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Appian vs IBM BPM vs IBM Business Automation Workflow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.5
Businesses using IBM BPM reported improved efficiency, automation, and cost savings despite high costs and moderate ROI.
Sentiment score
7.6
IBM Business Automation Workflow enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and accelerates digital transformation for improved ROI and user experience.
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.
Initially performed manually, workflows now provide a better user experience and increased efficiency.
 

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
IBM BPM customer service is generally positive, with effective support, though response delays and communication issues are noted.
Sentiment score
5.9
IBM Business Automation Workflow's support has mixed reviews, but many find value once acquainted with their processes.
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 technical support is generally good.
The customer service is outstanding.
We had a contract that provided on-site support, which was very satisfactory.
If the solution is readily available to IBM support team, they provide it instantly.
IBM provides long-term support and maintains a traditionally good customer-vendor relationship.
 

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
6.9
IBM BPM offers impressive scalability, efficiently managing high user volumes with varied experiences and requiring occasional careful tuning.
Sentiment score
7.8
IBM Business Automation Workflow is highly scalable, supporting extensive transactions, concurrent users, and both cloud and on-premises 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.
The solution has scalability issues; on a scale, I would rate it at eight out of ten.
I found IBM BPM to be scalable to a certain level but it struggled with large volumes of concurrent transactions.
We are implementing load balancing and horizontal scalability.
We can manage the license usage and scale our environment while optimizing license use.
 

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
7.1
IBM BPM stability varies; recent versions improve reliability, but issues remain with infrastructure, configuration, and developer expertise.
Sentiment score
7.6
IBM Business Automation Workflow is stable, with minor bugs, improving over time; users rate stability highly due to IBM's robust infrastructure.
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.
Outside of these maintenance periods, the environment is quite stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Appian needs improvements in flexibility, integration, scalability, team collaboration, mobile features, documentation, licensing, and handling complex processes.
IBM BPM needs improved customization, integration, and user-friendliness, addressing complexity and high cost with enhanced API and AI features.
IBM Business Automation Workflow needs improved integration, usability, cloud features, and support to enhance user experience and modernize the platform.
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.
If there is a very complex process that includes a lot of data transitioning and memory-centric processes, it consumes a lot of memory.
I would like to see more enhancement in the user interface to allow more freedom in designing the sites and pages.
IBM BPM also lacks smaller solutions, so I must purchase multiple solutions to start with workflows and applications.
Many developments are focused on AI, LLM models, and data science.
IBM Business Automation Workflow could be more intuitive, with more advanced low-code features and services definition.
Code management lacks merging capabilities.
 

Setup Cost

Appian offers flexible pricing with cloud and on-premise options, but costs can rise with usage and require negotiation.
IBM BPM's high costs suit large enterprises, while flexible Cloud Pak and tiered licensing offer varied pricing options.
IBM Business Automation Workflow is costly but offers high-quality features, flexible licensing, and worthwhile enterprise-level capabilities.
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.
SAP is more expensive, but IBM BPM is very expensive.
It is not a cheap license but in line with expectations for such software.
The price of IBM Business Automation Workflow is on the higher side compared to the features it offers.
 

Valuable Features

Appian provides low-code development, easy integration, scalability, and strong AI-enhanced features with a user-friendly interface and robust support.
IBM BPM offers integration, scalability, and low-code development with strong UI, enhancing efficiency and reducing complexities.
IBM Business Automation Workflow offers agile, user-friendly workflow solutions with RPA integration, enhancing collaboration, customization, and AI-driven processes.
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.
It is easy for me to define the process and create configurable workflows.
The integration capabilities of IBM BPM are excellent.
The system is fully customizable, very resilient, and fault-tolerant.
It assisted in making users concentrate on the process flow rather than just features.
It offers robust workflow features and, despite being a low-code tool, provides extensive customization options.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Appian is 5.7%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM BPM is 6.9%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Business Automation Workflow is 2.2%, down from 2.3% 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…
Prince Mathew - PeerSpot reviewer
More customizable than IBM FileNet and useful for automation
One suggestion for IBM BPM is to provide better integration between their products, such as DataCap, which we use for scanning. Although the new CP4BA offers offline capabilities, not everyone is on CP4BA, so enhanced integration for those on older versions would be beneficial. Another major suggestion is to offer a migration path when a product reaches its end of life. For example, there was no migration path when we moved, so we had to redo everything we had developed over ten years completely.
Ateeq Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
Customizable features empower seamless workflow automation
The system is fully customizable, very resilient, and fault-tolerant. We have first-line support from IBM, so there are no issues. We have integrations with different banks, ERP systems, and other human resource management systems by integrating through different systems. It provides many ways to integrate, and we are utilizing it effectively.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Educational Organization
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
6%
Insurance Company
6%
 

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...
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. The...
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 i...
Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user inter...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
What do you like most about IBM Business Automation Workflow?
It performs the basic tasks that are required for the BBM solution as part of the overall integration with ECM or ent...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Business Automation Workflow?
The price of IBM Business Automation Workflow is on the higher side compared to the features it offers.
What needs improvement with IBM Business Automation Workflow?
Code management lacks merging capabilities. If parallel development requires merging, improvements in this area would...
 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
Business Automation Workflow
 

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
Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
Key Bank, Barclays, Control€xpert, MIR Insurance Brokers, Conqord Oil
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Automation Anywhere, Apache and others in Business Process Management (BPM). Updated: June 2025.
862,077 professionals have used our research since 2012.