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ARIS BPA vs Appian comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
Appian enhances ROI for companies by improving efficiency, reducing costs, and achieving break-even within the first year.
Sentiment score
6.8
ARIS BPA improves operational resilience, transparency, and stakeholder alignment, offering significant time savings and enhanced management understanding.
They see return on investment in terms of cost savings, time savings, more efficient processes, and more efficient employees.
Appian is very efficient, allowing us to build a lot of applications within a financial year, making it cost-effective.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Appian's customer service is excellent but faces capacity challenges; proactive support is valuable despite complex issue delays and high costs.
Sentiment score
6.6
ARIS BPA technical support is praised for responsiveness, though improvements in communication and complex issue handling are needed.
The technical support for Appian rates as 10 out of 10 because they have a great support team.
Their customer service is responsive, and the team is very prompt for support.
The technical support is generally good.
The consultants are fine, however, reliance on single experts for modules can be risky.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Appian is scalable and flexible, but may encounter performance issues with complex processes and large data volumes.
Sentiment score
7.6
ARIS BPA is scalable and flexible, supporting cloud-based growth across industries despite its cost considerations, accommodating various deployments.
On a scale of one to 10, Appian rates as a nine for scalability.
Initially, without much coding, I can easily handle five thousand records.
Appian is scalable, but it depends on how you build your applications.
For user scalability, it is a matter of licenses, while functional scalability is supported and easy to implement.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Appian is praised for stability and reliability, with high uptime, seamless updates, and occasional minor database issues.
Sentiment score
7.2
ARIS BPA is stable, with challenges in large environments; users appreciate performance improvements and responsive support.
It depends on how it has been designed and how it has been configured.
The stability of Appian would rate as nine, as it's a stable environment.
The stability of ARIS BPM is quite strong, rated eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Appian needs improvements in flexibility, integration, scalability, team collaboration, mobile features, documentation, licensing, and handling complex processes.
ARIS BPA is criticized for high costs, complexity, and integration challenges, needing significant training and better user interface.
It has room to improve for use cases where the users are public facing, where anonymous users could come to a site and run a business workflow or interact with some data.
I would like to see more enhancement in the user interface to allow more freedom in designing the sites and pages.
If there is a very complex process that includes a lot of data transitioning and memory-centric processes, it consumes a lot of memory.
Software AG could improve this by making the database more open.
 

Setup Cost

Appian offers flexible pricing with cloud and on-premise options, but costs can rise with usage and require negotiation.
ARIS BPA's high cost is justified for large enterprises, offering flexible options and extensive features with negotiable terms.
On the pricier side, both Appian and Pega are enterprise-level solutions, placing them on the slightly higher side.
The pricing of Appian is based on the number of users and generally ranges from 70 to 100 USD per user per month.
The price of Appian, on a competitive landscape, is a little bit on the higher side for companies, rating maybe a 6.5.
 

Valuable Features

Appian provides low-code development, easy integration, scalability, and strong AI-enhanced features with a user-friendly interface and robust support.
ARIS BPA features a centralized repository, robust analytics, integration options, customizable methods, and supports notations like BPMN and EPC.
The zero-code integration feature is remarkable, allowing for ease of data transfer and workflow enhancement.
Appian also utilizes AI for business users, providing a feature called process each view, enabling business users to create their own dashboards, reports, and gain insights from their data and processes using artificial intelligence.
I can create tables, perform database-related activities, and create multiple tables.
The maintenance capabilities of ARIS BPM and the strong underlying database are particularly valuable.
 

Categories and Ranking

Appian
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (8th), Rapid Application Development Software (8th), Low-Code Development Platforms (5th), Process Mining (8th)
ARIS BPA
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Appian is 5.9%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ARIS BPA is 5.0%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Nitin-Agarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless integration enhances workflows while memory optimization can improve complex processes
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…
Cirvesh-Daga - PeerSpot reviewer
Capable of handling a wide range of business processes but presents users complexity with two interfaces (Java application and web interface)
ARIS needs to make a better user interface. The user interface sucks. The problem with ARIS is that they have two interfaces for the same product. You can use either a Java application or a web interface. The web interface doesn't give you access to the same features as the Java application. You have to switch between the two interfaces to get some things done. The web interface is more intuitive, but it lacks the functionality of the Java interface. So I'd give it a six for that reason. The Java interface has more functionality, but it tends to run out of memory and has its own set of problems. So, I'd also give it a six out of ten because of the technology choice. It was really frustrating having two UIs for the same product, with some functionality in one and not in the other. They've got to do something about that.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
 

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 do you like most about ARIS BPA?
The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are its flexibility and reporting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ARIS BPA?
Pricing for ARIS BPA is average, not cheap or expensive. It's cost-effective and worth the money we pay.
What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?
I find it difficult to access the database as I want with direct querying. I must write scripts, which requires specific knowledge. Software AG could improve this by making the database more open. ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
ARIS, ARIS BPM
 

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
Tesco, Weifu, Airbus, Siemens, Proximus, Alicorp, Sekerbank, Bancor, Philips,Sky, Emirates NBD, Dubai Municipality, Suva, U.S. Army, Australia Post, Westfalen Weser Energie - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as the market leader for process excellence with more than 30 years of experience in the market, 10 million users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.
Find out what your peers are saying about ARIS BPA vs. Appian and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.