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Appian vs BizTalk Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Appian
Ranking in Process Automation
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (12th), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), Low-Code Development Platforms (5th), Process Mining (8th)
BizTalk Server
Ranking in Process Automation
14th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Business-to-Business Middleware (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Appian is 5.9%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BizTalk Server is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Kunal Sharda - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience enables seamless automation and elevates process efficiency while embracing innovative technologies
The features of Appian that have proven to be the most beneficial are its capability to create processes and integrate with external systems while ensuring data consistency across all the systems. The latest features of Appian are quite useful around the UI/UX design and the artificial intelligence integrations. Appian is aiding in leveraging AI technologies in multiple ways: one way is for developers, as they make development efficient and quick by enabling developer co-pilots across various phases of the application, which helps design Appian quickly and provides suggestions along the way. Another way is through AI Skills, which can be integrated anywhere in the process model to leverage artificial intelligence for tasks such as extracting data from documents, summarizing information from documents or long paragraphs, and building custom prompts with Appian. 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. It's multi-fold and always growing.
Vignesh Kumar Sekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables message routing and provides a secure way to communicate between two systems
The AS2 communication protocol is one of the most advanced processes. It enables a handshake with the source and target systems using certificates. It is the most secure way of communicating between two systems. It is an advantage. We can do a lot of message routing. If we want to handle large data, we can put the data into different patterns to process it. We can do it through sequential convoy or parallel convoy orchestration. BizTalk comes with SQL Server. We can load temporary data in the database and use the batch process from BizTalk. It is an added advantage. Creating agreements is a manual job, but it's quite easy in BizTalk. Even a fresh college graduate can configure AS2 certificates and partner profiles and communicate with other systems. It is easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Even with an on-premise implementation, the scalability is still high, so it is easy to scale up."
"Technical support has been amazing overall."
"Appian is a stable product and works very well."
"The solution has a lot of strong features for the financial industry, it is very easy to use."
"Form building capabilities and well thought out process modelling are key points to this product."
"The initial setup was seamless. We didn't run into any hardships at all."
"The technical support for Appian rates as 10 out of 10 because they have a great support team."
"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."
"BIzTalk's integration with Visual Studio is the most valuable feature of this product."
"The most valuable feature is its reliability and stability. The first version of BizTalk was released in 2000, and many companies still use it. It was stable until 2013 when we had support."
"BizTalk Server offers workflow functionality that I find very effective for process automation."
"I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of BizTalk Server is that it will turn XML into flexible transactions."
"Essentially, you can do whatever you like with these systems, and you do not have to take care about the scaling because if one server is overloaded, it just forwards the message to the next server, even if it were designated to a specific server. It weeds out the messages according to the load. If you want to scale it, you just add new servers."
"We can handle a large number of messages without any issues, ensuring that everything runs smoothly."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its integration with the banks. Its messaging and routing capabilities are good."
 

Cons

"Something I would like to see improved is an SQL database connection."
"If we could calculate the amount of data that will be realized, it would help us a lot."
"The solution could improve robotic process automation."
"The UI of Appian is more internal. Recently, there has been an addition of an external user portal for the customer-facing stuff. It's still coming out."
"The documentation needs to be improved."
"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."
"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."
"BizTalk Server is an outdated legacy system that does not support messaging."
"BizTalk lacks native cloud support. BizTalk doesn't offer in-built support for cloud. We need to use third-party adapters to connect it to cloud services."
"The product's deployment can be quicker"
"It's a complex product because you have many degrees of freedom to connect different parts together. Whether it's sensible or not, is up to you, but the machine does allow it. But because of the vast degrees of freedom, it's complex."
"Updating things in BizTalk is a headache."
"BizTalk Server needs improvements, especially because we use it for EDI messaging, and it would be very useful to have enhanced tracking capabilities for message tracking and archiving of messages."
"The product could be improved in monitoring, managing, and support functionalities."
"It's an on-premises system, requiring physical servers for deployment. This is different from Azure; you don't need any servers with Azure. If you have a subscription, you can do whatever you want. There are unit restrictions based on the environment (like non-production vs. production) in BizTalk. You need physical servers and databases. In Azure, those are not required – it's all in the cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license is not very cheap. It's on the expensive side."
"More flexibility in the licensing model is still needed because initially there were customers who are looking at only one or two use cases of business areas, but now the business areas are changing and there is a larger scope. One license model may not fit everyone. They need to be a little more flexible on the licensing model."
"When it comes to pricing, it's definitely not affordable. However, it really depends on the requirements that you're seeking from the solution."
"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."
"If you're doing an enterprise-wide digital transformation, Appian is worthwhile, but not for just one or two use cases because the license costs are higher."
"We will have to have a dialogue or negotiate a price for future use. To start with, it is a reasonable price. As we go ahead, we will have to make sure the costs are inline with our expectations as we grow our user base and workloads."
"The cost is a bit higher than other low-code competitors, OutSystems and Mendix. The price needs to be more competitive."
"It is fully managed, and I don't believe there are any additional expenses."
"Based on the knowledge, it is relatively cheaper than Azure Identity Services and cloud services in general."
"It was not cheap, but it was affordable."
"The solution is expensive."
"BizTalk Server is cheap. I would rate its pricing a two out of five."
"The cost will depend on the client's requirements."
"BizTalk Server is not freeware. There's a significant licensing cost involved. Be sure you will actually utilize its features fully."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

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 BizTalk Server?
The tool's most valuable feature is its integration with the banks. Its messaging and routing capabilities are good.
What needs improvement with BizTalk Server?
BizTalk Server needs improvements, especially because we use it for EDI messaging, and it would be very useful to have enhanced tracking capabilities for message tracking and archiving of messages....
What advice do you have for others considering BizTalk Server?
BizTalk Server has adapted to the changing needs of business over time with steady development, but there are new requirements, for example, on APIs, application programming interfaces. That functi...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
No data available
 

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
Centrebet, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, QualCare, Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, DTEK, Allscripts, United BioSource, Hogg Robinson
Find out what your peers are saying about Appian vs. BizTalk Server and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,155 professionals have used our research since 2012.