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Appian vs CA Process Automation 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
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (10th), Rapid Application Development Software (9th), Low-Code Development Platforms (5th), Process Mining (8th)
CA Process Automation
Ranking in Process Automation
36th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 CA Process Automation is 0.3%, up from 0.2% 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.
SJ
Added value to the delivery of services and the customer experience
We design end-to-end automation solutions for repetitive tasks performed by IT support teams This tool is used in my organization for automating IT infrastructure related incidents or service requests.  Built-in operators available for most integrations. Easy to manage. Attended/unattended…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With low-code, we don't need a lot of coding, and then from the plumbing perspective, there is a complete CI/CD pipeline that exists within Appian that can be leveraged for open deployment."
"Technical support is quite responsive."
"Form building capabilities and well thought out process modelling are key points to this product."
"The agile manner that we require to create our workflows. This is probably the most critical part of our solution and the time it takes to start processing the solution."
"It has created executable requirements and speeds up the SDLC process greatly."
"The tech support is quite good."
"The process models provide self-documenting systems."
"Write to Data Store Entity - Saving data in SQL databases is done easily using entities. Entities (CDTs in Appian terminology) define relationships and target schema tables via XSD files."
"This tool is used in my organization for automating IT infrastructure related incidents or service requests."
"It is easy to debug and troubleshoot."
 

Cons

"Appian could include other applications that we could reuse for other customers, CRM for example."
"Native mobile capabilities or hybrid mobile app capabilities are very limited. Things like offline sync, offline storage, access to smartphone device features, etc. are not supported by the Appian platform yet."
"It has it's own built-in UI components and doesn't provide much flexibility to customize or extend those components."
"I would like to see more features for enterprises. They would also benefit from adding documentation and training on their site."
"It is also not easy to learn. Training tutorials could be improved."
"We'd like improved functionality for testing new devices."
"My only request is that they decrease the license costs."
"The tool itself is pretty good, but the main area that we struggled with was the backend. The frontend development is really good, but the backend modeling can be streamlined a little bit. There are good integrations, but tying them through the data layer and then up into the frontend could be improved a little bit. It does read/write on the data source, and you can configure it to just write or just read, but there is a little bit of work involved."
"Somehow the product group within CA left the product dry from some regular expression functionality."
"Make some of the features more open source that way developers can have more flexibility."
"OCR capability should be added as a feature."
"It needs auto-triggering of workflows based on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"The price is high."
"You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first."
"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."
"There are a lot of automation savings from any process which is repeatable."
"It has provided ROI by auto resolving incidents or requests in the ITSM queue, improved MTTR and SLA adherence, and added value to the delivery of services and the customer experience."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
 

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...
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Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
CA IT Process Automation Manager
 

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
Unum, HCL Technologies, Logicalis
Find out what your peers are saying about Appian vs. CA Process Automation and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.