Appian Reviews

There are multiple use cases of Appian. A banking customer uses it more for agent onboarding; we are working on contract management for a manufacturing customer; and we are working on an incident management system for an airport. There are almost seven to eight use cases, as of now. 

We don't use Appian, we are partners and we implement this solution for customers. I'm working on both on-premises and cloud-based deployment. Appian's deployment is hybrid. 

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. 

There are four areas I believe Appian could improve in. The first is a seamless contact center integration. Appian does not have a contact center feature. The second is advanced features in RPA. The third would be chatbot and email bot integration—while Appian comes with chatbot and email bot, it's not as mature as it should be, compared to the competition. The fourth area would be next best action, since there is not much of this sort of feature in Appian. These are all features which competitors' products have, and in a mature manner, whereas Appian lacks on these four areas. I see customers who are moving from Appian to Pega because these features are not in Appian. 

I have been working with Appian for three years. 

The stability and performance are good. Appian is focusing a lot on this because they recently came out with a Kubernetes system acquisition, which is providing them the ability to scale as well as an expansion model that can be as stable as required. The performance is very good, as this solution is available across multiple cloud systems. 

As far as maintenance, it's pretty straightforward because Appian, as a company, comes with very mature hotfixes when required, as well as seamless upgrades. As long as you do not do any customizations—which is not recommended—it is pretty easy and straightforward to maintain, and does not take much effort. 

Appian is definitely easy to scale, especially if you understand the requirements. It's a good architecture. 

Of our customers who use Appian, I would say most of them are medium-sized. Next would be large-sized, and then there are not many small-sized customers. Medium- and large-sized companies mostly go for Appian. 

I would rate the technical support of Appian about a seven out of ten because there is definitely room for improvement when compared to the other product support we are seeing. 

The initial setup is a simple process. If it's on cloud, it does not take much time. If it's on-premise, you have to have all the required hardware. It takes around four hours. 

We implement this solution for customers. 

Appian is very flexible in their pricing. In general, Appian's pricing is much, much lower when compared to competition like Pega or other products. Appian also has a flexible licensing model across geographies. Pega usually goes with a single licensing cost—which is a US-based cost—for all global customers, and it's costly. Whereas Appian has a different regional licensing cost model and it can be cheaper, depending on geography. So Appian's licensing is very flexible, and cheaper when compared to other competition. 

The pricing is pretty straightforward. If you're going for a cloud-based deployment, there are no additional costs because you're just going to be on the cloud. However, if you're going to deploy it on-premise, you would need to install software, so you might have to procure your own database and servers and everything. The current recommendation, and what most customers are going for, is the cloud because it's easy to maintain. There aren't really any costs except for the licensing. 

Pega and Appian are both good BPM platforms. The area where Appian has the advantage is that it's really low-code. It takes much less effort when compared to Pega, both for developing and for setup and implementation. Within about 30 days, maximum, you can build out a product in Appian, whereas it will take you much longer in Pega. However, in regard to the four areas in which I believe Appian is lacking, Pega has all those features in a mature manner: seamless contact center integration, advanced features in RPA, mature chatbot and email bot integration, and next best action.

I would rate Appian an eight out of ten. 

If you are looking for a fast, rapid rollout of applications and you have multiple medium-scale and small-scale processes that you want to roll out at a faster pace, with ease of maintenance, then Appian is a good product to go with. Appian can also be leveraged for large-scale implementation—for example, financial service customers, for loan origination or claims organization—but you would really need to understand your requirements in order to achieve this with Appian. Whereas with Pega, it has framework for loan originations and everything, which Appian doesn't come with. Appian is a plain vanilla product, and if you go for a large-scale core implementation, then you should have enough information and requirements to capture it. Appian is best suited to mid-scale and small-scale processes and a rapid rollout. 

Appian can be used to helps organizations build applications and workflows.

The solution's most valuable features are the regular periodic and quarterly updates, they are very useful updates. They keep improving the solution more often, and that helps the platform or code always be up to date with the latest features.

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.

I have been using Appian for approximately six years.

The solution is stable.

The technical support is amazing. They have high availability when attending to tickets. The extent to which they go to support you is amazing. They go down deep into the issue you are facing and get you to the right expertise. You can access support through forums and the telephone which they respond quickly with details on a solution.

The standalone and distributed environment installations are straightforward. There are clear instructions, documentation, and support available. However, the installation into a distributed environment can be more challenging.

I have had assistance from Appian support for the implementations.

The license is a bit expensive and the pricing model is sometimes confusing for new users or business users. It is difficult for them to know what volume of usage they will have to be able to purchase the best-suited license at the beginning.

I rate Appian an eight out of ten.

We use Appian for business process management.

I like how quickly you can build applications. The low code aspect of it is really useful to get things out to market quickly. Compared to other code tools that I've seen, Appian has a more robust rules engine.

I've been an Appian consultant for three years now.

Appian virtually has a 99.99% uptime rating. It's very stable. 

Appian is very scalable. There's a lot of options for bigger enterprises, like high availability. It's enterprise-grade for smaller to mid-sized businesses.

I have used their tech support, honestly, I'd probably give their support a rating of eight out of 10. They work pretty hard to try to figure out what's going on if there's an issue.

I wouldn't say their response time is long, but it could be quicker. 

There's a one-time setup fee. I think they usually set it up for you. For the typical business user, it's straightforward as they don't have to do anything.

The pricing can be a little confusing to customers. Clients sometimes have to lay out their whole set of use cases and get them approved for specific types of licensing— it's on a case-to-case basis. I think that they're very actively working on improving this, but it can be quite difficult to work out the licensing.

Other than the pricing concerns, it's a really great platform. 

If you're considering using Appian, my advice is to work with people that have experience building solutions with it, because that's going to lead to fewer problems down the line.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Appian a rating of nine. It's a great business management platform.

We use this solution to provide us with real-time data on all connected systems — for a continuous process workflow.

Within our company, there are roughly 45 people using this solution — mostly developers. We have two admins that handle all maintenance-related issues.

Appian has enabled us tо аutоmаtе busіnеss рrосеssеs much faster sо thаt оur usеrs саn rерlісаtе thеm аnd use them on a daily basis to improve their productivity. 

The most important and the most notable feature is that it provides us with real-time data on all connected systems in terms of how they're integrated with each other and how they are performing in a workflow manner.

The graphical user interface could be easier to use. It should be simplified. When we're dealing with a large number of complex applications, the user interface is not the best. There could be a simpler design especially when it comes to providing a view on handling large users/user groups. 

I have been using Appian for two years.

This solution is very stable and robust. The updates definitely work. I've never had to roll back an update.

It works very well actually across systems. It can work across multiple complex systems, as well. There's no problem when it comes to scaling up and scaling out. Still, the interconnections, in terms of provisions of real-time data, can be a little clunky as the current graphical user interface has some issues.

The initial setup was fairly simple and straightforward. It's pretty much plug-and-play.

Deployment time depends on the environment and the use case. It can take anywhere from two weeks to six weeks.

When it comes to connecting multiple systems, Appian fares much better compared to Pega.

First, you have to understand the business logic behind all of your systems before you start developing and interconnecting the systems, and the process flows across the systems. That's the best advice I have.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

In terms of the traffic, the user interface should be improved so that it provides real-time data for complex connections between systems. If that is improved, I would give this solution a higher rating. Otherwise, it's a very stable and very robust product.

I work for the largest distributor of Toyota Lexus in the Middle East. My area is related to car motors. I'm an IT senior general manager and we are customers of Appian. 

The workflow engines are a valuable feature. We use them to bridge the gaps of processes within our core systems that are either too difficult or too costly to develop within the core system. We bridge those gaps using Appian. 

We'd like to see the employee experience improved, something we can integrate with SharePoint. Right now we're looking at the Power BI which belongs to Microsoft. It has a lot of good features for low-code no-code development kinds of things. I'd like to see the ability of the software itself to integrate with the core systems. It's a gap that Appian hasn't fulfilled. 

I'd like to see integration with Microsoft products as an additional feature. Microsoft Team, or something like that. It's not there or if it is, it requires some work to enable easy integration with SharePoint. 

I've been using this solution for eight years. 

The scalability and stability of this solution are good. 

I'd say that the technical support is good. 

We visited the workflows that are provided within SharePoint but they did not fulfill the kind of things that we were looking for, or the problems that we were trying to solve at that point of time. We were planning to work on specific domains, specific areas, but you cannot make it work for complex things. 

The setup is not completely straightforward but not too complex either. The deployment itself wasn't too difficult, but this is something where features evolve and the things within it over time start moving. Adapting to any new feature while continuing to work is not simple. It makes things more complex. There are around 5,000 people using the product and we have five people dealing with maintenance. 

The price should be lower. It's not too expensive but I believe the price could be better. 

The product needs to be supported by top management for it to work. This is one of the things that we faced at the very beginning. Second, from a technical point of view, you need to have a dedicated team taking care of this from a product management point of view, not necessarily from a technical point of view because that can be outsourced. I recommend not doing the development in-house, rather to outsource it with one or two partners and the corporate team. I recommend going for the full cloud-based solution architecture rather than having part of it inside and part of it outside. If there is no issue with data sharing then I would recommend going for a fully cloud-based solution. It gives an advantage and reduces a lot of management headaches. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

We use Appian for client on-boarding, anything onboard related, really: loading institutional clients, tracking that information in a single reporter, doing the follow-up, creating the plan parables for them, and developing for them.

In my organization, there are about 150 users who are currently using Appian on a daily basis. We use Appian very extensively. Every day, there are more than 100 unique logins to the system.

Appian also has very flexible local integration and we have used that extensively to integrate with our Legacy system.

The user interface is good, but it's not perfect. They should provide more flexibility so designers can create a more picture-perfect device. There should be more features on mobile UX development as well. 

Currently, it's easy to use and It gets the job done, but it's not flexible in regards to creating the mobile application from scratch. You have to play within the framework and the rules of the UX; however, that's something that not many customers like. Customers want a flexible mobile application development platform. I think Appian should make a lot of improvements with respect to their mobile application development by providing more flexibility for designers in order to allow them to create their own UX components and control the display of the data onscreen. 

I would like to see more flexibility in terms of the UI. I know that it's not designed to be a big application that allows you to do multiple things, like creating the second year stream of the pie, for example. I feel like Appian has been so instrumental in making their entire product local, and have really improved the user interface design, but the user interface design is limited to authenticated users only — although there are some limited pieces available on the login page. I would like Appian to extend their local capabilities to the login page as well so that we could create an available application that can be targeted to any customer. For example, if you flipped it, you would see information about various products and other information, something that could be very realistic if only Appian would allow these capabilities to be extended to the login page.

I have been using Appian for more than 10 years.

The stability is good. We have been using Appian for our strategy and tactical solutions and it has held up very well for us. The team was able to adapt to the changes of the new version  very quickly and were able to implement the application without any complexities or jumping hurdles relating to development. There were no issues for us. Appian has been meeting just as many of the requirements in my department as the stakeholders have. The stakeholders are happy with the UI and ease of the application. The overall usability has improved and everyone is happy with Appian. 

We believe that the scalability of Appian depends on the expertise of the Appian designers. It completely depends on the skill of the designers — how they design the applications determines the scalability of processes and data. In other words, the platform is very scalable. It stores the data as memory so the data allows us to retrieve the information rapidly; but again, we had already done the data management so the team was focused on data retention and data management. They set up their architecture in such a way that the system and the application can be scaled very quickly, so we are not seeing any problems with the scaling of Appian. 

My team mainly interacts with Appian cloud support who regularly provides them with solutions and advises them about any existing platform issues.

We previously looked at the Pega system; actually, one of our departments is currently using Pega system, but we wanted to diversify our technology base to provide a better experience for our stakeholders. My CIO recommended we make an investment because these two platforms are leading BPM tools offering similar functionalities, including BPM, EI, and case management. So we were calculating the pricing, trying to figure out what the return on the investment would be if we went with one platform or the other and what it would cost us in terms of losses between Pega and Appian.

The initial setup was straightforward. The team was able to set it up quickly, build up the applications and deploy it within six to ten weeks.

We have an in-house team that is comprised of Appian architects, designers, consultants and professionals who are trained on the Appian platform.

I would definitely recommend Appian. It has come a long way and it's a good product. It's entering into the area of a local application development platform. Appian is continuously making product updates every quarter. 

I would give Appian a rating of nine out of ten.

Our plan on using the solution will be to basically utilize it for business process management, and for case management as well. We want to use their local platform offering and some of their niche markets, to see how they can provide dynamic case management all in one place. 

One of the features that we felt was valuable to us was the business case management and how seemingly easy it was to use.

The combination of business process management, dynamic case management over the local platform has vastly improved.

We appreciate the drag and drop functionality and the easy to access plug and play features. 

They seem to be introducing a lot of automation into their product, which is exciting for us. They're apparently partnering up with different companies to offer robotic process automation in the future.

The initial setup is very easy.

You can easily integrate other applications into the product.

We're still researching the platform. I don't have a strong opinion on what might be missing. They seem to be constantly upgrading their products.

The solution could use some more tutorials to help brand new users figure out how to use the product effectively.

We're not really using the solution so much as testing its capabilities and discovering its resources. We've been doing this now for about two months.

The solution has been pretty stable. I haven't had any downtime whatsoever, or any disruptions or anything of that nature. There hasn't been any lag in service. It's been good.

The solution is very agile. It's very easily expandable too. You're able to integrate different applications or different interfaces with this platform. It's actually quite flexible, I should say.

That said, at this point, we don't plan to increase usage. We're still learning about the product. We hope, in the future, if we take it on, we will be able to expand it.

Due to the fact that we haven't had any issues yet, and we've been using the solution for a short amount of time, we haven't needed to contact technical support. If I need to in the future, I will. However, at this point, I can't speak to their level of service as I've never used them.

We did not find the initial setup complex. Our engineers, who handled the implementation, found it to be quite straightforward.

The deployment process was fast. I can't recall the exact number of hours it took, however, it was not a drawn-out process.

Maintenence seems to be minimal, however it would be helpful if there was someone on staff to maintain it as needed.

Our engineers handled the implementation. We were able to do everything in-house. We didn't need assistance from consultants or resellers.

The solution offers a monthly subscription model. That's what we use. I recall it being about $90 a month. They do have different tiers. 

We're currently doing a case study on this specific solution. We didn't look at other solutions.

We don't have a business relationship with Appian. We're just customers.

We're most likely using the latest version of the solution.

I would definitely recommend the solution and invite other companies to try it out. They even have the trial edition. That way, you can test the solution before having to purchase the application edition. If you decide to go forward, it is $90 per user per month. They have the enterprise edition as well which is a bit more. 

The solution is that it's available on different devices as well, which makes it very flexible and easily adaptable to a lot of different environments, including Windows, Linux, Mac, and Android.

The product also caters to all sizes of companies, whether you are small or large.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Process Automation and Forms Digitisation, implementation of organisational wide processes rather than use of COTS.

Appian was not selected by any of the organisations I've worked with to date for production use.

Form building capabilities and well thought out process modelling are key points to this product.

Support for complex models really needs significant improvement

Flexibility in the architecture is not there

Management or reusable assets is extremely limited and poorly designed

Business rules are not aligned to industry best practices

Authoring tool slow to use resulted in limitations on how quickly solutions can be built

Integration to DevOps (such as automated testing, CI/CD etc needs work)

Trial/evaluations only.

This product is targeted to mid size companies and not highly scalable complex processes.

Customer Service:

Average, although a small responsive team Appian has been fast growing stretching their ability to service customer needs.

Technical Support:

Reasonable, stronger than say IBM or Oracle technical support but it is still critical to engage in a full POC activity with this product to ensure it fits your needs before proceeding with an implementation. The closed nature of the platform means there is limited to no help outside of that technical support team which is already stretched based on the ever increasing customer base.

leveraging IBM engine on other jobs with the Blueworks Live for developing processes with business.

Compare this product closely to open source options, IBM and Pega. For simple solutions using simple models Appian may be sufficient and would provide better ROI than investing in building a team to support a more complex tool but for complex models I'd look for a stronger tool-set.