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Appian vs Temporal 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Appian
Ranking in Process Automation
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (5th), Low-Code Development Platforms (4th), Process Mining (6th)
Temporal
Ranking in Process Automation
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
AbhishekDash - PeerSpot reviewer
Orchestrates infrastructure tasks like deployment, deletion, and management
Temporal focus on developers rather than business users. In contrast to older workflow orchestration engines like Camunda, which are more business-oriented and strongly emphasize UI and workflow authoring, Temporal is geared toward developers. It provides extensive capabilities for building complex workflows. A standout feature of Temporal is its handling of long-running workflows, a significant advantage over many other solutions. Temporal excels in managing distributed transactions and application state durability, especially in microservice environments where transactions might fail due to network issues. Temporal simplifies these challenges by managing retries, fail-safes, and circuit breakers. As a result, developers don't need to implement these features manually; Temporal handles them implicitly, though it also allows for tuning based on specific needs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In terms of interface, it's very good. In terms of infrastructure, it's amazing and already using multiple tools behind the scenes. It's a low-code platform, so it's very easy to implement."
"The application is mobile-friendly, allowing me to use it across any device, whether mobile, laptop, or desktop."
"Form building capabilities and well thought out process modelling are key points to this product."
"What I found most valuable in Appian is that it lets you drill down on multiple things through the structure of the reporting and UI side. It's also low-code, yet it results in quick deliverables."
"Recently, we added Appian Process Mining, Appian Portals, and now Appian RPA."
"The most valuable features of Appian are workflow management and the ease with which you can build the UI."
"Even with an on-premise implementation, the scalability is still high, so it is easy to scale up."
"It's heavy on business processing in terms of logic, process workflows, and primarily on the process design modeler. Appian is really great at that. In terms of the full stack set from a low-code platform perspective, it's definitely an eye opener since it can be deployed via mobile app and on the web as well."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Temporal allows retryability for different workflows whenever they fail. It helps ensure idempotence and that things get done."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to fix things quickly."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to retry from an interrupted state."
"The most valuable thing about Temporal is that we can create multiple and child workflows. We can segregate work as we want, which is good for work organization. It's also easy to maintain. We're trying to generate and fill PDF forms with custom data, including digital signatures. We call AWS and do all activities through Temporal, like calling and saving data in buckets. We do this because we have a lot of load, with multiple users requesting data. We have two types of users: admin and customer. The admin creates forms, and employees or customers fill them out. When admin gets a form, it's stored in Temporal."
"The solution's most valuable features include its ability to simplify the management of complex workflows, improve system resilience and fault tolerance, and reduce the need for extensive boilerplate code."
"What I like best about the tool is that it's easy to install, especially since it uses JavaScript. It's also easy to set up with Docker, and the documentation is easy to understand."
"When some jobs take a lot of time and fail midway, the solution’s retry feature automatically causes them to retry."
 

Cons

"It would be nice if you could create your own customized apps when the business needed them.​"
"There are some restrictions with respect to using external components within Appian. So, for example, if we do not have a particular feature available, there's a long cycle of getting approvals and all of that. That does not offer flexibility, which definitely can be improved on."
"​Appian is easy to set up, but JBoss is complex. JBoss is the application server for running Appian."
"The ability of the interface to load automatic data is not great."
"If that had more DevOps capabilities, it would be an excellent product."
"It is also not easy to learn. Training tutorials could be improved."
"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."
"Occasionally, certain pre-made modules may not be necessary and customers may desire greater customization options. Instead of being limited to pre-designed features, they may prefer a more flexible version that allows for greater customization."
"One area for the product improvement is the learning curve."
"We previously faced issues with the solution's patch system."
"Sometimes it scales kind of badly, but it depends on the process of our products."
"Configuring workflows can be improved —the solution could offer more options, but it's not a must-have."
"While the tool can be a bit daunting initially, especially if you're not used to async programming models, it's generally a pleasure. There's always room for improvement, though. I've noticed some limitations with the .NET SDK regarding dynamic workflows, but this might have been improved in recent versions. Overall, I think Temporal could be more open about implementing features in a more—.NET-friendly way, especially in how you add workers and clients."
"Temporal doesn't have built-in data storage to store the state of the ongoing execution."
"One issue is that we don't have enough resources in the community to get answers when we face problems. We once had a cross-cluster persistence issue, which we solved using different keys. I think Temporal is good right now, but I'm part of the community and will let you know if I think of any improvements."
"One area where I think Temporal could improve is its dashboard, particularly in event tracking. Currently, the dashboard doesn't show a time-based view of events, meaning it doesn't display when an event started or went through the retry process. If this feature could be added in a future release, it would significantly enhance monitoring capabilities. Other than that, Temporal's overall performance is quite impressive, and we're confident we can migrate to the Temporal workflow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive, but powerful. I would recommend comparing against cheaper licensing products and open source."
"The price of this solution is a little high here in Mongolia."
"You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first."
"The cost depends on the number of users, although I recommend taking an unlimited license."
"I think that if somebody is really serious at looking at business value, then by all means, the product is well worth the value. You get representative business value for the price that you pay for the product, and for the implementation of the product."
"If you're doing an enterprise-wide digital transformation, Appian is worthwhile, but not for just one or two use cases because the license costs are higher."
"The cost is a bit higher than other low-code competitors, OutSystems and Mendix. The price needs to be more competitive."
"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 savings weren't as big as we initially expected, but they were pretty great from a developer's perspective."
"It is worth the price."
"Temporal is a free, open-source tool."
"Temporal is open-source and free to use, which is great. We didn't have to pay for any premium features."
"The tool is open source under the MIT license, so there are no hidden fees. You can freely use everything on their GitHub and Docker images."
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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
28%
Computer Software Company
19%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing 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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Temporal?
Temporal OSS is expensive in infrastructure, but it brings back the reliability that companies need.
What needs improvement with Temporal?
The actual user interface is still in its early stages. It’s very basic. Users don’t really have a complex permission model yet. Users don’t really have ways to automate things like, for example, p...
What is your primary use case for Temporal?
We [my company] use it to run a large workload. We have a set of security scans we want to perform, and we distribute them over a full day, that’s over 24 hours. We use it to orchestrate all the st...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
No data 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
Information Not Available
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