What makes Connhex a great Thingsboard alternative

Thingsboard is an excellent open-source IoT platform, featuring device management, data collection, processing and visualization.

While Thingsboard shares many similarities with Connhex, there are also some significant differences. This page focuses on what Connhex does differently and when you should choose it over Thingsboard ¹.

Connhex vs Thingsboard: what are the differences?​

Designed for IoT manufacturers​

Thingsboard is a general purpose IoT platform: it empowers both makers just tinkering around and businesses. Connhex, instead, takes the opposite approach, just focusing on device manufacturers.

You can see this diversity of focus if you compare features: while Thingsboard provides widgets and dashboards to quickly create a data visualization system, Connhex includes manufacturing integrations.

Complete IoT suite vs IoT platform​

Thingsboard is an IoT platform: it takes a device-centric approach. Connhex is a complete suite: it takes an app-centric approach. What does this mean?

While Thingsboard is great for connecting and managing devices, Connhex focuses on every step between the end customer and a device manufacturer looking to sell services for its products. It does so by including features that are typically outside the IoT domain: look no further than Connhex Pay.

User interfaces​

The approach to user interfaces is completely opposite between the two. While Thingsboard provides customizable dashboards by default, one of Connhex's pillars are bespoke user interfaces - whose sections can be hidden or shown through Connhex IAM. Both approaches have pros and cons: with Thingsboard you'll get a data visualization system out of the box, but you'll be missing out of an aggregation and decimation strategy optimized for your use case, thus forgoing a reduction in operating costs and query latency².

Audiences​

Thingsboard and Connhex cater to different audiences. Thingsboard is mainly targeting developers and technical customers, whereas Connhex is designed for device manufacturers - typically without big in-house cloud development teams.

You can also see this difference by comparing Thingsboard's Trendz Analytics to Connhex AI: while the former provides a low-code algorithm designer, the latter only focuses on providing out of the box anomaly detection and forecasting, without any configuration needed.

When is Thingsboard better than Connhex?​

There are situations where Thingsboard compares favorably over Connhex, of course. Thingsboard might be a better fit if:

• you value configurable dashboards for final³ customers
• you have an in-house software development team that is just looking for a data collection solution to build on top
• you just need to connect devices and are not planning to sell additional services

It also offers a pay-per-use pricing model, so it might be a better fit for low volumes.

Why you should choose Connhex over Thingsboard​

Connhex is a complete industrial IoT suite, whereas Thingsboard is an IoT platform. Connhex is a better solution than Thingsboard for your needs if you:

• are a device manufacturer, looking to connect at least 1000 devices to your own IoT platform
• are looking for a complete plug-and-play suite
• value getting to market really fast, with an extensively tested and validated solution
• don't have an in-house dedicated cloud development team
• plan to offer additional services - and open new revenue streams - to your customers

Ready to start connecting your devices? Start your 30-day free trial with no obligations for any Connhex version. Still unsure? You can always reach out for any additional information: we'll be glad to hear from you!