Appian Reviews

We use Appian to automate processes that we are currently doing manually. We are working on an agile project. We have 500 people using this solution, most of which are operational.

This particular project started with four cases, or four processes. Next year we plan on doubling this and implementing eight more cases.

Prior to Appian, when we were handling a particular process manually, it took 40 days to resolve. After Appian was implemented, it took only seven days. The improvement in time is amazing.

I find the BPM the most valuable feature. It is easy to develop as it is a local solution. Appian is quick to understand and develop.

Appian could include other applications that we could reuse for other customers, CRM for example. This would make implementation quicker.

I have been using Appian for three years.

We had some concerns with the stability of Appian when we had a lot of cases. During normal operation it is a stable solution.

Scalability depends on how much you want to embrace the capacity of Appian. If you have a lot of cases, 150,000 for example, the stability will not be good because the memory required is so heavy that the RAM that you need is backed in. If you pass a certain number of cases, and the processes are complex, the situation is not suitable for Appian.

I have had no concerns with customer service. 

The initial setup of Appian was straightforward. We have an architect on our team who did the deployment. The deployment depends on the environment. For us, configuration took a day and to deploy no more than an hour.

We use one person, the architect, to maintain the program.

The ROI has been good. Profits increased because of this solution, this is why we are going to implement eight more cases next year.

The cost can be improved, however it is not too high for the customers here in Spain.

My advice before starting to implement this solution you need to consider what you want to do in Appian because everything is not possible. Sometimes when you think BPM process, you think that the interface application is the same, but it's not.

I would rate Appian an 8 out of 10.

Normally, we are building platforms. At the moment, we are running 19 big projects, and we had never used Appian before. One of our customers is a big consulting company, and one of their customers wanted a project with Appian.

They don't have Appian developers, but we have a very good team. They reached out to us and they had some projects in 2022 with Appian, and they asked for our support. I gave my BAs and PMs an introductory level Appian course, and now some of the developers are doing the associate and lead developer part for Appian.

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.

There's a nice fundamentals course that I can ask my project managers to easily learn, while the other local, no-code platforms don't have that option.

The certification is pretty expensive, and it doesn't allow for a tailored UI. I'm a little bit disappointed with the exam. It's different from the preparation, training, and sample exam.

One of my lead developers failed to pass this morning. I'm a bit sad because it's $200. If I ask 10 of my developers to get a certificate, it's $2,000. It's a scaleup company, so we have more than 60 people at the moment, but I can't ask most of my developers to get the certificate.

From a developer point of view, I can't try this in the free version because you can't buy one or two subscriptions. You need to get the minimum package for premium, which is about one hundred seats.

From the first day, I wanted to see the capability of reaching other functions, Google Cloud services, and cognitive services. There is already an OCR, intelligent document that comes in the My Cloud and which Appian gave me as a sample. I can't build it because it uses the Google cognitive services as a backend, and this is the thing that we couldn't try. 

You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first.

Something I would like to see improved is an SQL database connection.

We have been using Appian for over a month. We are still on the trial license instead of the full license.

I'm happy about the stability. It looks promising for me.

I can't predict how many developers it requires. It really depends on the type and size of the app and the capability of the developers.

We run a one-hour workshop from scratch. My developer can create the users' data, custom data types, a small UI, and a nice flow and read right from the databases easily. In one hour, he can complete as many tasks that normally take many days.

The scalability is a bit limited for the SQL databases because for some of my cognitive services, I'm using no SQL databases in the cloud. Appian doesn't support it. Appian only supports relational databases. There is no database for the unstructured data.

We are building platforms, but normally we are fully in Azure and the whole platform is in Azure, but because some of our customers and potential customers want to use Appian, I'm preparing my team for such opportunities.

You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first. Certification is expensive.

Appian is like a butter knife, not a Swiss Army knife. It will serve the business user's solution. It'll create a very good thing and the application is clear.

I really enjoy it because the PowerApps from Microsoft mature and are internally connected to other platforms inside Microsoft.

However, it doesn't explain the learning part very well non-technical people. There is a separation, but in the Appian fundamentals, this course is just for the BAs and the PMs. If they want to lead a project with Appian, this is the minimum standard that they need to know. At that point, it's easy for me to train project managers and business analysts. I think that's the advantage of Appian.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

My humble advice to someone who is looking to implement this solution is that they need to replicate. It's a so-called no-code platform, but it's not no-code because it has its own coding site. That's why they need to build one of their own solutions with Appian first to understand the how-to-dos first and become more confident. Luckily, the learning curve is not that steep.

There are multiple use cases of Appian. A banking customer uses it more for agent onboarding; we are working on contract management for a manufacturing customer; and we are working on an incident management system for an airport. There are almost seven to eight use cases, as of now. 

We don't use Appian, we are partners and we implement this solution for customers. I'm working on both on-premises and cloud-based deployment. Appian's deployment is hybrid. 

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. 

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. 

I have been working with Appian for three years. 

The stability and performance are good. Appian is focusing a lot on this because they recently came out with a Kubernetes system acquisition, which is providing them the ability to scale as well as an expansion model that can be as stable as required. The performance is very good, as this solution is available across multiple cloud systems. 

As far as maintenance, it's pretty straightforward because Appian, as a company, comes with very mature hotfixes when required, as well as seamless upgrades. As long as you do not do any customizations—which is not recommended—it is pretty easy and straightforward to maintain, and does not take much effort. 

Appian is definitely easy to scale, especially if you understand the requirements. It's a good architecture. 

Of our customers who use Appian, I would say most of them are medium-sized. Next would be large-sized, and then there are not many small-sized customers. Medium- and large-sized companies mostly go for Appian. 

I would rate the technical support of Appian about a seven out of ten because there is definitely room for improvement when compared to the other product support we are seeing. 

The initial setup is a simple process. If it's on cloud, it does not take much time. If it's on-premise, you have to have all the required hardware. It takes around four hours. 

We implement this solution for customers. 

Appian is very flexible in their pricing. In general, Appian's pricing is much, much lower when compared to competition like Pega or other products. Appian also has a flexible licensing model across geographies. Pega usually goes with a single licensing cost—which is a US-based cost—for all global customers, and it's costly. Whereas Appian has a different regional licensing cost model and it can be cheaper, depending on geography. So Appian's licensing is very flexible, and cheaper when compared to other competition. 

The pricing is pretty straightforward. If you're going for a cloud-based deployment, there are no additional costs because you're just going to be on the cloud. However, if you're going to deploy it on-premise, you would need to install software, so you might have to procure your own database and servers and everything. The current recommendation, and what most customers are going for, is the cloud because it's easy to maintain. There aren't really any costs except for the licensing. 

Pega and Appian are both good BPM platforms. The area where Appian has the advantage is that it's really low-code. It takes much less effort when compared to Pega, both for developing and for setup and implementation. Within about 30 days, maximum, you can build out a product in Appian, whereas it will take you much longer in Pega. However, in regard to the four areas in which I believe Appian is lacking, Pega has all those features in a mature manner: seamless contact center integration, advanced features in RPA, mature chatbot and email bot integration, and next best action.

I would rate Appian an eight out of ten. 

If you are looking for a fast, rapid rollout of applications and you have multiple medium-scale and small-scale processes that you want to roll out at a faster pace, with ease of maintenance, then Appian is a good product to go with. Appian can also be leveraged for large-scale implementation—for example, financial service customers, for loan origination or claims organization—but you would really need to understand your requirements in order to achieve this with Appian. Whereas with Pega, it has framework for loan originations and everything, which Appian doesn't come with. Appian is a plain vanilla product, and if you go for a large-scale core implementation, then you should have enough information and requirements to capture it. Appian is best suited to mid-scale and small-scale processes and a rapid rollout. 

Appian can be used to helps organizations build applications and workflows.

The solution's most valuable features are the regular periodic and quarterly updates, they are very useful updates. They keep improving the solution more often, and that helps the platform or code always be up to date with the latest features.

The solution could improve by being more responsive when dealing with large quantities of data. Additionally, they can make the decision or rules engine better. It cannot handle too many rules or too many decisions at once.

I have been using Appian for approximately six years.

The solution is stable.

The technical support is amazing. They have high availability when attending to tickets. The extent to which they go to support you is amazing. They go down deep into the issue you are facing and get you to the right expertise. You can access support through forums and the telephone which they respond quickly with details on a solution.

The standalone and distributed environment installations are straightforward. There are clear instructions, documentation, and support available. However, the installation into a distributed environment can be more challenging.

I have had assistance from Appian support for the implementations.

The license is a bit expensive and the pricing model is sometimes confusing for new users or business users. It is difficult for them to know what volume of usage they will have to be able to purchase the best-suited license at the beginning.

I rate Appian an eight out of ten.

I work for the largest distributor of Toyota Lexus in the Middle East. My area is related to car motors. I'm an IT senior general manager and we are customers of Appian. 

The workflow engines are a valuable feature. We use them to bridge the gaps of processes within our core systems that are either too difficult or too costly to develop within the core system. We bridge those gaps using Appian. 

We'd like to see the employee experience improved, something we can integrate with SharePoint. Right now we're looking at the Power BI which belongs to Microsoft. It has a lot of good features for low-code no-code development kinds of things. I'd like to see the ability of the software itself to integrate with the core systems. It's a gap that Appian hasn't fulfilled. 

I'd like to see integration with Microsoft products as an additional feature. Microsoft Team, or something like that. It's not there or if it is, it requires some work to enable easy integration with SharePoint. 

I've been using this solution for eight years. 

The scalability and stability of this solution are good. 

I'd say that the technical support is good. 

We visited the workflows that are provided within SharePoint but they did not fulfill the kind of things that we were looking for, or the problems that we were trying to solve at that point of time. We were planning to work on specific domains, specific areas, but you cannot make it work for complex things. 

The setup is not completely straightforward but not too complex either. The deployment itself wasn't too difficult, but this is something where features evolve and the things within it over time start moving. Adapting to any new feature while continuing to work is not simple. It makes things more complex. There are around 5,000 people using the product and we have five people dealing with maintenance. 

The price should be lower. It's not too expensive but I believe the price could be better. 

The product needs to be supported by top management for it to work. This is one of the things that we faced at the very beginning. Second, from a technical point of view, you need to have a dedicated team taking care of this from a product management point of view, not necessarily from a technical point of view because that can be outsourced. I recommend not doing the development in-house, rather to outsource it with one or two partners and the corporate team. I recommend going for the full cloud-based solution architecture rather than having part of it inside and part of it outside. If there is no issue with data sharing then I would recommend going for a fully cloud-based solution. It gives an advantage and reduces a lot of management headaches. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We use Appian for client on-boarding, anything onboard related, really: loading institutional clients, tracking that information in a single reporter, doing the follow-up, creating the plan parables for them, and developing for them.

In my organization, there are about 150 users who are currently using Appian on a daily basis. We use Appian very extensively. Every day, there are more than 100 unique logins to the system.

Appian also has very flexible local integration and we have used that extensively to integrate with our Legacy system.

The user interface is good, but it's not perfect. They should provide more flexibility so designers can create a more picture-perfect device. There should be more features on mobile UX development as well. 

Currently, it's easy to use and It gets the job done, but it's not flexible in regards to creating the mobile application from scratch. You have to play within the framework and the rules of the UX; however, that's something that not many customers like. Customers want a flexible mobile application development platform. I think Appian should make a lot of improvements with respect to their mobile application development by providing more flexibility for designers in order to allow them to create their own UX components and control the display of the data onscreen. 

I would like to see more flexibility in terms of the UI. I know that it's not designed to be a big application that allows you to do multiple things, like creating the second year stream of the pie, for example. I feel like Appian has been so instrumental in making their entire product local, and have really improved the user interface design, but the user interface design is limited to authenticated users only — although there are some limited pieces available on the login page. I would like Appian to extend their local capabilities to the login page as well so that we could create an available application that can be targeted to any customer. For example, if you flipped it, you would see information about various products and other information, something that could be very realistic if only Appian would allow these capabilities to be extended to the login page.

I have been using Appian for more than 10 years.

The stability is good. We have been using Appian for our strategy and tactical solutions and it has held up very well for us. The team was able to adapt to the changes of the new version  very quickly and were able to implement the application without any complexities or jumping hurdles relating to development. There were no issues for us. Appian has been meeting just as many of the requirements in my department as the stakeholders have. The stakeholders are happy with the UI and ease of the application. The overall usability has improved and everyone is happy with Appian. 

We believe that the scalability of Appian depends on the expertise of the Appian designers. It completely depends on the skill of the designers — how they design the applications determines the scalability of processes and data. In other words, the platform is very scalable. It stores the data as memory so the data allows us to retrieve the information rapidly; but again, we had already done the data management so the team was focused on data retention and data management. They set up their architecture in such a way that the system and the application can be scaled very quickly, so we are not seeing any problems with the scaling of Appian. 

My team mainly interacts with Appian cloud support who regularly provides them with solutions and advises them about any existing platform issues.

We previously looked at the Pega system; actually, one of our departments is currently using Pega system, but we wanted to diversify our technology base to provide a better experience for our stakeholders. My CIO recommended we make an investment because these two platforms are leading BPM tools offering similar functionalities, including BPM, EI, and case management. So we were calculating the pricing, trying to figure out what the return on the investment would be if we went with one platform or the other and what it would cost us in terms of losses between Pega and Appian.

The initial setup was straightforward. The team was able to set it up quickly, build up the applications and deploy it within six to ten weeks.

We have an in-house team that is comprised of Appian architects, designers, consultants and professionals who are trained on the Appian platform.

I would definitely recommend Appian. It has come a long way and it's a good product. It's entering into the area of a local application development platform. Appian is continuously making product updates every quarter. 

I would give Appian a rating of nine out of ten.

Our plan on using the solution will be to basically utilize it for business process management, and for case management as well. We want to use their local platform offering and some of their niche markets, to see how they can provide dynamic case management all in one place. 

One of the features that we felt was valuable to us was the business case management and how seemingly easy it was to use.

The combination of business process management, dynamic case management over the local platform has vastly improved.

We appreciate the drag and drop functionality and the easy to access plug and play features. 

They seem to be introducing a lot of automation into their product, which is exciting for us. They're apparently partnering up with different companies to offer robotic process automation in the future.

The initial setup is very easy.

You can easily integrate other applications into the product.

We're still researching the platform. I don't have a strong opinion on what might be missing. They seem to be constantly upgrading their products.

The solution could use some more tutorials to help brand new users figure out how to use the product effectively.

We're not really using the solution so much as testing its capabilities and discovering its resources. We've been doing this now for about two months.

The solution has been pretty stable. I haven't had any downtime whatsoever, or any disruptions or anything of that nature. There hasn't been any lag in service. It's been good.

The solution is very agile. It's very easily expandable too. You're able to integrate different applications or different interfaces with this platform. It's actually quite flexible, I should say.

That said, at this point, we don't plan to increase usage. We're still learning about the product. We hope, in the future, if we take it on, we will be able to expand it.

Due to the fact that we haven't had any issues yet, and we've been using the solution for a short amount of time, we haven't needed to contact technical support. If I need to in the future, I will. However, at this point, I can't speak to their level of service as I've never used them.

We did not find the initial setup complex. Our engineers, who handled the implementation, found it to be quite straightforward.

The deployment process was fast. I can't recall the exact number of hours it took, however, it was not a drawn-out process.

Maintenence seems to be minimal, however it would be helpful if there was someone on staff to maintain it as needed.

Our engineers handled the implementation. We were able to do everything in-house. We didn't need assistance from consultants or resellers.

The solution offers a monthly subscription model. That's what we use. I recall it being about $90 a month. They do have different tiers. 

We're currently doing a case study on this specific solution. We didn't look at other solutions.

We don't have a business relationship with Appian. We're just customers.

We're most likely using the latest version of the solution.

I would definitely recommend the solution and invite other companies to try it out. They even have the trial edition. That way, you can test the solution before having to purchase the application edition. If you decide to go forward, it is $90 per user per month. They have the enterprise edition as well which is a bit more. 

The solution is that it's available on different devices as well, which makes it very flexible and easily adaptable to a lot of different environments, including Windows, Linux, Mac, and Android.

The product also caters to all sizes of companies, whether you are small or large.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Process Automation and Forms Digitisation, implementation of organisational wide processes rather than use of COTS.

Appian was not selected by any of the organisations I've worked with to date for production use.

Form building capabilities and well thought out process modelling are key points to this product.

Support for complex models really needs significant improvement

Flexibility in the architecture is not there

Management or reusable assets is extremely limited and poorly designed

Business rules are not aligned to industry best practices

Authoring tool slow to use resulted in limitations on how quickly solutions can be built

Integration to DevOps (such as automated testing, CI/CD etc needs work)

Trial/evaluations only.

This product is targeted to mid size companies and not highly scalable complex processes.

Customer Service:

Average, although a small responsive team Appian has been fast growing stretching their ability to service customer needs.

Technical Support:

Reasonable, stronger than say IBM or Oracle technical support but it is still critical to engage in a full POC activity with this product to ensure it fits your needs before proceeding with an implementation. The closed nature of the platform means there is limited to no help outside of that technical support team which is already stretched based on the ever increasing customer base.

leveraging IBM engine on other jobs with the Blueworks Live for developing processes with business.

Compare this product closely to open source options, IBM and Pega. For simple solutions using simple models Appian may be sufficient and would provide better ROI than investing in building a team to support a more complex tool but for complex models I'd look for a stronger tool-set.

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 used this solution for the digitalization of all our legal processes. It has very flexible adaptation and the ability to save and automate processes. In addition, it is easy to change the user interface and improve it, make reports, and obtain information copies.

The most valuable feature is trustability. The preparation, reports, information, and data model are also valuable.

The ability of the interface to load automatic data is not great.

We've used Appian in the last year.

It is a stable solution. 

It is a scalable solution, and we have about 30 to 40 people using it in our company.

I rate the technical support a ten out of ten. They are very good.

The setup was not difficult. It requires a technical profile, but it's a low-cost application.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. I would recommend taking the tutorials and courses. There is a lot of material available to learn how to use and take maximum advantage of the application.