ABBYY and Appian are both solutions in the Process Mining category. ABBYY is ranked #12, while Appian is
ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.9. ABBYY holds a 2.1% mindshare in PM, compared to
Appian’s 5.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ABBYY users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Appian users who would recommend it.
Appian and ABBYY Timeline compete in process automation and data analytics. Appian seems to have the upper hand with its comprehensive automation features, though ABBYY Timeline provides superior analytics for data-driven insights.
Features: Appian offers robust process modeling, AI-powered automation, and powerful integration features. ABBYY Timeline specializes in capturing and analyzing business processes through process mining and delivers data-driven insights with advanced analytics. Both products have distinctive features that cater to their strengths in automation and analytics.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Appian is known for rapid deployment, supported by intuitive low-code platforms and robust customer service. ABBYY Timeline ensures quick deployment with a cloud-based model, offering strong support for analytics and process mining. Appian's intuitive setup eases integration, while ABBYY requires specialized support for deeper insights.
Pricing and ROI: Appian's pricing reflects its comprehensive automation features, focusing on long-term ROI through efficiency. ABBYY Timeline, despite a higher initial investment for analytics, provides significant ROI through enhanced process insights. Appian's cost-effectiveness is seen in automation benefits, whereas ABBYY's investment justifies analytics-driven improvements.
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Categories and Ranking
ABBYY Timeline
Ranking in Process Mining
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Appian
Ranking in Process Mining
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (12th), Process Automation (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), Low-Code Development Platforms (5th)
Mindshare comparison
As of July 2025, in the Process Mining category, the mindshare of ABBYY Timeline is 2.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Appian is 5.8%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
The software is user-friendly, flexible, and can be used with various data sources. It provides various reports and charts that help organizations to identify areas for improvement and optimize their processes. ABBYY Timeline is a great choice for business process analysts, process owners, and IT professionals who are looking for a tool to help them analyze and optimize their processes. The process flow/diagram is the most valuable feature, as it offers a helpful visual simulation that allows users to see what's happening in the grand scheme of things and then drill down into specific tasks and processes to see where the bottlenecks are. For those companies that look for the low-hanging fruit in terms of process automation and operational excellence, this is the tool you need to succeed.
I am working with all of these products: Pega, Appian, and OutSystems. I use Appian as a process orchestrator for workflow and rule-based routing, and it is preferred when I am developing an enterprise-wide application. The application is mobile-friendly, allowing me to use it across any device…
"There are a couple of new features available in Timeline that still need more time to mature."
"We'd like improved functionality for testing new devices."
"The reporting is not as good as in similar products. They could also improve the dashboards."
"The solution needs more features. For example, a way to connect to our viewing database, to record, and more interface and component design."
"It is difficult to set up the on-premise version."
"It is also not easy to learn. Training tutorials could be improved."
"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."
"Appian is easy to set up, but JBoss is complex. JBoss is the application server for running Appian."
"We would like to see more reduced latency. We would like to make sure that the scale-out factor will be much more as workloads come in."
"Licensing of Appian is less expensive when compared to other BPMs in the market."
"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."
"It's an enterprise tool and can be used by enterprise only. So it's a very expensive tool."
"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 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."
"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."
"It's good value for the price."
"I'm sure it is cost-effective, but right now, we're just toying around with it. So, I don't have any hard numbers."
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...
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...
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...
ABBYY Timeline is a cloud-based, AI-driven process mining tool. Using the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology, ABBYY Timeline automatically builds an interactive digital twin of your business processes, analyzes them in real time to identify bottlenecks, and predicts future outcomes to facilitate better decision-making.
Why use process mining & task mining?
✔ End-to-end process visualization: Visualize the flow of your work through the process stages and see the delays, bottlenecks, and outliers. Gain insight into your “as-is” customer processes to understand challenges.
✔ Compliance risk management: Simplify compliance by using audit trails to build a model of your process and reason against it. Receive alerts when rules set in place are broken and follow up immediately to ensure that it won’t happen again.
✔ Greater ROI from automation: Drive down the cost of process evaluation and make it easy to identify high-value improvement opportunities. Discover the most valuable opportunities to implement RPA or automatically monitor the performance of your existing RPA processes.
✔ Accurate, un-biased data: Before, process mining relied on subject matter experts. Now, process mining software gives decision-makers facts and figures from real-time event log data to back up their decisions by serving as an irrefutable source of truth.
How Timeline process mining works
In four steps, discover and visualize process execution details automatically by leveraging artificial intelligence to examine desktop user interaction (known as task mining) or by analyzing your existing data (known as process mining) to quickly identify opportunities for improvement, monitor ongoing performance in real-time, and predict future outcomes.
Appian is a unified low-code platform and solution used by businesses to build enterprise applications and workflows. This product adapts to the needs of clients and the technologies they are already using to combine their data in a single workflow and maximize resources. The platform has four main components through which it transforms the work process for companies of various sizes. They are:
Complete automation: Through complete automation, companies are able to coordinate and manage employees, existing systems, bots, data, and artificial intelligence (AI) in a single workflow. The solution offers a way to centrally manage all third-party automation vendors as well.
Low-code applications: Appian offers the ability to build applications faster with visual development and low-code tools. All applications are ready-made to be suitable for mobile.
Low-code data: Appian lets companies source data from multiple types of sources, eliminating the need for data migration. Through no-code and low-code solutions and industry-standard connectors, the platform also eliminates the need for data silos.
Enterprise ready: The platform offers options for companies to scale their businesses to an enterprise level without complications.
Appian is utilized across a diverse set of industries, including automotive and manufacturing, energy and utilities, education, financial services, telecom and media, transportation, retail, insurance, healthcare, and life sciences. The most frequent use cases of Appian are customer journey, governance, risk and compliance, operational efficiency, supply chain, distributed order management, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) management.
Appian Features
Appian has various features that allow users to create solutions for their businesses. These features can be separated into a few groups according to function, including automation, low-code application development, and integrations and data. Some of the most frequently used features of Appian include:
Robotic process automation (RPA): Users of Appian can assign software bots to perform rules-based tasks that need to be repeated over a set course of time. This can improve efficiency and performance within an organization while saving human resources.
Intelligent document processing: The tool offers a feature for quick and accurate extraction and structuring of data. This can reduce time and costs for organizations because it eliminates the need for outsourcing such services.
AI: Appian utilizes artificial intelligence to enhance applications, workflows, and automation. AI is also used to address complex processes and unique situations.
Business rules: Organizations can automate and simplify work processes while adhering to their operating procedures.
Application development: Appian provides a low-code development feature that allows users to deploy applications over ten times faster than through conventional approaches. This feature not only allows for quick application building, but also applications that run on multiple types of platforms, seamless data integration, and business scalability.
Integrations and data: Appian allows for data integration from a wide array of sources without the need for migration. This contributes to easy access to data across systems, real-time data insights, improved user experience, and accelerated development.
Appian Benefits
The benefits of using Appian include:
The solution ensures seamless organization growth, as it supports various UX patterns, common data schemes, and upgrades, used to facilitate application development on a bigger scale.
Appian can increase process speed and deliver applications considerably faster compared to conventional development.
The platform is easy to use and suitable for complete beginners to build applications and workflows.
Appian offers a variety of design tools that facilitate development and deployment.
Appian offers detailed real-time data insight which allows organizations to access relevant information about their processes as they are developing.
The solution offers clients the ability to move data between the cloud, on-premise, and hybrid configurations.
The platform is easy to optimize, which allows businesses to utilize it according to their personal needs.
Appian offers connectivity across web, mobile, email, voice, and chat, providing a multi-channel experience for companies and their clients.
Hansard Global plc, Punch Taverns, Pirelli, Crawford & Company, EDP Renewables, Queensland Government Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning (, Bank of Tennessee
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