Ericsoft switched to ActiveReports after running into licensing, performance and support issues

"We were using Crystal Reports XI as our main report engine. Due to licensing problems, Crystal Reports doesn't offer an editor. It also has a massive setup that sometimes doesn't work.

This lead us to search for an alternative, and ActiveReports did all we needed a report engine to do. ActiveReports was lightweight, fast!!! and offered a working editor for its reports. The licensing system is great.

We also received technical support both directly and indirectly (via other postings) through the support forums. This benefit was also missing in case of Crystal Reports."

Stefano Rossi
Chairman,
Ericsoft

Erin Arroyo finds both Spread and ActiveReports easier to use than the competition

"We purchased the Spread controls since they were better and easier to use than the Microsoft Grid controls in .NET. We purchased the ActiveReports product because it was easier to use than Crystal Reports. We also liked the option of the end user reporting which allows the end users to customize the reports in their layout because every team in our organization likes to display their reports a little differently ."

Erin Arroyo
Senior Developer
Geomentum

Why Robert Ripp switched to Data Dynamics Reports and Spread

"I turned to GrapeCity products when competitive offerings did not work for us. Our product is a spreadsheet based application with heavy reporting features. We tried to use Crystal Reports but its user interface was terrible and support nonexistent. The moment we switched to Data Dynamics Reports, I knew we had a winner - it was 1000% better than Crystal Reports.

Similarly, we replaced Infragistics UltraGrid tool with Spread for Windows and had a similar experience: dramatic improvement in performance, features, and coding efficiency. In both cases, we've gotten timely feedback from the support forums.

I've been very pleased with these products and look forward to continued new releases."

Robert Ripp
Chief Executive Officer
Fintelligent, LLC
Full Case Study.

Chris White finds dynamic reporting easy to do with ActiveReports

"The reason I purchased ActiveReports was because Crystal Reports did not have the functionality we required. There was no way to dynamically author the content of the report with Crystal Reports. With ActiveReports, this was easy to do."

Chris White
Software Development Manager
Key Traffic Systems

Brian Macomber likes ActiveReports features and flexibility

"I switched to ActiveReports right after starting to use Crystal Reports. Haven't looked back since. ActiveReports works much better, doesn't require COM and being able to do code behind gives me much more flexibility."

Brian Macomber
Development Manager
Synergiance, INC

ActiveReports provides UK's Lovetts with competitive advantage and customer satisfaction

"Lovetts plc is a market leading commercial debt recovery law firm in the United Kingdom. We have a reputation for technical excellence that has been built over many years and has allowed us to both gain and retain clients over and above our competitors.

Some years ago we were looking at options to be able to provide a reporting suite for clients through CaseManager, our client extranet. Preliminary investigations narrowed the field of potential products down to Crystal Reports and ActiveReports.

Since ActiveReports is written in .NET and integrates so well with existing C# code, it was the clear winner. The ability for our developer to be able to customize reports and make use of existing .NET modules considerably sped up the development process and has also allowed us to be more responsive to client demand. This has allowed us to provide our clients with a full reporting suite - a facility that is much appreciated by our clients!"

Andrew Dancy
IT Manager,
Lovetts plc.

Why Melmarc chose ActiveReports for its .NET reporting

"I considered Crystal Reports and several other products, the names of which now escape me. In all, I looked at four products. Ease-of-use and the ability to have multi-level subreports were the two main considerations. I evaluated the four products by obtaining demo versions and using them to create test reports. ActiveReports stood head and shoulders above the other three products. I knew of the support and track-record of the company by word-of-mouth."

Rod Pick,
Software Designer and IT Manager,
Melmarc Products

Why the Oklahoma Student Loan Authority switched to ActiveReports for their .NET reporting

"We purchased ActiveReports to replace our other tool because of pricing, licensing and capabilities. ....We wanted to find something that was easy to use when creating the reports, that wasn’t cost-prohibitive, and that worked well with Visual Studio.When I came to my current place of employment, we needed reports with the data formatted in ways that this other reporting tool couldn’t handle. We purchased ActiveReports on my recommendation.

"Creating the type of reports that I’ve created using ActiveReports with this other reporting tool would have been extremely cumbersome, if not impossible, to do."

I also love having the ability to write VB.NET code within an Active Report and how it integrates so easily into Visual Studio. That alone has cut down on development time because there is such flexibility to manipulate the output based on certain conditions. It makes the maintenance of code a lot easier too."

Molly J. Fagan
Senior Applications Specialist,
Oklahoma Student Loan Authority
Read the full ActiveReports case study and other case studies.

Why Total Computer Group selected ActiveReports for its .NET reporting

Back in 2004, Al Perez and his team started working on the detailed architecture of the .NET application. A key item on their list was selecting the .NET reporting technology to use in their system. They evaluated a number of alternatives and finally shortlisted this other reporting tool and GrapeCity's ActiveReports for a comparative evaluation.

Al describes what happened next. He says, "The product we evaluated ActiveReports against was this other reporting tool. The other reporting tool blew our software installation up from 8 MB at the time to a big number! There was no comparison between this other reporting tool and ActiveReports and we sure are glad we made the right choice in selecting ActiveReports."

Al Perez
Chief Software Architect
Total Computer Group
http://www.totalcomputer.com/


Read the full ActiveReports case study and other case studies.

Why Interactive Intelligence selected ActiveReports for its .NET reporting needs

"In one case (with this other reporting tool), I was not even able to easily use their API to configure the data source, much less to manipulate data at run-time. Not only were their help and samples inadequate, it took their support personnel two days to return my call. Ultimately the solution they provided was nothing like their samples, and was so convoluted and non-intuitive as to render it unusable. All this was just to bind a report to a custom data source."

"Each of the other products I tried, though better than my dismal experience mentioned above, did not function as well or as easily as ActiveReports.....Moreover, in comparison with other products, we feel that ActiveReports enables us to deliver more tailored, informative, integrated, distinctly customizable, and better-looking reports."

Thomas Kashin
Team Lead, Client Group, Database and Reporting Team
Interactive Intelligence
http://www.inin.com/


Read the full ActiveReports case study and other case studies.