Google Sheets vs. KNIME Analytics Platform

Google Sheets is well suited in two main areas: is free to use and you don't need to buy a license to use it, comparing to the most direct competitors ; collaboration is in my opinion the best advantage, with multiple people working together and seeing others working in real time. It's less appropriate in low connectivity environments (offline capabilities)

KNIME Analytics Platform is excellent for people who are finding Excel frustrating, this can be due to errors creeping in due to manual changes or simply that there are too many calculations which causes the system to slow down and crash. This is especially true for regular reporting where a KNIME Analytics Platform workflow can pull in the most recent data, process it and provide the necessary output in one click. I find KNIME Analytics Platform especially useful when talking with audiences who are intimidated by code. KNIME Analytics Platform allows us to discuss exactly how data is processed and an analysis takes place at an abstracted level where non-technical users are happy to think and communicate which is often essential when they are subject matter experts whom you need for guidance. For experienced programmers KNIME Analytics Platform is a double-edged sword. Often programmers wish to write their own code because they are more efficient working that way and are constrained by having to think and implement work in nodes. However, those constraints forcing development in a "KNIME way" are useful when working in teams and for maintenance compared to some programmers' idiosyncratic styles.

Incentivized

• Collaborative planning : In the initial phase of project, Team leads and architects create a permission matrix along with the naming convention simultaneously, seeing who is editing / adding the details in real-time.
• Cost tracking : We use this tool to track cloud resource usage monthly costs, so that we can analyse it and send out comms for high cost based resources. By storing cost data here, it's easy for use to store data of last couple of years.
• Flexible documentation : For change logging of different scenarios we would need different / ad-hoc columns to be added on the fly, which makes using this tool much simpler then reputed third party tools.

Incentivized

• Summarize instrument level financial data with relevant statistics
• Map transactions from core extracts to groups of like transactions using rule engines
• Machine learning using random forests and other techniques to analyze data and identify correlations for use in predictive models
• Fill out sampling data from averages.

• Ease of use - I collaborate with a lot of folks on these and a lot of them have trouble using it.
• Would love more live features; for example, being able to have cells react to other inputs (checkboxes, etc) with reactive formatting
• More cross-usability with other Google products; it's hard to think of drawbacks honestly, this is a pretty seamless software.

Incentivized

• It does not have proper visualization.
• Some other BI tools (QlikView) have much easier functions for data interaction.
• Some other BI tools (Tableau) can be set up much faster.
• It is not an easy tool to use for non-tech savvy staff.

Incentivized

I am not involved in the purchase/selection process, but my organization is a Google shop, and Sheets meets most of our spreadsheet needs and works seamlessly with our other tools. I don't anticipate our switching anytime soon.

Incentivized

We are happy with Knime product and their support. Knime AP is versatile product and even can execute Python scripts if needed. It also supports R execution as well; however, it is not being used at our end

It can easily handle most uses and functions. It is only for very large datasets or advanced analysis that it either lacks the proper functions or performance begins to slow. Most employees who continue to use competitors' products do so out of preference, familiarity with the user interface, or other surface-level reasons.

Incentivized

KNIME Analytics Platform offers a great tradeoff between intuitiveness and simplicity of the user interface and almost limitless flexibility. There are tools that are even easier to adopt by someone new to analytics, but none that would provide the scalability of KNIME when the user skills and application complexity grows

Incentivized

Like most Google products, Google Sheets rarely has outages or slowness, and when it does, connection is always momentarily restored. I can't recall a time when I've been unable to access Google Sheets but able to access other sites just fine. That said, errors aren't uncommon when handling large data volume. You know what they say about using spreadsheets as databases, but sometimes it's just the most convenient option, especially for smaller or one-off projects, and not being able to store large amounts of data hampers our ability to move quickly with scrappy prototypes or full solutions. It would be great if we could better integrate our data manipulation (Apps Script) with big data in the sheet.

Incentivized

Again, Google Sheets is no exception to Google's general high speed and reliability, but load times can be slow for larger amounts of data. I've used Sheets with Zapier and have used the Python API, and speed has never been an issue.

Incentivized

I have never contacted Google Sheets support, but Google Sheets makes it very easy to report an issue or suggest a feature from Sheets itself (Help > Help Sheets improve), and I've had mostly good experiences with support for other Google products.

Incentivized

KNIME's HQ is in Europe, which makes it hard for US companies to get customer service in time and on time. Their customer service also takes on average 1 to 2 weeks to follow up with your request. KNIME's documentation is also helpful but it does not provide you all the answers you need some of the time.

Incentivized

KNIME Analytics Platform is easy to install on any Windows, Mac or Linux machine. The KNIME Server product that is currently being replaced by the KNIME Business Hub comes as multiple layers of software and it took us some time to set up the system right for stability. This was made harder by KNIME staff's deeper expertise in setting up the Server in Linux rather than Windows environment. The KNIME Business Hub promises to have a simpler architecture, although currently there is no visibility of a Windows version of the product.

Incentivized

I have found that I can do almost everything I could have done in Microsoft Excel faster and easier in Google Sheets. We recommend Google Sheets in 99.9% of our use cases and feel it meets the needs of our workers very well. I am sure there are other spreadsheet creation programs out there, but because we are already in the Google environment, adopting Google Sheets in very easy.

Incentivized

Having used both the Alteryx and [KNIME Analytics] I can definitely feel the ease of using the software of Alteryx. The [KNIME Analytics] on the other hand isn't that great but is 90% of what Alteryx can do along with how much ease it can do. Having said that, the 90% functionality and UI at no cost would be enough for me to quit using Alteryx and move towards [KNIME Analytics].

Incentivized

I'm not involved with the purchase, but I assume everything goes smoothly and that the pricing structure is predictable and reasonable. We do not get surprise fees.

Incentivized

Google Sheets works very well with multiple users. It's convenient to see in real-time who is collaborating in a sheet, down to the specific cell that they're viewing/editing. Linking Sheets across departments is convenient with the IMPORTRANGE function.

Incentivized

• Don't need to pay for windows 365 license as it is free
• Has a positive impact since I am not cursing excel for annoying problems(I don't want the new Pivot table format, I want to use Classic and I don't want to expand/collapse arrows. "x$#%")
• [Haven't] looked at return on investment on work, but has "simplified" for basic and medium spreadsheets.

Incentivized

• It is suited for data mining or machine learning work but If we're looking for advanced stat methods such as mixed effects linear/logistics models, that needs to be run through an R node.
• Thinking of our peers with an advanced visualization techniques requirement, it is a lagging product.

Incentivized