OutSystems Reviews

In the last months, OutSystems has become our primary development tool. Grendene is a huge producer of footwear and our development in OutSystems is supporting the construction of a large set of applications in these areas:

Factory and production-level systems (industrial apps)

There are already many applications built to provide information to our offices and for production control of factory processes, simulation, and machine setup. In addition to the already running analytics apps, we are in the process of integrating OutSystems with machines' programmable logic controllers (PLCs). We believe that OutSystems can support factory-level systems that respond quickly. Beginning with the less critical processes, we have already started to build web/mobile applications to be used on the assembly lines and loading docks in the distribution center.

Integration and ETL

There are many APIs built in OutSystems to provide process automation and information to internal and partner systems. An example is the Melissa branch website that is sustained by a third-party and the product profile is provided by OutSystems APIs. ETL architecture is also developed to synchronize data among some SQL databases and the company’s units. 

Business and ERP Apps

Apps for business and ERPs are a fast-growing set of applications developed in OutSystems, accessed within the ERP portal. New developments are made in OutSystems using the ERP’s database as the information source and connections to many other specialized systems.

Corporative Apps

In addition to the above, there are many office processes, human resources, and product development/design teams that use OutSystems. Our "Careers" website was built in OutSystems with a dynamic approach that allows the human resource team to create and upload their own pages as a self-service website builder.

In the 21st century, innovation is not easy without IT support. With this low-code platform, we deliver more quickly and it allows innovation to occur fast. It reduces the risks associated with functional changes and these can be produced rapidly to meet deadlines.

• Easy and low-code web/mobile development: Reduces the manual labor in compiling and deploying applications and generating procedural code (by reducing development bureaucracy/processes, resulting in real gains). The LifeTime Server approach, requiring just a few steps to publish applications in production environments, is fantastic.
• High reuse of components and business logic: Once built, web/mobile components can be reused in all new developments. In addition, the OutSystems Forge is very useful. We can exchange components and even already-built applications, reducing costs to build specific solutions.

• Build-logic becomes simple with a graphic interface: Developers work better with visual support. In a related vein, we are currently studying if, in the near future, an OutSystems environment could be provisioned to non-technical areas to allow them to construct their own applications (supervised by IT, and with good governance and security assessments).
• Stakeholder engagement and satisfaction: In the past, it was difficult to keep our clients (employees and partners) up to date on the development process. There were many promises of application delivery dates which were often not met. With OutSystems, we can develop and share progress and functionalities.
• Integration: With the SOAP and REST APIs and the database connections allowing communication with different data sources, it’s simple and quick to fulfill requirements which demand resources from multiple sources. In this way, the platform provides opportunities for innovative ideas. A simple example is to check transportation costs against rotes using maps and GPS technologies to measure accurate distances.

There are some features expected in the future that may speed up some processes. But there is a lack of development resources that need implementing. For example, OutSystems does not provide any native reporting resources. All reports must be created with other tools or as a webpage. 

Another issue is the asynchronous processing and multithreading tasks for which the current resources of the platform are very generic and not built for the end-user. Any asynchronous jobs have to be constructed with an end-user dashboard to allow inspection of the status of the activities.

We have basically not encountered any issues with stability. There was only one situation, when we first started using the environments, that a security policy conflicted with the installation of OutSystems or Microsoft IIS server. We had to gather a team to solve the problem by removing security baselines until we found the conflict and fixed it. At that time, it took four days to resolve this conflict. Since then, the servers have never had a single instability. 

As a very scalable solution, OutSystems does not provide an already-built infrastructure of modules. Companies should follow OutSystems tips on growing their environments using the concepts of Canvas Architecture.

Canvas Architecture is a very scalable, sustainable, and feasible approach. Companies should use these layouts, but not follow it to the letter. It should be changed according to the company's strategies, depending on the kind of applications they are developing. 

On the other hand, some effort should be made to regularly maintain the norms and standards of the environments. Even with good governance in software development, due to the power and agility of the platform, it is not too easy to keep track of the development team; hence, the importance of a periodic reviews and standard, documented processes.

Technical support is qualified and proactive but not very specialized. OutSystems always fixes all bug reports within the expected timeframe.

The team is very proactive. When we had that situation with the security baselines that conflicted with the platform, late at night Brazil time, I received a call from OutSystems support in Portugal right way, willing to help solve the problem. However, when it became more technical they helped only up to a certain point, and only our team could ultimately fix it.

I would give OutSystems support a six out of 10. I understand that a more specialized level of support (with software engineers) is needed sometimes when the operational team cannot resolve.

We did not use another low-code platform before, although many of the traditional development technologies were widely tested (Java, .NET/C#, OpenEdge, etc.). OutSystems was the first which provided a complete, easy, and effective platform.

We have been using OutSystems since the middle of 2016. In the implementation phase of OutSystems, we had formal training and hired a third-party (Sispro S/A) with years of experience in the technology, for consulting and to design our environment correctly.

The setup itself was straightforward. Our company chose a local installation of the platform server in virtualized machines, instead of on the cloud (there were internal reasons for this choice, such as the need for prompt responses in production systems, which are not achievable over the WAN network). The setup was very simple, however, due to our very high-security scope, some difficulties with security policies had to be overcome. I would recommend choosing the cloud platform whenever possible, as it is much simpler to start with.

OutSystems was open to a deal that worked for both sides. It’s not ethical to give more specifics about the pricing and licensing.

We evaluated many solutions in the market. Some companies in Brazil were visited with a view to finding a more agile solution for the development of applications. Among those solutions were Zoho and Tibco. However, OutSystems stood out.

We find in OutSystems a great platform that enables extraction of data from multiple sources, and working with business logic to access essential information and produce process-automation at the highest level.

We have future projects in mind to build factory production process with this technology. New developers were recently hired to support the industrial development team and they are being progressively coached in OutSystems development, using an internal training program to reach this goal.

We rate OutSystems an eight out of 10. It is the best platform we have found. However, it’s not perfect.

In terms of advice:

• When possible, use a cloud environment option rather than a local installation.
• Negotiate a suitable license with OutSystems, taking into account that the application objects grow quickly.
• Hire trainers and make sure the development team sets up a proper architecture. If you choose the wrong approach or do not plan appropriate architecture, in a short time you will certainly have a very large rework. 
• It is essential to build an appropriate Canvas.
• Sometimes, junior developers will perform better with OutSystems, since senior developers often do not adapt to the graphical structural programming. It is not a rule, but some resistance and difficulty of adaptation were noticed.
• A good practice is to hire an expert consulting company, for a couple weeks, which already uses OutSystems. They will help your development team with basic questions, increasing the pace of learning and making it more effective. 
• OutSystems has a set of metadata and any kind of control is possible, but these structures should be practiced with the developers.
• OutSystems Forge is a very useful place, when starting out, to download components to adapt to your needs.
• SQL Server is a good default database option for OutSystems. We have never had a problem with it. We recommend using only a single database catalog instead of many.
• Another suggestion is to plan an approach for the REST/SOAP APIs with more security implementations. As a default, it provides NTLM authentication or basic authentication to SOAP API and a custom strategy for REST. We have built a complete architecture with client authorization, IP control, and cryptography over the exposed services. The OutSystems User Provider module can be customized with the company’s default authentication method, however, it is quite simple to maintain the standard module and just push data into the Users and Roles tables. Otherwise, it will take some time to understand how everything works underneath.
• Finally, perhaps the most important tip is regarding development governance. Not only for OutSystems but for all types of development, it is very important to maintain normalized and standardized environments. In a chaotic scene with no effort to have periodic reviews, a low-code platform could create a huge mess and the cost will be paid in the near future.

The solution can be used to develop apps, websites, and core applications. We are working for an insurance company on an application to digitize hundreds of documents. We also work for a bank on an application to manage time and time sheets.

It is easy to develop things. It is much easier to develop applications with the product’s IDE.

OutSystems is creating a new platform on the cloud called ODC. The new version could be improved.

I have been using the solution for about five years.

The tool is quite stable. It depends on the way we use it.

Our clients are medium and large enterprises.

My team contacts support. The support responds quite well.

Positive

We have used some local platforms before.

The initial setup is straightforward. Normally, the solution is cloud-based, but it depends on the clients. For the setup of the platform, we must have a contract and license from OutSystems. The setup takes one to three weeks.

The return on investment is difficult to measure, but the time to market is much faster.

OutSystems has a lot of traction in Portugal. We are studying Mendix and Appian to see if they could be adequate in some cases. Some clients don't have the capacity to support OutSystems, or they might be using other tools. We want to adapt to other platforms and tools. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We are a financial institution, and our primary credit solution is developed in OutSystems. We have several small apps, not for mobiles, but apps that are developed to support our core business, which is factoring and credit.

It is easy to use.

In my opinion, the support and the pricing could be better.

I have been working with OutSystems for seven or eight years.

OutSystems is a stable solution.

OutSystems is scalable.

In terms of the solution, we went through some minor escalations. It was simple to manage. We have also added some redundancy to our app server, which was simple to set up.

Our company is still small, with a staff of about 50 people. I believe ten of them are developers. They develop, operate, administrate all systems platforms and deployed applications. The remainder, are business units.

The SLA should be improved. The response time could be improved.

I can't say for certain that it was simple. It was simple for us. Because I have an experienced manager who manages our team, it was simple for him to set that up.

It took some time because we were building a core banking service system from scratch. What we did in OutSystems, aside from setting up all of the licenses and the platform itself, was that we had help because it was the early days of the company. OutSystems in Portugal assisted us with this. However, because the solution was created from scratch, it takes a long time to deploy it with the business solution.

I manage a development team that develops and maintains DevOps. Within that team of developers, I add one who leads the team that also handles all of the tool's administration.

I believe they are very strict with their pricing platforms, or the pricing policies, and it changes. They have changed it from software units to application objects in recent years, and now it's all free, but you pay for the users. 

I believe they should have a better scheme for companies like ours, which are small and could benefit from the platform without paying too much.

The fees are approximately €150,000, €170,000 per year, which is excessive for a company of our size.

We don't have any additional costs, but we did have, within this price we had some, I believe we have some agreements regarding accelerator, to be honest, I don't know off the top of my head.

They should have OutSystems support with the setup and structuring of the best pricing for the goal that they want to assign to the solutions. Because of the pricing, if you want to use OutSystems for self or internal solutions, it would be very different, but it could be very expensive if you want to develop things for the outside, which would require users and business management. I believe they should receive support directly from OutSystems or through a vendor. I'm not sure which is preferable. However, OutSystems support is required for installation.

I would rate OutSystems a seven out of ten.

OutSystems is a versatile development platform that I find incredibly useful for various purposes. It is great for building both web and mobile applications, making it suitable for large enterprises and small to mid-sized businesses across different industries like banking, healthcare, manufacturing, and more. With its visual development, pre-built components, and easy maintenance, OutSystems has significantly expedited software development in my experience, offering a rapid and efficient solution for a wide range of applications.

In comparison to other local development platforms, OutSystems is quite advanced. While every platform can benefit from ongoing enhancements, OutSystems seems to have most of the features I, as a software professional, would look for. I have started working with it, and I find it to be a genuinely cool and effective platform for my development needs.

OutSystems is already on the right track for improvements. They plan to transition from their cloud platform to a cloud-native architecture, emphasizing infrastructure scalability and the integration of Docker containers, which is a positive step forward. I would also like to see OutSystems improve its integration capabilities, especially with emerging technologies like AI and GPT. Integrating with AI and GPT models could enhance OutSystems' functionality and help it easily adapt to new trends and concepts in connectivity and artificial intelligence in future releases.

I have been using OutSystems since 2011.

I would rate the stability of OutSystems as a ten out of ten.

OutSystems supports both horizontal and vertical scaling, and I find it quite easy to scale applications when needed. Adding a front-end server to a cluster, for instance, is a straightforward task that takes just a few minutes. As long as you follow OutSystems' recommended application composition and architecture, scalability is not a problem, and I would rate it a solid ten out of ten for scalability. In our company, around eighteen to nineteen developers are actively using OutSystems to develop applications for our customers. For mid-sized applications with OutSystems, you don't require large teams. OutSystems encourages small teams to use agile methodology. Typically, you need an engagement manager, a tech lead, and two to three developers for a medium-sized project. Additionally, a solution architect may be necessary initially, and then one tech lead and two developers are often sufficient for ongoing work.

I have had a positive experience with OutSystems' tech support. They offer a guided learning path, well-structured documentation, and a valuable component repository called Forge. Their community is also quite active, with fellow users and even OutSystems champions and family members providing assistance. In addition, they have a stable support process where you can create a support ticket, and the OutSystems team will reach out to help with any issues. Overall, I'm satisfied with the support available from OutSystems through their various resources.

Setting up OutSystems is straightforward, and even citizen developers can quickly learn and start building software with it. While complex applications may require professional expertise, OutSystems provides numerous prebuilt components and features, such as UI components for creating beautiful interfaces and easy database design tools, making it accessible even for those without extensive design or development experience. It is also user-friendly when it comes to handling logic, integrating with third-party services, and working with APIs. Overall, I find it to be a great and user-friendly platform for software development. The deployment process in OutSystems involves using a tool called Lifetime, which acts as a control console for managing different environments. When you purchase an OutSystems license, you typically receive three environments: development, QA, and production, along with a separate Lifetime environment. Lifetime keeps track of application versions and modules deployed on servers in each environment. It alerts you when an environment is outdated compared to a new version in development. Lifetime also checks references and other prerequisites before deploying releases from one environment to another, making the deployment process straightforward and well-managed.

OutSystems licenses are not cheap, but they fall within the range of standard pricing. It is not very expensive or overly budget-friendly; it is more in the middle, making it an average-cost option for organizations.

Before using OutSystems, I explored other tools like APN and Automation Anywhere. However, I found OutSystems to be the best fit because it offers both rapid application development and flexibility. Unlike some other tools, OutSystems allows you to integrate with third-party libraries and technologies like .NET, Java, BigQuery, and more, making it a more flexible and easily adaptable platform.

I would definitely recommend OutSystems to others. Overall, I would rate it as a ten out of ten.

I have used it for a company in Saudi Arabia. The application was mainly focused on transportation. The other application is a recent upgrade.

I love OutSystems because, as a manager and someone who has experience with various traditional development technologies (approximately 20 technologies), it provides a standard approach. Unlike other companies where there is no development standard, with OutSystems, we have our own standard. This makes it easier when transitioning between developers or onboarding new team members.

It's not easy to master OutSystems within the first month. Even if you have ten years of experience, like me, it will take about two to three months to explore everything. For example, customizing a header or integrating a video is not easy. 

Many people assume that mastering OutSystems is as simple as drag and drop, but for specific tasks, you need someone with development experience, preferably a senior or expert with over five years of experience. 

Sometimes it requires both skills, someone who knows how to develop and add script code or extensions to our system. However, there are also times when it is easy. Let's say around seventy percent of the time; it's easy. Customizing the user interface, aside from the header, is relatively straightforward, although I did encounter difficulties with the header. 

Another example is working with live video, which is also not easy.

I have been using OutSystems for one year.

It is very stable. I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

The scalability of OutSystems is not bad. I know someone who conducted a scalability test. They used SCC Solutions, a telecom company with a great team of developers. They encountered some issues compared to what OutSystems claimed. However, I believe you always need to have a package that can handle more users than OutSystems recommends. 

If they suggest an eight-gigahertz processor, you should go for a better specification. But overall, it's not a major problem. Just make sure to exceed the recommended specifications. OutSystems is widely used in many regions. It's extensively utilized in the UK and Australia, as I have experience working with these countries. However, in some countries, traffic and other factors can make it more challenging.

I did contact the customer service and support team, but they mostly provide general IT support.

I believe there is room for improvement in technical support. However, they are good and responsible in terms of providing documentation and guidance to help you.

I believe you would need someone who is already good in development or has a logical understanding of development. OutSystems has four layers: the timers and processes layer, the interface layer, the version layer, and the database layer. 

Sometimes, when you add a module from the first layer, it doesn't work because it needs to be compatible and supported by the OutSystems platform. Many components or modules from the first layer are often incomplete or non-functional when compared to the later layers. 

Therefore, you need to comprehend the logic and then integrate it. It's not always straightforward. There are challenges involved. 

If you don't have someone who is already skilled in development, most of the time, you won't succeed. I believe you need a certain level of intelligence to excel in OutSystems. You have to be intelligent, like in development. 

I've brought in many developers who weren't skilled in development and put them in our system. They excelled at all the traditional tasks but when I asked for any custom work, it took them around one month to finish.

The deployment process is very easy. It involves just one publish button. They call it the "one publish" button.

In our system, there are always many challenges in development. For example, you don't need an administrator or a developer because we have something called architecture AI. It can evaluate your application and determine if it follows the best practices or not. We already have a baseline of good practice cases or standards for our system, so we're not far from the best practices. There are certain things you can't do directly, like calling a server action. Instead, you need to use client actions. 

There are many perspectives like this that you need to consider. Otherwise, it won't work. For example, you can't simply drag and drop a client action inside a server action. 

I believe anyone would require about two to three months of training, and they would need to build their own application. The issue in our system is that sometimes developers are only skilled in either logic or UI. I think it's important to train people to be proficient in all aspects.

There is an annual cost of approximately 23k. So sometimes, you need to wait for a return on investment. It also requires skilled individuals who know how to utilize this technology and train others. Finding good developers isn't easy because most of the people who work with OutSystems come from Big Data or have multiple engineering backgrounds. We face difficulties in finding the right people, and I think this is a common issue across platforms. Nonetheless, I consider it a unique feature.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. I still believe in our system, despite some limitations in traditional development. There is always room for improvement. 

I think they are constantly making progress and adding new features. However, sometimes it's not easy to achieve customizations.

We don't sell OutSystems as a separate solution. We sell it as a platform. And then you win a lot of solutions on top of it. So that can be a second process, it can be a middle phase, it can be a portal, it can be many things, but it is useful for small apps to complete ERP systems and everything in-between.

It supports implementing Agile at scale, as it enables working in an iterative way, and it is very fast. Time to value as a result has dropped significantly!

What I like most about this solution is that it does automatic dependency checking in enterprise environments, which means that the application will automatically test if it can work in the environment of the customer or not. Instead of only having to find it out when it is too late. Normally, if you build software, you test it and then you deploy it. In the real world, it sometimes happens that it does not work and then you quite often have to figure out why is it happening. So this step is completely taken away because OutSystems tests the functionality of the software against the existing systems in an automatic session and that is very valuable.

Something that can be improved is that I would like them to be a little more flexible in the area of containerization. They're currently running on Docker on Windows, but I think they should also support Docker on Linus too. Needs a little more effort.

I've worked with OutSystems for many years now - I've worked with it, I've implemented it, and we use it in our company too.

OutSystems is extremely stable. We are replacing complete back-end systems with it, and are in progress to go complete mainframe replacements with it.

You can go to huge back-ends with OutSystems - so it is definitely a scalable solution.

The technical support is quite good, although it could be better: it currently fluctuates a little depending on how busy they are. Also it depends on your contract (what level of support you have).

The initial setup is super simple and you can do it from your desktop. That is if you only want to implement the platform, but if you have a more complex enterprise setting, then it will be a little more complex and you will have to do some configuration, and up-front think about what functionality you expect to need (particularly if you chose to run on a native AWS or Azure environment so that you can make full use of all the functionality of those 2 CLoud environments. If you do not know exactly how the platform works and what it can do, you can implement certain things and redo a few things. But that's not a deficit. More power comes with more responsibility, l always say. 

That depends on the kind of solution you are building and at what speed: the more you build, the higher the ROI.

For a single application, it's too expensive, but that's also not what the OutSystems aims for. Personally I don't think that's the smart approach. Their model is really based on platform and not every customer is ready to adopt a platform at the start. So, as a result, they actually limit their own success and results at the moment. But that isn't a huge issue. If you look at the value of the platform, I think the pricing is fair.

We looked at multiple alternatives, including (but not limited to) Appian, Betty Blocks, Mendix, Kony , Pega etc. They all have their own stronger and weaker points, yet we chose OutSystems as it is the most suitable platform for an Enterprise environment. As we do end2end transformations, this is why we chose OutSystems.

I will rate OutSystems a nine out of ten because if you look at other solutions, they do not have the functionality, the scalability and the performance of OutSystems, even if their prices are lower. So if you need a platform for a large organization, OutSystems is the one. 

To make it the perfect solution, it needs improvement in the AI capability. I would say that it would be nice to augment the functionality for the citizen development even further and augment the cloud's platform controls so that you can more easily run in a hybrid cloud environment too. Next to better branching options.

A word of advice to others is that they should align the business and IT because many people look at it from a technical point of view. And that is another really smart thing to do because it is really about driving the value. Because I've seen customers that bought either mandates or OutSystems or any other platforms and a lot of them had difficulties in getting the value out of it. And the reason was because if the IT or individual departments don't know how to define the proper user requirements, and then it is too difficult to successfully deploy it. It is therefore very important for the business and IT team to work together because that is the most common mistake people make. 

Customer track and trace. We get information from SAP which is updated later by carriers (via EDI). The user interface is built in OutSystems.

Development timeframe and deliveries on sprints. Customers can check the progress on a weekly basis and provide adjustments and comments right away.

Agile development. I love that you save a lot of time on development and can focus on logic and business requirements.

Mobile apps need improvement.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

Technical support is a 10 out of 10.

We did not have a previous solution. We started the department using OutSystems with the goal of creating applications for our internal customers (departments and warehouse customers) to help their main businesses.

Setup was straightforward. I was not there at that time, but I know that it was very smooth. The developer at the time was trained by OutSystems and this helped with the first applications.

It is still very expensive, so small companies can’t generally afford it. We hope that this changes. Still, the time saving on development and delivery is worth the value.

Agile development is really worth it. Depending on the size of your department – and requirements – you don’t need a big development team. The same developer can take care of all steps: analysis, development, implementation, support.

My company uses OutSystems for developing mobile applications and web applications.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a low-code tool with which it becomes very fast for users to create something and to show the creation to the customer much faster than any other technology.

In OutSystems, cloud management is an area of concern where improvements are required. Searching through the logs is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required in OutSystems.

I have been using OutSystems for half a year. My company has a partnership with OutSystems, and we have a lot of certified engineers.

OutSystems has some issues with stability. When OutSystems is used as an enterprise solution or has millions of users, then there are some stability problems with your stability. When millions of users use your application, the management of the databases and caching systems is sometimes not that efficient in OutSystems.

It is a scalable solution.

My company deals with small and medium-sized businesses.

The solution's technical support is good, especially owing to its documentation part. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of OutSystems is easy.

The solution can be deployed in a few hours.

The solution is deployed on the cloud. A user gets access to the user interface and some applications that you can install on Windows, making it a process that one person can do.

OutSystems is an expensive product. My company has to make monthly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. I am unsure about how much my company spends towards the solution's costs, but its cost runs into thousands of euros. There are some additional costs towards which certain payments are to be made, considering that one needs to pay for the end user who uses the solution.

I know about the competitors of OutSystems. I didn't choose any of the competitors of OutSystems since it was a product that already existed in my company.

A person is required to maintain the solution.

If someone needs to show their customers really fast results of the development phase of an application, OutSystems is a very good solution that is expensive at the same time.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.