We have many use cases for this solution.
For example, we used it for data prep and blending as well as machine learning. We built customer 360, have used it for labor optimization, and demand forecasting.
Download the Alteryx Buyer's Guide including reviews and more. Updated: June 2022
Alteryx can be used to speed up or automate your business processes and enables geospatial and predictive solutions. Its platform helps organizations answer business questions quickly and efficiently, and can be used as a major building block in a digital transformation or automation initiative. With Alteryx, you can build processes in a more efficient, repeatable, and less error-prone way. Unlike other tools, Alteryx is easy to use without an IT background. The platform is very robust and can be used in virtually any industry or functional area.
With Alteryx You Can:
Alteryx Features Include:
Some of the most valuable Alteryx features include:
Scalability, stability, flexibility, fast performance, no-code analytics, data processing, business logic wrapping, scheduling, ease of use, data blending from different platforms, geo-referencing, good customization capabilities, drag and drop functionality, intuitive user interface, connectors, machine learning, macros, simple GUI, integration with Python, good data transformation, good documentation, multiple database merging, and easy deployment.
Alteryx Can Be Used For:
Alteryx Benefits
Some of the benefits of using Alteryx include
:
Reviews from Real Users
"Automation is the most valuable aspect for us. The ability to wrap business logic around the data is very helpful." - Theresa M., Senior Capacity Planner at a financial services firm
"Alteryx has made us more agile and increased the speed and effectiveness of decision making." - Richard F., Director, Digital Experience & Media at Qdoba Restaurant Corporation
"The scheduling feature for the automation is excellent." - Data Analytics Engineer at a tech services company
"The product is very stable and super fast, five-star. It's significantly more stable than its nearest competitor." - Director at a non-tech company
“A complete solution with very good user experience and a nice user interface.” - Solutions Consultant at a tech services company
"There are a lot of good customization capabilities." - Advance Analytics PO at a pharma/biotech company
AnalyticsIq Inc., belk, BloominBrands Inc., Cardinalhealth, Cineplex, Dairy Queen
We have many use cases for this solution.
For example, we used it for data prep and blending as well as machine learning. We built customer 360, have used it for labor optimization, and demand forecasting.
Alteryx has made us more agile and increased the speed and effectiveness of decision making.
All of the features are valuable to us.
The data prep and blending are great but so is the machine learning functionality.
We used spatial analysis, which is a good feature.
The server is too expensive for what you get and it is really a designer desktop on a server. It is not worth the money.
We have been using Alteryx for four years.
It is fairly stable and we have had no major issues.
With respect to scalability, it is rather good at handling large data sets.
Grazitti Interactive is very responsive and very helpful.
We did not use another solution prior to this one.
The initial setup is very easy.
We used Grazitti Interative. They are excellent!
We did not calculate a specific ROI.
The server pricing is high.
We did not evaluate other options before choosing Alteryx.
The team uses Alteryx for many things because they code various algorithms to create different dashboards. These are used as solutions for various things from sales to customer experience to whatever else the customer needs. So there are many areas where the team is using the product. There is not one, but as of now, there are some 30 different use cases that we have.
The ease-of-use has allowed our business users to directly create their own solutions without the use of additional development resources.
I think the most valuable feature is the ease of use for my business scientists. They do not need to be experts in R and Python coding, and they can do their complete analysis projects without knowing the code. I think that one of the biggest reasons we are depending on Alteryx.
I'm sure there is always development happening with the product, but I think there should be both cloud and on-premises options. We have not seen a cloud deployment and have not heard they will be making one available. I think if there is the cloud deployment available, it would definitely be more convenient for some users to engage with and use while lowering the implementation costs.
Cloud deployment would be easier for us and our clients because a lot of services that we push to the clients are through the cloud only. It is expensive to buy additional licensing, and it is time and resource consuming to install onto our own hardware — which itself requires maintenance and administrative attention. On-premises can raise the cost of deployment over just using a cloud enrollment option.
We are one of the main solution providers in the region and we have been using this solution for almost two years.
The solution is stable. We experience no bugs, glitches or crashes.
We can scale usage of the product as much as we want and we do that depending on the instructions that we have from the client. It is quite scalable in that regard.
We have more than 50 users who are using this solution within our company. They are a mix of data scientists, administration and business users as well.
Alteryx is used quite extensively in our organization and we are planning to increase the usage in the short term.
We are sometimes in touch with Alteryx technical support. If I had to evaluate them, the waiting times are not long, the response, in general, is pretty good. So we are satisfied with their support work.
I would say the initial setup is straightforward. It takes the technical team just a few days to deploy this solution. It is deployed in days, not months or weeks.
In terms of deployment, you only really need one person to complete it and that is good enough. You might use two technicians depending on the skill set, the scale of the deployment and the business areas the client focuses on. The maintenance is pretty cheap. The same people that do the deployment manage it for us.
We do not use an integrator, seller or consultant for the deployment as our team has training and they do these things.
We have a yearly cost that we pay for the licensing. We do not pay any costs in addition to the licensing fees. The technical support is included as part of the fees that we pay.
Before we choose Alteryx, we did weigh other options from different vendors. In fact, we still use other technologies. We cannot properly service client needs by just using Alteryx as the only solution we offer. Because client needs differ, we are using other products that we evaluated and determined were also serviceable technologies to deliver for client use.
Advice that I would give to people considering Alteryx as a solution depends on the real needs from business to business and in accord with what use cases they have. I think Alteryx definitely takes away the potential problem of having to have a lot of technical expertise. Any business user can use Alteryx to develop their business case and use the program's options much quicker without having the technical knowledge and programming know-how. It really depends on the skills and resources of the individuals in the company. They should use Alteryx if they want users to be able to walk through the process and deploy their own use cases without having a deeper technical knowledge and skills that other products may require.
What we have learned from using the product is that it is definitely a great advantage for the business users to not need to have great technical skills and programming knowledge to complete their analysis. The business users can build their own analytical use case, visualize what they want to do more easily and quickly, and revise it without any dependencies on other staff and additional communications.
On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as a seven-out-of-ten.
I am using the product for making machine learning models for particular uses that we have to focus on analytics.
I didn't like the data analysis features at first, but they were actually quite good. The built-in machine-learning models that they have are quite extensive and useful. There are a few models that are normally not found in any other drag-and-drop interface platforms. For example, when I was using and testing other tools, I could not find vector autoregression models. I also could not find the rather complicated tentative models and other model types that I find very useful. Those are built-in to Alteryx as cubes. On top of that, the capability of writing Python commands and creating our own tools and our own models for machine learning make the solution customizable and quite interesting.
There are a few ways the solution could be made better. The graphical user interface could be made more friendly. I mean from the GUI point of view, it is a little dated. But from a functionality point of view, I think even for people who do not know the coding part and who are more business users than programmers, they would not have a very hard time using Alteryx for creating machine learning models. It is quite good and quite useful already without improvement to the GUI. It could just stand to be more modern-looking.
I would like if they could make some type of free license for the product. Not a free full license but a limited edition or limited capability free version. The limited-time version is a little restrictive. A free, open-term desktop version like Power BI and Tableau and KNIME might help users more with discovery and utility.
I've used this solution for about five or six months.
We were using Alteryx from a development point of view. We did not use it to test it to its breakage point. So it handled our demands and was quite stable.
The response time was quite good. Even running on a laptop, it was like using it on my desktop. The response is consistent, fast and stable.
From my experience and from my point of view, the solution is quite scalable. We did not use it for the production system yet, but from my experience of using it on a laptop more recently, it runs with a few hundred thousand rows and columns without a problem.
The other good side of the scalability is the number of connectors available for data sources. They have more than 200 connectors, which allows access to well more sources than anything I have needed.
I did not contact the technical support at Alteryx directly. When we initially got the license, they had us talk to the local support here in Singapore. We went to them for a small issue to see what exactly the product can do and then we did not need any support from their support at all. We are quite adept with this solution and modeling. We called up the Alteryx local support to show us how to do that one thing but it was very easy. Once we saw it, we did not have additional reasons to contact them again.
Before Alteryx we tried of KNIME. The learning curve for KNIME is steeper than Alteryx. Alteryx is much more user-friendly than KNIME, at least from our experience on both products. Also, KNIME functionality is limited for the free version so it was harder to explore the full capabilities. When we tried the free license for Alteryx, we got the full use of the client license for 14 days and then we were able to get an extension to explore our testing of it for some time. But we did use KNIME before that for long enough to be familiar with the differences. My impression of Alteryx is that it is more user-friendly than KNIME and the built-in modeling in Alteryx is much better than KNIME.
The initial setup was very straightforward. I was able to install it and get it running up and running quickly and the process was very simple.
When I started doing a machine-learning model in a project writing my own code, it took me in-all about three or four days to complete it. For my initial experimentation, I decided to replicate that model in Alteryx. As someone who understood models but did not know the program at all, it took me two hours or less than that to complete the test. Once you learn how to drag-and-drop things in the interface, it is very easy to start on development as long as you know what you want to do.
We did not use any help as far as an integrator, reseller or consultant. We did the deployment ourselves.
Our approximate cost as we understand from the company is that the total is $5,000 per user per year for the desktop production license. So, for us and the ten licenses we need, that means the production license would be around $50,000 per year. That might not be the exact number, but I think it is close enough to be correct. With that, there are not any additional costs. Probably you can pay for support and for training if you want something like a dedicated workshop. That might cost more as an add-on but there is no additional cost for using the tool itself.
I have a really good impression of Alteryx at this point in time. So I would suggest to people who are considering this type of solution to go ahead and try it. If you are looking for a self-service data analytics tool, Alteryx is a good solution. It does a good job of end-to-end integration as well as accessing data from multiple sources or email modes. Then you can push data out to Tableau and Power BI or tools like that if you need other capabilities. So, 'go ahead and try it' would be my recommendation.
On a scale from one to ten where ten is the best and one it the worst, I would rate Alteryx as easily a solid eight. From my use case and considering the point that I'm not seeing and using everything, I can't give it more or less. But from our use case and what we have in our company, it is pretty good for several purposes.
We primarily use the solution for basic data analysis and forecasting.
The giga size is very good.
The solution offers excellent predicting power. The accuracy and confidence have been great.
You don't have to be tech-savvy or technical to use the solution. There's a lot of drag-and-drop functionality.
The visualization could be improved, as could the BID bots.
The solution could work on the BI side of the tool to make it a bit better.
I've been working with the solution for five or six months.
I've liked working with Alteryx so far.
The solution is totally scalable. Users can work with the data at all levels and determine if you want to scale it. You just have to choose the product model with the larger amount of data.
The technical support is very good.
I've worked with other solutions such as Knime, among others, however, in a corporate environment, I've only worked with Alteryx.
The initial setup is very straightforward. You just need to go through the manual. Reading it makes everything easy.
Each deployment is different. Some jobs seem easy, but then the back end is complex. Other times it can be deployed in practically one click. It all depends on the customer requirements.
We're Alteryx partners. We handle various deployment models, depending on the client's needs.
I've worked with other solutions such as Knime, among other tools for data science and data prep. It's great that this solution is just drag and drop and easy.
I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate it 9.5 out of ten.
My company uses Alteryx differently for each of our clients' individual cases.
It has helped across my organization.
Let's say we have a client that has been mostly using Excel for their data preparation, data casing, etc. By using Alteryx, they now spend most of their time in the data prep and then just go to reporting. It saves a lot of time.
I actually like all of their features. But the feature I have found most valuable is the data profiling. I can check the quality of my data and everything else.
Alteryx is very good - I don't see any room for improvement. I can't think of any downside to Alteryx.
I use a lot of third-party tools with Alteryx. It would be great if Alteryx could take third party tools and incorporate them.
I have been working with Alteryx around two years.
In terms of stability, Alteryx is stable.
It is scalable. We currently have all of our almost 20 employees using Alteryx with plans to expand.
Their technical support is good.
The initial setup was straightforward. Depending on your machine it usually takes less than 20 minutes.
Alteryx is very good. You can do literately anything on Alteryx. Alteryx is so advanced. It's just drag and drop. You don't need to know any coding or other technical stuff to use Alteryx.
On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is the worst and 10 is the best, I would rate Alteryx a 10. No doubt, a 10.
We use this solution for self-service data preparation from data warehouses and data marts.
It gives the power back to the end-users. It brings flexibility and accuracy to our new analytics.
The most valuable feature of this solution is data preparation.
Alteryx Connect (data catalog) is also really important for us.
The event handling, such that the file system watcher, is in need of improvement.
Data blending and complex data manipulation and augmentation.
Workflows and a large number of tools were a quick QA methodology and rapid prototype creation tool.
More emphasis on extensible R and data augmentation interface design.
ETL.
Fast data processing and cleaning.
Crosstab and transpose.
Add inbuilt interactive visualization in Alteryx.
It collects data and manipulation and some Geo-spacial mapping.
It provides opportunities to do some pretty complex tasks easily, without having to worry about the Java. The tools are built-in. You just plug and play, drag and drop, once you understand how to use the tools, it is easy.
I think better visualization would be helpful. In terms of data extraction, during the sequel queries of servers as an example, you can structure your sequel query and it's fine, very readable, but once you run it, it crashes into one complex single line, and makes it very difficult. Then you you almost have to go back to management studio, and run it through management studio and put it through restructuring, and it just seems to me that that's not very user friendly.
It is a very stable solution.
For our purposes, the scalability is fine. But, I think that scaling it for a big enterprise would probably be an expensive endeavor.
I would rate the tech support a 7.5 out of 10. They do not necessarily provide lots of hands on support themselves, instead they farm it out to partners and forums.
The learning curve for implementation was a bit steep. You pretty much have to teach yourself as you are setting up the solution. Once you do that, you are OK.
It is a little bit pricey. The desktop version is cheaper, it is on a one year license. And, if you want to do anything on an enterprise name it is quite expensive. The current pricing model may get to be too much in three to four years time.
We also considered DataBricks.
I would advise that you should ask yourself what you need and want, and do a one-month trial.
I implemented Alteryx for a logistics company.
It helps clean messy data and provides spatial analysis.
We create workflows to automate central reporting and visualize data directly in Tableau.
We use Alteryx everyday. Using the product, we earn a lot of time, which is used to do other tasks.
Multicategories exist in Alteryx: These categories are flexible and answer a lot of controlling rules.
It saves time on a lot projects.
The analytics are easy.
In the database, it should be more functional and connect to more big data, especially using IPI.
It handles multiple large data sources, and prepping/manipulating the feed to the Live dashboards for internal and external distribution.
It allows for manipulation and automation, which has greatly reduced the amount of time required per project.
Geo features have made spatial mapping large retail universes possible. The basic package of manipulation tools are the tools that my team use the most. It makes lengthy Excel processes seamless and lighting quick in comparison.
A feature which allows the user to be able to click on an output (in a file browser) and see the creation of the module would be fantastic. Also, when a process completes there is a notification, but the notification does not include the process's name.
We can now provide a single source of truth and build a bigger picture.
The data preparation. We have high reporting needs and the data is stored in many different tools. We are moving to predictive analysis too. Still, we need an easy to deploy solution until the IT department finds a better solution to connect all data sources.
The learning curve is long, and there is lack of e-learning; the tool is not user-friendly to a non-technical user.
No stability issues.
No scalability issues, if it is accompanied with centralization or the organization has a strong top-down culture.
I would rate tech support five out of five. The team is willing to work with you and help with any difficulties.
We were using Oracle BI, and we are still using it. The value add of Alteryx is the agility for making changes, and speed of deployment.
The seat is too expensive.
I am using the desktop version. The only issue is it supports only a 64-bit system so I have to use an earlier version.
My advice to regarding this product is to keep learning and not rely too much on the support team.
Visualization.
No issues.
Not really.
Different ETL tools (SSIS, Talend). We switched for ease of use and a wide range of features.
Easy to install and intuitive to use.
Very transparent.
We worked with other ETL tools for a long time, Alteryx was chosen based on ease of use and value add.
Start small and prove the value for specific use cases.
We provided the whole consulting delivery on a single tool with reporting and automated PowerPoint presentations.
We have been using this solution since 2014.
There were no deployment issues, and it went pretty fast. You sometimes need a license file if you are behind a firewall.
When the workflows are huge and complex, it may take some time to refresh it.
There were no issues with scalability.
Customer service is pretty responsive, based on the UK and US time zones.
Technical support is pretty responsive and knowledgeable. The community support is exceptional, too. It is a very crowded community with lots of practical solutions.
The setup was simple. It was pretty much "next, next, and next".
We did the implementation in-house.
With a $5K USD designer tool, we already did some big data. There were lots of fruitful projects. I would estimate a six of seven times ROI in a few months.
A designer and scheduler for $13K/year in total is pretty much earning you the money back in time and in other resources.
The server is a big bet and you need at least 10-15 people with designers or 60-70 people for the continuous use of analytic apps. Otherwise, it's too early to scale up and out.
This solution has a very bold vision.
Data Blending and Predictive Analytics: Alteryx is very intuitive and you don’t need to know how to write code to use Alteryx.
It helped us reduce time blending data from multiple sources into one file. Our analyst’s time was cut from two days to one hour of data blending and the output was amazing! And we could map out file-run predictive analytics in the same tool.
Visualization: There is room to improve here.
I have used it for two years; this is our third year using Alteryx Designer.
I did not encounter any stability issues.
I did not encounter any scalability issues.
I haven’t had to call tech support.
I did not previously use a different solution. I used to copy and paste and convert data.
Initial setup was straightforward.
Buy a single desktop license, and if more is needed, you can expand. Initially I would advise clients to start with the 14-day trial license.
I did not evaluate other options.
Try the free trial.
As a multiple data source blending tool and predictive analytics tool, Alteryx stands out from an ease-of-use and flexibility perspective.
The drag-and-drop capability to create a workflow works like drawing a flow chart. Each icon represents an action. You drag the action on the canvas and connect it to the data source, make configurations on the action, then run the workflow. When data goes through the process, the action will execute and you get what you want afterwards. The actions are intuitive and you can design you own way to do the same thing.
Alteryx automated some manual standard processes and the workflow is easy to maintain. Staff do not need to wait for IT to prepare data once a data warehouse is set up. The output can be shared within the company which other teams can make use of to reduce rework. Advanced analytics such customer response prediction, time series demand forecast can be done without a PhD.
I would like to see the field tracks along the workflow show the route of selected field. That would be easier to do checking or modification when designing a complex workflow.
Also, data profiling would be helpful if audit/compliance requires the info of data transformation. That would be easier to trace the data along the whole process.
I have used it for one year.
I did not encounter any stability issues, at all. This tool is designed for big-data analysis, so basically there are no input/output issues. It can process more than 10 million records in 10 minutes on a normal laptop.
I did not encounter any scalability issues, at all. As long as the server is set up, it can share the workload by the load balancer. It depends on how complex the problems you want to solve are or how many people you want to access them simultaneously.
Technical support is 8/10:
We previously used Informatica. The position of Alteryx is not only ETL, and we need to do more than just ETL, so we switched.
Initial setup was very straightforward. You can also download a comprehensive guide from the official website.
It is not cheap. So I would suggest you start with a trial and then evaluate how many licenses you need for your analysts. Basically, I do believe each analyst – regardless of whether they are in the sales operation, data analytics, or planning – requires one license. When they acquire the skills of how to use it, the ROI will be much larger than you can imagine.
We did not evaluate other options before choosing this product.
It would be great to find a local partner to do some training and use the consultation service at the beginning. It would help you and your staff to learn fast.
It is a very user-friendly product that doesn’t require a strong technical background; you can build something within an hour. It encourages self-service, has good capacity and supports a variety of data sources.
One of the most valuable features to me is its ability to take millions of rows of data, blend them with more millions of rows of data, then output the data set to a Tableau Data Extract (*.tde), which I would then use to build a dashboard in Tableau.
Another of its most valuable features gives me the ability to pipe external data onto a server in a temporary table. This frees my 16GB machine up while the server does all the heavy lifting. Blending data this way is faster, as a simple blend of a couple of million rows can take a minute or two. Also, because Alteryx can output to a *.tde, we are able to use it hand-in-hand with Tableau Server to develop data access solutions for our users.
Non-computer-savvy business users used to require periodic and ad-hoc reports to spot trends or so they could work with our customers on spend allocation. Some of these reports took days or weeks to compile. Alteryx allowed us to access all the data, blend it, and output it as a dashboard for the user to access any time they needed it. It took the strain off the reporting team and it gave the user a simple interface from which to work.
The company is constantly pushing updates and making the product more user friendly and faster. Although I have about seven months’ experience using it, I don’t feel like I’ve even scratched the surface on its capabilities. I haven’t used its spatial, data investigation, predictive/predictive grouping, market basket analysis, time series, demographic analysis, behavior analysis, or macro-building features.
If there's one thing that I would like improved, it's the in-database tools to function the same way as outside-database tools. For instance, if there is data that is being blended outside database with a join, there are nodes that you can select so you can see the data that didn't get joined. As you can see with the purple join
I started using Alteryx in the beginning of January, 2016.
I did not you encounter any stability issues.
I did not you encounter any scalability issues.
I haven’t had to use technical support, as far as actually speaking to people, but I have used Alteryx Community to find solutions to some of the challenges I faced. Alteryx Community has a great selection of training videos and documentation, and its users are posting more and more, which offers other users solutions without having to reach out to Alteryx representatives.
I did not previously use a different solution.
The initial setup was straightforward. Another user in my department decided he wasn’t going to use Alteryx, so he transferred the license key to me. I downloaded the program and started using it.
It’s quite pricey for an Alteryx Designer license (~$5200 for a one-year subscription), but once you use the product, you won’t want to go back to whatever you were using before.
I did not evaluate other options.
Before you download the 14-day trial, compile a list of processes that you want to improve. Once you start improving processes, you won’t want the trial to run out.