Sky is the Limit

Fantastic. We had worked to solve problems for no less than 24 months prior to our introduction to knack. From the time we started with knack we had a minimum viable internal product within 90 days and a customer facing web-portal (providing sales, project, and invoice detail) in 180 days. With knack we have have saved an immeasurable amount of time and resource.

Pros

Very simple to solve for Secure, HIPPA, PCI compliant user logins. Ability to pivot large data-set with simplified permission based views - no incremental expense for additional users / views / roles.

Cons

Support. Our reliance on knack is significant in pre-sale functions and as a result, when it breaks we have always defined the solution (or created the work-around) several days before a knack tech gets around to responding to our requests.

Flexible, Powerful, Great API, Community Support Lacking

8 / 10 is right where I'm at. They filled a huge need for us, and for that, I'm extremely grateful. One more point can easily be gained by paying attention to the community, which are the fans of their business. The other point can be gained by adding better standard features and design features. It should be noted that I have passed Knack's name to MANY others in my industry, and I really do highly recommend them.

Pros

When I found this software, I nearly jumped for joy. I had been researching no-code database apps for a long time, and this really seemed to fit what we needed it to do. Hats off to Knack for an original-concept. What's great: - App building on the backend AND front end. You create your data modules, decide your schema, then decide how it shows up to the users. Set your logins, set the access levels, etc. It's amazing. - It's extremely easy. Once you get the hang of it, you can make nice looking apps in little time. - The API is very easy to use and powerful. We us it to build special CMS apps that allow our customers to update content on large interactive touch screens. The data is always reliable. - The app is responsive, so users can can access public or their private data from mobile devices. It opens up many possibilities for businesses to use this as a CRM, CMS, Accounting, or even a field-service database. - The in-app support through the chat is great. Staff members are responsive and helpful.

Cons

Take this with a grain of salt. When your whole business runs online like ours, you get used to the idea that no software is ever perfect. There is always something that will grind your gears. Here's some things about Knack that need improvement: - Community support - my major gripe about Knack is the responsiveness to the community. There are many active users who contribute a lot of great content, ideas, and issues that need solving. Response from Knack in the community is practically non-existent. Even just to say "Good idea, we'll add that to our list"...just let people know they've been heard! Also, in my opinion, there's some very standard features that I can't believe aren't built yet. Sometimes it seems they work on features for a very small niche audience, rather than things that all users can benefit from. (Like drag and drop sorting of records) - Minimal design freedom on the front end - You can make an app that is extremely functional, but there's not a lot of ways to customize the look and feel of that data for the users. So you may solve some great business issues with Knack, but chances are it won't look super pretty.

Knack is very helpful

We use knack to store multiple sets of data. It is extremely helpful in tracking donations (and donors), restricted grants (and foundations/organizations who provide grants), and complex volunteer jobs for a non-profit. We are able to track and analyze all of this information through Knack. I especially like that we can attach documents to records in Knack so all of the information we need is right in one place. Also, being able to set up scheduled reminders is a lifesaver to ensure that we won't miss deadlines for important tasks.

Pros

I like that in Knack I can access all-inclusive data, and see it reported in a variety of ways. I can opt for simple summary reports, more complex detailed reports, or even colorful and pretty graphs. I can use a wide variety of parameters to create the report, and I can sort the included data in a variety of ways. I can also export data in different formats. Knack is extremely flexible for me. Full disclosure - I am a frequent Knack user, but I do not record data into Knack, nor do I set up the databases at all. That magic is all done by someone else, so I cannot comment on the administrator aspects of Knack.

Cons

Sometimes Knack will log me out while I am in the process of using it. I try to accept the blame when this happens because I always have too many tabs open in my browser, and I often work in 2 different sections of Knack simultaneously. However, it is definitely frustrating. Also, I have a pet peeve about the number of items I can view in one page of a report. For a report with lots of items, I have to navigate forward or back between many pages. I would much prefer to scroll further down the same page to see data in a long report. I don't know of any way to alter the number of items per page.

Most user friendly, easy-to-use of all the no-code platforms

I wanted a good-looking frontend for my users that came prebuilt with the platform.

Pros

This is truly a no-code experience. I tried five different platforms before finally stumbling upon Knack. I was sold so fast -- FINALLY a platform with both back-end AND front-end hosting within the no-code environment. It is the platform on which my entire business runs -- my employees, clients, everyone. I connect it to Zapier also which is extremely useful for integrating with my other softwares.

Cons

Because it is so geared to being user-friendly on the development side, it is not very customizable from a UI perspective. And at least for lower-tier plans, the app can start processing certain requests very slowly once you have built out a lot of connections between objects. That is my one true complaint -- I wish there were more computing power from their end. Also they have very limited customer support. While I expect that at their price point, the community forums are not very active and Knack support does a poor job of keeping users up to date on the features they plan to roll out/ what improvements they are actively making to the software.

Numerous bugs and lack of customer service taint an otherwise useful tool

This system worked well for what we needed this year. The main need was to create a system to enter and track points from our various members for year-end awards. This was a complex system to build because of the many different categories involved, and so far Knack has handled it. Building the system was extremely frustrating at times, as fields and properties would sometimes refuse to update, or the system would just hang and not do anything. I have built other apps with much the same issues. Customer service was initially helpful but now seems to ignore my requests for looking into bugs even after multiple attempts to have them resolved. We are on the middle tier plan. For example in one of my apps, the app simply hangs if I sort a certain table by one of the fields. Their answer was to not sort it by that field when using the app. I have also had records that should have been deleted not be deleted. I have put my own stop checks into the app and have not had any corrupted data as of yet, but the issues I've had do concern me.

Pros

-Easy to learn and build numerous apps -Lots of functional field types -Easy to customize CSS and Javascript for each app if desired -Excellent price point

Cons

-Very buggy -Customer service was initially very responsive, but eventually stopped responding to my requests for simple bugs in my app to be fixed, even after numerous attempts to resolve.