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AWS Step Functions vs Appian comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.9
Calculating ROI from Appian is challenging, but many report significant benefits, improved satisfaction, and increased adoption across organizations.
Sentiment score
9.5
AWS Step Functions reduce development time and costs, enhance scalability and reliability, streamline workflows, and improve ROI.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Appian's customer service is generally effective, with quick responses for critical issues but needs improved response times for complex problems.
Sentiment score
6.4
AWS Step Functions' customer service is mostly positive, with praised enterprise support and mixed reviews on smaller-scale responsiveness.
Their customer service is responsive, and the team is very prompt for support.
I use enterprise support, which is excellent, providing responses within fifteen minutes.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Appian effectively scales for medium to large enterprises, managing various user sizes despite occasional hardware and integration challenges.
Sentiment score
7.8
AWS Step Functions is highly scalable and cost-effective, adapting seamlessly to demand fluctuations for teams of all sizes.
Starting separate Step Functions for each request, making it highly scalable.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Appian is stable with high uptime, but performance relies on best practices, especially under heavy data processing loads.
Sentiment score
8.5
AWS Step Functions are rated highly stable by users, ensured by redundancy and strategies for high availability and reliability.
It depends on how it has been designed and how it has been configured.
If one zone fails, others handle the demand, ensuring high availability.
 

Room For Improvement

Appian users seek improvements in UI customization, integration flexibility, efficiency, mobile features, pricing, and enhanced training materials.
AWS Step Functions requires improvements in data limits, pricing, features, integrations, IDE support, and hybrid cloud integration.
If there is a very complex process that includes a lot of data transitioning and memory-centric processes, it consumes a lot of memory.
 

Setup Cost

Appian's pricing offers flexibility but is often seen as costly, yet competitive with IBM and Oracle for licensing options.
AWS Step Functions pricing varies based on requests and workflow duration, requiring careful configuration to avoid unpredictable costs.
On the pricier side, both Appian and Pega are enterprise-level solutions, placing them on the slightly higher side.
Pricing for Step Functions is very cheap.
The cost is average, provided it is configured correctly.
 

Valuable Features

Appian offers low-code development, intuitive modeling, seamless integration, and scalable deployment for streamlined business process automation.
AWS Step Functions seamlessly integrate AWS tools, enhancing workflow efficiency with scalable task management, visualization, and error handling.
It is easy for me to define the process and create configurable workflows.
AWS Step Functions offers advanced workflows that save time and enhance efficiency by reducing delays and ensuring consistent orchestration among various services.
Step Functions provide seamless integration with AWS services, which enhances the speed of application development.
 

Categories and Ranking

Appian
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (4th), Rapid Application Development Software (5th), Low-Code Development Platforms (4th), Process Mining (6th)
AWS Step Functions
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Appian is 6.2%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Step Functions is 2.4%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Srimanta Pandit - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, improves operational efficiency, and reduces the time taken to complete processes
The solution’s turnaround time for development is better compared to other tools. The solution enables fast development. The traceability of the processor is good. There is much more governance and regulations on the processers. The tool reduces the time of the processes by 30% to 40%. The solution’s low-code aspect has greatly impacted the development and deployment speed. One of the major reasons we are using the product is that we can reuse the modules. The developers can reuse all the modules. It enables us to make subsequent developments in less time. The prebuilt modules can be deployed within two to three weeks. The tool is very flexible. Compared to other platforms, the Appian product team was agile in quickly customizing things for us.
Carlos Alberto Marangon - PeerSpot reviewer
Automate complex workflows with seamless AWS integration
Step Functions provide seamless integration with AWS services, which enhances the speed of application development. The JSON app launched recently allows us to define data execution more easily. The Standard Workflows feature includes error replay capabilities, which are crucial for efficient error management. The Amazon State Language (ASL) in JSON format facilitates workflow automation and accelerates the deployment of Step Functions.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
30%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Appian or Camunda Platform?
Appian is fast when building simple to medium solutions. This solution offers simple drag-and-drop functionality with easy plug-and-play options. The initial setup was seamless and very easy to imp...
Is Appian a suitable solution for beginners who have no additional preparation?
Appian is actually pretty big on educating its users, including with courses that reward you with certifications. There is a whole section on their company’s website where you can check out the edu...
Is it easy to set up Appian or did you have to resort to professional help?
We had some issues when we were setting up Appian. It was quite surprising, since this is a low-code tool which, in its essence, means it is meant for business users and inexperienced beginners. So...
What do you like most about Amazon Step Functions?
The integration capability is easy, whereas building state machines is tricky.
What is your primary use case for Amazon Step Functions?
I use Step Functions for orchestrating several application workflows. Specifically, I often use Step Functions to automate processes requiring multiple steps and for application orchestration. I fo...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Step Functions?
Overall, I would rate AWS Step Functions at least nine out of ten. The technology is robust, but improving the payload size could enhance the product's utility further.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
Amazon Step Functions, Step Functions
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hansard Global plc, Punch Taverns, Pirelli, Crawford & Company, EDP Renewables, Queensland Government Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning (, Bank of Tennessee
Alpha Apps, The Guardian, SGK, Bigfinite
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Step Functions vs. Appian and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.