

Appian and AWS Step Functions compete in the application development and workflow orchestration space. Appian seems to have the upper hand due to its intuitive process modeling and low-code rapid deployment which enhances time-to-market significantly.
Features: Appian offers low-code development for rapid deployment and seamless integration, along with an intuitive process modeling tool for creating complex workflows. It also provides diverse application development features. AWS Step Functions is known for its seamless integration with AWS services, robust orchestration capabilities, and effective error management, making it a strong contender within the AWS ecosystem.
Room for Improvement: Appian needs to enhance its architecture flexibility, interface customization, and integration with DevOps tools. It also faces challenges with UI customization and offline capabilities. AWS Step Functions would benefit from increased fault tolerance, more integration options, and improved pricing transparency. Better support for non-AWS systems and cost management are also desired enhancements.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Appian supports versatile deployment across public, private, and hybrid clouds, coupled with responsive customer service. AWS Step Functions is aligned with public cloud deployment and benefits from AWS infrastructure but lacks extensive customization and customer support focus compared to Appian.
Pricing and ROI: Appian's pricing is high but justified by its extensive features and quick return on investment through rapid deployment efficiency. AWS Step Functions offers cost-efficient pricing for AWS-specific tasks with a flexible but complex structure, necessitating careful cost management.
Using Appian is saving us five full-time employees, which is significant since we currently have only four team members.
They see return on investment in terms of cost savings, time savings, more efficient processes, and more efficient employees.
Appian is very efficient, allowing us to build a lot of applications within a financial year, making it cost-effective.
I would give Appian's customer support 10 out of 10 due to their next-level support.
The technical support for Appian rates as 10 out of 10 because they have a great support team.
Their customer service is responsive, and the team is very prompt for support.
The speed of reply and the content of their responses usually solve the problems that arise.
I use enterprise support, which is excellent, providing responses within fifteen minutes.
On a scale of one to 10, Appian rates as a nine for scalability.
Our volume has increased by 20% in the two years since using Appian, and it can handle the increased volume effectively.
Appian is scalable, but it depends on how you build your applications.
They can handle multiple simultaneous requests effectively.
There isn't much need for scalability when creating orchestration in AWS Step Functions, which explains the rating of six.
We have tested Appian during peak usage and off-peak times, and we have not experienced any issues such as lagging or system disruptions.
It depends on how it has been designed and how it has been configured.
The stability of Appian would rate as nine, as it's a stable environment.
If one zone fails, others handle the demand, ensuring high availability.
I never faced any faults or issues due to its stability with AWS, making it very reliable with no downtime and 100% reliability.
It has room to improve for use cases where the users are public facing, where anonymous users could come to a site and run a business workflow or interact with some data.
If Appian can suggest the country based on that address, it would significantly decrease error rates in processing remittance.
I would like to see more enhancement in the user interface to allow more freedom in designing the sites and pages.
It would benefit from more integration with different applications or services.
Appian provides value for money, is easy to use, has a straightforward setup procedure, and offers great support from the Appian team.
The price of Appian, on a competitive landscape, is a little bit on the higher side for companies, rating maybe a 6.5.
The pricing of Appian is based on the number of users and generally ranges from 70 to 100 USD per user per month.
Pricing for Step Functions is very cheap.
The cost is average, provided it is configured correctly.
Appian also utilizes AI for business users, providing a feature called process each view, enabling business users to create their own dashboards, reports, and gain insights from their data and processes using artificial intelligence.
After switching to Appian, it can extract data from MT103, eliminating the need for manual data entry.
The zero-code integration feature is remarkable, allowing for ease of data transfer and workflow enhancement.
Step Functions provide seamless integration with AWS services, which enhances the speed of application development.
AWS Step Functions offers advanced workflows that save time and enhance efficiency by reducing delays and ensuring consistent orchestration among various services.
It was particularly valuable for its integration capabilities, allowing for execution of scripts and data migration.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Appian | 3.7% |
| AWS Step Functions | 1.7% |
| Other | 94.6% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 20 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 9 |
| Large Enterprise | 44 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 7 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 2 |
| Large Enterprise | 5 |
Appian is a unified low-code platform and solution used by businesses to build enterprise applications and workflows. This product adapts to the needs of clients and the technologies they are already using to combine their data in a single workflow and maximize resources. The platform has four main components through which it transforms the work process for companies of various sizes. They are:
Appian is utilized across a diverse set of industries, including automotive and manufacturing, energy and utilities, education, financial services, telecom and media, transportation, retail, insurance, healthcare, and life sciences. The most frequent use cases of Appian are customer journey, governance, risk and compliance, operational efficiency, supply chain, distributed order management, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) management.
Appian Features
Appian has various features that allow users to create solutions for their businesses. These features can be separated into a few groups according to function, including automation, low-code application development, and integrations and data. Some of the most frequently used features of Appian include:
Appian Benefits
The benefits of using Appian include:
Reviews from Real Users
A practice leader - digital process automation at a computer software company values Appian highly because the product is easy to develop, low-code, and has a good user interface.
Alan G., an advisory board member at Codecon VR, Appian offers a clear application life cycle, easy to learn documentation, and comes with a fundamentals course.
AWS Step Functions integrate seamlessly with other AWS services to offer efficient pipeline and workflow management. Its intuitive design allows for streamlined orchestration, easily handling complex tasks.
AWS Step Functions provide robust orchestration and automation capabilities, simplifying the creation of workflows with graphical and JSON-based designs. It excels in managing tasks through advanced parallelization and error handling features. Automatic scaling further enhances performance, ensuring reliability in varied environments. However, improvements are needed in IDE integration, larger data handling, and fault tolerance. Users find value in its capacity for microservice orchestration and data integration, although dependency on the Amazon ecosystem and limited third-party integrations pose challenges.
What are the key features of AWS Step Functions?In industries managing data pipelines, AWS Step Functions orchestrate workflows, execute parallel ETL jobs, and integrate various AWS services, enabling smoother operations and efficient data migration. Companies benefit from streamlined processes and robust handling of interdependent tasks.
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