TrustRadius Insights for Gephi are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Easy-to-use Interface: Many reviewers have found Gephi's interface to be very user-friendly and intuitive, allowing them to quickly access the tools they need without much training or learning required.
Simple Data Import Process: Several users have praised Gephi for its simple and easy data import process, especially when working with CSV files. The software automatically generates a graph once the relevant data is loaded and mapped together, making it convenient for users.
Flexible Visualization Capabilities: Numerous reviewers highly regard Gephi's visualization capabilities. They appreciate how easy it is to edit, drag, and customize visualizations in the software. The flexibility to change the size and color of nodes and edges allows for representing different characteristics of the graph effectively.
I use Gephi in my research on social networks for the local food movement. Gephi allows me to write specific analysis programs and gather data on farm product movement through space in both distance and directionality while also analyzing the embeddedness of social networks.
Pros
Gephi enables me to create beautiful, publication-ready graphical images.
I can write programs to be incorporated in Gephi.
The open-source platform provides versatility and the GUI allows easy use.
Cons
I wish the geo layout function worked consistently, but I have learned to work around some of the quirks with the layout view.
Likelihood to Recommend
Gephi is wonderfully suited for research and conducting follow-up social network analysis that GIS is too cumbersome for. It is less-well-suited for spatial statistical modeling, which is easier in programs like GeoDA, Stata, R, and GIS.
We used Gephi as the last phase of our big data analysis pipeline. After generating the desired metrics with Hadoop, and using a Java interface we could generate fully customized, sophisticated and intuitive pictures of our results, so that our customer could make sense of the huge complexity of the problem and the proposed solution to improve their business.
Pros
Clustering
Visualization
Customization
Cons
Documentation on how to use Gephi as a library is not enough.
Performance of algorithms might be improved by making use of GPU power in recent computers.
Likelihood to Recommend
<ul><li>Do you know what type of clustering you need to best explain your data? If not, then Gephi GUI is your tool.</li><li>Once you know what type of clustering algorithms you want, then Gephi as a library is even better.
</li></ul>
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Research & Development (11-50 employees)
At Quaero, we've used Gephi primarily in our Analytics department for visualizations around social networking. We've used it to look at traffic patterns across websites. This helps as we have discussions with our clients to give them insight into site design and where changes in flow may need to be made. We've also used it to map how individuals are connected across the site, more of a classic social network analysis exercise.
Pros
Gephi has a very easy interface to use and get to the tools you need quickly. Without much training or learning, it's pretty simple to figure out.
The data import process is very easy in CSV format and the software produces a graph automatically once the correct data is loaded and mapped together (edges and nodes).
The visualization is very easy to edit, drag around, and customize. There is flexibility to change the size and color of nodes and edges to represent various characteristics of the graph.
Cons
In Gephi, there's really not a great export feature for the map you've created. Screenshots can be taken, but you can't currently export to an image or HTML document.
All the interactivity is lost if not using the Gephi file itself. A screenshot does not have nearly the impact as if you could move the edges and nodes around like you can in the software itself.
All the text label size is edited by one master control. It would be nice if this would size proportionately with the size of the nodes or if this could be a manual selection at times. With all the edges flowing around, sometimes it's hard to read the text if it's too small or too large.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for projects that are more discovery related. If this is a one-time project that we create a visual for, this would definitely make sense to use. If this is an ongoing analysis (monthly for example), we might look to another software that we would be able to automate a little further in how the visualization comes together.
I used Gephi as a student for an information systems/data-focused course. I chose an organization that ran events and then performed a network analysis on their networking event attendees in order to identify key influencers and strategies on how to grow the organization.
Pros
Easy to filter the data based on different criteria.
Good for data visualization of networks.
Easy to zoom into different nodes.
Cons
A friend helped me to import that data -this process was outside my expertise.
The UI took some time getting used to. I spent a while formatting my graph before I could really obtain a good view of the network.
I would like an easier way to organize the different views of the data, I had a lot of tabs open that quickly cluttered my workspace.
Likelihood to Recommend
I haven't used enough products like this to provide a good answer.
Currently, Gephi is being used by the IT Business Systems group and perhaps a few members of Research and Product Development. The IT group is always looking for new and interesting ways to visualize our data, and Gephi was the first tool I found that had a quick and easy way to load and analyze data from a graph-centric point of view. The data i played with was a mixture of both traditional business data (financials, customer support, et al) and some DNA sequence data. I shared some of the graphing models with colleagues throughout the lab, and a few of the scientists with a math background gave Gephi for a test run as well. They too are also on the hunt for new/cool ways to visually represent sequence data.
Pros
In comparison to other tools such as GraphWiz or Circos, Gephi comes with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that makes it easy to load your data, and quickly start building all sorts of different graphs. There's absolutely no code that needs to be written for either loading or modeling. And without downloading additional plug-ins, Gephi ships with quite a few standard graph models, as well as some "fun" extras such as the Sierpinski triangle, and a variety of force atlas types.
Most of the layout types (maybe all) are highly configurable, which can make for extremely customized and unique displays of your data. Again, none of this requires the user to write any code. That said, it is possible to script custom functionality for your models, or even update the Java source code yourself, if you feel like getting technical. Gephi builds are available on GitHub, and the developers encourage people to contribute ideas, improvements, and plug-ins.
There's a plug-in for Gephi that allows for streaming data to update your model. This essentially allows you to create near realtime graphs of your data in motion. This plug-in was by far the biggest reaston we invested time in the product; to create animated data visualizations without exhaustive hours in development.
Cons
At one point, there was an issue with files built in earlier builds not working in newer builds. I typically like to update products as soon as updates are available, but i wound up having to run separate version of Gephi if i wanted to check out what was new. Any models built in prior versions would then have to be recreated in newer versions if I wanted to leverage new features.
Documentation; you can never have enough of it. Since much of the product is being built by a variety of contributors, it's hard to document how all the features and plug-ins work. It would be great if the the Gephi team could find a body of resources to manage some sort of global product documentation. There are plenty of 3rd party videos and documents online, however, that do cover some of the specifics.
Likelihood to Recommend
If anyone ever asked me "what mathematical graphing tool should I use", Gephi would be my first answer. At the very least, it's an excellent prototyping tool. I would be wary, however, if someone needed to use the product for large scale production output. It's finicky at times and does require a little "jiggling of the handle" to get things to work, but I'm sure the kinks will be worked out as the product matures.
My team used Gephi to report customer level spend pattern and behavior for a large consumer cards base. We used Gephi to create dynamic dashboards that can present some amazing data visualization and clearly bring out the story and position a strong case for further exploration.
Pros
Wide variety of Dynamic Graphs & Charts
Handling large volume of data and making it almost real-time, fast without and delay in intraction with the charts
Ability to work on geospatial data
Cons
Ease of integration with traditional statistical data sets, like raw SAS datasets
Need high end laptops with larger memory to be able to get the best experience
Likelihood to Recommend
Recommended for situations where you need to create dynamic or geospatial representation of your data. Gives maximum leverage and scope where you need to use huge data for first draft/preliminary hypothesis checks.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Research & Development (10,001+ employees)
I basically use it for my research on real world networks. My professor helped me in learning about Gephi initially. I use it for calculating centrality metrics on my edge lists. It is not used organizational level. My professor advised me to use this.
Pros
As far as my experience gephi provides good mathematical results in calculating Metrics
Its helpful as we can directly import our data which is in a .csv file
Saving the analyzed data to a .csv is a plus. Its easy to run all the metrics by single click
We can filter the columns of metrics and we can export only those we need.
Cons
Visualization. Not much graphical as of now in Gephi
UI can be much improved. Gets confused between different tabs when used after a long gap.
I worked for a digital media startup doing political and consumer brand analysis. I used Gephi for network analysis of relationships between facebook and twitter users to do GOTV outreach. I am now in insurance recovery auditing and plan to use it for analysis of commonalities between patient pools and providers who overcharge for services.
Pros
Define strength of relationships based on custom weighting variables.
Common algorithms for defining connectedness
Visualizations run on a spreadsheet-formatted table, which makes use more intuitive to non-programming experts
Cons
Would like to see better documentation on the product in general.
Make spreadsheet-based data backend more user friendly
Better options for tailoring predefined algorithms.
Needs to have direct hookup to live data sources (SQL server, Hadoop, Google Analytics, etc)
I have used Gephi personally, for my own research. I have a 2014 paper published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology in which I present a network map plotted with Gephi (Hala and Huggett 2014).
Pros
Excellent construction and visualization of network graphs.
Excellent 'mapping' of edge weights to network graphs.
Convenient calculations of graph metrics such as degree and betweenness centrality.
Cons
Maybe an easier way to import data. I had to import source data as a Pajek file.
Likelihood to Recommend
Gephi is a good tool for biological network construction and visualization.
