We compared Appian and OutSystems based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
In summary, Appian is praised for its intuitive interface, customizable workflows, seamless integration, efficient task management, and robust reporting capabilities, with highly regarded customer support but improvements needed in UI, performance, scalability, and reporting features. On the other hand, OutSystems is valued for its ease of use, rapid application development, platform compatibility, scalability, built-in tools, and strong support, with positive feedback on pricing and ROI, although users desire increased speed in development, improved UI, more customization options, enhanced collaboration features, and smoother integration capabilities.
Features: Appian stands out for its intuitive interface, customizable workflows, seamless integration, task management, and powerful reporting capabilities. OutSystems, on the other hand, excels in ease of use, rapid app development, compatibility, scalability, tools, integration options, support system, time-saving, and cost-effectiveness.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for Appian product has been mentioned by users as requiring consideration. In contrast, OutSystems product has been described as having a straightforward and hassle-free setup cost., Appian users have expressed satisfaction with its efficiency in streamlining processes, decision-making capabilities, and ability to achieve business goals. They also find value in its automation features, resulting in time and cost savings. On the other hand, OutSystems users have reported increased efficiency, streamlined processes, improved productivity, and cost savings due to its ease of use, quick development time, and scalability.
Room for Improvement: Appian: Users have requested improvements in user interface, performance, scalability, and reporting features. OutSystems: Users seek increased performance, efficiency, and speed in development. They suggest intuitive UI, customization options, enhanced collaboration, and smoother integration capabilities.
Deployment and customer support: The reviews for Appian and OutSystems indicate that there may be differences in the time required for deployment, setup, and implementation. User feedback suggests that Appian users may mention different timeframes for deployment and setup, while OutSystems users mention specific timeframes for deployment and setup. It is important to carefully consider these differences when evaluating the products., Appian's customer service is highly regarded and praised by users. The support staff is knowledgeable, friendly, and willing to go the extra mile. OutSystems also has positive feedback, with customers appreciating prompt responses and helpful troubleshooting throughout the development process.
The summary above is based on 50 interviews we conducted recently with Appian and OutSystems users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"It provides us with real-time data on all connected systems in terms of how they're integrated with each other and how they are performing in a workflow manner."
"The solution has a lot of strong features for the financial industry, it is very easy to use."
"Another advantage of this tool is its reports and records. You can maintain dashboards, layouts. If you with a Java solution, it takes six months time. If you use this tool, you can finish in one or one and a half months' time."
"We appreciate the drag and drop functionality and the easy to access plug and play features."
"What stands out are the speed of the product, the quick, easy development, and visual diagramming."
"The most valuable features of Appian are the VPN engine, it is fast, lightweight, and easy to set up business rules. Business teams can do it by themselves. That is a very good feature."
"Appian is easy to install and set up, and it does not come out with your audit. It has accessible process orchestration and process management. With Appian, the time to market is much faster."
"The application life cycle is very clear. I started learning it and giving some workshops to my team. Creating the users and the building is very structured. Documentation is nice and it's easy to learn."
"I like the mobile features the most, and there are also various features around the portal we created that I enjoy."
"OutSystems' low-cost approach has positively impacted our productivity, because we were able to develop faster with OutSystems, enabling us to implement many changes during our sprint."
"The drag-and-drop feature is very valuable."
"The scratch coding is useful. The solution is easy to understand."
"We've used features like batch processing timers, components, and integrations with other systems like SAP, which have accelerated our development process.In terms of productivity, we've seen a 30 percent reduction in screen design time and an additional 10 percent improvement when implementing client requirements. OutSystems' integration capabilities have significantly enhanced our app's functionality, making it quicker and easier to connect with other systems."
"OutSystems is easy to use."
"It is easy to use."
"It is very stable."
"A point of improvement would be the SAIL forms. The built-in tool used to generate forms does not have debugging support (to view local variables as they change on live preview, and step-by-step valuation) which is a big drawback for form development. Moreover, the script language used to build SAIL forms does not support inheritance or lambda expressions (functions as arguments of other functions), which makes the code base more verbose."
"Appian has a few areas for improvement, which my organization raised with the Appian team. One is the Excel output which is limited to fifty columns when it should be up to two hundred or three hundred columns."
"Sometimes, clients expect us to implement ERP using Appian, which is very complicated. In such cases, I don't believe that Appian is a good tool for that."
"We have clients that want to use Office 365, Microsoft Analytics, and Power Apps. Appian just isn't the same as using something specifically designed to cater to the Microsoft Suite."
"The tool itself is pretty good, but the main area that we struggled with was the backend. The frontend development is really good, but the backend modeling can be streamlined a little bit. There are good integrations, but tying them through the data layer and then up into the frontend could be improved a little bit. It does read/write on the data source, and you can configure it to just write or just read, but there is a little bit of work involved."
"The solution could improve robotic process automation."
"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."
"Appian could be improved by making it a strict, no-code platform with free-built process packs."
"Writing custom code still needs to be done via Integration Studio. This might have been added to the IDE."
"We have performance issues while fetching bulk data."
"I would like to see improvements in versioning. It can be challenging to keep track of what changes should be committed, especially when many developers are working in one environment."
"OutSystems does not provide any native reporting resources. All reports must be created with other tools or as a webpage."
"The largest obstacle currently associated with OutSystems is its high cost and limited availability of skilled personnel. Despite being a rapid application development platform, having a highly skilled individual familiar with the platform can be much more beneficial than an inexperienced individual. Because there is a shortage of people with the necessary OutSystems skills, utilizing the platform can become expensive. This makes little sense, considering that a rapid application development platform should be accessible to the average person. However, having a highly skilled individual can greatly increase productivity, making the cost worthwhile."
"When shared extensions are updated, all the applications are redeployed."
"The new version could be improved."
"The PDD framework can't be used for the behavioral-driven development way of working."
Appian is ranked 5th in Low-Code Development Platforms with 58 reviews while OutSystems is ranked 2nd in Low-Code Development Platforms with 46 reviews. Appian is rated 8.4, while OutSystems is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Appian writes "Low resource consumption, easy setup, and stable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OutSystems writes "The visual program provides the advantage of only requiring one skill set for both the front and backend ". Appian is most compared with Microsoft Power Apps, Camunda, ServiceNow, Pega BPM and Mendix, whereas OutSystems is most compared with Microsoft Power Apps, Mendix, ServiceNow, Oracle Application Express (APEX) and Pega BPM. See our Appian vs. OutSystems report.
See our list of best Low-Code Development Platforms vendors and best Rapid Application Development Software vendors.
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