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.
"The solution has a lot of strong features for the financial industry, it is very easy to use."
"We appreciate the drag and drop functionality and the easy to access plug and play features."
"The most valuable features of Appian are workflow management and the ease with which you can build the UI."
"Recently, we added Appian Process Mining, Appian Portals, and now Appian RPA."
"Technical support has been amazing overall."
"It's a stable product."
"I find the BPM the most valuable feature."
"What I found most valuable in Appian is that it lets you drill down on multiple things through the structure of the reporting and UI side. It's also low-code, yet it results in quick deliverables."
"It is a stable solution."
"I find it to be a genuinely cool and effective platform for my development needs."
"I really like the one-click publish feature in OutSystems. In other development tools/languages, it's not as easy. I also like how easily I can manage all my projects in one place."
"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."
"The tool makes the development process easier."
"The flow editor is the most valuable feature. It is simple and intuitive, and it can guide you step-by-step."
"The most valuable feature is Agile development. I love that you save a lot of time on development and can focus on logic and business requirements."
"Integrations with external systems with SOAP and REST are easy to implement off-the-shelf, but a developer can always implement specific libraries for other integrations."
"There could be a scope of enhancement for capturing the variety of use cases."
"I would like to see more features for enterprises. They would also benefit from adding documentation and training on their site."
"While Appian is generally flexible, it's rigid in some ways. It takes longer to do something that isn't available out of the box."
"The product’s pricing could be improved from the developers' perspective."
"There are four areas I believe Appian could improve in. The first is a seamless contact center integration. Appian does not have a contact center feature. The second is advanced features in RPA. The third would be chatbot and email bot integration—while Appian comes with chatbot and email bot, it's not as mature as it should be, compared to the competition. The fourth area would be next best action, since there is not much of this sort of feature in Appian. These are all features which competitors' products have, and in a mature manner, whereas Appian lacks on these four areas. I see customers who are moving from Appian to Pega because these features are not in Appian."
"It is also not easy to learn. Training tutorials could be improved."
"My only request is that they decrease the license costs."
"Offline capabilities and responsive capabilities could be better. The mobility features of Appian platform are still evolving."
"Mobile apps need improvement."
"Writing custom code still needs to be done via Integration Studio. This might have been added to the IDE."
"Currently, in mobile applications, we don't have push notifications."
"One of the biggest areas for improvement is that every time an existing data element is modified, it creates a new data element. It doesn't really modify that particular data element. So, a user has to follow an extra step of removing the existing data element and bringing in the new and modified data element that is being added, which sort of goes into negative productivity."
"It needs improvement in the AI capability."
"The prices should be lower. It is a little bit too high for a small market."
"The solution's testing framework needs to be improved, and the workflow should be slightly more mature."
"The integration points need to be increased. People have also started to adopt this solution for their regular needs. That means it's not only the big enterprises that are adopting this solution. There are also small and medium enterprises that are adopting it. I've read that where you have large deployments, OutSystems starts to crumble a bit. That is the idea that no customer would know at the beginning and would also not like to hit the wall there. When it is on the client, there are a lot of applications already on low-code, and then suddenly you realize that you want to do some big applications, and you face hurdles. This is the general feedback for all such platforms."
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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