

Appian and IBM BPM compete in the business process management category. Appian seems to have the upper hand due to its low-code rapid development and market-leading ease of use, while IBM BPM is strong in integration and process orchestration.
Features: Appian provides rapid development with low-code capabilities and quick application deployment. It features robust process design and is designed for intuitive use, making it accessible to non-technical users. IBM BPM excels in system integration, exceptional process orchestration, and adherence to BPMN 2.0 standards. It offers seamless connectivity with other IBM technologies for enhanced enterprise-level integrations.
Room for Improvement: Appian needs to improve its customization options and integration flexibility, particularly in user interface design. Mobile and offline capabilities also require enhancement. IBM BPM could enhance usability for non-technical users and improve integration with modern APIs. Cost-effective pricing is another area for IBM BPM to consider improving.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Appian is flexible, offering deployment across public, private, and hybrid cloud environments, with typically excellent customer service. IBM BPM is usually deployed on-premises and in hybrid environments, suiting larger enterprises. While Appian boasts generally strong support, it occasionally struggles with resource availability. IBM experiences moderate customer service challenges, especially with complex issues.
Pricing and ROI: Appian offers competitive pricing with flexible licensing models that are often more accessible compared to competitors like Pega. Costs are user and workload-based, with cloud subscriptions available. Appian's rapid deployment leads to a fast ROI. IBM BPM has higher pricing, more suitable for large enterprises, with substantial ROI potential requiring careful process evaluation to justify the investment.
Using Appian is saving us five full-time employees, which is significant since we currently have only four team members.
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.
I would give Appian's customer support 10 out of 10 due to their next-level support.
Their customer service is responsive, and the team is very prompt for support.
The technical support for Appian rates as 10 out of 10 because they have a great support team.
The customer service is outstanding.
We had a contract that provided on-site support, which was very satisfactory.
On a scale from 1 to 10, support deserves a rating of 7 to 8.
On a scale of one to 10, Appian rates as a nine for scalability.
Our volume has increased by 20% in the two years since using Appian, and it can handle the increased volume effectively.
Initially, without much coding, I can easily handle five thousand records.
The solution has scalability issues; on a scale, I would rate it at eight out of ten.
The architecture of the solution offers scalability; we can scale both vertically and horizontally.
I found IBM BPM to be scalable to a certain level but it struggled with large volumes of concurrent transactions.
We have tested Appian during peak usage and off-peak times, and we have not experienced any issues such as lagging or system disruptions.
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.
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.
Appian can be improved by adding a geo-location tagging feature, which would be really helpful for identifying remitter addresses.
If there is a very complex process that includes a lot of data transitioning and memory-centric processes, it consumes a lot of memory.
IBM BPM also lacks smaller solutions, so I must purchase multiple solutions to start with workflows and applications.
Technologies evolve day by day, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence and generative AI models.
There are negative aspects, such as IBM BPM being quite heavy and not lightweight, and the licensing cost is higher, which has caused some companies to shift away.
Appian provides value for money, is easy to use, has a straightforward setup procedure, and offers great support from the Appian team.
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.
SAP is more expensive, but IBM BPM is very expensive.
The zero-code integration feature is remarkable, allowing for ease of data transfer and workflow enhancement.
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.
After switching to Appian, it can extract data from MT103, eliminating the need for manual data entry.
The integration capabilities of IBM BPM are excellent.
Coordination across data silos is effective, and IBM BPM can be used for that purpose.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| IBM BPM | 4.1% |
| Appian | 3.7% |
| Other | 92.2% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 20 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 9 |
| Large Enterprise | 42 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 30 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 19 |
| Large Enterprise | 72 |
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:
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:
Appian Benefits
The benefits of using Appian include:
Reviews from Real Users
A practice leader - digital process automation at a computer software company values Appian highly because the product is easy to develop, low-code, and has a good user interface.
Alan G., an advisory board member at Codecon VR, Appian offers a clear application life cycle, easy to learn documentation, and comes with a fundamentals course.
IBM BPM is a business process management tool that provides a robust set of tools to author, test, and deploy business processes, as well as full visibility and insight to managing those business processes. The solution provides tooling and run time for process design, execution, monitoring, and optimization, along with basic system integration support. To support various levels of complexity and involvement with business process management, there are two different editions of the product: IBM BPM and IBM BPM Express.
IBM BPM Features
IBM BPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
IBM BPM Benefits
There are many benefits to implementing IBM BPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
IBM BPM is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it’s good for developing complex apps, is robust, and has helpful team management and process performance features.
Zoran C., Owner/CEO at IT SPHERE, says, “It is perfect if you have to develop complex apps without much coding (only java script). It is also good if you don't have much IT resources in your company and would like to involve business analysts in the process of developing apps. My opinion is that it can do about 50% of all developers' work.”
Suhas V., BPM Architect at GBM, mentions, “Overall the solution is robust and has the ability to integrate with any product for complex workflows."
A BPM Consultant at a financial services firm comments, "Some of the features that I like the most are team management and process performance. They are both very useful and very powerful with regard to the workflow."
A Digital Banking & Innovation Director at a financial services firm expresses, “The processing functionality makes it easy to change processes and workflows easily.”
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