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Appian vs Knack 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 Rapid Application Development Software
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (10th), Process Automation (8th), Low-Code Development Platforms (5th), Process Mining (8th)
Knack
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
32nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No-Code Development Platforms (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Rapid Application Development Software category, the mindshare of Appian is 8.2%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Knack is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rapid Application Development Software
 

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.
ND
Flexible and granular security options, good filtering, and the pricing model is cost-effective
The vendor does a really poor job of marketing this software because it should be more popular. This is something that I have pointed out to them. It's a super piece of software, but very few people are aware of it. I am an EX-IT director and I've worked in big systems, and I'm amazed this solution isn't more popular. The "native" integration with other products could be improved. The user interface for the systems that you build can use some improvement because as it is now, you may have to use HTML and CSS to make it look more modern or to match a clients existing look. The documentation is amazing, although they don't do videos and their YouTube channel is very poor. They could create some training videos.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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's most valuable features are the quick time it takes to develop for the market. It's easy and faster than other BPM solutions."
"Another advantage of this tool is its reports and records. You can maintain dashboards, layouts. If you with a Java solution, it takes six months time. If you use this tool, you can finish in one or one and a half months' time."
"The solution's most valuable features are the regular periodic and quarterly updates, they are very useful updates. They keep improving the solution more often, and that helps the platform or code always be up to date with the latest features."
"Rapid development with low-code makes it easier to quickly get apps implemented and the time to break-even and ROI is much faster."
"The application is mobile-friendly, allowing me to use it across any device, whether mobile, laptop, or desktop."
"In terms of interface, it's very good. In terms of infrastructure, it's amazing and already using multiple tools behind the scenes. It's a low-code platform, so it's very easy to implement."
"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."
"The security is the most valuable feature, in particular, the way I can give different access to different areas to different people, so you can really fine-tune access for different users."
 

Cons

"​Appian is easy to set up, but JBoss is complex. JBoss is the application server for running Appian."
"Even though the company has made great improvements in online documentation, featuring rich material which includes case studies of real-life use cases, the material could definitely be better in quality and coverage of use cases."
"The performance is pretty good, but the distortions need to be optimized in order for it to work well."
"While Appian is generally flexible, it's rigid in some ways. It takes longer to do something that isn't available out of the box."
"Authoring tool is slow to use resulted in limitations on how quickly solutions can be built."
"There are four areas I believe Appian could improve in. The first is a seamless contact center integration. Appian does not have a contact center feature. The second is advanced features in RPA. The third would be chatbot and email bot integration—while Appian comes with chatbot and email bot, it's not as mature as it should be, compared to the competition. The fourth area would be next best action, since there is not much of this sort of feature in Appian. These are all features which competitors' products have, and in a mature manner, whereas Appian lacks on these four areas. I see customers who are moving from Appian to Pega because these features are not in Appian."
"Sometimes, clients expect us to implement ERP using Appian, which is very complicated. In such cases, I don't believe that Appian is a good tool for that."
"It needs better integration with our existing application ecosystem."
"The user interface for the systems that you build can use some improvement because as it is now, you have to do a lot of HTML and CSS to make it look modern."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It's an enterprise tool and can be used by enterprise only. So it's a very expensive tool."
"The solution offers a monthly subscription model. That's what we use. I recall it being about $90 a month. They do have different tiers."
"The tool is quite costly."
"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."
"You can't really test the software properly without actually buying the license first."
"Product pricing compared to some of the earlier vendors, like IBM, CA, and Oracle, is quite well-priced. Although, we do feel that as we increase the number of users and the workload increases, we will have to spend more."
"This product has really good value, as it doesn't have a per-user cost, there's a flat fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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...
Ask a question
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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
Siemens Kaiser Permanente VMware SunChemical C.R. England Philips The Salvation Army United Way U.S. Green Building Council Cambridge University Press
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