Zoho Analytics has once again earned top honors in the analytics and business intelligence space. In the newly released Wisdom of Crowds® Business Intelligence Market Study, 2026 Edition, published by Dresner Advisory Services, Zoho has been rated an Overall Leader in both the Customer Experience and Vendor Credibility models, marking the fifth consecutive year the company has secured this distinction.
"In 2026, Zoho’s scores are generally above the overall sample with some improvements in product and overall value. It is an Overall Leader in both the Customer Experience and Vendor Credibility models. It is considered high value and low TCO in the Value/TCO Model and maintains a perfect Recommend score."
— Howard Dresner, Founder and Chief Research Officer at Dresner Advisory Services
Built on real user voices
Dresner Advisory Services surveys a broad base of working BI users directly, asking them to rate their actual day-to-day experience, their trust in the vendor, and the value they feel they're getting. That methodology is what gives a Leader ranking here real weight: it's a reflection of the market's lived experience with a platform, not a polished pitch.
The study is led by Howard Dresner, Founder and Chief Research Officer at Dresner Advisory Services and the analyst credited with coining the term "business intelligence" back in 1989, alongside John Hagerty, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, who brings over four decades of experience across financials, HR, and supply chain analytics from his time at Gartner, AMR Research, Oracle, and IBM.
What the report says about Zoho
According to Howard Dresner, Founder and Chief Research Officer at Dresner Advisory Services, Zoho's 2026 scores landed above the overall sample average, with measurable gains in two areas in particular: product strength and overall value. These improvements helped push Zoho into Leader status in both of the study's headline models:
Customer Experience Model, which measures how satisfied users are with the day-to-day experience of using the platform, including usability, support, and reliability
Vendor Credibility Model, which captures how much trust customers place in the vendor's ability to deliver, innovate, and support them long-term
Beyond these two models, Zoho was also recognized as high value with low total cost of ownership in the report's Value/TCO Model, a category that weighs the cost of a platform against the value organizations report receiving from it. Perhaps most striking, Zoho maintained a perfect Recommend score, meaning that among surveyed users, satisfaction was high enough that every respondent indicated they would recommend the platform to others. In an industry where switching costs and implementation friction often dampen enthusiasm, a perfect Recommend score is a rare and notable outcome. To know more about Zoho's performance, get the full report on our website.
Relevance of 5 years of being an overall leader
Earning a Leader designation once can reflect a strong year. Earning it five years running reflects something more durable: a platform that continues to evolve in ways that keep pace with or exceed what its user base expects. BI is a fast-moving category, with shifting expectations around AI-assisted analysis, embedded reporting, and self-service data access. Maintaining Leader status across that span suggests Zoho Analytics has kept adapting without losing the qualities that earned its early recognition: usability, dependable support, and a value proposition that holds up against larger, more established competitors.
Inside the full report
For organizations currently evaluating or re-evaluating their BI stack, the full 2026 study offers more than vendor rankings. It includes:
The role of Agentic AI in business intelligence: how it's shaping the BI industry, technology, and initiatives that organizations consider strategic to their roadmap
Benchmarking data comparing current BI vendor performance against broader industry norms, useful for organizations trying to gauge whether their existing platform is keeping up
Guidance on vendor selection, including the criteria buyers are weighing most heavily when choosing or switching BI platforms today
Insight into top use cases, helping organizations understand what most companies are prioritizing when they adopt or expand BI investments, whether that's self-service reporting, embedded analytics, or AI-driven insights
Budget trend data, giving a sense of how BI spending plans are shifting heading into the next fiscal cycle, which can help teams benchmark their own budget conversations
Three findings in particular stand out this year. Half of all surveyed organizations now classify their AI maturity as either advanced or intermediate, signaling that AI adoption in BI workflows has moved well past the experimental stage for many teams. At the same time, the average longevity of BI tools currently in use is increasing, suggesting organizations are settling into platforms rather than churning through vendors. And self-service BI adoption has seen a notable resurgence, pointing to renewed appetite for putting analytics capabilities directly in the hands of business users rather than gatekeeping them behind technical teams.
Takeaways
A Leader ranking in Customer Experience and Vendor Credibility—sustained across five years—reflects ongoing trust from a large community of real users who rely on Zoho Analytics to turn raw data into decisions and who continue to vouch for it when surveyed independently. As the BI landscape keeps shifting toward AI-augmented analysis and broader self-service adoption, this kind of consistent, user-driven recognition offers a credible signal for any organization deciding which platform deserves a serious look.
To get the full breakdown of vendor rankings, methodology, and market trends, download the full Wisdom of Crowds® Business Intelligence Market Study 2026 report from our website.
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