Mendix and OutSystems are prominent low-code development platforms that simplify application building through visual interfaces and minimal coding. Mendix emphasizes ease of use, rich visual customization, and a cloud-native architecture that supports diverse deployment scenarios. OutSystems, on the other hand, focuses on enhancing developer productivity and offers robust features for enterprise deployment, including cloud and on-premise options.
The summary above is based on 45 interviews we conducted recently with Mendix and OutSystems users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The most valuable features of Mendix are the drag and drop functions, the data entities, domain models, and all the related features."
"The development environment is model-driven. We can use the information from this for our business engineers to make the information models, and they can also execute the model."
"They are leading in the smart manufacturing, and connectivity space."
"You can scale the solution."
"The most valuable features are the decorative style, model-driven development, and the fact that Mendix validates flows. Mendix is quick to develop because it's a low-code platform. It's very robust, flexible, open, and scalable. It's for a low-code customer. The tooling is also really good and it has mobile capabilities."
"I think that the workflow and automation features are quite good."
"What I found most valuable in Mendix is that it's very much suitable for mobile apps such as native Android or IOS supported mobile apps. The multiple features of the platform are very, very attractive and very popular. Mendix has technical features such as microflows and nanoflows. You can also access data models in the platform. These are the features that are very, very strong in Mendix. I got my hands dirty on other low-code platforms, but I have not seen such strong features in them compared to the microflows, nanoflows, and data model access that are in Mendix, including creating and integration. The platform has out-of-the-box adapters or out-of-the-box-connectors that you can integrate with different interface applications such as SAP, Salesforce, Oracle EBS, etc."
"Mendix code and coding logic are very visual. It looks like a flow chart rather than lines of code. Rapid development is what drew us to Mendix."
"The architecture of OutSystems is quite simple, and the features are similar to Mendix's. OutSystems has connectors for different enterprise apps and solid reporting capabilities. You can also integrate with any content management platform like SharePoint or Adobe Enterprise Manager, or something like that. You can also create and integrate workflows."
"OutSystems is easy to use."
"It is a stable solution, and the initial setup is straightforward."
"It is easy to use."
"OutSystems' low-cost approach has positively impacted our productivity, because we were able to develop faster with OutSystems, enabling us to implement many changes during our sprint."
"It provides for faster development and better software releases."
"The most valuable feature of OutSystems is the drag and drop and toolchains in the small AI developing environment. Additionally, the documentation is helpful."
"We can quickly develop an application using the tool."
"In the beginning, it is difficult to learn and work with."
"What is lacking is the support of higher level modeling features, like the modeling you do is relatively low level, yet it is still close to programming. We would like to see a more business-oriented modeling environment, like BPMN."
"While the documentation is good, the development box could be better."
"My understanding is that, if you are not using the free version, it is very expensive."
"There needs to be an increase in the number of the UI components."
"An improvement I would like to see is the ability to version manage independent modules. Their version management for software repositories must be better. It's good and you can do it, but it needs work."
"One area for improvement is its integration capabilities. Creating a pluggable widget or integrating it with other systems is challenging. In terms of features, it would be great to see advancements such as AI services and the integration of third-party services. Additionally, connecting external devices to the application requires multiple steps. Improving this will make it easier for the developers."
"There should be more integration with engineering applications and tighter integration for user authentication, such as single sign-on, etc. They have some of that. It just could be stronger."
"We had some lagging issues under high data loads, and the solution needed to be customized to improve this."
"The dashboards in OutSystems could improve. There are a lot of tabs in the service center that can be confusing."
"I would like to see improvements in versioning. It can be challenging to keep track of what changes should be committed, especially when many developers are working in one environment."
"The integration points need to be increased. People have also started to adopt this solution for their regular needs. That means it's not only the big enterprises that are adopting this solution. There are also small and medium enterprises that are adopting it. I've read that where you have large deployments, OutSystems starts to crumble a bit. That is the idea that no customer would know at the beginning and would also not like to hit the wall there. When it is on the client, there are a lot of applications already on low-code, and then suddenly you realize that you want to do some big applications, and you face hurdles. This is the general feedback for all such platforms."
"While I can't speak to the market impact, as a developer, I've seen significant reductions in development time across different versions of our applications. One area for improvement would be the UI controls in Service Studio. Sometimes, controls don't appear in the IDE, requiring us to check them in the web browser instead. Overall, our experience with OutSystems has been positive, though improvements in UI development would be welcomed."
"The latest version of the app generation tools could be more user-friendly."
"In OutSystems, cloud management is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The new version could be improved."
Mendix is ranked 4th in Low-Code Development Platforms with 48 reviews while OutSystems is ranked 3rd in Low-Code Development Platforms with 46 reviews. Mendix is rated 8.4, while OutSystems is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Mendix writes "Low-code, helpful support, and great native mobile capability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of OutSystems writes "The visual program provides the advantage of only requiring one skill set for both the front and backend ". Mendix is most compared with Microsoft Power Apps, Appian, Oracle Application Express (APEX), ServiceNow and Salesforce Platform, whereas OutSystems is most compared with Microsoft Power Apps, Appian, ServiceNow, Oracle Application Express (APEX) and Pega BPM. See our Mendix vs. OutSystems report.
See our list of best Low-Code Development Platforms vendors, best Mobile Development Platforms vendors, and best Rapid Application Development Software vendors.
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