Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Appian vs Knack comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 29, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Appian
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (5th), Process Automation (4th), Low-Code Development Platforms (4th), Process Mining (6th)
Knack
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
31st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No-Code Development Platforms (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Rapid Application Development Software category, the mindshare of Appian is 9.9%, up from 8.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Knack is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rapid Application Development Software
 

Featured Reviews

Devashish Mishra - PeerSpot reviewer
Low resource consumption, easy setup, and stable
To determine whether a platform, such as Appian, is suitable for your domain industry, you must first assess whether it offers any out-of-the-box features relevant to your needs. If it does, utilizing that platform would be the best option since it already has the required functionalities. If the available features do not align with your requirements, consider choosing a platform that can easily build such services. Attempting to modify pre-existing features on a platform is a challenging task, and any upgrades to the platform could pose further issues for users. The solution has high performance but the main issue is the lack of customization after deploying it. I rate Appian an eight out of ten.
ND
Flexible and granular security options, good filtering, and the pricing model is cost-effective
The vendor does a really poor job of marketing this software because it should be more popular. This is something that I have pointed out to them. It's a super piece of software, but very few people are aware of it. I am an EX-IT director and I've worked in big systems, and I'm amazed this solution isn't more popular. The "native" integration with other products could be improved. The user interface for the systems that you build can use some improvement because as it is now, you may have to use HTML and CSS to make it look more modern or to match a clients existing look. The documentation is amazing, although they don't do videos and their YouTube channel is very poor. They could create some training videos.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Technical support is helpful."
"Form building capabilities and well thought out process modelling are key points to this product."
"This is the most complete solution of its kind."
"The setup is easy."
"Appian's most valuable feature is that we can create end-to-end process workflows with minimum turnaround."
"The technical support is excellent."
"Since implementing we have had a faster time to solution, with fewer resources needed."
"The security is the most valuable feature, in particular, the way I can give different access to different areas to different people, so you can really fine-tune access for different users."
 

Cons

"Appian has a few areas for improvement, which my organization raised with the Appian team. One is the Excel output which is limited to fifty columns when it should be up to two hundred or three hundred columns."
"I wouldn't say their response time is long, but it could be quicker."
"It would be useful if they could create an academy or forum in the future to help active users answer questions they have about the solution."
"I would like to see more features for enterprises. They would also benefit from adding documentation and training on their site."
"A point of improvement would be the SAIL forms. The built-in tool used to generate forms does not have debugging support (to view local variables as they change on live preview, and step-by-step valuation) which is a big drawback for form development. Moreover, the script language used to build SAIL forms does not support inheritance or lambda expressions (functions as arguments of other functions), which makes the code base more verbose."
"It is also not easy to learn. Training tutorials could be improved."
"The tool itself is pretty good, but the main area that we struggled with was the backend. The frontend development is really good, but the backend modeling can be streamlined a little bit. There are good integrations, but tying them through the data layer and then up into the frontend could be improved a little bit. It does read/write on the data source, and you can configure it to just write or just read, but there is a little bit of work involved."
"The graphical user interface could be easier to use. It should be simplified."
"The user interface for the systems that you build can use some improvement because as it is now, you have to do a lot of HTML and CSS to make it look modern."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Product pricing compared to some of the earlier vendors, like IBM, CA, and Oracle, is quite well-priced. Although, we do feel that as we increase the number of users and the workload increases, we will have to spend more."
"The price of the solution is reasonable and is paid annually. The price of the solution depends on how many users use the solution. It can range from $50,000 to $200,000. For example, for 20,000 users the price can be approximately $200,000."
"The licensing will be on a monthly basis. We are estimating that cost to be around $2000 to maybe $3,000 per month. We don't foresee any costs above that."
"The price of this solution is a little high here in Mongolia."
"The tool is quite costly."
"The cost depends on the number of users, although I recommend taking an unlimited license."
"You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first."
"When it comes to pricing, it's definitely not affordable. However, it really depends on the requirements that you're seeking from the solution."
"This product has really good value, as it doesn't have a per-user cost, there's a flat fee."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Rapid Application Development Software solutions are best for your needs.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
29%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
6%
Real Estate/Law Firm
15%
University
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
No data available
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

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
Siemens Kaiser Permanente VMware SunChemical C.R. England Philips The Salvation Army United Way U.S. Green Building Council Cambridge University Press
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, ServiceNow, OutSystems and others in Rapid Application Development Software. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.