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.
"Low code development: Code can be developed pretty quickly which leads to less turnaround time for automation of business processes."
"Appian also has very flexible local integration."
"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's most valuable features are the quick time it takes to develop for the market. It's easy and faster than other BPM solutions."
"Appian has many valuable features, the first being the ease of development—rapid development. Second, the process of learning the product and tool is faster when compared to its peers in the market. It's closer to low-code, and while it's still not very easy, it's more low-code than other products in the industry. Appian has a good user interface, a seamless model user interface, which comes without additional coding. It can also integrate with multiple systems."
"In terms of interface, it's very good. In terms of infrastructure, it's amazing and already using multiple tools behind the scenes. It's a low-code platform, so it's very easy to implement."
"It is really simple to create a new app, and I like the data-centric aspect of the BPM tool."
"The process models provide self-documenting systems."
"The product is mostly stable."
"We have no complaints surrounding both the scalability and stability of this solution."
"It is very stable."
"Reduces the manual labor in compiling and deploying applications and generating procedural code (by reducing development bureaucracy/processes, resulting in real gains). The LifeTime Server approach, requiring just a few steps to publish applications in production environments, is fantastic."
"The visual program of OutSystems is one of the major advantages of this solution."
"One thing I like about OutSystems is that there's no lock-in. You can keep running your applications because it's on .NET and hosted centrally. That's one of the advantages I see there in terms of not having an IT strategy that has a dependency on a particular platform."
"The most valuable features of OutSystems are the user-friendly platform. The drag-and-drop feature is great. I have used other rapid application development tools before, but they were not as advanced as OutSystems. With the previous tools, I had to manually build certain features, but OutSystems does it automatically."
"OutSystems is a low-code solution. Most features are like drag-and-drop, so it's pretty easy to work. Thus it helps the organization by saving time for developers."
"Lacks business rules management as part of the solution."
"Appian could include other applications that we could reuse for other customers, CRM for example."
"The product’s pricing could be improved from the developers' perspective."
"There should be more flexibility for the developers to choose the look and feel of the UI. They should have a better ability to design their widgets and customize them with different colors, shapes, and sizes. That is a limitation that could be improved upon."
"Appian could be improved by making it a strict, no-code platform with free-built process packs."
"We would like to see more reduced latency. We would like to make sure that the scale-out factor will be much more as workloads come in."
"It has it's own built-in UI components and doesn't provide much flexibility to customize or extend those components."
"What could be improved is more on the front end perspective, like the user interface and the mobile application aspect."
"In my opinion, the support and the pricing could be better."
"It is hard to find the logic in OutSystems. From an improvement perspective, I want to be able to properly use logic in OutSystems."
"I would like to see OutSystems improve its integration capabilities, especially with emerging technologies like AI and GPT."
"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."
"When shared extensions are updated, all the applications are redeployed."
"It's difficult to do the component version control. I would like them to add more studying materials."
"Mobile apps should have been fully native."
"In OutSystems, cloud management is an area of concern where improvements are required."
Appian is ranked 6th in Rapid Application Development Software with 57 reviews while OutSystems is ranked 3rd in Rapid Application Development Software 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 "Useful natural speech to algorithm, reliable, and beneficial automatic task". 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 Rapid Application Development Software vendors and best Low-Code Development Platforms vendors.
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