1. Home
  2. Data Analytics and BI Services
  3. Alteryx Reviews
  4. User Review of Alteryx
Best for big data prep
October 05, 2022

Best for big data prep

Gottfried Mathurin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Alteryx Designer

Overall Satisfaction with Alteryx

Alteryx is to my knowledge the most efficient tool for agile data preparation. I use it massively as a low-code yet elaborate-feature-rich piece of software to acquire, transform, cleanse and analyse data, generally big data, from various and heterogeneous sources as required for the corporate internal audit assignments which cover the full scope of business units and activities in the company I work with.
  • data prep
  • acquiring data from various sources in various formats
  • combining (joins), (even fuzzy) matching, parsing
  • dealing swiftly with big data
  • providing a graphical (audit) process trail
  • (basic) machine learning functionalities
  • practical visualization outputs
  • (even) more straightforward integration of Python and R code
  • SQL push down (translation of workflows into SQL code)
  • (full blown) cloud version of Designer
  • data prep can be developed 10x faster than with classic tools or raw SQL
  • low-code enables embarking directly data owners saving a layer of consultants or IT
Alteryx runs surprisingly quick even on complex workflows and huge volumes of data. Comparing against other tools, colleagues or counterparts are often baffled by the efficacy of Alteryx no matter how challenging the input data quality or the necessary transformation. Errors are in most case automatically identified and highlighted by the system which helps greatly and quickens investigation and remediation along the workflows under construction.
These features might make sense as future improvements once fully developed and in the same spirit as the rest of the environment. The existing tools do not provide the level of user experience one could expect from a tool like Alteryx. They feel like late "quick and dirty" add-ons to try and mimic trendy functionalities of other specialized solutions. Alteryx if entering this field should concentrate on a few key and canonical machine learning tools, provide the simplest possible user experience (ass the rest of Alteryx does) and make sure outputs are not limited to preset report sheets but also actionable data outputs and learned parameter outputs.
Knime is open source and free. It also positions itself a little on machine learning. But the user experience and the features available are far less powerful than Alteryx. I was a former user of Lavastorm (ancestor of Infogix Data360) and got acquainted with the low-code graphical approach thanks to this tool. RapidMiner is the Alteryx for machine learning, but is not at all as tooled as Alteryx for data prep. I also like to use Orange BioLab which is really for machine learning and offers an excellent low-code/graphical user experience... on top of being free.

Do you think Alteryx delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Alteryx's feature set?

Yes

Did Alteryx live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Alteryx go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Alteryx again?

Yes

To any "Excel power-user kind of" profile, to any any data owner willing to reap information from huge volumes of data and facing data prep difficulties, I would definitely recommend Alteryx. Yet, Alteryx is not the best suited for machine learning, even in a low-code approach and should for such needs be regarded as a very useful preparation tool before actual machine learning processes. Alteryx deploys well bottom up, pushed by thrilled users and doers. It is not to be launched as an ERP-like project from top down, with armies of consultants and project managers.