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Appian vs Hyland OnBase 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 Business Process Management (BPM)
9th
Ranking in Low-Code Development Platforms
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), Process Mining (7th)
Hyland OnBase
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
16th
Ranking in Low-Code Development Platforms
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Appian is 5.3%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hyland OnBase is 1.0%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Appian5.3%
Hyland OnBase1.0%
Other93.7%
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

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.
Srinivas Rao Kagitha - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good dashboards and reports but fails to offer better migration features
The migration is a bit difficult in the tool. Whenever we make certain changes to workflow or other stuff, migrating the code from one environment to another is a bit tedious. The tool has an option for export and import, which is not robust. Most of the time, we need to do things stuff manually. For example, if we make any changes in the existing life cycle or any queues, we have to move those changes manually. There is no robust way to migrate code from one environment to a lower environment, like prod. When it comes to the product's technical support, the turnaround time is a bit longer than expected. The issue may be because there are a number of issues or a large number of customers who are reaching out to the support team for help. I believe that the solution's technical team can provide a solution more quickly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Recently, we added Appian Process Mining, Appian Portals, and now Appian RPA."
"What stands out are the speed of the product, the quick, easy development, and visual diagramming."
"The solution has a lot of strong features for the financial industry, it is very easy to use."
"The most beneficial aspect of Appian is its data management capabilities and the process engine in general."
"Appian helps you do a lot of things. It's easy to configure and build an application platform, and it offers a lot of features that you find in an RPA solution. It's flexible so you can reuse it for a variety of use cases."
"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."
"It ​reduces development time in half making us more efficient."
"The most valuable features are the low coding and low code data."
"We found the setup process to be okay since they do offer a troubleshooting guide."
"It provided data security features, allowing restrictions on sensitive documents, such as who could view or modify them."
"I like the cloud and its integrability."
"The solution's most valuable features are integration and flexibility."
"OnBase is a remarkable tool. It is a well-done product. Hyland has a lot of experience in building it and looking for new things for clients in terms of functionalities. It has amazing stability, and it can grow horizontally and vertically. It is built for growth. Their technical support is also quite good and available throughout the year."
"Hyland OnBase is valued for its security, especially for those in the finance domain who require data confidentiality."
"The retention module is one of the most valuable features. Whatever we scan onto the system can be identified and we are notified when the records are due to be disposed."
"The solution is very developed and we are not taking full advantage of its functionalities."
 

Cons

"There could be a scope of enhancement for capturing the variety of use cases."
"They should provide more flexibility so designers can create a more picture perfect device."
"There are some restrictions with respect to using external components within Appian. So, for example, if we do not have a particular feature available, there's a long cycle of getting approvals and all of that. That does not offer flexibility, which definitely can be improved on."
"The documentation needs to be improved."
"It is difficult to set up the on-premise version."
"The solution could use some more tutorials to help brand new users figure out how to use the product effectively."
"Appian could improve their customer-facing initiatives."
"I would like to see more enhancement in the user interface to allow more freedom in designing the sites and pages."
"An area for improvement would be the training - getting our people up to speed on how to use it required more training than we expected due to the complexity of the solution."
"I find OnBase's monolithic architecture to be expensive, and adopting microservices could be beneficial."
"The migration is a bit difficult in the tool."
"We are struggling with duplicates and would like to have OCR functionality when using this solution."
"The application could potentially be more open-source, allowing integration with more solutions."
"We need to troubleshoot why our reports didn't get downloaded in a day. There is a workflow feature which powerful but also complicated."
"We found the size of images to be a restriction, though this may have been due to the API used rather than the Hyland application."
"The solution’s initial setup is a little difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The tool is quite costly."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing can be a little confusing to customers."
"The cost is calculated on a per-user basis. It might be expensive for small and mid-sized enterprises."
"I think that if somebody is really serious at looking at business value, then by all means, the product is well worth the value. You get representative business value for the price that you pay for the product, and for the implementation of the product."
"It's good value for the price."
"The solution costs around $6,000 per month."
"OnBase is reasonably priced."
"They can do better in terms of the pricing model. It is a really expensive tool in Latin America. They should have different prices for different regions."
"The tool's price is high."
"There are a number of different types of licenses. There are concurrent licenses, individual licenses and imaging licenses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise41
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Hyland OnBase?
I find pricing to be on the higher side due to its monolithic architecture. I would rate it six out of ten. Transitioning to microservices, allowing users to pay for only what they use, could reduc...
What needs improvement with Hyland OnBase?
I believe the reporting features need improvement, as other competitors in the market provide better analytics. Hyland is working on a new platform (HXP) to integrate features from all products, ad...
What is your primary use case for Hyland OnBase?
I was a vendor managing Hyland OnBase ( /products/hyland-onbase-reviews ) for Hyland, not as a direct user but as a business partner. We managed the solution and were a partner with Hyland.
 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
OnBase
 

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
Honda France Industries, Hill County Texas, Hylant Group, ING Lease France, State of South Carolina, Syracuse University, Swindon College, Rhode Island Department of Human Services, Rochester Institute of Technology, Moen, Odense University Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about Appian vs. Hyland OnBase and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.