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Appian vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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
7.2
Appian enhances profits, reduces process time, achieving break-even in year one, with widespread adoption and demonstrated ROI.
Sentiment score
7.6
GitLab offers excellent ROI by reducing deployment time, supporting users, improving DevOps scores, and enhancing project management.
Appian is very efficient, allowing us to build a lot of applications within a financial year, making it cost-effective.
We have saved time significantly, reducing deployment time from four hours to five minutes per deployment.
Migrating to GitLab is bringing time-saving benefits, and everything is easier to automate.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Appian's customer support is praised for efficiency and personalization but faces challenges with response times and complex issues.
Sentiment score
6.8
GitLab's customer support is generally well-regarded, with users appreciating community forums, fast responses for paid versions, and third-party assistance.
Their customer service is responsive, and the team is very prompt for support.
The technical support is generally good.
Appian has a community where I can put my questions.
I have had meetings where they taught me, explained things, and provided guidance for starting from scratch.
I have interacted with architects for some advice during the implementation, and they were prompt in their response.
We have rarely needed to escalate issues to technical support since GitLab usually runs seamlessly.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Appian is scalable with expert setup, handling cloud configurations well, though hardware and complexity issues may impact performance.
Sentiment score
7.4
GitLab's scalable container architecture efficiently manages diverse user sizes, with potential improvements for large deployments and on-premises setups.
Appian is scalable, but it depends on how you build your applications.
Initially, without much coding, I can easily handle five thousand records.
It has all the features required for our coding and deployment needs, which makes it scalable to our changing requirements.
We're transitioning to OpenShift for future scalability with increased user numbers.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Appian is highly stable with 99.99% uptime; issues are mostly linked to development choices, while users commend its reliability.
Sentiment score
8.3
GitLab is highly stable, with minimal glitches, reliable performance under pressure, and user satisfaction ratings of 7-10.
It depends on how it has been designed and how it has been configured.
I have not encountered any performance or stability issues with GitLab so far.
 

Room For Improvement

Appian users want better UI customization, mobile flexibility, enterprise features, and integration, with improved scalability and reduced licensing costs.
GitLab requires better AWS integration, UI, documentation, project management, security, and reduced pricing with enhanced leadership dashboards and testing tools.
I would like to see more enhancement in the user interface to allow more freedom in designing the sites and pages.
If there is a very complex process that includes a lot of data transitioning and memory-centric processes, it consumes a lot of memory.
It would be beneficial to have a user-friendly interface for setting up these configurations, instead of just writing YAML files.
The UI has remained the same for a couple of years and could benefit from an update with AI features and better customization.
Roadmaps and Gantt charts in GitLab are not as advanced as in Jira, and changing start and end dates is more laborious in GitLab.
 

Setup Cost

Appian offers high-value, cost-effective cloud solutions with flexible licensing, competitive in specific regions, and affordable workload-based options.
GitLab offers free and paid plans, with enterprise options valued for features but sometimes seen as expensive.
On the pricier side, both Appian and Pega are enterprise-level solutions, placing them on the slightly higher side.
The pricing of Appian is based on the number of users and generally ranges from 70 to 100 USD per user per month.
The pricing of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.
Even when working in other small organizations, we opted for GitLab as it was cost-efficient.
The price is high, and it limits user accessibility.
 

Valuable Features

Appian offers low-code development, intuitive interfaces, and BPMN 2.0 compliance, enhancing application deployment, workflow management, and business process automation.
GitLab excels in CI/CD with user-friendly interfaces, seamless integration, automation, and scalability, enhancing productivity and collaboration.
The zero-code integration feature is remarkable, allowing for ease of data transfer and workflow enhancement.
I can create tables, perform database-related activities, and create multiple tables.
It is easy for me to define the process and create configurable workflows.
The Ultimate version offers enhanced features for security scanning through DAST and SAST analysis, which have greatly benefitted our project workflow.
As we implement automated testing and DevSecOps, it speeds up the process by forty to sixty percent.
The feature I appreciate the most about GitLab is its ease of use and compatibility, which allows for straightforward building and deployment processes.
 

Categories and Ranking

Appian
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (7th), Process Automation (6th), Low-Code Development Platforms (4th), Process Mining (6th)
GitLab
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Build Automation (1st), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Rapid Application Development Software category, the mindshare of Appian is 9.4%, up from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 3.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rapid Application Development Software
 

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.
Gaurav Chandel - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosted productivity with automated pipelines and seamless collaboration
There are some challenges with repository file management as GitLab may struggle to manage larger files. Improvements could be made regarding size management and file partitioning. Also, the UI has remained the same for a couple of years and could benefit from an update with AI features and better customization.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
29%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
25%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 GitLab?
I find the features and version control history to be most valuable for our development workflow. These aspects provide us with a clear view of changes and help us manage requests efficiently.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
The pricing of GitLab is reasonable, aligning with what I consider to be average compared to competitors.
What needs improvement with GitLab?
Certain features in Jira are not available in GitLab, such as the functionality to have weights at the milestone and epic levels. Hopefully, these features will be resolved with work items in GitLa...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
Fuzzit
 

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
1. NASA  2. IBM  3. Sony  4. Alibaba  5. CERN  6. Siemens  7. Volkswagen  8. ING  9. Ticketmaster  10. SpaceX  11. Adobe  12. Intuit  13. Autodesk  14. Rakuten  15. Unity Technologies  16. Pandora  17. Electronic Arts  18. Nordstrom  19. Verizon  20. Comcast  21. Philips  22. Deutsche Telekom  23. Orange  24. Fujitsu  25. Ericsson  26. Nokia  27. General Electric  28. Cisco  29. Accenture  30. Deloitte  31. PwC  32. KPMG
Find out what your peers are saying about Appian vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.