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Appian vs OutSystems comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 16, 2025

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
7.1
OutSystems typically offers high ROI through fast development and cost savings, though initial expenses and developer skills impact outcomes.
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.
Developing that same project in OutSystems can be completed in around 40 to 50% less time, requiring only six resources.
 

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
7.2
OutSystems' service is generally proactive and responsive, but advanced help varies by SLA, location, and contract tier.
The technical support for Appian rates as 10 out of 10 because they have a great support team.
Their customer service is responsive, and the team is very prompt for support.
The technical support is generally good.
Many helpful videos and documentation are available on the OutSystems site, making it relatively easy to learn the platform.
 

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
7.7
OutSystems offers scalable, adaptable solutions for enterprises, with seamless cloud expansion and efficient management, despite pricing concerns.
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.
They can be deployed vertically and horizontally, supporting as many deployments as needed.
 

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
8.0
OutSystems is praised for stability and reliability, handling large systems well, with minor issues on high data loads.
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.
 

Room For Improvement

Appian needs improvements in flexibility, integration, scalability, team collaboration, mobile features, documentation, licensing, and handling complex processes.
OutSystems faces performance and integration issues, high licensing costs, and needs improvements in support, automation, UI, and documentation.
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.
I would like to see more enhancement in the user interface to allow more freedom in designing the sites and pages.
If there is a very complex process that includes a lot of data transitioning and memory-centric processes, it consumes a lot of memory.
It is crucial to be aware of which module corresponds to which application in real-time projects, as there are multiple applications.
I would like to see more integration between the use of artificial intelligence to speed up the process delivery time.
 

Setup Cost

Appian offers flexible pricing with cloud and on-premise options, but costs can rise with usage and require negotiation.
OutSystems is costly, suited for larger enterprises, with yearly fees varying by usage, covering licenses and infrastructure.
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.
Subsequent users can be added at an additional cost per user; exact pricing details can be found on the OutSystems site.
 

Valuable Features

Appian provides low-code development, easy integration, scalability, and strong AI-enhanced features with a user-friendly interface and robust support.
OutSystems streamlines development with low-code tools, offering rapid deployment, easy integration, and enhanced productivity through reusable components.
The zero-code integration feature is remarkable, allowing for ease of data transfer and workflow enhancement.
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.
I can create tables, perform database-related activities, and create multiple tables.
OutSystems offers a lot of reusable components and solutions that I can simply drag and drop and use, which has a significant impact on project delivery time.
The clean separation of concerns in the architecture provided by OutSystems is a key benefit compared to other platforms.
 

Categories and Ranking

Appian
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
8th
Ranking in Low-Code Development Platforms
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (12th), Process Automation (8th), Process Mining (8th)
OutSystems
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
4th
Ranking in Low-Code Development Platforms
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Low-Code Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Appian is 11.2%, up from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OutSystems is 10.1%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Low-Code Development Platforms
 

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…
DhrubajyotiBiswas - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps us efficiently streamline repetitive tasks, but they could provide improved connectors to integrate with outside platforms
The OutSystems' most effective features for speeding up development cycles are the process orchestration and the drag-and-drop updating of business processes. I would recommend it to a friend or colleague, especially if they are looking for a solution that is easy to deploy and helps streamline internal processes. I rate it a six out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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...
Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
What industries do you think OutSystems is most useful for?
I cannot really name an industry in which OutSystems cannot be beneficial. Who does not want to make top-notch applications that work in no time? And OutsyStems does exactly that. The low-code plat...
How did you decide which OutSystems edition was the best one for you?
We started using OutSystems fairly recently, so we are still on the free version of it. My company is still testing how we like the platform, but so far, we have been satisfied with it and will li...
 

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
Randstad, Warner Brothers, HP, Intel, ING, Banco Popular, Thrivent Financial, Bacardi, Kent State University, Bacardi, FICO, ING, Vodafone, AbbVie, Estafeta, Siemens, Vopak
Find out what your peers are saying about Appian vs. OutSystems and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,874 professionals have used our research since 2012.