Knack Review 2025: Is It the Best No-Code Platform for Scalable B2B Apps?

Introduction: Is Knack the Right No-Code Platform for Your Business?

You're evaluating no-code platforms and Knack has come across your radar. You need to know: What is it, really? How does it stack up against the competition? Is the interface modern enough for today's standards? And the million-dollar question: can you actually build a scalable, commercial SaaS product with it? This report is designed to answer precisely these questions, providing the clarity and data you need to make a strategic decision.

The no-code market is experiencing exponential growth, projected to expand from $28.11 billion in 2024 to an astonishing $93.92 billion by 2029. This explosion has turned no-code from a niche tool into a critical strategic lever for modern businesses, enabling rapid innovation and empowering non-technical teams. However, this growth has also created a crowded and often confusing landscape of platforms, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, making detailed analysis essential before committing to a solution. According to Forrester, 87% of enterprise developers now use low-code or no-code platforms for at least some of their work, institutionalizing these tools within IT departments and driving a market that could approach $50 billion by 2028.

This report will provide a comprehensive, unvarnished view of where Knack excels and where its limitations lie. We'll begin with a foundational look at Knack's identity and market position. From there, we'll conduct a deep-dive into its unique pricing model, place it head-to-head against its main competitors, scrutinize its user interface, and finally, tackle the critical question of its viability for SaaS development.

Knack 101: A Veteran Player in the No-Code Arena

What Exactly is Knack?

At its core, Knack is a no-code application development platform fundamentally built around a powerful online database. Its philosophy is centered on a unified, all-in-one approach, combining a relational database, a front-end visual builder, workflow automation, and user management into a single, coherent subscription. This design directly counters the "patchwork" problem where businesses must stitch together separate tools for forms, databases, and user portals, often leading to integration headaches and escalating costs.

Key Capabilities:

• Database-Centric Foundation: Everything in Knack begins with the data structure. Users first define "objects," which are the equivalent of database tables (e.g., Customers, Projects, Invoices). Within these objects, they create "fields" (columns) with specific data types like text, numbers, or dates. The platform's real power comes from its ability to build relationships between these objects—such as one-to-many or many-to-many connections—allowing for the creation of a sophisticated relational database schema without writing a single line of SQL.
• AI-Powered Builder: To accelerate the initial development phase, Knack offers an AI-builder. This tool can automate the creation of database structures by analyzing a user's description of their app's purpose. It recommends relevant tables, fields, and data relationships, significantly reducing manual setup time and potential errors.
• Visual App Builder: Once the database is structured, users build the front-end interface with a drag-and-drop visual designer. This is where the application comes to life. You can add pre-built components like forms for data entry, tables and lists to display records, interactive charts and graphs for reporting, maps for location data, and complete dashboards to provide a high-level overview of business operations.
• Workflow Automation: Knack includes a native automation engine to streamline business processes. This is handled through features like conditional triggers that automatically update records when certain criteria are met, multi-step processes for managing approvals or sending custom notifications, and scheduled tasks that run at predefined intervals.

Knack is specifically designed for building data-rich business applications. Its most common use cases include custom CRMs, customer and vendor portals, project management trackers, inventory management systems, property management apps, and other internal tools that require structured data and controlled user access.

Company Snapshot: History and Market Position

The no-code platform Knack was founded in 2010 by Eric Katherman and Brandon Griggs, making it a veteran in the space. It's important to distinguish this platform from other companies with the same name, such as a P2P tutoring marketplace founded in 2014. Our focus here is solely on the software development application company established in 2010. While public records show some conflicting headquarters information (New York City vs. Erie, PA), this is a minor discrepancy for a long-standing private company.

Today, Knack serves a diverse customer base of over 5,000 organizations, from small businesses and non-profits to large enterprises and prestigious institutions like Spotify, Zendesk, Honda, Panasonic, and Harvard University. This broad adoption establishes its credibility and demonstrates its ability to scale to meet significant demands.

In the vast no-code market, Knack holds what industry analysts call a 2.4% "mindshare" within the No-Code Development Platforms (NCDP) category.

At first glance, a 2.4% share might seem small. However, this figure requires context. The overall no-code market is not a monolithic entity; it is a highly fragmented collection of specialized sub-markets, including website builders, mobile app creators, workflow automation tools, and database application platforms. Knack's market share does not indicate a failure to compete but rather a successful and deliberate strategy to dominate a specific niche: database-centric business applications. In a market projected to be worth over $93 billion by 2029, a focused 2.4% share represents a substantial and sustainable business. This positioning signals that Knack is not a jack-of-all-trades platform but a mature, stable specialist that has honed its product to serve a particular set of business needs exceptionally well.

Deconstructing the Value: Knack's Pricing and the "Unlimited User" Advantage

How Knack's Pricing Model Works

Knack's pricing model is one of its most defining and disruptive features. Unlike a significant portion of the SaaS market, which prices services on a per-user, per-month basis, Knack's plans are structured around resource consumption—primarily the number of database records and the amount of file storage.

The most critical takeaway is this: On every plan, from Starter to Enterprise, Knack offers unlimited users. This fundamental difference in pricing philosophy has profound strategic implications for the types of applications that are economically viable to build on the platform.

Here is a breakdown of their current plans:

The Strategic Impact of Unlimited Users

The "unlimited users" feature is more than just a line item on a pricing page; it is Knack's core strategic advantage. To understand its impact, one must compare it to the per-seat licensing models used by many competitors, such as Airtable and Quickbase.

A per-user pricing model creates a direct, linear relationship between user growth and operational cost. For an internal tool with a fixed number of employees, this model is predictable. However, for applications designed to serve a large, fluctuating, or external user base—such as a portal for thousands of clients, a directory for a large member association, or a management system for hundreds of vendors—a per-seat model can become prohibitively expensive, acting as a direct tax on growth.

Knack's model decouples user growth from cost. The primary cost driver is data consumption (records and storage), which often grows at a much slower and more predictable rate than the user count. This fundamentally changes the total cost of ownership (TCO) calculation. An organization can onboard 10, 10,000, or even 200,000 infrequent users to a client portal without seeing its monthly bill skyrocket, a scenario mentioned by one of Knack's users.

This pricing strategy is a deliberate business decision that carves out a competitive moat. It makes entire categories of high-user-count applications economically feasible in a way they simply are not on many competing platforms. For any CFO or CTO evaluating Knack, this unique approach to pricing is a critical factor that can dramatically improve the platform's long-term ROI, especially for applications that involve external collaboration at scale.

Knack in the Arena: A Head-to-Head Competitive Analysis

No platform exists in a vacuum, and the "best" choice is entirely dependent on the specific job to be done. To provide a clear picture of Knack's position in the market, we'll compare it against three key rivals that represent different philosophies in the no-code and low-code world: Airtable (the spreadsheet-database hybrid), Quickbase (the enterprise work platform), and Bubble (the full-stack web app builder).

Knack vs. Airtable: Graduating from Spreadsheets to Applications

The core difference between Knack and Airtable lies in their fundamental purpose. Airtable is a brilliantly designed, spreadsheet-style database that excels at helping teams organize data visually. It's perfect for lightweight project tracking, content calendars, and simple internal tools where collaboration and multiple data views (like grids, Kanban, and calendars) are key. Knack, in contrast, is a true application builder. It's designed for creating data-driven web applications with a distinct front-end user experience, complex business logic, and granular, role-based user permissions.

• Choose Knack when: Your primary need is to build a secure portal for external users (clients, vendors, partners) where each user must only see their own data. Airtable's user management and permissions are too simplistic for this level of security and data segregation. You also need multi-step forms, advanced data validation rules, and complex conditional logic that Airtable lacks natively, often requiring third-party tools to achieve. Finally, if your application's cost needs to remain predictable as your user base grows into the hundreds or thousands, Knack's unlimited-user model is far more economical than Airtable's per-seat pricing.
• Choose Airtable when: Your team needs to quickly organize and collaborate on structured data in a familiar, visually appealing interface. The goal is internal project management or data organization, not building a full-fledged external-facing application. Speed of setup for simple, internal tasks is the top priority, and you can have a working solution in minutes.

Knack vs. Quickbase: SMB Agility vs. Enterprise Governance

This comparison highlights a classic market split. Quickbase is an enterprise-grade low-code platform focused on automating complex internal workflows, offering deep integrations, and providing robust governance and compliance features (like SOC 2 and HIPAA) that large, regulated organizations require. Knack is geared towards small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and departmental teams that need to build and deploy powerful applications quickly and affordably, with a simpler, more accessible feature set and minimal IT oversight.

• Choose Knack when: Budget and speed are primary drivers. Quickbase's entry point is significantly higher (starting around $8,500 per year for just 10 users), whereas Knack's plans are much more accessible. If you are building an application for a large number of external users, Quickbase's per-user pricing model would be financially impractical. Knack is the better choice when you want to empower business users to build their own solutions without a heavy reliance on a dedicated IT team.
• Choose Quickbase when: You operate in a highly regulated industry like healthcare or finance and require stringent compliance certifications out-of-the-box. Your application demands extremely robust, multi-system process automation (what Quickbase calls "Pipelines") and advanced enterprise governance features for managing user access and application lifecycles. You have a dedicated IT team and the budget to support a more powerful, and consequently more complex, platform.

Knack vs. Bubble: Rapid Business Apps vs. Pixel-Perfect Web Apps

Knack and Bubble represent two very different ends of the no-code spectrum. Bubble is a visual programming environment for building fully custom, pixel-perfect web applications, including complex consumer-facing SaaS products. It offers maximum design freedom and functionality but comes with a notoriously steep learning curve. Knack is a database-centric builder optimized for speed and functionality. It is much faster for deploying structured business applications like portals, CRMs, and directories, where the data model and user permissions are more important than achieving a unique, highly stylized UI.

• Choose Knack when: Your primary goal is to build a functional, data-driven business application quickly. Time-to-market is critical, and a complete app can be built in hours or days with Knack, compared to weeks or months with Bubble. You or your team are non-technical and need a platform with a gentler, more intuitive learning curve.
• Choose Bubble when: You are building a unique, consumer-facing web application where total control over the UI/UX is non-negotiable. Your application requires complex client-side logic, custom API integrations, and workflows that go far beyond standard database operations. You have the time, technical aptitude, or development resources to master a more powerful and complex development environment.

The User Experience: Is Knack's Interface Modern and User-Friendly?

Evaluating the Learning Curve and Ease of Use

Knack is intentionally designed to be accessible to business users, operations managers, and so-called "citizen developers" who understand business logic but do not write code. The core development process is logical and structured: first, you define your data tables and their relationships; second, you use a drag-and-drop builder to create pages; and third, you add "views" (like forms, tables, or charts) to those pages and connect them to your data.

While the learning curve is steeper than a simple form builder like Jotform, it is significantly gentler than a visual programming tool like Bubble. Users familiar with spreadsheet logic or database concepts will find the transition natural, but even true beginners can build functional apps by following Knack's structured approach.

The New "Next-Gen" Builder

A common criticism found in older reviews and user feedback is that Knack's user interface could feel dated. This perception, even if the underlying platform is powerful, can be a significant deterrent for new users and can affect the perceived quality of the applications built on it.

However, this critique is now largely a legacy issue. Knack has clearly recognized this and invested heavily in a comprehensive overhaul of its platform. Recent user reviews from mid-2025 and promotional materials confirm the release of a "Next-Gen" builder. One G2 reviewer, initially hesitant about the change, praised the new interface as "a clear step forward... fast, intuitive, and well-organized," noting that the improvements were not just cosmetic but made building "smoother and more efficient".

Recent video demonstrations of this new builder showcase major enhancements that directly address past shortcomings:

• Section-based layouts and drag-and-drop views for more modern and flexible page design.
• Inline editing that allows users to update individual fields directly within tables without loading a separate form, making the apps feel much more responsive.
• Bulk page editing and global theming, which save significant time by allowing builders to apply layout and style changes across multiple pages or even multiple apps at once.
• Improved mobile responsiveness that works automatically without requiring manual CSS tweaks.

Any evaluation of Knack in 2025 must focus on the capabilities of this modernized builder, not on outdated perceptions. The platform has made a clear and substantial commitment to improving the user experience for both the builder and the end-user.

Customization and Extensibility

Beyond the standard builder, Knack offers multiple layers of customization. The new builder provides significant control over layout, branding, and design elements like charts and pivot tables without needing to write any code.

For teams that require deeper personalization, Knack provides direct access to add custom CSS and JavaScript/jQuery. This opens the door for fine-grained control over the look, feel, and functionality of the application, allowing for deep branding alignment and the implementation of custom front-end behaviors. Furthermore, Knack applications can be embedded directly into an existing website or blog. When embedded, the app can inherit the website's existing CSS, creating a seamless and fully integrated user experience.

The Ultimate Test: Can You Build a Scalable SaaS Application with Knack?

This is often the most critical question for entrepreneurs and business leaders looking to leverage no-code for commercial products. The short answer is yes, you can build a SaaS application with Knack, and the platform explicitly markets itself for this purpose. However, success requires a clear understanding of both its capabilities and the architectural responsibilities that fall on the builder.

The SaaS Builder's Toolkit: Essential Features

Knack provides a robust set of features that are essential for building a secure, multi-tenant SaaS product:

• User Roles & Permissions: This is the cornerstone of any multi-tenant application. Knack allows you to create distinct user roles (e.g., 'Company Admin', 'Standard User', 'Client') and assign them different permissions. Each role can be given access to a unique set of pages and functionalities within the app.
• Data Isolation: True multi-tenancy requires that one customer's (or tenant's) data is completely invisible and inaccessible to another. In Knack, this is achieved not at the database level, but at the application layer. The builder creates pages that are restricted to specific user roles and then adds views (like tables or lists) that are filtered with the crucial setting: "Only show records connected to the logged-in user". This mechanism is how Knack ensures Tenant A cannot see Tenant B's data.
• E-commerce and Payments: For a commercial SaaS product, collecting payments is non-negotiable. Knack offers built-in e-commerce functionality, supporting payment processing directly through integrations with Stripe and PayPal.
• Security & Compliance: Knack is built on an enterprise-grade security infrastructure. It maintains SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, offers HIPAA and GovCloud compliant environments on its Enterprise plans, encrypts all data both in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest (AES256), and supports advanced Single Sign-On (SSO) for secure user authentication.

Architecting for Multi-Tenancy: Your Responsibility as a Builder

While Knack provides all the necessary building blocks for a multi-tenant SaaS application, it does not provide the architecture itself. This is the critical distinction that aspiring SaaS founders must understand. The platform's model for multi-tenancy is effectively a "Shared Database, Shared Schema" approach, a common and cost-effective pattern where a tenant identifier is used to segregate data within shared tables. In Knack, this "tenant ID" is managed through its powerful connections framework.

The platform makes it possible to enforce strict data isolation, but it does not do so automatically. The builder is responsible for meticulously setting up the data connections, user roles, and page-level permissions for every single view that displays sensitive data. A small mistake—such as forgetting to apply the "show records connected to the logged-in user" filter on a single table—could lead to a catastrophic data leak across tenants. The integrity and security of the entire multi-tenant system rest entirely on the builder's architectural discipline and rigor.

This is precisely where the worlds of no-code convenience and professional software engineering principles converge. Building a secure, scalable, and reliable system requires more than just dragging and dropping elements; it demands a deep understanding of database design, security protocols, and architectural best practices. This is the critical takeaway for any aspiring SaaS founder: Knack gives you the power to build a multi-tenant application, but the responsibility for architecting it securely falls squarely on you. Ensuring every data connection and user permission is correctly configured to guarantee strict tenant isolation is paramount. This is precisely where the principles of enterprise-grade software engineering—a core strength of our team at Baytech Consulting—become indispensable, even within a no-code platform. Our experience in building secure, scalable systems with tools like Postgres and Kubernetes informs how we approach architecting applications on any platform, ensuring they are robust and reliable from the ground up.

Conclusion: The Final Verdict and Your Next Steps

After a comprehensive analysis, we can provide clear answers to the initial questions posed by business leaders evaluating Knack.

• What is it? Knack is a powerful, database-centric no-code platform designed for building data-rich business applications like CRMs, client portals, and internal management tools.
• When was it founded? It was founded in 2010, making it a stable and mature player in the no-code market.
• How many use it & market share? It serves over 5,000 customers and holds a solid, niche 2.4% mindshare in a large and fragmented market.
• How much does it cost? Plans start at $59 per month (with introductory offers available) and are priced based on data and storage, not users. This "unlimited user" model offers a significant cost advantage for applications with high user counts.
• How does it compare? It is more of a true application builder than Airtable, more affordable and agile than the enterprise-focused Quickbase, and significantly easier and faster for building business apps than the more flexible but complex Bubble.
• Is the UI user-friendly but dated? The UI is user-friendly, and the "dated" criticism has been effectively addressed with the modern "Next-Gen" builder introduced in 2025.
• Should you create a SaaS application with it? Yes, it is a viable platform for building SaaS products. It has all the necessary features for security, payments, and multi-tenant user management, but it requires careful and disciplined architectural planning to ensure proper tenant data isolation.

Actionable Recommendations:

• Choose Knack if: You need to build a client portal, vendor directory, member association app, or internal tool with a large number of users, and cost-predictability at scale is a primary concern. Speed to market for a functional, data-driven application is more important than pixel-perfect UI control.
• Consider an alternative if: You need absolute, granular control over the UI for a unique consumer-facing app (look at Bubble), or you require deep, out-of-the-box enterprise compliance and have the budget and IT resources for a heavier platform (look at Quickbase).
• Seek expert guidance if: You are building a mission-critical SaaS application on any platform. Ensuring your data architecture is secure, scalable, and correctly implemented from day one is essential to avoid costly mistakes and potential security vulnerabilities down the road.

The no-code landscape is powerful but complex. If you're weighing these options and need a strategic partner to help design and build a solution that aligns with your business goals—whether on a platform like Knack or through a fully custom application—our team at Baytech Consulting is here to help. Contact us for a consultation to discuss your project, or see our latest insights on unlocking real AI value beyond the AGI hype.

Further Reading

• Forrester: The Low-Code Market Could Approach $50 Billion by 2028
• Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms
• How to Choose the Perfect No-Code Platform: 10 Key Points to Consider!
• Balancing Customization and Speed: Low-Code vs. Custom Software

About Baytech

At Baytech Consulting, we specialize in guiding businesses through this process, helping you build scalable, efficient, and high-performing software that evolves with your needs. Our MVP first approach helps our clients minimize upfront costs and maximize ROI. Ready to take the next step in your software development journey? Contact us today to learn how we can help you achieve your goals with a phased development approach.

About the Author

Bryan Reynolds is an accomplished technology executive with more than 25 years of experience leading innovation in the software industry. As the CEO and founder of Baytech Consulting, he has built a reputation for delivering custom software solutions that help businesses streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and drive growth.

Bryan’s expertise spans custom software development, cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and strategic business consulting, making him a trusted advisor and thought leader across a wide range of industries.