Navigating Market Reports and Perspectives

Capterra, founded in 1999, offers free resources to help small businesses make the right technology decisions. It connects software buyers with software vendors using customer reviews to help those buyers find and evaluate solutions. Capterra is part of Gartner Digital Markets, which is a business unit within Gartner, a major analyst firm. Gartner also runs the similar Gartner Peer Insights, detailed below.

Planful earns a 4.3 out of 5.0 among the 300+ vendors in the budgeting/forecasting software category, which includes everything from Quickbooks and niche $9/month offerings to mammoth SAP and Oracle solutions.

G2 is the largest software marketplace and review platform. It ranks software companies and products based on authentic, timely reviews from real users.

In 2025, Planful continues to earn quarterly G2 badges, with Summer 2025 accolades including Grid Leader for enterprise and mid-market customers, High Performer for mid-market customers, and a Momentum Leader, among other badges for most likely to recommend, highest adoption, easiest to use, and more. Planful customers have scored our solutions an average of 4.3 out of 5.0.

In addition, Planful ranks highly in G2 categories, including the Enterprise Grid® Report for FP&A; Enterprise Grid® Report for Budgeting and Forecasting; Mid-Market Grid Report® for Budgeting and Forecasting; Momentum Grid® Report for FP&A; and Mid-Market Usability Index for Marketing Resource Management as a leader with a strong market presence.

Gartner Peer Insights solicits ratings and reviews of enterprise technology solutions from end-user professionals. Planful customers have scored our solutions an average of 4.5 out of 5.0 for Financial Planning Software and 4.5 out of 5.0 for Financial Close and Consolidation Solutions.

European analyst firm BARC uses extensive research to help companies worldwide select the right software solutions that align with business goals. Its reports offer insights into market developments and share proven best-practice advice for businesses embarking on a software evaluation project. To be included in the firm’s research, vendors must meet a minimum license and maintenance revenue threshold (€20 million for Financial Performance Management, undefined for Integrated Planning & Analytics). The vendor’s geographical distribution and reach are also taken into account.

In 2025, Planful was listed as a Leader in BARC’s Planning Survey 25. Planful earned top rankings in 31 categories and leading positions in 24 others across 3 peer groups driven by 1,000 surveyed users. The report also ranks Planful #1 for Ease of Use, Planning Functionality, and Self-Service, with 100% of users satisfied with the platform.

BARC collaborated with BPM for a survey-based report, “Global CPM Trends and Priorities for 2025,” which analyzes responses from over 1,300 companies worldwide to provide insights into key performance management and planning trends.

BPM Partners is focused exclusively on business performance management (BPM) solutions, which it defines as budgeting, consolidation, financial reporting, and more. BPM publishes a Vendor Landscape Matrix based on interviews with a vendor’s existing customers. The questions drill down on 15 key product attributes, and the output of these interviews forms the basis of the Vendor Landscape Matrix. The matrix provides a vendor ranking to help companies choose the best solution for their needs.

In 2025, Planful achieved an “Excellent” BPM Pulse Rating based on overall customer satisfaction. BPM lists Planful’s core strengths as intuitive, quick implementation, and integrated business planning. Planful also remains a BPM Core Vendor in 2025. Core Vendors are selected annually based on their depth and breadth of functionality and demonstrated market and customer success.

BPM joined with BARC for a survey-based report, “Global CPM Priorities and Trends for 2025.”

Read BPM’s 2024-2025 Vendor Landscape Matrix for Performance Management Solutions.

Constellation Research looks at technology solutions that help companies achieve their digital transformation goals. The prestigious Constellation ShortList for Cloud-Based Planning and Performance Management Platforms identifies the top vendors based on technology investment, use cases, strategic vision, customer value, executive leadership, and price. The firm talks with a vendor’s customers and partners throughout the year and then develops its own research methodology to identify the six leading vendors.

Constellation Research’s analysis is a helpful tool for early technology adopters, offering support for buyers by putting vendors that meet threshold criteria on its ShortList. Including 2025, Planful has been on the Constellation ShortList™ 13 consecutive times.

Dresner Advisory Services focuses on data, analytics, and performance management solutions. Each year, it releases a flagship report, Wisdom of Crowds®, that is 100% based on customer input across 33 criteria.

Planful has been ranked #4 out of 17 vendors in the latest 2024 Sales Performance Management Market Study by Dresner. This study covers sales planning, analysis, and execution. Planful is considered a Top Vendor in this study and is described by Dresner as “best in class for understanding customer business/needs, sales responsiveness, business practices, reliability of technology, and ease of administration.” Planful also maintains a perfect recommended score.

In 2025, Planful was named an Overall Leader in the Customer Experience Model and a Credibility Leader in the Vendor Credibility Model in Dresner’s flagship Wisdom of Crowds® Enterprise Performance Management Market Study. This marks the tenth consecutive year Planful has received top-tier recognition in the study. In addition, Planful was recognized as a High Value / Low Total Cost of Ownership provider in the EPM Value/TCO Model—reinforcing the company’s commitment to delivering both performance and value.

Planful was further recognized with a 2025 Industry Excellence Award in EPM by Dresner Advisory Services, as the company achieved a 100% customer recommendation score. This honor highlights Planful’s consistent leadership in the market and reflects the company’s ongoing innovation and dedication to customer success.

In 2025, Planful was also named a winner in three categories in Dresner’s inaugural Application Innovation Awards, recognized for top performance in financial reporting, close management, and FCCR. The awards highlight vendors that consistently rank among the top three in Dresner’s annual, research-driven market studies.

Forrester is one of the most recognizable analyst firms globally. Its proprietary research relies on annual surveys of business and technology leaders, who then look to its Forrester Wave™ evaluations to guide decisions that provide a growth path. Planful falls under Forrester’s Digital Operations Planning and Analytics Wave (gated), which uses a “22-criterion evaluation” of solution providers to identify the most significant ones and show how technology professionals can select the right one for their needs.

For the Q4 2023 Wave—the most recently published Wave report on this sector—Planful is positioned as a “strong performer,” with Forrester highlighting our expansion into more business and financial planning areas, strong capabilities across crucial planning areas, and easy “innovation consumption and collaboration.” The firm also pointed out that reference customers were happy with our solution’s flexibility and simplicity, that our solution stands out with its purpose-built tools to jump-start key planning initiatives, and that we continue investing in AI.

Gartner provides many types of advice across a wide range of topics for “enterprise leaders,” primarily at large, global enterprises—the firm’s client list includes 73% of the Global 500. It publishes thousands of reports and guides each year, with Magic Quadrants as its flagship reports. Each Magic Quadrant evaluates vendors on many factors, but they all roll up to the intersection of Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. Magic Quadrants are now accompanied by another document outlining how each vendor compares on a set of pre-defined Critical Capabilities.

In 2024, Gartner published its report, Voice of the Customer for Financial Planning Software. Planful was placed as a Strong Performer, winning a “willingness to recommend” rating of 95% overall from surveyed customers. Planful was also included in Gartner’s 2024 XP&A Market Guide, which noted Planful Predict’s machine learning capability and Planful’s hundreds of pre-built integrations with popular enterprise applications and a diverse array of partners.

In 2025, Planful was named a Challenger in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Financial Close and Consolidation Solutions. Gartner noted Planful’s prebuilt support for 160 currencies and strengths of data integration, innovation, and implementation support.

IDC, founded in 1964, is one of the oldest analysts covering technology, having been launched in the days of RCA, Univac, and Xerox. Today, the firm offers expertise on technology and industry trends to help organizations and investors make fact-based technology decisions. It’s also known for its market-sizing analysis, particularly the IDC MarketScape models designed to provide an overview of the suppliers in a given market.

For 2024, Planful was named a Leader in IDC’s Worldwide Enterprise Planning, Budgeting, and Forecasting Applications for Midmarket Organizations MarketScape, which noted Planful’s strengths as “more than just record-to-report capabilities,” price, and reporting and dashboards. Planful was also named a Major Player in IDC’s Worldwide Office of the CFO Record to Report 2024 MarketScape, which noted Planful’s strengths as a scalable platform, ease of use, and Microsoft 365 integration with Planful Spotlight.

Nucleus Research uncovers how technology drives ROI. Its Value Matrix specifically assesses software vendors using customer feedback to rate solutions on usability and functionality. The usability angle helps you understand how quickly solutions will be adopted by your teams, and the ROI angle puts a heavy weight on tangible benefits.

In 2025, Planful was named an Accelerator in the 2025 Nucleus CPM Value Matrix.

Nucleus has also published reports in 2025 highlighting how “Planful AI drives success for early adopters” and analyzing the ROI achieved by Planful customer Aceable.

Information Services Group (ISG) is a formidable global research firm offering market coverage, analyst insights, advisor perspectives, and more. It acquired Ventana Research in 2023.

Planful was included in ISG’s 2025 Buyers Guides for Record to Report in the Financial Consolidation segment, and was the only vendor placed in the Innovative category.