InetSoft's Top Rated Report Designer Tool for 2025

Comparing Report Designers: StyleBI, DashThis, Canva, Whatagraph, and KNIME

Report design is a surprisingly broad category. Some tools focus narrowly on marketing dashboards and client-ready PDFs; others are full-blown analytics platforms that let you model data, schedule ETL tasks, and craft operational reports. Below I compare five widely different report designers—StyleBI, DashThis, Canva, Whatagraph, and KNIME—by looking at core strengths, weaknesses, pricing/total cost of ownership considerations, ideal use cases, and tradeoffs. My goal: give you a practical sense of which to pick for which problem, not the marketing fluff.

Quick overview

• StyleBI — lightweight, developer-friendly BI and report designer with strong data mashup and customization capabilities. Good for product-embedded analytics and teams that want control over data pipelines without heavyweight infrastructure.
• DashThis — marketing-focused dashboarding and reporting tool built to consolidate multiple marketing platforms into client-ready reports quickly.
• Canva — design-first platform for visually polished reports, proposals, and one-off documents; not an analytics engine, but unmatched for branding and layout.
• Whatagraph — automated marketing and performance reporting geared toward agencies and marketers; emphasizes connectors, templates, and scheduled delivery.
• KNIME — an open-source analytics/workflow platform for heavy data processing, ETL, and advanced analytics that can also produce reports as part of pipelines.

Depth of data capability

If your top priority is data transformation, joins, and scalable mashups, StyleBI and KNIME sit at opposite ends but are both strong: StyleBI for BI-style mashups and embed scenarios (serverless, configurable), KNIME for heavy-duty data prep, feature engineering, and model pipelines. KNIME is practically a visual programming environment for data science—you can clean, join, model, and export results into reports as part of reproducible workflows.

DashThis and Whatagraph are narrower: they excel at pulling from marketing platforms (Google Analytics, Ads, Facebook, HubSpot, etc.), aggregating metrics, and creating dashboards/reports. Their data modeling capabilities are intentionally lightweight because their customers want speed and repeatability, not bespoke ETL. Canva is essentially zero on data capability; you can paste charts or export visuals from other tools, but it won't replace a data pipeline.

Report design and visual polish

Canva wins here, hands down. If your metric is “how good does the output look with minimal effort,” Canva’s drag-and-drop templates, typography, and styling controls are the best for producing client-facing PDFs, pitchbooks, and one-off visual reports. StyleBI also offers strong design control (dashboards and reports that can be branded and embedded), but it requires more setup and an eye for layout. DashThis and Whatagraph provide polished templates tuned to marketing use cases—excellent for agency deliverables where clarity and speed matter. KNIME can output visual reports too, but the focus there is function over form: it’s more about reproducible results than a two-page glossy report.

Automation & scheduling

Whatagraph and DashThis are built around automation: scheduled pulls from integrations, automatic refreshes, and scheduled PDF/email delivery. That makes them attractive to agencies and marketing teams who must send consistent reports to stakeholders. StyleBI supports scheduling and can be embedded into workflows, but its sweet spot is interactive dashboards and developer-customized exports. KNIME’s scheduling and automation are enterprise-grade—useful where you need to run complex workflows nightly and produce outputs as table dumps, reports, or model reports. Canva’s scheduling is limited to design collaboration; its automation capabilities are aimed at social posting more than scheduled data refreshes.

Ease of use vs. flexibility

There’s a predictable tradeoff: Canva, DashThis, and Whatagraph are easy to learn and fast to get value from. They’re designed for marketers and business users. StyleBI and KNIME require more technical skill—StyleBI less so than KNIME—but offer greater flexibility. If you want non-technical users to drag and drop and immediately send weekly PDFs, pick DashThis or Whatagraph. If you need to embed complex, interactive analytics into an application or perform advanced feature engineering and custom modeling before reporting, StyleBI or KNIME are better bets.

Read what InetSoft customers and partners have said about their selection of Style Scope for their solution for dashboard reporting.

Integration ecosystem

DashThis and Whatagraph come pre-loaded with a large set of marketing connectors, which is their raison d’être. StyleBI offers broad connectivity to databases and APIs for mashups (and is often chosen where custom connectors or enterprise data sources are involved). KNIME’s ecosystem is enormous for data science connectors and extensions—if a system exposes an API, KNIME can typically connect to it, and advanced users can build extensions. Canva integrates with content and asset systems (images, icons, brand kits), but not with databases for analytics.

Collaboration and sharing

Canva and DashThis shine in collaboration for designers and marketers—commenting, team templates, and brand asset management. Whatagraph likewise supports agency workflows, white-labeling, and multi-client reporting. StyleBI and KNIME support developer and analyst collaboration via shared projects, versioning (depending on deployment), and embedding capabilities. KNIME’s reproducibility features (workflows as first-class objects) make it particularly strong where auditability matters.

Pricing and total cost of ownership (TCO)

Pricing models vary wildly, which affects TCO beyond headline subscription costs. Canva and DashThis are subscription-based, and their costs are predictable for teams. Whatagraph is similar but often priced for agencies (multi-client), which can be cost-effective if you have many clients. StyleBI tends to be more flexible—often lower licensing than enterprise BI but may incur developer and integration costs for setup and customization. KNIME itself is open source (free) but enterprise-grade use often involves KNIME Server or enterprise extensions, plus the costs of skilled analysts, infrastructure, and long-term maintenance. In short: for low up-front cost and predictable TCO, choose DashThis/Canva/Whatagraph; for long-term, high-flexibility needs, StyleBI or KNIME may provide better ROI but require investment in people and integration.

Security, governance & scalability

KNIME and StyleBI are stronger where governance, on-premises options, and enterprise security are required. KNIME’s architecture is built for heavy processing and can be deployed where data residency and audit trails are strict requirements. StyleBI can be configured to meet enterprise security requirements, especially in private/cloud deployments. DashThis, Whatagraph, and Canva are cloud-first and are fine for general business use, but enterprises with sensitive data should evaluate compliance, encryption, and access controls before adopting them for sensitive reporting.

When to choose each

• Choose Canva when visuals and brand-first presentation are paramount—slide decks, marketing collateral, and one-off client reports that need to look exceptional with minimal data complexity.
• Choose DashThis if you run marketing campaigns across many platforms and need automated, repeatable client reports with minimal setup.
• Choose Whatagraph for agency-level multi-client reporting where templates, white-labeling, and scheduled delivery are critical.
• Choose StyleBI if you need embedded BI, flexible data mashups, and a balance between developer control and out-of-the-box reporting.
• Choose KNIME when you need heavy-duty data engineering, reproducible analytics pipelines, and the ability to produce reports as part of complex workflows or ML pipelines.