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KNIME vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

KNIME
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Data Mining (1st), Data Science Platforms (2nd)
Pentaho Business Analytics
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (21st), Cloud Operations Analytics (4th), Reporting (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. KNIME is designed for Data Mining and holds a mindshare of 25.3%, down 27.5% compared to last year.
Pentaho Business Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 0.4% mindshare, down 0.6% since last year.
Data Mining
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Laurence Moseley - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a drag-and-drop interface and AI capabilities
It's difficult to pinpoint one single feature because KNIME has so many. For starters, it's very easy to learn. You can get started with just a one-hour video. The drag-and-drop interface makes it user-friendly. For example, if you want to read an Excel file, drag the "read Excel file" node from the repository, configure it by specifying the file location, and run it. This gives you a table with all your data. Next, you can clean the data by handling missing values, selecting specific columns you want to analyze, and then proceeding with your analysis, such as regression or correlation. KNIME has over 4,500 nodes available for download. In addition, KNIME offers various extensions. For instance, the text processing extension allows you to process text data efficiently. It's more powerful than other tools like NVivo and Palantir. KNIME also has AI capabilities. If you're unsure about the next step, the AI assistant can suggest the most frequently used nodes based on your previous work. Another valuable feature is the integration with Python. If you need to perform a task that requires Python, you can simply add a Python node, write the necessary code,
Sayan König - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up
The repository should be improved. There should be the possibility to have versioning, to make it combinable with some Git repositories or something like that, to check out the processes and make sure it has a traceable history. The solution could really be improved. There are too many bugs in our version.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"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."
"KNIME is fast and the visualization provides a lot of clarity. It clarifies your thinking because you can see what's going on with your data."
"From a user-friendliness perspective, it's a great tool."
"I know I don't use it to its full capacity, but I love the Rule Engine feature. It has allowed me to create lookup tables on the fly and break down text fields into quantifiable data."
"KNIME is more intuitive and easier to use, which is the principal advantage."
"Usability, and organising workflows in very neat manner. Controlling workflow through variables is something amazing."
"It provides very fast problem solving and I don't need to do much coding in it. I just drag and drop."
"This solution is easy to use and it can be used to create any kind of model."
"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."
"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."
"It is robust, offers market intelligence, and utilizes modules effectively."
"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Easy to use components to create the job."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud."
"Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it."
 

Cons

"KNIME can improve by adding more automation tools in the query, similar to UiPath or Blue Prism. It would make the data collection and cleanup duties more versatile."
"We do not have much documentation in Portuguese."
"One area that could be improved is increasing awareness and adoption of KNIME among organizations. Despite its capabilities, it is not as well-known as other tools. The advertising and marketing efforts to reach out to companies and universities have not been very successful."
"The main issue with KNIME is that it sometimes uses too much CPU and RAM when working with large amounts of data."
"For graphics, the interface is a little confusing."
"It's difficult to provide input on the improvement area because it's more of self-learning. However, there are times when I am not able to do certain things. I don't know if it's because the solution doesn't allow me or if it's because of the lack of knowledge."
"There are some parameters that I would like to have at a bigger scale. The upper limit of one node that tries to find spots or areas in photos was too small for us. It would need to be bigger."
"There are a lot of tools in the product and it would help if they were grouped into classes where you can select a function, rather than a specific tool."
"Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process."
"The repository should be improved."
"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."
"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."
"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."
"Version control would be a good addition."
"Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a Community Edition and paid versions available."
"KNIME offers a free version"
"KNIME is a cost-effective solution because it’s free of cost."
"There is no cost for using KNIME because it is an open-source solution, but you have to pay if you need a server."
"We're using the free academic license just locally. I went for KNIME because they have a free academic license."
"At this time, I am using the free version of Knime."
"This is an open-source solution that is free to use."
"KNIME is a cheap product. I currently use KNIME's open-source version."
"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
"Free and commercial versions are available."
"Pentaho is expensive ."
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Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 10, 2013
Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition
Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about KNIME?
Since KNIME is a no-code platform, it is easy to work with.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for KNIME?
I rate the product’s pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with KNIME?
For graphics, the interface is a little confusing. So, this is a point that could be improved.
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
For those starting to use this tool, there is a free version available which is beneficial. The company also finds the pricing to be good.
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java. The platform works with Java, and it has brought some issues to the company.
 

Also Known As

KNIME Analytics Platform
Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Infocom Corporation, Dymatrix Consulting Group, Soluzione Informatiche, MMI Agency, Estanislao Training and Solutions, Vialis AG
Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Find out what your peers are saying about Knime, Weka, IBM and others in Data Mining. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.