External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
A common use case for Appian is intelligent automation, where companies wanting to transform and have the latest technologies such as robotic process automation, fintech, AI, and artificial intelligence under the same platform use Appian to automate their business workflows.
There could be multiple industries that could benefit from this, including investment banks, retail companies, manufacturing companies, and healthcare companies. There's a variety of use cases for implementation.
The features of Appian that have proven to be the most beneficial are its capability to create processes and integrate with external systems while ensuring data consistency across all the systems.
The latest features of Appian are quite useful around the UI/UX design and the artificial intelligence integrations.
Appian is aiding in leveraging AI technologies in multiple ways: one way is for developers, as they make development efficient and quick by enabling developer co-pilots across various phases of the application, which helps design Appian quickly and provides suggestions along the way.
Another way is through AI Skills, which can be integrated anywhere in the process model to leverage artificial intelligence for tasks such as extracting data from documents, summarizing information from documents or long paragraphs, and building custom prompts with Appian.
Appian also utilizes AI for business users, providing a feature called process each view, enabling business users to create their own dashboards, reports, and gain insights from their data and processes using artificial intelligence. It's multi-fold and always growing.
Appian could improve in terms of how it approaches external use cases.
Appian is a great tool for internal use cases where the users are company employees, but it has room to improve for use cases where the users are public facing, where anonymous users could come to a site and run a business workflow or interact with some data.
I have approximately nine to 10 years of experience working with Appian.
I have faced challenges while integrating Appian with existing systems, as there might be challenges around the integration systems not being stable or having many exceptions.
However, if the integration systems are stable and their process of integrations and the APIs are well documented, there are no challenges to integrate with Appian; it's fairly simple.
The stability of Appian would rate as nine, as it's a stable environment.
Appian is scalable. On a scale of one to 10, Appian rates as a nine for scalability.
The technical support for Appian rates as 10 out of 10 because they have a great support team.
Positive
I have experience with Appian, not SAP solution.
The initial setup of Appian has two ways of setting up the environments: one is on-premise, and the second is cloud environments.
The cloud environment is very easy to set up, as the Appian Cloud support team does everything for you end to end, and you will have the environments available where you could have the platform in about 24 hours, which is very quick.
This is preferred by about 95% of clients, as they would have Appian on Cloud.
The remaining 5% opt for Appian on premise due to data privacy issues or compliance challenges, where they manage the infrastructure themselves, which requires a couple of weeks for an infrastructure administrator to set up Appian on their own service.
I'm a reseller and a partner, and my relationship with Appian is that we implement Appian for our customers.
The majority of our clients see the return on investment in about one year after implementation.
They see return on investment in terms of cost savings, time savings, more efficient processes, and more efficient employees.
The price of Appian, on a competitive landscape, is a little bit on the higher side for companies, rating maybe a 6.5.
I would recommend Appian to especially large to medium, medium to large companies looking to automate their business processes, as it's a great tool. I would rate the whole solution as a strong 9.5.
I mostly use Appian for internal applications in the firm.
The most beneficial aspect of Appian is its data management capabilities and the process engine in general. It allows for a seamless transition from process-centric to data-centric operations. Additionally, the zero-code integration feature is remarkable, allowing for ease of data transfer and workflow enhancement.
I would like to see more enhancement in the user interface to allow more freedom in designing the sites and pages. The user interface should be updated for a more modern and appealing look.
I have been working with Appian for around fifteen years.
So far, I find Appian reliable and stable.
Appian is scalable, but it depends on how you build your applications. With a proper setup, Appian is scalable.
The technical support is generally good. Though I have had some issues in the past, overall, I consider it effective.
Neutral
I have experience with Microsoft Power Apps and have seen OutSystems. However, most of my experience has been with Appian.
The initial setup of Appian was very easy.
No implementation strategy was used. We simply built different platforms like development, testing, UAT, and production.
Appian is very efficient, allowing us to build a lot of applications within a financial year, making it cost-effective.
The pricing of Appian is based on the number of users and generally ranges from 70 to 100 USD per user per month. I would like it to be more flexible, not solely based on the number of users.
As alternatives, I have worked with Microsoft Power Apps and have explored OutSystems.
I would recommend looking into data management, reporting, and process capabilities of Appian. Overall, I rate Appian as a nine.
Positive
I am working with all of these products: Pega, Appian, and OutSystems. I use Appian as a process orchestrator for workflow and rule-based routing, and it is preferred when I am developing an enterprise-wide application. The application is mobile-friendly, allowing me to use it across any device, whether mobile, laptop, or desktop.
It is easy for me to define the process and create configurable workflows. Additionally, they have provided inbuilt integration points and services, which facilitates integration with external services.
If there is a very complex process that includes a lot of data transitioning and memory-centric processes, it consumes a lot of memory. For those use cases, Appian needs to optimize memory utilization. AI-related features should also be more integrated.
I have been in this ecosystem for quite some time. For Pega, it is 20 years, and for Appian, it is more than ten years.
I would rate the stability as eight out of ten. As a product, there are no issues. It depends on how it has been designed and how it has been configured.
Appian is scalable in its architecture.
Their customer service is responsive, and the team is very prompt for support. The response depends on the kind of partnership vendors have and their relationship with them. For step one issues, which impact most of the business on that workflow, I get quick support from the Appian team.
Positive
Whenever there is a production deployment, it involves the Appian development team. However, if other systems are also involved, representatives from the integration teams of different systems are needed as well.
There are two buckets. On the pricier side, both Appian and Pega are enterprise-level solutions, placing them on the slightly higher side.
However, the robustness of the products, their features, and their availability justify the pricing.
I have considered Appian, Pega, Uncorp, and Mendix as alternate solutions.
Overall, everything is eight out of ten.
I am a little bit biased towards Pega. Pega has a lot more standardized processes, which take less time to go to market compared to Appian. Appian provides a platform.
Appian is really helpful in automating different processes. Our clients use it for process automation and leveraging updated features like Appian Portal and Appian RPA. The main use case revolves around external application building in nature, making it comparable to other mobile app general interfaces, particularly those heavy in user interface and user exchange. Also, Appian Records integrates all systems, providing a consolidated view, dashboard, monitoring, and report.
Appian helps in consolidating systems within the client's network, correlating data points, and offering visual dashboards to get a real-time view of various factors. Clients can check the functional state of their current infrastructure and monitor it in real-time, which also relates to the financial side of operations with business reports and similar functionalities.
The valuable features include process automation, Appian Portal, and Appian RPA. Appian allows easy integration with other systems, offers a visual dashboard, provides real-time analytics, and is flexible to be used by non-technical users for automating simple process flows. Additionally, Appian's data fabric now helps in correlating data across various systems for consolidated monitoring.
From a reseller's point of view, subscription licensing could be improved to be more cost-effective, especially for new prospects and smaller investments. Appian has new subscription models, but they might not always be feasible for smaller customers. Competitive pricing on the external user side is good, but internal user pricing needs to be adjusted for better market reach.
I have been working with Appian for nearly six years.
In terms of stability, Appian is quite reliable. I have not encountered any major downtime in customer environments. Their support team has been effective, making the solution stable overall.
Technical scalability is generally good, maybe an eight out of ten, however, some clients encounter issues due to high costs, affecting their ability to scale effectively.
Customer service in the Philippines is rated around a seven due to response times and the lack of a direct support line.
Neutral
The initial setup is generally simple and well-supported by the platform's flexibility and ease of use. My technical colleagues find Appian easy to learn, though they need to continuously adapt to new features.
Appian is promising yet the cost can be a barrier. The subscription cost is higher compared to competitors, which can hinder potential market expansion, especially for new prospects.
The main competitors for Appian are Pega and OutSystems. Appian is set apart by its RPA capabilities, though it is still catching up with the likes of UiPath.
Appian is a promising platform with significant functionalities, but it would benefit from more cost-effective pricing for smaller clients. The technical support could also be improved, especially in providing direct and faster response options.
I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.
The solution is used to automate internal operations. We had industrial and equity-based financial clients.
The product improved our operational efficiency. The deployment takes one or two weeks. The rollout takes two to three weeks.
The solution’s turnaround time for development is better compared to other tools. The solution enables fast development. The traceability of the processor is good. There is much more governance and regulations on the processers. The tool reduces the time of the processes by 30% to 40%. The solution’s low-code aspect has greatly impacted the development and deployment speed.
One of the major reasons we are using the product is that we can reuse the modules. The developers can reuse all the modules. It enables us to make subsequent developments in less time. The prebuilt modules can be deployed within two to three weeks. The tool is very flexible. Compared to other platforms, the Appian product team was agile in quickly customizing things for us.
It is difficult to set up the on-premise version.
I used the solution for more than three years.
The solution is very stable. I've never faced any downtime. The response time is also great.
It is easy to scale up the product for a large number of users. We can scale up to 100 users within 20 to 30 minutes. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. Our customers are enterprise businesses.
The technical support is not excellent, but it is good.
Positive
The initial setup of the cloud version is quite easy. I rate the ease of setup of the cloud tool a nine out of ten. It is difficult to set up the on-premise version. I rate the ease of setup of the on-premise tool a five or six out of ten.
The tool is quite costly. It's not affordable to the general public and most companies. People would prefer a low-cost version that comes with reduced functionalities. The solution would be more accessible to the users if the vendor provided it at half the cost. I rate the pricing eight and a half out of ten. The price is quite high.
I haven't faced challenges with new implementations. If an organization has a long-term goal of automation and wants to explore automation, Appian is a good choice. The product is quick, agile, and very robust. It provides everything we need. It's not like the other platforms where we have to buy multiple things on top of the actual product. It is a holistic automation tool. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Appian is a platform that focuses on human-centric workflows around processes. It facilitates requests for policies or incidents involving groups of people. The application manages the workflow between individuals to negotiate and confirm these policies.
Appian is managed and upgraded regularly.
The most productive aspect of Appian lies in its ability to develop interfaces, particularly user interfaces. Creating user interfaces is highly productive when these interfaces are integrated with the original database. In such cases, using record types proves to be a very efficient method of handling data. The synergy between interfaces and record types enhances productivity.
The case management studio is still immature, but it looks very nice. However, the VPN should be improved. The case management system needs improvement, but it has some promising features. Appian has the commitment to continuous improvement. With each new release, they enhance the platform for all users.Currently, making changes requires too much backend development work. They're working on streamlining this process, particularly with VPN integration. As it stands, storing everything in memory doesn't effectively handle large datasets. Transitioning VPN processes to a more traditional database approach would greatly improve scalability and usability in real-world scenarios
When the sentences are too long, they become difficult to manage. The scalability is low, when they become complex. The integrations are fine. There are some minor errors and details, but it does a great job in explaining errors within Appian. Internally, there is much information to help you understand what's going on, but not always. Sometimes, it's difficult to know what's happening, but these instances are rare.
Architecturally, there is an issue with Appian that it tends to put all the applications in the same infrastructure. Big customers resort to having several installations of Appian to deploy different applications in different infrastructures. They face the problem of managing assignments. Appian should make it easy to deploy different applications in separate infrastructures. Additionally, there needs to be a way to unify them because without using VPN, users are left without a unified inbox. Applications can't use the VPN and have to resort to their own solutions to show users their work, leading to inconsistency. Since each application is different, it becomes crucial to have a centralized point where users can find their work. Even if the applications are split into different installations, there needs to be a single way for users to find all their work.
I have been using Appian for two to three years. We are the using V24 of the solution.
The solution's stability is better.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
The solution is difficult to scale. 1,000-2,000 users are using this solution.
I rate the solution’s scalability a six out of ten.
I have used SoftEther VPN.
I rate the initial setup a seven out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.
The platform was set up by third party.
The solution is expensive.
I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
We evaluated Outsystems. Appian is much proactive to create solutions applications.
The most frustrating aspect is its DPM offering. It fails to support VPN due to its limited scalability. You can only use the VPN for isolated cases. When attempting to apply it in a real-world scenario with multiple applications, it becomes unusable due to its lack of scalability. It boosts everything into memory.
It is very easy to develop interfaces and access data with Appian. The local code acts as a communicator. The interfaces function as record types, and the logic you program use special rules, which resemble a kind of functional language exclusive. This combination of user interfaces and record types, along with the special rules, is very productive. You typically need to write much less code compared to other platforms
Intergration is good.
I recommend the solution, One should evaluate the VPN needs very closely. Not everybody needs VPN, but those who do should take a closer look to avoid surprises. You can use VPN in Appian, but it's somewhat different from what you might expect.
Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Appian is a good workflow solution. So, I use it for workflow and low-code application development.
Workflows can basically be embedded in any domain. For example, we use Appian as a workflow solution primarily in chunks. We have a couple of use cases that we have built.
From a personal marketing perspective, it basically supports the end-to-end building of an awesome product, wherein you can use it primarily for data orchestration, and then for building process workflows, and then for building approval workflows.
So, you can set it all together. You can bring in the data through Appian, and then I use this to integrate with different solutions, different products, and different platforms that exist in the company. It brings them all together. It can then be automated. We have a couple of new steps available to us.
For one of the clients, we've used this to build a complete end-to-end claim cycle, where we built a portal that integrates into various systems.
We get emails that get processed. From there, a claim is received. It goes through the entire claim designation lifecycle. It goes through different people, different approvals, and then finally, there's some integration with the payment system.
Once the claim is approved, the payment happens. And it is one seamless process. And then if any litigation is required, it can be directed to the finance team and so on. So, there is an end-to-end claim cycle that has been automated using Appian.
So, this is just an example of a workflow we've optimized using Appian.
From a feature perspective, Appian has quick development, given it's a low-code platform; you can quickly use it to build a solution.
And then, if we need to make changes, we don't need to do a lot of coding.
With low-code, we don't need a lot of coding, and then from the plumbing perspective, there is a complete CI/CD pipeline that exists within Appian that can be leveraged for open deployment.
We can manage versions, do field deployment, and manage all these smaller incremental changes that need to be done. It's self-sufficient, from my perspective.
From a product perspective, it's good. There are some restrictions with respect to using external components within Appian.
So, for example, if we do not have a particular feature available, there's a long cycle of getting approvals and all of that. That does not offer flexibility, which definitely can be improved on.
Another area of improvement is pricing.
I have been using it for two years now.
It is a stable product. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. We have not faced any challenges with respect to the platform in the last two years.
Since it is on the cloud, it is easy to scale.
There are around 200 end users using this in our company. The usage depends on the end user.
Appian is scalable, especially from an integration standpoint. It offers low-code integration capabilities, eliminating the need for external integrators.
It comes with many components and connectors that facilitate system integrations.
The customer service and support are very responsive. We haven't faced many issues, but when we have, the support team has been very helpful.
The Appian community is strong and open. You can often find solutions or discussions relevant to your issues. Consulting with community members through platforms.
The initial setup is straightforward and easy to use.
Deployment is quick.
We did it in-house. It depends if you have the skills in-house, it can easily be done.
So, there are not many things that you have to do. The solutions can be built in Appian itself, there's a pipeline that exists. You just have to kind of tag the components that need to go into deployment and use them to deploy easily.
It is a little bit expensive when compared to other platforms, it is somewhat expensive.
The license is not very cheap. It's on the expensive side.
The licensing is on an annual basis.
Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.
I would recommend it, especially if you're looking to quickly develop workflow solutions with low-code integrations. Among similar platforms, I'd place Appian in the top tier.
It is a business process management platform. We used it while working on a loan origination process for a bank.
The product's most valuable feature is the low code aspect of development. We can develop an end-to-end VPN solution using a single platform. It is easier to focus on business cases and problems rather than consume much time in the development process.
The product’s pricing could be improved from the developers' perspective.
We have been using Appian for a year and a half.
I rate the software’s stability a nine out of ten.
We can resolve many issues with the help of their community and documentation or in-house trial and error.
The initial setup for the on-cloud platform is quite straightforward.
We can implement the on-premise version in-house. However, Appian helps us set up cloud-based clusters.
We purchase the software’s yearly license. The cost is calculated on a per-user basis. It might be expensive for small and mid-sized enterprises.
I recommend Appian to others and rate it a nine out of ten.
We use Appian for the automation of processes. The solution is typically used to automate case management.
The most valuable features of Appian are workflow management and the ease with which you can build the UI.
One of the areas that Appian is working on is to improve its UI capabilities and give more flexibility to the UI.
I have been working with the solution for around seven years.
Appian is a very stable solution. We've never faced any huge glitches or bugs with the solution.
I rate Appian ten out of ten for stability.
Appian is a scalable solution. However, we have to be a bit cautious if large volumes of data are being exchanged and if there are any use cases to transform the data in between.
I rate Appian a six out of ten for scalability.
Appian's technical support is pretty decent. The support team responds on time and sticks to their SLAs, which is good. Appian provides good support from an infrastructure and platform perspective.
Positive
Appian's deployment is pretty good. To run your deployment processes, it has separate built-in utilities and tools to deploy packages across the environment. I work for a services company, and I have built applications for some of our clients leveraging Appian as a platform, which is used probably every day.
I am using the latest version of Appian. Appian is deployed on Appian's own cloud in our organization.
Appian has a very strong workflow engine compared to other solutions like OutSystems and Mendix. I would definitely recommend Appian to someone who is looking for strong workflow and process capabilities. However, I recommend other platforms like OutSystems and Mendix to someone looking to build their own mobile app or looking for a lot more flexibility with respect to user experiences.
Appian is a pretty good tool. It's a low-code platform where you can start building your applications pretty fast. It has got really good workflow capabilities and a very good process engine. The solution has started integrating with cognitive services, RPA, and other services, which are probably at their initial stages, but the platform's roadmap is really good. Appian is definitely a platform to explore if you are considering a low-code platform to be part of your tech portfolio.
Overall, I rate Appian a seven out of ten.