KNIME Business Hub Reviews

I use KNIME for clustering data analysis. 

It's a coding-less opportunity to use AI. This is the major value for me.

I had some difficulty connecting to servers. It asked me to set something up on my server and it asked me for a code that I needed to generate on the server. There were several steps that I messed up. I followed all of the instructions but I couldn't manage it at all. I followed the directions in several forums to find out the problem.  

There should be better documentation and the steps should be easier. 

I have been using KNIME for three to four months. 

I haven't needed to contact their support. 

I tried Python and Microsoft. 

The initial setup was super easy. It was really quick. I did it myself for personal use. It didn't take longer than half an hour. 

Some of the samples are outdated but my advice to someone considering KNIME is to use their samples. 

I would rate KNIME an eight out of ten. 

In the next release, the should have more comprehensive samples.

Our primary use case for this solution is shopping-basket analysis.

It gives much insight about business in different aspects, from understanding product portfolio to clients, much of them arouse interests from important stakeholders

It is a complete data science platform and especially good at scaling up data preparation and wrapping. It provides a large numbers of algorithms to look at data from different angles

It needs more examples, use cases, and MOOC to learn, especially with respect to the algorithms and how to practically create a flow from end-to-end.  The learning curve is steep.

We have been using this solution for six months.

Very good

Perfect

Very good and very prompt, usually in a few hours, can't complain more

I wrote Python in different IDE, however KNIME is easier to tackle with changes in data sources, processes, and expectations, etc. It is simple to work around with different situations for testing and comparison. 

Setup is very easy, no more than a normal app

I do it myself, and I am super-user level

More than worthy to invest

One of the benefit for KNIME is free for desktop version, which is enough for small team work. It is worthy to try but prepare for times to search and learn. It is not really as easy as drag and drop.

I check with Alteryx and RapidMiner

Official and structural online training is a must, which is now not enough. Or you can start something simple very easily but stuck to go deeper. However KNIME response is very prompt.

This solution is primarily used for various data analytics in an enterprise environment. 

The reality of any data analytics project including Data Science is that 90% of the effort goes into data sourcing and preparation. Data usually comes from multiple sources including data warehouses, web scraping, Excel input, free text, etc. KNIME allows you to do the 90% plus other predictive functionality.

It is a free open-source tool that performs very similarly to other expensive tools. KNIME has been great for me over the years. It allows me to connect to various sources including data warehouses, then put the processing logic together (ETL-like), which can be quite complex and produce the required output. Ultimately, it would go into Excel or Tableau for presentation.

The features that I find most valuable are:

1. The visual workflow tools for custom and complex tasks always beat raw coding languages with the agility, speed to deliver, and ease of subsequent changes.
2. Unlimited volume of data; you are only limited by the machine you run on.
3. Python and R integration.
4. Predictive functionality and text analytics. If it is not enough then you can use custom Python and R scripts.
5. Looping functionality.
6. Variables allow you to parameterize your flows.
7. Run one node at a time, which is something that Alteryx users dream of doing.
8. Managing (collapsing) sub-flows, which is another thing that Alteryx container users also dream of.

The areas that I feel need improvement are:

• It needs support for a joiner node to have three outputs (left unmatched, matched, right unmatched), as competitors do (have not checked 2019/20 releases).
• I need the ability to add additional comparison conditions to a join. For example, in SQL you can specify only rows with a date fitting within a date range from the joined file. At the moment in KNIME, you should allow a join explosion to take place and filter what you need later, but sometimes the output becomes too big.
• It would be helpful to have more examples of Java code for nodes, like Java Snippet.
• I would like to have this solution show row counts on canvas, as it would improve the control and speed to build the workflow.
• The pseudo-code types could be rationalised into one (e.g. only Java).
• I would like to see better web scraping because every time I tried, it was not up to par, although you can use Python script.

I have been using KNIME for between four and five years.

My system occasionally may crash like other similar tools, although autosave is available.

Scalability is limited to a desktop application.

Obviously, as an open-source application, your options are limited but I have found answers on forums when I needed help.

Recently I have been using Alteryx so I have collected a few points on differences in both tools. Both are good, I can conclusively say I could go back to KNIME and be as effective data professional as I am with Alteryx.

I have to use Alteryx due to my client's tool choice, but I know that what I am doing with Alteryx right now could be done better in KNIME. Of course, Alteryx has its own advantages for certain areas.

It is a relatively simple install. You can even avoid installing it and run from a directory.

KNIME is free as a stand-alone desktop-based platform but if you want to get a KNIME server then you can find the cost on their website. The fact that KNIME is open source may create challenges from an IT security view in an enterprise environment.

For this review, I would include Alteryx and Lavastorm (the latter is no longer available).

If you need a good Visualisation functionality, you should use Tableau or something of that caliber. However, the data prep can be done KNIME, which would give you extra confidence that what goes into your Visualisation layer is correct.

Overall, KNIME is definitely worth considering.

We are using KNIME for basic analytics to reduce the amount of processing time. We found that it takes a lot of time for scripting on the cloud, so we have been using it locally on our PCs.  

While the product has not yet improved our organization, we expect to use it in full deployments with our clients to greatly reduce their costs and make our services more attractive.  

The most valuable part of the solution is the machine learning part. The second feature that we use most is big data connectivity. When we deployed the architecture, we directed our IDS (Intrusion Detection System) server to where the big data will be on our servers. Then we needed some kind of basic machine learning and obviously. After that, we connected it with Tableau visualization. Now we are writing the big data part of our solution along with the overall machine learning. These two parts will be the most important for our business going forward.  

I think also connectivity with hybrid databases and also integration with languages like Python are great advantages to what we are seeking to do in our environment. We have been using these features extensively and we find them to be very valuable in achieving what we hoped to achieve with the tool.  

One thing that I found was that in the open-source version of the KNIME analytics platform, we see difficulties in scheduling jobs. If the scheduler could be updated in the open-source version, the software will be easier to schedule properly and to use efficiently.  

The second time that I faced difficulty using KNIME was with data processing time. When we use large chunks of data for local processing, the processing is very slow. We do not want to move these big data often. For me, it seemed that moving one gigabyte of data went very slowly. So, the second thing that I would really like to see is a better ability to handle large amounts of data locally with KNIME in an efficient manner.  

The third area that might be improved is that when we have a large amount of data — let's say like five gigabytes — then there is one panel completely ignored. The impact of that on the results of our data processing is not good. So I would really like to see the load balancing and the overall processing time substantially reduced.  

So the things I would most like to see are the ability to handle large amounts of data and improved performance in processing.  

We have been working with KNIME for about six months.  

We do not have many people using the solution in our company at this point because the tool is comparatively new to us. There are around three or four users right now. We do have plans to increase the usage and the number of users. We have been planning it because we have growth opportunities with some clients. The only potential problem is that right now, we are under-confident, in our capability to implement pure KNIME solutions without more discovery and testing. So, we are planning it to replace Alteryx eventually with KNIME. But as of now, we are just planning. We do plan to increase the usage in the future but we have not done anything yet regarding that.  

The initial setup was very straightforward. It was not complex at all.  

We deployed it, we installed it ourselves on our local system server.  

We have done a few projects with some of our clients in KNIME. In these cases, we mainly used KNIME because of its ability to work in a data center environment in an enterprise system. This was one of the most important things that we were looking for. The second point was that KNIME is an open-source analytics platform. The point is that if some client has less data or a relatively small database, then we can use the open-source platform instead of using Alteryx, which is fairly expensive. These are the options we advise our clients about.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as an eight out of ten. I honestly do not feel familiar enough with this product that my rating is accurate as I need to be more familiar with it over time. On the other hand, I have used KNIME and other tools in a similar category — like Informatica and Alteryx. Informatica is purely a data warehouse software. Alteryx is something we use frequently. So I have used three ETL tools. If I compared KNIME with Alteryx which are the most similar of the three, then I think KNIME is much better for our purposes. Strictly as a comparison with Alteryx, I would rate KNIME as an eight.  

I am just considering whether to use it or not. I am trying it to determine whether it is helpful or not. So far, it can solve my data analysis problems and I think it's a powerful data analysis tool.

It provides very fast problem solving and I don't need to do much coding in it. I just drag and drop.

They could add more detailed examples of the functionality of every node, how it works and how we can use it, to make things easier at the beginning.

The stability is great.

Most of the time it can solve the problems.

I have not used KNIME for a very long time so I have not used technical support so far.

Previously I used some programming tools, but I needed to do a lot of coding. KNIME is simpler to use.

The most important factor when I'm looking at which vendor or product to go with is the program's features.

I think the setup is straightforward.

I would rate it at nine out of 10. It's good, it makes thing easier.

I mainly used it to perform predictive modeling projects, such as customer-churn predictions and HR attrition predictions. The environments are mainly SQL-databases or CSV files.

The installation I worked with to perform the analyses was a regular laptop with no computational server behind it, which may have an impact on the capacity of the program handling very large databases or files.

The clients I performed the analyses for were all very pleased with the results. For churn prediction, one of the companies proactively started contacting clients with high risk to churn, resulting in drastically decreasing churn rates.

For organizations with a small team of data analysts or data scientists, it is a very easy tool to become familiar with predictive modeling, and makes it possible to hand over projects to colleagues without the need to extensively document them.

• The very easy-to-use visual interface
• Help functions and clear explanations of the functionalities and the used algorithms
• Data Wrangling and data manipulation functionalities are certainly sufficient, as well as the looping possibilities which help you to automate parts of the analysis

For inexperienced analysts or data scientists, it is a very easy tool to take your first steps in modeling and analytics.

The visualization functionalities are not good (cannot be compared to, for instance, the possibilities in R).

The program is not fit for handling very large files or databases (greater than  1GB); it gets too slow and has a tendency to crash easily.

I used it quite intensively for 10 months, long enough get familiar with it, to follow training, to use it in in several projects, to ask questions on the user forum.

We use KNIME for two main reasons:

Automation: The main purpose of our utilization it to run scheduled workflows (such as CRM campaigns, business reports, etc.) on a recurrent basis. We have created ETLs to automate most of the recurrent tasks and we let it run via batch files.

Ad-hoc business cases: We leverage KNIME flexibility in order to query data from our database and manipulate them for any ad-hoc business case, before presenting results to stakeholders.

In addition to leveraging KNIME flexibility to query data from our database for ad-hoc business cases, the product is very easy to understand even for non-analytical stakeholders. Sometimes we provide them with KNIME workflows and teach them how to run it on their own machine. In some particular cases, my team builds the workflow and then we hand it over to the stakeholder, who can run it on his own by inserting a variable or changing a few settings in the workflows.

• Easy to connect with every database: We use queries from SQL, Redshift, Oracle.
• Easy to have a clear view of the data at every single step of the ETL process, with the consequent possibility of changing the flow according to your needs.

I think the data visualization part is the area most in need of improvement.

I’ve been using KNIME for more than four years now. I started using it in the company I was working for in Rome (Paddy Power Italy), then I moved to headquarters in Dublin (Paddy Power Ireland/UK) and started using it for their business. Eventually, I moved to the United States and started using it for my current company (TVG-Betfair) and it is currently the main analytics tool in both our offices (New Jersey and Los Angeles).

I would definitely rate it a nine out of 10. I am very happy with the product and it would be hard to find something better in the market.

All analytics individuals use KNIME to integrate multiple sources of data (SQL, excel, etc.) and prep the data for static reporting.

We are able to automate several functions which were done manually. I can integrate several data sets quickly and easily, to support analytics.

• Visual workflow creation
• Workflow variables (parameterisation)
• Automatic caching of all intermediate data sets in the workflow
• Scheduling with the server

The overall user experience feels unpolished. 

• Data field type conversion is a real hassle, and date fields are a hassle.
• Documentation is pretty poor.
• User community is average at best.

It is pretty stable.

Partially, only with very large datasets (10M+ records or so); its reliance on RAM is a bit high for normal PCs. Servers should be fine.

Not applicable (not local in South Africa).

Alteryx. KNIME is much cheaper. The KNIME desktop client is free. KNIME handles 95% of our requirements.

Straightforward.

KNIME desktop is free, which is great for analytics teams. Server is well priced, depending on how much support is required.

Alteryx.

I rate it a seven out of 10. It's very useful but needs polish and improved UX and UI in several areas.

For quick adoption, either get KNIME to provide training, or have a local knowledge expert on hand who is well versed with data workflow tools, and databases if necessary.