, 2022

It's a very organized product. It's easy to use.

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IBM SPSS Modeler

Free Report: IBM SPSS Modeler Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM SPSS Modeler. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.

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Application Architect at Canada Border Services Agency

Jul 12, 2024

I was familiar with using IBM SPSS Modeler separately in the private sector before that. It's a good tool for extracting data from data warehouses, creating streams, and manipulating logic to extract final data.

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reviewer1428942

Contracts Manager at a program development consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 11, 2020

You take two quarters and compare them and this tool is ideal because it gives you a lot of visibility on the before and after.

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RB

Prof. Dr. Rudolf Bisping

business owner at SASS GmbH

Aug 7, 2025

The customer loves it at first glance because it is so easy to handle, and you get a solution pretty soon.

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Director of Engineering at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 20, 2018

It scales. I have not run into any challenges where it will not perform.

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Dealer Analytics Product & Services Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 21, 2018

It continues to be a very flexible platform, so that it handles R and Python and other types of technology. It seems to be growing with additional open-source movement out there on different platforms.

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Associate Professor of Statistics at KAU

Sep 22, 2020

Automation is great and this product is very organized.

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Solution Consulting, Growth, Analytics at Akinon

Nov 3, 2018

Automated modelling, classification, or clustering are very useful.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 33)

IBM SPSS Modeler Cons review quotes

Business Intelligence Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 21, 2018

Regarding visual modeling, it is not the biggest strength of the product, although from what I hear in the latest release it's going to be a lot stronger. That, to me, has always been the biggest flaw in using this. It's very difficult to get good visualization.

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IT Specialist at a government with 51-200 employees

Mar 21, 2018

The platform that you can deploy it on needs improvement because I think it is Windows only. I do not think it can run off a Red Hat, like the server products. I am pretty sure it is Windows and AIX only.

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Associate Professor of Statistics at KAU

Feb 4, 2022

The time series should be improved.

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IBM SPSS Modeler

Free Report: IBM SPSS Modeler Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM SPSS Modeler. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: August 2025.

865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Application Architect at Canada Border Services Agency

Jul 12, 2024

There are performance issues. Extracting data from many combined tables can take hours and occasionally crash the server due to memory leaks. This performance problem bothers people. The performance issue seems to be related to the server. We design streams on the client and submit them to the server, which generates a large SQL statement. There are two potential bottlenecks: one in the server and another in data extraction. I'm unsure about the exact mechanics of data splitting when fetching from the database.

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reviewer1428942

Contracts Manager at a program development consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 11, 2020

When you are not using the product, such as during the pandemic where we had worldwide lockdowns, you still have to pay for the licensing.

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Director of Engineering at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 20, 2018

I would like better integration into the Weather Company solution. I have raised a couple of concerns about this integration and having more time series capabilities.

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Associate Professor of Statistics at KAU

Sep 22, 2020

Dimension reduction should be classified separately.

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Solution Consulting, Growth, Analytics at Akinon

Nov 3, 2018

Customer support is hard to contact.

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Quantitative Researcher at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Sep 29, 2017

It would be beneficial if the tool would include more well-known machine learning algorithms.

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Analyst at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 20, 2018

It is very good, but slow. The slowness may be because we have not finalized all the background information in SPSS. It still needs some tweaking.

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Data Science Platforms

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Databricks vs IBM SPSS Modeler

KNIME Business Hub vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Alteryx vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Amazon SageMaker vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio vs IBM SPSS Modeler

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IBM SPSS Statistics vs IBM SPSS Modeler

Altair RapidMiner vs IBM SPSS Modeler

IBM Watson Studio vs IBM SPSS Modeler

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See all alternatives

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