A fantastic ETL, data munging, data prep, and data processing tool

Alteryx can do so much more than I use it for, so I believe the only case where Alteryx wouldn't be needed is when a department/team had a full development team to prep data pre-analysis or already has a central data store fully stood up and standardized. Alteryx works extremely well with a multitude of BI and database solutions and would be a great fit for any team trying to speed up the typical daily grind of data prep and ETL so their analytics and data team can be more agile, accurate, and automated.

Pros

Data ingestion: Alteryx is capable of connecting with a multitude of data sources from SQL databases to cloud-hosted solutions like Salesforce, Tableau, or Google Analytics. Also supports OleDB & ODBC connections.

Dynamic data munging: Alteryx has a great variety of processing tools to clean and prep data including: dedupe, formulas, joins, union, sort... Performing these functions really quickly on even moderately equipped laptops or desktops. It's dynamic in that it can easily handle changes in data by allowing extra columns to flow through.

Macros: have a process that you are consistently running in separate workflows? Build a MACRO, be it a batch or iterative, Alteryx can do it. I've built 40-50 macros and use at least 4+ in every workflow I design so data is handled the same way in every workflow for consistency and cutting down on copy/pastes.

Cons

I've had issues with the scheduler tool getting frozen or stuck in previous versions. For about the last 2-3 months the latest software version has been much more reliable. Previously I had to restart the Alteryx service on my machine at least once a week, which meant my workflows weren't running while the service had been stuck and data wasn't moving.

Some of the connectors, like the Tableau Online connector, should become supported by Alteryx. The online community is fantastic and has created a ton of useful macros and it would be great if Alteryx would adopt, support, and enhance some of the most widely used and useful.

So many uses!

Alteryx has been great! It solved our business need plus so much more. The number of users in my company has been expanding since we first started using it.

Pros

You can do so much with Alteryx! We acquired the software for one specific project but I find myself using it for so many other things, from day to day data work to other large projects. It has great features like fuzzy matching, data normalization, and join capabilities. It is great for working with large data sets that can't be easily managed in excel or access and for allowing multiple data sources to interact with each other.

Cons

There is a bit of a learning curve. However, once you understand how it all works its easy. Also there are so many tools and more than one way to achieve the same thing. It can be hard to know how to approach new projects.

We started using Alteryx in a pilot project in November 2017, which resulted in immediate success

Massive time saving on Analytical function as well as improvement in accuracy with data from disparate data sources

Pros

Ease of implementation, fantastic product support. Great assistance from Altyrex - committed resources at no cost to help implement, train etc. A lot of willingness to help us 'prove' the business case - i.e. make a success of the pilot project. Workshops ran in business helped getting a number of other business functions exposed and on board in support of the product. Willingness to negotiate on price as well as providing trial licences to other functions for a period of time to enable usage uptake. Willingness to understand business problem assisted greatly in successful deployment. Ease of deployment in 'non-analytics' environment was a big enabler. What is great is that it is process flow based and no extensive coding experience is required. Now busy with further business case projects in other parts of the business.

Cons

The cost initially seems exorbitant - especially as there are alternatives such as KNIME & Rapid Miner. Value delivered however overcame this barrier.

Daily user

Overall, am a happy user, ALteryx saved time and effort on daily basis and opened many horizons for me to clean he data in a timely manner. If you work in a dynamic environment where quick steps in data cleaning and wranglning are required in no time then ALteryx is your first option.

Pros

Not so steep learning curve, Alteryx is built around the human common sense. The fact that you can (View/Process) the data as a branch at any stage of the processing is really useful, and the way the software designed allows you to go backward and see what happened.

Cons

The limitation of some tools and the high barrier to developing new functionality.

Quick and easy way to move from data exploration and blending to analysis and insight

This software, especially the predictive analytics piece, gave me new insight into my data. I saved time during the process of merging and cleansing data that could then be put to better use exploring, analyzing, and making decisions with the data. The work that previously required collaboration between several people to complete could be done by one person in a fraction of the time, which benefited everyone.

Pros

Alteryx has the full package starting with excellent customer service and continuing with an straightforward drag-and-drop interface. An abundance of available nodes make it simple to pull in data from many different sources, merge, union, filter, sort, and even perform statistical or predictive analysis on your data, and then disseminate it to the proper stakeholders. The visual nature of the product makes it accessible, even for beginners with no programming background, so they can start building queries right away. What I love most is how it makes the part of my job that used to be the most tedious--data prep and cleansing--fast and effortless and even fun. There are also many online training videos and community group to help build your knowledge of the product and its full range of capabilities.

Cons

Alteryx may be better suited to fields other than education; however, I can still find good use cases for it in my job.

Must have tool for analysts

Pros

1. Drag and drop based UI interface
2. Ability to import data from and export data into variety of data sources
3. Re-usuability of workflows
4. Full feature trial license

Cons

1. Lack of (or limited) visualisation capability.
2.machine dependent licensed(it should had license key Linked to email ID, making it easier to port licensed from one system to another)
3. Expensive license

A simple yet powerful ETL tool

Pros

Easy to use UI, just drag and drop tools and start your data modelling.
Geo spatial data for spatial analysis
Blending data from different sources is quite easy.
Create and schedule data models and it will run automatically.

Cons

Integration with other tools are less compared to its competitor tools such as Informatica .etc.
Reporting option could be improved.

Powerful and simple

This is a great data handling software. Half the company runs on this.

Pros

There is basically a module for doing everything
Connectivity in both inputs and outputs is simply superb

Cons

Output to PDF to export reports might need better capabilities
Documentation of less used features might be insufficient compared to most commonly used features

A good tool for automating complicated analytics pipelines

Alteryx is a good tool and well fits in our need of clinical data management and analytics pipeline optimization. There are rooms for improvement in terms of stability in desktop application.

Pros

Alteryx is a great tool when need of integrating multiple or complicated analytics pipelines in one place and manage them in a systematics manner. It provides a variety of data connections to common relational database product and web resources. It also provides plugins to add other product such as Tableau, etc.

Cons

The desktop application used to crash (not responding) in case of loading large sized data. It also gets very slow when moving or drag-dropping objects in the authoring environment.

Game changer.

Postive 100%

Pros

This application has no limits as it relates to everything data. With Alteryx, I have been able to automate my data cleansing / loading activites within hours and now runs within SECONDS daily. Truly remarkable product, and quite frankly scares me at times how well it works.

Cons

Price for the premium packages. However, the price points are accurate and justified based on what the application can do.

Great analytics and overall tool

Pros

The ease of use is great. We can teach people how to data analyst very quickly. The functions they continue to add have been great.

Cons

We have issues at times with it hanging or shutting down but customer support is quick to respond and resolve issues.

Alteryx is a great self selfservice ETL tool for non-coders

great customer service

Pros

no coding experience necessary, seamless integration with Tableau and SQL, great workflow icons and capabilities, great automation

Cons

pricing, but they are flexible, could make a cloud product that is easier to scale out to more people

Makes data prep and predictive analysis a breeze

We used to spend a lot of time in Excel and SQL queries trying to get the data right for reporting, plus if there was anything more complex involved such as forecasting or predictive model building to do, we'd have to find an R expert which really slows the process down. Alteryx changed all that and building workflows that preps the data and spits out a clean dataset or report complete with forecasts etc. can all be done without coding and in a visual way that anyone can understand and see what's been done and where leading to the greater confidence the data is right.

Pros

Easy to use interface, extremely flexible for data analysis tasks, self-documenting, very fast on large data sets

Cons

Automating workflow is an additional cost

My favorite data science tool

Pros

I would argue that this is the number one product for data science. I have change my entire analytics department for the better with using alteryx.

Cons

No major complaints on this software, my team loves it!

Pretty good data analytics software

Business problems like considation, analytics, dashboard and reporting can be made very convenient

Pros

Easy to use
You can see data as it passes through each tool.
Seamless integration with excel, database other sources
Good reporting options

Cons

Lack of customer service
Not able to read excel files with macro enables format correctly

Alteryx is the most frequently used software at my office.

Pros

The inputs are easy to use, the tools are easily understood and well described in the help files and they easily connect with one another. Writing neat output files is made easy regardless of file type. The ability to use R within the module has made a lot of analyses much easier.

Cons

The transition to newer versions of Alteryx is much too complicated when you have to skip a few of the in-between versions, which my company often does.

Great tool for Process Automating

Amazing tool for process automation and integration

Pros

Easy drag and drop interface for creating workflows.
Easy to debug (easy to track and monitor the workflows while it is running)
Can Integrate "R" code with Alteryx
Alteryx provides variety of features for text data cleaning (including fuzzy matching, regular expressions and table joins)
Without much coding alteryx provides machine learning for predictive analytics (drag and drop features)

Cons

At times Alteryx is slow in responding
Expensive tool
Not good for data visualization
Very few training videos

Easy to use, beautiful interface, documentation in a cinch

So much time saved Easy to share documentation without worrying about syntax, coding and verfication Trainable to a layman analyst

Pros

Drag and drop interface, the ability to manipulate my data at any point and expand my analytics through spatial and predictive.

Cons

The Server solution could be better developed to be ready to integrate with other enterprise wide features (for example, managing users, databases, schedules)

Alteryx simplifies and Enhances Data Preparation

I've loved working with Alteryx. After just 4 months of using the software, I have managed to automate over 20 daily or weekly processes that used to take all my time. I now have more time to create meaningful reports that can help management make the decisions that will keep our company moving forward.

Pros

Alteryx allows you to walk through your data preparation step by step to ensure that everything is following the exact process of orders that you want.

Cons

Occasionally, Alteryx will stop processing a workflow because of a minor error. Frequently, that minor error has a handful of different solutions, forcing you to try each solution one by one. After some experience you learn what things to look for, but when just starting out, it's a nuisance.

One tool for most of your data management and preparation needs

Pros

I have been using Alteryx for past few months and it has made my life so easy when it comes to handling multiple files. You can combine multiple excel files, CSVs, any other files, 100s of MBs in size, and within minutes it carries out the entire ETL process.
1. Ease of use - simple drag and drop
2. Input and outputs - multiple file formats are supported
3. Very easily handle GBs of data

Cons

1. A few visualization capabilities can be added to make it more comprehensive tool
2. You have to run the entire workflow again, even if you have made a slight change - having the functionality to run just a piece or small part of the entire workflow will save much more time