Mendix Room for Improvement
There is always a layer of custom code required. There is a misconception of low-code, or Mendix, or the industry in general. They are perceived as more of a dashboarding tool, and as a visualization platform only, rather than building a complete enterprise solution. That's more of an awareness marketing challenge they have, or the industry has.
In general, AI needs to be better. The team and the company is running ahead with this a bit more. AI area is something which companies have started to pick up on, low-code wise, and they should invest in it more.
I would like to see their data hub module become a little bit more mature.
They need to expand their base as the concept is amazing. We just need to see more use cases and learn more capabilities there, and then definitely they need to fill in the AI piece of it.
View full review »I found some issues in Mendix. The platform still has many areas for improvement. If I compare apples to apples, the PWA features of Mendix could be improved, for example, I wouldn't recommend creating a B2C or B2B marketplace or web portals on Mendix, but there's a tendency for people to still do it through the systems provided by my company, particularly implement B2B or B2C marketplace, versus using eBay or Shopify. On the web portal front, Mendix still needs to improve.
Additional features I'd like to see in the next release of Mendix are better BPM modeling and workflow modeling, because their competitor Appian is very, very strong in workflow modeling. Workflow features could still be improved.
RPA features or automation features also need to be added to Mendix. Process Mining and AI email are also additional features that would make the platform better. All these features are offered by Appian, which is a complete package, low-code tool that's a competitor of Mendix. Adding all these features to Mendix would make it more competitive, not just over Appian, but over other similar tools as well.
View full review »JK
reviewer1947705
Industrial Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The cost model could be better. It is expensive.
There should be more integration with engineering applications and tighter integration for user authentication, such as single sign-on, etc. They have some of that. It just could be stronger.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Mendix
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Mendix. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,995 professionals have used our research since 2012.
The code refactoring tools could be better, especially for applications running for years. It's not bad, but it could be smoother.
Also, writing new widgets can be trickier than it should be for some people, but not if you're familiar with Mendix.
Pricing used to be complex, but Mendix has improved that quite a bit. So, the pricing policy in general. It's not exactly straightforward.
The reporting feature also wasn't great, but Mendix has fixed that in version 10. I still need to test it fully, though. Version 9's reporting could be better.
In future releases, I would like to see more features around report writing.
Another thing is managing and breaking down monolithic apps into modules, with version control for individual modules, which could be more robust. Sharing individual modules wasn't as strong as it should be.
However, the biggest improvement still would be better refactoring tools, both for code and models.
View full review »Feature-wise and in terms of technical aspects, Mendix is excellent, but its pricing is steep.
View full review »Students do have some difficulties translating the hard code. They are usually using code from a previous course.
My understanding is that, if you are not using the free version, it is very expensive.
We'd like more support and more publication of use cases and examples so that students can more easily study the product and better understand how it works and its applications.
View full review »In the beginning, it is difficult to learn and work with. I have to say it was difficult in the beginning to understand best practices.
Once I got the best practices for the back end part, for manipulating data, it was easier to use. For the front end, it was a bit more difficult. For the front end part, I don't like that it's not fully drag and drop there, and I have to know a bit of CSS, which I don't really know.
It would be cool if it could be completely drag and drop, and you could do it like other products, like PowerApps. With PowerApps, you can move it pixel by pixel. It's like PowerPoint.
I've experienced a few bugs. Sometimes it was really tiny things - not something big. There are issues with the versioning systems, et cetera.
It had errors deploying in the public cloud to publish a solution just for the sake of testing it.
I had an issue with a message definition. When you create a message definition and save it, and then close the project and open it again, the message definition did not save. I had to do it again. This has happened a lot.
View full review »JK
Jaroslav Krecek
Senior Product Manager at Deutsche Börse
We specifically want version control of whatever we deploy in the production. However, with Mendix, unfortunately, storing things in binary is quite a lot. If you put it into Github and stuff like that, we'd like it to be a text type of source code rather than binary.
There are not enough developers who are using Mendix. The knowledge base available online and in the market is not as rich as other competitors.
In terms of workflow automation, local automation, they should focus on integrating AI modules. Many companies are trying to build their own models, however, if you compare with how much learning Google has done on their Google models, it makes sense to go for integrations rather than starting from scratch with teaching your AI. That's roughly how we see the domain of RPA and local automation platforms.
The integration or making use of some artificial intelligence and models which are out there could be a lot better. There should be some kind of marketplace.
The user interface styling is a bit tricky. It's got a restrictive and highly sophisticated styling which could be better.
CA
Caesar Aljaaf
Device Manager at Nippurtech
One area for improvement is its integration capabilities. Creating a pluggable widget or integrating it with other systems is challenging.
In terms of features, it would be great to see advancements such as AI services and the integration of third-party services. Additionally, connecting external devices to the application requires multiple steps. Improving this will make it easier for the developers.
PS
reviewer1925442
Principle Technology Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
I struggle with solutions like Mendix in terms of creating enterprise solutions. When I say enterprise solutions I mean enterprise-grade solutions. Let's say if I create an application on Mendix and I want to roll it out to multiple countries, that kind of thing I can do with Mendix. I'll have to copy it. That's hard to do at an enterprise level which can be quite sizeable. I'm not sure how well it scales.
The setup itself can be complex and difficult.
The UX capacity is lacking.
I'm not sure how well the workflow capabilities will hold up.
View full review »EM
Dr.-Ing. Emile Mokouabeka
Project Leader / IT Architect at Hamburg Port Authority
I'm still in the evaluation phase. I have not fully vetted the entire product yet.
It is expensive.
View full review »The cost of total ownership needs to be better. The licenses are very expensive. If you compare it with, let's say, a kind of BPM, or CRM solutions, the cost is very, very big.
While the community is great, they need to work on making their direct technical support services better.
View full review »RB
Robert Bloss
Solutions Architect at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
There's a new update coming soon, and that will be full of great items.
It's not so much that there's room for improvement on the product. They're creating some custom or some out-of-the-box modules that are going to be a part of it. In particular, they've got a workflow module that we could replicate-build ourselves, so to speak. It's probably a module that would take a couple of months, and then you can tweak it. To have that out-of-the-box potential for certain aspects is going to be really good. Having all that workflow prebuilt will be amazing.
There's no direct tech support. However, it's not the type of product you really would get tech support on.
View full review »Mendix could improve by allowing the customization of different programming languages, such as Python and C++.
In a feature release of Mendix, they should add 3D augmentations or other 3D visualizations, such as images. Additionally, more customizations would be a benefit.
View full review »The product needs more connector integration with Microsoft products.
We'd like to be able to write in C Sharp to develop code for Mendix. However, that may be impossible. Still, we'd like to be able to modify the programming language.
View full review »KM
reviewer1128819
System Analyst at a government with 10,001+ employees
A constraint of Mendix is that you have to look for the required plugins which takes up development time. There are a limited number of Mendix experts in the market.
We would like to see is the ability to version manage modules and not just the app. We need finer-grained version management for software repositories. Version management is good but it needs more work.
Also, because of the licensing model, Mendix apps are too monolithic. It would be great to have a microservices licensing model that works well for microservices especially designed to work with Kafka, Google Pub/Sub and streaming technologies.
We need much better code refactoring tools, like IntelliJ but for Mendix. For example, if I wanted to maintain all projects and refactor Domain model fields in bulk, it would be good to have intelligent renaming across the whole model with regular expression syntax. The modeller is too clickety-click.
The most important feature I'd like to see is support for is first-rate JSON Schema support and first-rate GraphQL support. Of course, the Modeller must run on Mac, not Windows.
Lastly, the licensing model does not scale well with many users. This is a huge problem as apps that have many users become very expensive and can kill the business case. Mendix is reasonably negotiable but it's a pain to deal with the licensing for each new project.
View full review »MS
Mohammed Sulty
Principal Consultant at Palmira
While it is difficult for me to address which areas of the solution are in need of improvement, as I manage Mendix projects, but do not utilize them, I would point out the transformation of the BPM and the process with other applications. This is because the applications are conceptually what we need, as they concern the RPA Automation Anywhere and UiPath.
Mendix has the potential to redesign its process engine for compatibility with a BPMN tool without any further action being required, enabling seamless integration between the business processes design applications.
As mentioned, there needs to be an increase in the number of the UI components so that other platforms will not be used in place of the UI interface of Mendix, such as Angular.
Improvements should be made to the functionality to increase the number of UI components in the actual software. As such, we occasionally go outside the system to develop certain pages in React, Angular or Vue JS, which we then import to Mendix. This we do because of the limitation in the UI design, but it is not on par with what's happening, for example, with OutSystems or other tools.
Mendix needs to think about itself offering machine learning and artificial intelligence. That's going to be the future.
I really like that they're already working on new features. Nevertheless, to really be on top of things, they will need to do more in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
View full review »TW
reviewer1600098
Chief Technology Officer at a financial services firm with 1-10 employees
In terms of what could be improved, of course I'd like it to be highly secure and highly scalable. Security is paramount to us. Scalability-wise, we don't necessarily have a huge volume.
From a scalability perspective, at this particular stage, it's not necessarily a top priority.
View full review »MT
Markus Travaille
Business Development Manager & Project manager at EGALiT
Mendix is right now focusing on developer features while we would like to have more features for the information analyst. Mendix is not going this route because they clearly see the developer as their target group, while we like to see it as more of a tool for information analysts.
What is lacking is the support of higher level modeling features, like the modeling you do is relatively low level, yet it is still close to programming. We would like to see a more business-oriented modeling environment, like BPMN. However, that is not the direction Mendix is going. We are developing our own intellectual property in this direction. Thus, we are building it ourselves.
View full review »One thing I would like to improve is the support system offered by Mendix. It can sometimes take a while to get the help I need when I'm using Mendix.
View full review »MM
Mitchel Mol
CEO / Owner at Aelion - Netherlands
The document templates definitely need some love, they have been around for a while but no actual improvement have been done since they were released. At least not in terms of additional options like the web counterparts of the elements you have available have. Also, Mendix is even easy for non-developers to start developing apps with, however when the applications grows and gets more complex these type of users are not fully guided in making it as secure and performance as it should.
It would be great if the modeler could also start pointing in the right direction when it comes to that. Although Mendix did introduce the Mendix Application Quality Monitor which could help with this issue.
View full review »UX/UI design is still the largest area that can be improved, or at least be made easier. Mendix have been making massive steps in this area since release 5.18 though, so that’s promising. Next to that the integration possibilities have been expanding but can always use more options.
View full review »The area of this product that needs improving is the templates in which the user uses to create documents. As it stands it is not very intuitive and not pleasing to the eye.
RS
Ramli Somers
Chief Innovation Officer & Board member at TimeSeries
It could use a more comprehensive widget creation studio in the IDE.
View full review »I see little to no improvements to its core functionality since Mendix 7 was rolled out, creating web apps for businesses.
From Mendix 6 until 7, options on creating mobile apps have improved, but offline capabilities are not mature enough. Still, this gets a good focus within the company, so I believe this will be something of the past soon enough.
View full review »Reporting isn't Mendix' strong suite. The Business Modeler is amazing for rapid application development but the Reporting lags behind. Mendix relies on third party products who specialize in reporting to supplement their product. Other areas where they could improve are already on the roadmap, for instance clustering and NoSQL databases. Generally speaking the community and R&D are on the ball when it comes to features that their client base desire.
View full review »We need better support for master data management, consuming corporate dictionaries and exporting the models to others. We also need better reporting and visualisation as this is a critical part of each app and currently the reporting side has to rely on external BI tools. Additionally, we need better support for quickly integrating with external data sources without writing code or reliance on ETL tools. A Mendix profiler will also help and lastly, a multi window business Modeller so that one can use the Modeller more productively on two monitors.
View full review »JM
Jack Mojapelo
Software Developer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
They need to enable multiple database connections so an app can directly read/write data to/from multiple databases. This would enable easy splitting of big applications that have complex entity relationships.
I would also like to see automatic adjustment to the Java Heap, whenever an application load becomes too much for the application.
It could also use hot database replication.
View full review »Indeed nothing is 100% perfect. But who am I to say what should be better? Nevertheless, I think Mendix is very strong if you want to store and retrieve something in a database. My personal experience with connecting the LoRa device (which itself is not fully developed yet, so the interface requirements are not fully known) is that it has been a hard job to get done. Be aware that I’m a Java developer so loading the encryption, hashing and decryption libraries was hard for me to find. On the other hand, interfacing with new Internet of Things (IoT) devices creates endless possibilities.
View full review »Seamless integration with legacy application is what I would like to see the most.
View full review »SB
GlobalAda543
Industry Expert and Advisor at a financial services firm
Overall, integration with the enterprise ecosystem needs improvement.
I would like to see the inclusion of APIs that can help with the interoperability.
View full review »Pricing: Development is free, but deploying applications in production requires a monthly fee, based on the amount of users.
This makes Mendix unfit for small businesses, since they can rarely afford high monthly costs. Also, Mendix cloud charges ridiculous monthly fees for data storage.
View full review »Creating better document templates would be nice. You can achieve what you want but not a speedy as you can do everything else.
View full review »PV
Petar Vukmanovic
Software Business Engineer at Intonovi
- Overview of model versioning control for the sake of the review process
- Better SCRUM board
- Provide an overview of model changes from the repository through Sprintr (SCRUM board)
- A choice between versioning control system would be nice
I think it has made some good/significant changes like Model API and a presence in AWS as well as integration with cloud foundry. Going forward some important improvements would be the inclusion of support for non-relational databases . Non-relational databases have had a fair presence in domains like Big Data and the ability to extract data out of them represented in Mendix and then go on for analysis could be an important feature .
View full review »I cannot think of any immediate issues. Mendix has an active community, providing requests, advice and add-ons. Each new Mendix version incorporates suggestions from this community. I believe this is why it meets the needs of most users very well.
View full review »BK
Bryan3256
Software Developer at a real estate/law firm with 51-200 employees
They are already improving on this, but I would like to see more documentation as well as how-to documents. This will improve adaptation for future developers/companies.
View full review »The out of the box crud screens can be made more user friendly, but then again it is a business application tool to quickly generate crud screens for enterprise application, not focused on public facing/entertainment values.
View full review »After two weeks the business will be able to see what they had in mind and will be able to validate whether the IT people have understood what they meant but also whether the solution is going to work as they had in mind.
View full review »I would like it to help us be more productive.
Also, while the documentation is good, the development box could be better.
View full review »Mendix is great for internal applications but not so great for a public-facing interface. It lacks a proper directory structure for public use. The URL will not change from page to page unless a deep link is created for each page. That makes it difficult to bookmark pages in the browser to view later on. A feed can be created for other public UI solutions.
View full review »User experience and performance with large datasets.
View full review »In the next version I would like the Rest Service Module to be incorporated into Mendix, similar to the way web services work.
View full review »AS
Alexander Saravia
Gerente at 1-800SAP
You need experienced programmers and developers to understand this solution. We had a very experienced developer use the solution and they had difficulties, the training for developers could be better.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Mendix
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Mendix. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,995 professionals have used our research since 2012.