Node-RED Community Survey Results

The Node-RED community recently published the results of their 2023 Community Survey, building upon their 2019 survey. The findings reveal some interesting trends within the Node-RED community that are worth highlighting.

1. Passionate and Experienced Community. The Node-RED community has shown a remarkable increase in experience. In 2019, only 28.3% of users had been utilizing Node-RED for over two years. However, in 2023, this number has grown to an impressive 65.2%. This indicates that Node-RED has become a go-to tool for many individuals, demonstrating their continued loyalty to the platform. Moreover, the community highly regards Node-RED, with 94% of respondents rating it as a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 to 5.

   Developer tools can fall out of fashion but it is clear Node-RED is providing value and is being used by developers.

2. Increasing Adoption in Industrial and Manufacturing Automation. The survey also revealed a significant increase in Node-RED usage within the manufacturing and industrial automation industries. Several data points support this finding, including a rise from 31.5% to 40.3% in respondents identifying themselves as working in the manufacturing industry. Additionally, there has been an increase in the use of Node-RED applications for Industrial IoT/PLC devices, which grew from 24% to 35.8% in 2023. Furthermore, the adoption of popular manufacturing industry protocols like OPC-UA and Modbus has also increased, with OPC-UA usage rising from 9.3% to 16.7% and Modbus usage increasing from 15.8% to 27.6%.

3. InfluxDB dominance in the Node-RED community. InfluxDB has emerged as the leading database within the Node-RED community. Its usage has grown significantly, from 24.2% in 2019 to 43.9% in 2023. On the other hand, MySQL, the next most popular database, experienced a slight decrease in usage, dropping from 32.4% to 31.4%.

   It is evident that the MING stack (MQTT/Mosquitto, InfluxDB, Node-RED, and Grafana) is gaining momentum and becoming a preferred choice for developers.

4. Limitations to Node-RED Adoption. This year's survey also explored factors that might limit the adoption of Node-RED. Approximately 27.9% of respondents stated that they perceived no additional need for Node-RED. However, the next most common responses were related to the perception that Node-RED is only suitable for proof-of-concept (POC) projects (19.9%), the lack of specific Node-RED features (13.3%), and the absence of professional support (10.1%).

   It is important for the Node-RED community to demonstrate the platform's usage in production environments. Although changing the perception of Node-RED as solely a POC tool may take time, FlowFuse is committed to helping shift this perspective. Moreover, FlowFuse aims to address other identified issues by developing the FlowFuse platform, which will provide the necessary features to create reliable, secure, and dependable Node-RED applications. FlowFuse will also offer professional support to all its customers, ensuring that users have the assistance they need.

Thank you to everyone that completed the Node-RED Survey. The insights from the survey will help the community to build a better Node-RED. Check out the detailed results on the nodered.org website.