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 an Amazing Tool

I found Knack when I was searching for a tool that would help me to build a simple cloud based lead tracking application for my small law firm (two lawyers) to use. I have a dabbler's technical background in the sense that I have fooled around with Microsoft Access and Visual Basic for Applications - not a particularly high level mind you - barely beyond Hello World stuff. Well, maybe a little beyond that. I was looking for a tool that would allow me to develop something in the cloud and boy did I find it with Knack. I didn't know that Knack existed, but it was exactly what I wanted to exist and I was blown away when I actually discovered that it in fact existed. I was familiar enough with relational databases through my limited experience with Access that I was able to pretty much immediately start using Knack. I had a rough version of the application I wanted to develop put together in a couple days really. (Not a huge feat, really since what I wanted was really pretty simple). But we used it every day and came to really rely on it. It has become absolutely a part of the business. The ability to have this cloud based application, available on our phones or wherever we have computer access has been incredible and the platform itself works like magic. I spent hours wrestling with Access in setting up subforms and reports and such and developing queries and all of that. Knack takes care of that sort of heavy lifting behind the scenes. From my experience with Access, I know that it really is heavy lifting too, which is why I appreciate it so much. I used to design my websites in Dreamweaver, but as the technical expertise required to build sites well started to increase well beyond my ability to use Dreamweaver, I discovered Squarespace. Squarespace for me was the answer to my prayers, because it gave me the freedom to create sites that were technically pretty sophisticated and modern but in a way that shielded me from the need to have the technical expertise to execute it well. Knack is like Squarespace in this way. In fact, since many people who design sites might have use for cloud based applications that Knack can provide, I would think that Knack and Squarespace ought to be able to find ways to work with each other. They both occupy the same sort of space - providing people without the increasingly sophisticated skills required to build nice things (websites or custom database applications) the ability to build those nice things.

Pros

I love the way it shields me from what I know to be complex and tricky issues involved in putting together an application built around a relational database. I know the agony of wrestling with figuring out how to do things with relational databases and it just makes me so happy to be able to create a wonderfully stable application that works in the cloud - without the torture of having to figure out why my SQL query isn't working as I thought it would, etc. It just works, and I am shielded from the coding. I don't have to know what a SQL query is. To me this is just plain magic.

Cons

Hard to come up with something I am not really happy about with it. I guess everything could be improved with more features and options and such, but I see that as mostly window dressing. The guts of this thing are amazing. I'm sure the future will see more features and more ways to style the applications and such, but the magic is built in now.

Great software now good for users in Europe.

I use Knack to build my main business application. The interface and functionality is excellent and I have looked at all the alternatives at length. If you are not an IT person, then this really is the business. The tutorials are also good. The support team are responsive in the chat interface. During the two years I have been using the product there have been continuous upgrades which have been excellent.

Pros

Great intuitive interface, great software, fair pricing. Now that EU servers are available this makes it a great product for users like me who hold client data and need to comply with EU data privacy laws. I am already delighted with the product, but have seen a beta version of the new builder which in my view takes the produt from excellent to perfect. As a non-technical user (I am no more than a competent excel user) I had never thought I could build my own functioning application. With Knack, I can.

Cons

The standard support hours are based on the US working day so that means we in Europe have to wait. Having said that, if there is an emergency there is 24 hour response there. This is a minor niggle and I guess when Knack grows to dominate the world they will put more support on.

The most powerful no/low code database app for non-coders

Pros

- Lives up to the "no code" billing many other platforms tout, but with Knack you can actually build a feature-rich app without coding.
- Zapier integration recently improved, greatly expanding the capabilities of the app
- Out of 10-15 database apps I tried, the learning curve was shorter and support documentation was more useful with Knack
- Easy to implement and strong user security/user roles implementation
- Unlike many business-focused app builders, Knack is designed for many users in structure and in pricing model, so it's the best for customer-facing applications (including ecommerce websites)
- Basic subscription plan includes all the features most will need, unlike many apps that pull 1-2 critical features into their mid-tier and enterprise plans.

Cons

- Pricing plan options are slim, and the base plan is a bit more expensive than others in the similar tier.
- Very difficult to style the app in an attractive manner without a fair amount of CSS and/or Javascript understanding (though the standard design is fine and mobile friendly). Limited options for customization in the dashboard.
- Main troubling issue is with how pages and views get created with every menu and link you add..causing a quickly overwhelming page structure and sitemap. Biggest related caution is that when simply deleting a menu item, you could also be deleting an entire page or detail view without clearly being told that (and no way to recover it).

Best Database Platform Out There

After listening to vendors with my company for weeks, I had enough. Every system that was pitched for our needs was either ugly, or inflexible, and not all that infrequently, both. I began my search for online database platform technology and quickly found Knack among a few other competitors. What set Knack apart was the appearance of the software. I am of the believe that a product is worthless if no one ever wants to look at it, and Knack stunned me. It was a clean, crisp, interactive set of user interfaces that quickly led to live database views. I set up the trial, and was sold.

Pros

Intuitive design! It just makes sense from the get-go, even if you have little understanding of relational databases, with a bit of light reading of Knack's thorough documentation, it's not difficult to get going.

Cons

Definitely the way the front end views of your database operate in a mobile device. Some of the feature's are basically unusable, and if your user's are going to use a mobile device, you really have to keep that in mind when developing the database's UIs or you can end up with a bit of a mess.

Just what I needed

Pros

This is Everything I need from a database & simple interface builder. I took a long time evaluating existing products for my business programs to no avail, and decided I needed custom solutions. As a nonprofit I know we couldn't afford paying someone to do it so I took it upon myself to research options & move forward. Knack was my first intro to "no code" cloud app builder and I love it. I check around every 6 months or so to see what competition is out there, I've yet to find anything I enjoy using quite as much.

Cons

That apps cannot integrate / stay in sync. It's going to take a lot of extra work to integrate all my company's apps, as it is not feasible for all our programs / branches to use one app, and some information needs to be in sync across all apps. I just know by the time I've finally done it, they will have built in the feature / option...

One of the Best

Pros

Knack is seriously one of the greatest apps that exist out there for those who need to organize their offices. Nowadays, data is produced in such huge amounts that it ca be very difficult to organize. This leads to chaos and lost productivity. Other database apps like Access, OpenOffice and even just SQL are not user friendly and the UI is chaotic. Knack is an easy way to make your own custom database with functionality that expands seemingly daily.

Cons

There's a bit of a learning curve, but I learned it in about a week. Now I've made a CRM/HRM/Project manager all in one with unlimited logins for pennies on the price of a full-suite solution.

Super easy and fast

I was looking for an cloud based application that could allow me to build a database in the cloud and present that data securely to users over the web for viewing and editing. I tried out Caspio, Ragic, Airtable and AgileApps also during the process of picking an application. The only other provider that I like was Caspio- they have a ton of features and can be used fairly easily to build business apps. However, Knack won the day based on the fact that it is more intuitive to figure out (I needed very little help), super fast to edit and view the results and capable of doing so much. I built my first app in ~ 2 hours. I couldn't change it so that each user could edit their own data, but not the data of other users. Knack customer service helped me with process using just email- that is how easy it is. I could understand their emails and make adjustments. I am confident I could built a new app in less than a day- even if moderately difficult.

Pros

Super easy to get going (it is the most intuitive interface).
Price by number of apps instead of by user works well with our company.
Powerful features including, for instance, users logging in by their Google+ or Facebook profile (single sign on).
I have not run into any bugs.

Cons

You can't adjust the presentation layer (the website) as much as, say, Caspio. You can change some things like colors and basic layout, but most of the CSS is fixed.
Their formulas are very weak. They only allow basic functions, especially for manipulating text. For formulas, I found Airtable to be much better.

Knack is fantastic

I've created a number of different applications with Knack and its been able to satisfy all of our use cases and be extensible where needed. Its been great to use and you can build web applications at a fraction of the cost it would normally be. There are great custom developers that can build entirely or help out with integrations as needed.

Pros

Powerful and yet easy to use. Extensible

Cons

Some of the features take some time to learn, have to invest some time up front getting to know what it can do.

Customizable features for our Spa's client records

Increased communication between staff and clients, accurate record keeping for all clients, and for all staff to access!

Pros

How customizable it is to our ever changing needs as the company grows and changes! We are able to access it on multiple devices at once, and have different log ins for each employee!

Cons

Have experienced software shutdowns that have slowed business, not always able to do what we need, but there is usually a work-around!

Use carefully, as good as you are

Pros

Its highly customizable and you can adapt it to fit whatever your company needs might be. Be it just a simple data base, a team management software or something else. Its great for large sets of data, but needs you to be smart and data savy.

Cons

Its not always great when using outside the US. The smartphone view is close to impossible to work with.

Geek candy for a middle-of-the-pack geek!

What's geek candy? It's that little moment of excitement you got when you opened up that sweet lego set, or figured out your phone can do "talk to text." I'm a middle-of-the-pack kind of geek... better than some geeks and worse than equally as many. What's cool about Knack is that it can offer something for everyone. I have used it to give us much more insight into our business. We can track progress and make better decisions.

Pros

Knack is easy to use, they listen to their customers and the pricing structure is awesome.

Cons

The app layout through the UI is limited.