which is best to use Fusionchart or Highcharts?

Question

I am building a reporting solution. After a lot of research I have narrowed my choices down to two solutions: HighChart and FusionChart. Between these two, I am still not able to decide which I should buy.

Does FusionChart support animated redrawing of the chart like HighCharts? Is flash performant with large data sets?

FusionCharts has published a comparison of it and other products

What are some of the pros and cons of these reporting options, so I can decide which is better suited for my application?

Solution 1

When it comes to choosing between a Mazda and Porche, it ultimately boils down to your taste and requirements! ;)

Where most of us go wrong is to ignore certain requirement parameters that are latent and notional in nature. So, let me put them forward to you:

You need pure JavaScript charting: Both products provide the same.

You need performance on large data-points: Both products can handle 1000 odd data-points very easily. However, FusionCharts has a specific "ZoomLine" chart to handle data-points of greater than 10k. Also, the fact that Flash is slower on plotting data is not quite correct, almost all JS charting components have severe performance issue on Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8.

Product support: FusionCharts provides 24x7 dedicated customer support and has a very extensive documentation to help you through. If you ever get issues around your implementation, you always have dedicated customer support to fall back to. They help out in figuring out implementation and other issues and provide workarounds + fixes for the same. Over 80% of fortune 500 companies rely on this as one of the key factors. When it comes to practical development, you will not need pages after pages of docs and huge API. You would need quick solution and configuration that does exactly what you want and that too very intuitively.

Less hassle in development: If you consider that your charting solution to be intelligent and present data aesthetically without you having to configure 1000 odd parameters, then FusionCharts is your bet. For example, if you want your chart's legend to be on right, what would you do... just say legendPosition="right" or configure 10 parameters to resize canvas, position the caption, etc etc? This reduces your overall effort in developing and maintaining your software and as such... save money!

Customization and variety of animations: Highcharts has more customizable animations when compared to FusionCharts JavaScript Charts. Nevertheless, FusionCharts Flash has more advanced animations and that are really easy to setup. Also, FusionCharts is definitely working upon adding more animation customization options for JS variants soon.

Variety of charts: I do not yet know whether you need more chart types or not. If you need charts such as radar, waterfall, etc and gauges (widgets) then FusionCharts is your best bet.

Solution 2

Both the charts ranks top on the market.I prefer it depends upon the application you choose. I personally prefer HighCharts over FusionCharts because High charts provides an insight documentation and API support.I was using it for a stock based application which I felt HighCharts had an edge over the FusionCharts.The customization of HighCharts was as easy as pie when you go through the High Stock API.