We are a solution provider and Knack is one of the products that we use to delivery business improvement/transformation for our clients.
Flexible and granular security options, good filtering, and the pricing model is cost-effective
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
I built quite a sophisticated business management system for a consultancy firm using this product. This includes an reporting, employee directory, CRM, Programme management, Training/Certification records for clients trainees and financial tracking and integration to Xero (inprogress)
What is most valuable?
The security is the most valuable feature, in particular, the way I can give different access to different areas to different people, so you can really fine-tune access for different users.
It's completely no code, so I can build all of the logic in workflow tools. You can build quite complex business logic and business workflows.
You've also got nice filtering and exporting of data from the system.
The pricing model is very good.
When you want to extend or customize it, you can do so using JavaScript CSS, and HTML, so you're not limited to what you get from Knack.
It integrates well with Zapier, which is an integration toolset. This means that you can integrate it into other systems, as well. For example, I have integrated it with Google Sheets, Xero and most other cloud based business systems.
I was also able to integrate with Google Single Sign On so that the client can manage access from their Gsuite Control Panel. This was very easy to do
The interface looks great.
Being a cloud-based product, I don't have to worry about infrastructure, backup, dev ops etc
Their written support documentation is excellent and I find their support very good.
What needs improvement?
The vendor does a really poor job of marketing this software because it should be more popular. This is something that I have pointed out to them. It's a super piece of software, but very few people are aware of it. I am an EX-IT director and I've worked in big systems, and I'm amazed this solution isn't more popular.
The "native" integration with other products could be improved.
The user interface for the systems that you build can use some improvement because as it is now, you may have to use HTML and CSS to make it look more modern or to match a clients existing look.
The documentation is amazing, although they don't do videos and their YouTube channel is very poor. They could create some training videos.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using Knack for approximately one year.
How are customer service and technical support?
I find their support to be very good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I looked a few similar products including Airtable but they were cost prohibitive as they mostly all charge by user.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
This product provides really good value, as it doesn't have a per-user cost, there's a flat fee. So, if you have 100 users or 200 users accessing the system that you build, there's no difference in the cost. Rather, it depends on the amount of data. The pricing model is a big plus for me. That's probably the number one reason I use it, and most of the people I talk to who use it, that's the reason they do as well.
Unlike Airtable and any of those other systems, where they charge $10 per user per month, this system has a flat-fee tier.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I looked at Airtable but the run costs were 10X that of Knack.Also looked at Appsheet, Betty Blocks, CAspio, Kintone, Filemaker, Quickbase, TrackVia.
What other advice do I have?
My recommendation for anybody who is looking at Knack is that it's for multi-user system scenarios, where it's really data-oriented. I probably wouldn't use it as a mobile app dev platform but you can apply css/html to make it more responsive for mobile. It's ideal if you've got multiple users out in the field, spread geographically, you want to provide them access to data, or they need to input data and have rules and data validation for applications that you'd never have on a shared spreadsheet. Knack is just super for that type of scenario.
Overall, I am a big fan of Knack.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
