KNIME Reviews

I am promoting the use of KNIME because of my background as a computer scientist and my experience programming in languages, such as Pascal, Python, and R. Many of my junior colleagues at the university lack proficiency in computing, and KNIME is an effective tool for introducing beginners to programming. The platform is user-friendly and does not require coding, making it accessible for those who can learn the basics in just an hour through video tutorials.

One way KNIME has improved our organization is by allowing us to perform analyses that we previously couldn't. We often start with data in Excel or CSV format, and the process of importing data from other software, such as SPSS or STATA can be challenging. With KNIME, the process is simplified, as we can easily import the data with a single node, making it quick and efficient.

There are many valuable features in KNIME. One of the most useful aspects is that it can read a wide variety of data file types. Additionally, the ability to manipulate data, such as deleting rows or columns, is very helpful. I also use many of the nodes for analyzing data, such as doing frequencies and cross tabs. I have used it for machine learning tasks, like decision trees and random forests. It also has neural network capabilities, but I am not an expert in that area, so I cannot comment on it.

It's a very powerful and simple tool to use.

KNIME has met all of my needs so far. It has excellent data visualization capabilities. Additionally, it has a text analysis package, which I haven't used. However, I am satisfied with the features currently available and it has a strong support community.

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.

I have been using KNIME for approximately two years.

KNIME is highly stable, it's been working for over 10 years.

In terms of scalability, I haven't personally pushed KNIME to its limits. I have used it to work with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of cases and it has performed well on my own Microsoft Windows 10 PC. It has completed everything I wanted to do within a maximum of 10 seconds, but usually much less, often taking only a second or two. It sometimes seems immediate, but I have not tested it with hundreds of thousands or millions of cases.

The server version is certainly scalable. However, I am not using that version. I am using the desktop version, known as the Workbench. The server version can handle large datasets, such as those found in genomics, proteomics, and chemistry databases that are in the millions, so it is clearly capable of scaling. I am not able to comment on the performance of the server version as I have not personally used it.

I have not contacted the company for technical support. They have a community hub where many users contribute and I have used that for assistance and it has worked well for me. I am not commenting on the company's specific support services, but rather on the facility provided by the company for users to communicate with each other. Often, you can't distinguish whether the person providing the advice is an official representative of the company or a fellow user.

The support provided by the community hub is excellent. You can post questions and usually receive a reply within 24 hours. Sometimes you even receive workflow that can be easily integrated into your own work, saving you the time and effort of retyping it.

The initial setup of KNIME is trivial. I only needed to download and it run.

For beginners, the free desktop version is very attractive, but the full server version can be more expensive. I have only used the free version and it offers a fair pricing system. I have been promoting it to others without any compensation or request from the company, simply because I am enthusiastic about it. I am not aware of the pricing for the server version, but it seems to be widely used.

My advice to others starting out with the solution is for them to look up videos on the solution because there are hundreds of them, but start with the small ones.

You can begin using KNIME with a one-hour introduction, which provides enough knowledge to complete most research tasks, but it does not cover all the fine details of the platform. KNIME offers tens of thousands of packages, or nodes, that are available for download to perform various tasks such as text processing or regression. It is not possible to learn all of it at once, it's best to start with analyzing data that interests you and then expanding your knowledge as you go along. The platform is reliable, as new features are thoroughly tested and it has never failed me in the many times that I have used it.

I rate KNIME a nine out of ten.

As a university professor instructing courses on data mining and machine learning, I incorporate both KNIME and another software application into my teaching. This approach allows me to demonstrate various use cases effectively. I actively engage my students by having them utilize both software applications, providing practical hands-on experience in the areas of data mining and machine learning.

The most valuable is the ability to seamlessly connect operators without the need for extensive programming.

To enhance accessibility and user-friendliness, there is a need for improvements in the interface and usability of deep learning and large-scale learning languages.

I have been using it for more than ten years.

I would rate its stability capabilities nine out of ten.

It provides good scalability abilities, I would rate it eight out of ten. Currently, more than sixty individuals use it on a daily basis.

They are helpful and I am highly satisfied with their customer support services. I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

We use Orange as well.

The initial setup is straightforward.

While there are certain limitations in functionality, you can still utilize it efficiently free of charge.

I would recommend it, especially for those who prefer not to program or have limited coding intervention. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

I use KNIME for analysis-related purposes. I am currently in the process of developing some models for analysis.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is a user-friendly tool where a person doesn't have to get involved with codes since you just need to drag the nodes to create your model, which is a very easy process for me.

The most difficult part of the solution revolves around its areas concerning machine learning and deep learning. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement.

I have been using KNIME since 2019. I am an end user of the solution.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

I am the only user of the solution in my company. I do provide training to other employees in my company on how to use KNIME.

I have experience with Excel, and I faced some limitations since my company had loads of data to analyze. Considering that my company had loads of data to analyze, I would say I find KNIME to be very useful.

My company has some problems related to the solution's updates. I don't know if there are some restrictions from my organization because of which I cannot update or install some extensions.

The solution can be deployed in a few minutes.

The solution is currently deployed only on my personal computer, which I use in my company.

Only one person or an IT administrator is required to take care of the installation phase of the product.

KNIME is a cheap product. I currently use KNIME's open-source version.

I have experience with Python. Compared to Python, KNIME is better because of the user-friendliness it provides. With KNIME, you don't have to get involved with codes. KNIME provides nodes, making it a very easy tool to use.

I have not received any response from my company, though I had proposed to my organization to buy KNIME so that we can use it on the servers since, right now, it is like a standalone tool used on my personal computer only. I am just a basic and not an advanced user of KNIME. I find KNIME to be a very useful tool.

Speaking about the maintenance phase of the product, I would like to say that I cannot update the solution. If a new version is released, I cannot update the product. I always have to request my organization and the IT team to download and install the product's new version for me.

I recommend others to use KNIME. I have recommended KNIME to my colleagues.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

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.

KNIME is mainly used for developing workflows for machine learning and VA. We are using integrated Python scripts.

The solution has improved our company because it is economical as it is an open-source platform. There are not a lot of costs involved.

The most valuable features of KNIME are its ability to convert your sub-workflow into a node. For example, the workflow has many individual native nodes that can be converted into a single node. This representation has simplified my workflow to a great extent. I can present my workflow in a very compact way.

I want to access more of the popular deep learning libraries or frameworks as they have in other solutions, such as TensorFlow and PyTorch. There should be better integration, and a better way to use those libraries because they are very popular. Our company uses PyTorch and TensorFlow regularly to solve many computer vision problems. We expect better integration of those two tools.

KNIME could improve when it comes to large data markets.

I have been using KNIME for approximately one and a half years.

The solution is stable but it could improve.

I rate the stability of KNIME a six out of ten.

We have approximately 25 people using this solution in my company. The employees typically do business analytics with MLS and DLLs in their workflow.

We are not using the solution at its full capacity.

I rate the scalability of KNIME a six out of ten. 

I have not contacted the support from KNIME directly. We use online forums and blogs.

We used Alteryx prior to KNIME.

We do the deployment of the solution in-house. We have a team of approximately five to seven people who not only take care of these pipelines, and workflows in this solution, but also do a lot of AI and ML module developments.

This is a free open-source solution.

We selected KNIME rather than Alteryx because of the price comparison.

We usually only use the coding methods using Python. When people don't have much experience with coding, then we always recommend they choose the concepts of analytics and machine learning, mainly a no-code tool, such as KNIME or Alteryx. They become close to citizen developers. We will teach them coding aspects later. They always start with a no-code or a low-code tool, such as KNIME and Alteryx. Once they learn slowly, we switch them over to coding access.

I would recommend this solution for use cases that has a small amount of data and not a lot of code needed.

I rate KNIME a six out of ten.

I am a basic user, doing a data science course.

I am using Knime more from a study perspective, rather than a practical work application.

I am fairly competent with creating workflows and automating some basic things in Knime.

NA

From a user-friendliness perspective, it's a great tool.

I think some of the online training content could be better, although I have been able to find all of the information. At times they're quite lengthy, and for me to go through everything and then get a resolution takes a good amount of time.

They could have a more structured node-wise training model, where I can simply get into it. For example, if I need to understand a node to create pivot tables, I have to go through the training mode to understand what the functionality is.

If they had a more structured training model it would be very helpful.

It would be helpful to launch more certification programs online. 

There could be better marketing. The awareness of Knime is limited, especially for small organizations. When you compare with PowerBI, there is a lot of active marketing put into their product, also, having Microsoft associated with it is an advantage.

They have to step up on the marketing aspect and the ability to digitize using Knime. Many are aware of other tools such as PowerBI.

In the next release, I would like to see the certification available for active users.

Also the costing aspect of the certification, there could be more local impact time zone programs with a bit of costing dissension to encourage more active users in Knime who can then move to the server version in their organization.

I have been using Knime for approximately one year.

We are in the testing phase of this solution.

It is quite stable. I have not been faced with any issues since I have been using this solution.

Knime is a scalable product.

We have five power users who are test prototype users at the moment. We are trying to sell that prototype to the management so that we can deploy it on a larger scale.

I have never had the need to reach out to technical support.

At some point when I move on with the server versions, I might need some help.

The desktop version, it's more of an install and then just run it.

At this time, I am using the free version of Knime.

I did look at Tableau and was considering it to some extent. I felt Knime was more user-friendly and more versatile to automate tasks (most of them excel based).

I am quite supportive of this product. It has been helpful in automating a few of my accounting activities.

Digital groups such as Knime have great potential, but there needs to be more aggressiveness with marketing. There are many executives that do not know what Knime is.

My journey starts by explaining what Knime is and what the functionalities are.

I like Knime, and I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We used the product to prepare data for our team. I would prepare SQLs and check them in Oracle Developer, then create workflows in KNIME to manage and process the data, creating specific tables for modeling.

The product is a great alternative because it is not an open-source tool and offers simplicity, making it easier for our large team to use.

Sometimes, we needed more space to handle larger operations, especially since our machines had limited space and memory due to Kubernetes clusters. Breaking up SQLs was necessary to handle the data flow better.

I extensively used KNIME for about one year and at least two months.

The product is quite stable.

The platform is scalable. It is possible to configure the system to effectively manage memory and space requirements. 

I rate the scalability a seven out of ten. 

The community support is good, and plenty of shared knowledge is available.

We had licensing issues with other tools, but KNIME worked well as an alternative.

We integrated KNIME with Oracle, Apache, and other tools. It allowed us to pull data from various sources, such as Oracle, CSV, and Excel, into one consolidated table, which was very efficient.

Overall, I rate it an eight. It is a good tool, especially for our current requirements. However, there were limitations, such as space issues and occasional process slowdowns due to memory constraints. Despite these challenges, it is a solid product.

I recommend it to other professionals, particularly those who work with diverse datasets and require a flexible tool to manage data flows. It is user-friendly, especially for individuals with a background in Java or Python, as it allows for custom operations and automation, which I found very helpful in my experience.

It's mostly data preprocessing, handling, and processing (ETL) processes, as well as expanding the transport load. 

Additionally, we also work on various machine learning tasks, such as regression models and other small topics related to machine learning.

I've tried to utilize KNIME to the fullest extent possible to replace Excel. Our company has been heavily reliant on Excel for generating reports and performing data transformations. With KNIME, I've been able to combine data from Excel, SQL Server, and various other resources efficiently.

There are a few aspects that I am not entirely satisfied with. For instance, when integrating KNIME with our SAP system ERP and HANA, it's not as straightforward as expected. We need to find alternative connectors like the Teradata connector, which adds complexity.

So far, I've had some problems integrating KNIME with other solutions. Thus, it could be an area of improvement. 

We have been using KNIME for two years.

Overall, the product has been stable. It has efficiently handled the tasks we have encountered so far.

There are two end-users using KNIME in our organization. Because we are still beginners, we are only using it to learn how it works and get a better understanding of the system. We are not yet certain if we will use it extensively for all topics.

The initial setup was easy. 

I deployed the solution myself. 

We use the free version only. 

We are working with KNIME on some small projects, but we are also looking for an alternative solution to explore.

Overall, I would rate KNIME a seven out of ten because we faced a problem with the integration with other products, like SAP.