Appian vs Pega CRM vs ServiceNow comparison

The compared Appian and Pega solutions aren't in the same category. Appian is ranked #8 in BPM , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 3.5% mindshare in the category. Pega is ranked #6 in CCEC , with an average rating of 7.5, and holds a 5.0% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Appian users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Pega users who would recommend it.

Appian

Read 64 Appian reviews

10,144 Views
4,565 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Pega CRM

Read 10 Pega CRM reviews

1,597 Views
399 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ServiceNow

Read 225 ServiceNow reviews

24,579 Views
8,848 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Appian

Pega CRM

ServiceNow

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Appian, Pega CRM, and ServiceNow based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Automation Anywhere, Pega and others in Business Process Management (BPM).

To learn more, read our detailed Business Process Management (BPM) Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Business Process Management (BPM)

March 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 885,789 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Business Process Management (BPM) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Appian	3.5%
Camunda	9.2%
IBM BPM	4.3%
Other	83.0%

Business Process Management (BPM)

CRM Customer Engagement Centers Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Pega CRM	5.0%
Microsoft Dynamics CRM	13.0%
Salesforce Service Cloud	10.6%
Other	71.4%

CRM Customer Engagement Centers

IT Service Management (ITSM) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
ServiceNow	15.8%
JIRA Service Management	7.3%
BMC Helix ITSM	5.7%
Other	71.2%

IT Service Management (ITSM)

Featured Reviews

Shad Bhowmik

Finance Specialist at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees

Automated remittance workflows have boosted speed and accuracy but still need geo-tagging improvements

Remittance is a crucial part of my integral operation, so any disruption would majorly impact our clients. After switching to Appian, we never faced any disruption as it is reliable and we can generate data at any point in time, quite faster than other tools in my personal opinion. Regulators can ask for data from us at any time, and with Appian, we download data from our Appian tools to share it with them whenever they ask. I would share a real-life example: a customer's transaction processed more than a year ago. Suddenly the customer came back asking for all the details. In our previous tool, it was quite difficult to generate transaction details from over a year ago; however, while using Appian, we can pull up data using different key search fields, such as a customer's cell phone number, remittance tracking number, or MT103 reference number. We shared it with the customer instantly, and the customer was surprised we could provide all the details in such a short time. It added reputational value for our organization, thanks to Appian.You have pointed out two major things: time-saving and reduction of error, which are key points while processing remittance. Previously, while using another tool, it was quite time-consuming to process remittance, but after switching to Appian, it can extract data from MT103, eliminating the need for manual data entry. The process has become fully automated. Previously we could process only five to ten transactions within an hour, but now, after switching to Appian, we can process about 100 transactions in an hour, making it 10 times faster. In terms of error detection, since Appian extracts data from MT103, the extraction rate is quite good, and the error rate is negligible, lower than 0.001%. We can share accurate, error-free data with the regulator, which is essential for us. Appian benefits us significantly. After receiving an MT103, we check what the remitter is, the amount, if it is under threshold for processing, and if it is from a high-priority remitter or client. Since Appian extracts data from MT103 messages and identifies top-level clients from the database, it can notify us to process their transactions with priority. Due to automated data extraction, there are fewer instances of error. In our previous tool, we reported regulatory data to the central bank manually and often received complaints about invalid purpose codes due to manual data entry. Appian handles this automatically, and after switching, our error rate has dropped significantly, resulting in positive feedback from the Central Bank of Bangladesh regarding our reduced error rates. This has greatly enhanced our organization's reputation. Appian is fully on-premises, and we have our own system.

Read full review

reviewer2388567

Senior Manager, Siebel Services, Technology Enablement at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Can be deployed easily but needs to offer more out-of-the-box adaptors

The disadvantage of the tool stems from the fact that it does not allow users to make database-level modifications. In Siebel CRM, you have complete control over your database, you can do any database-level modifications, and you can create a custom data model within your database, but such functionalities are not available in Pega CRM. The UI and UI level modifications that are available in Siebel CRM with JavaScript within the jQuery framework, which is basically an open UI framework built by Siebel on top of a UI layer, are available in the tool. The level of UI modifications allowed by Siebel CRM is not available in Pega CRM. The aforementioned areas can be considered for improvement in the tool. I would like to see more out-of-the-box adaptors in Pega CRM since it is an area where the tool has certain shortcomings.

Read full review

MichaelTang1

Manager of Security Engineering & Architecture at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Seamless data integration and advanced automation improve service delivery efficiency

I think that nothing needs to be improved with the product; you just need the user to commit and spend appropriate time to overcome that learning curve. Once that is done, the product itself is pretty wonderful. I've seen a very nicely built interface with ServiceNow, and I've also seen the ugliest version that feels outdated. ServiceNow does allow that team to exist. They should modernize their fonts and their layout, the UI friendliness. They did introduce AI, chatbots, and AI on the back end, so that's wonderful and extremely useful if you train it. If you don't train it, it's pretty useless. Assessing the impact of ServiceNow's automation on service delivery times is complicated. The engineers who operate on ServiceNow find it isn't straightforward because the data set is accessible by everybody. The problem is that understanding how to manage that data set requires an enormous amount of engineering skill set to run the product. I would not hand the key to the customer; I would highly recommend that ServiceNow take control of that. Instead of offering support for the software, they should offer administrative support for the software. They should provide professional service or some kind of support system that allows us to use their product at a faster pace. I'm sure they offer something, but it's often outrageously expensive, or they rely on another company to resell their product and offer professional service. It makes no sense in my opinion, and they should offer the team at the front to help customize the product to fit each company's needs, as every company has different demands and forms of submitting a request that need adjustment over time.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is business automation."

"The most valuable features of Appian are workflow management and the ease with which you can build the UI."

"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."

"The workflow engines are a valuable feature; we use them to bridge the gaps of processes within our core systems that are either too difficult or too costly to develop within the core system."

"The low code functionality and being able to get applications faster to customers or to the market are valuable."

"If you are looking for a fast, rapid rollout of applications and you have multiple medium-scale and small-scale processes that you want to roll out at a faster pace, with ease of maintenance, then Appian is a good product to go with."

"The Application Designer is very user friendly. There are also lot of plug-ins that you can use and, for the most part, they are free."

"The most beneficial aspect of Appian is its data management capabilities and the process engine in general."

More Appian pros

"The most valuable feature is the ability to pull information about the customer on-the-fly so they feel the interaction is more personal."

"The solution is very easy to use."

"Pega offers a clear parent-child case relationship that's easily created and maintained. Dependencies can be configured, where reaching a specific stage in a parent case automatically triggers a child task in a child case, while the parent case remains on hold until a certain condition is met before moving forward. This configuration allows multiple users to work on cases in parallel. Many of these settings are readily available within Pega case settings. Overall, Pega's case management is unparalleled compared to other options."

"We can effortlessly manage the data within it, and it offers ease of use and high flexibility to present the data across various vendors."

"The product's deployment phase was easy."

"The case management feature is really valuable."

"This is all about one use case where we are basically orchestrating all the different systems into one system and making sure that all the information is presented on one page, which improves the efficiency and results in a good experience for the customer."

"Great flexibility and its locking mechanism enable multiple users to work on the same case seamlessly."

More Pega CRM pros

"The biggest improvement I see is that unstructured work, which would primarily be worked on within spreadsheets or within emails, is able to be centralized, managed end-to-end, and have that visibility and structure in ServiceNow."

"ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI."

"The area where we have benefited a lot is that, initially, it was very difficult to have end-to-end visibility into what was happening, and we were able to establish that with ServiceNow."

"The way it can integrate with other applications and be a central hub for anything we need to do, plus the fact that it's cloud based, is huge for us."

"It enables us to meet SLAs, track issues across the environment, and report those issues."

"We could have chosen many different platforms but for lack of a better word, it was the easiest to be able to move to, taking all of our existing processes and data from different sources."

"The return on investment is good when implementing for ourselves and for other clients."

"It uses a common base of data and allows different types of records to pull from that same base of data."

More ServiceNow pros

Cons

"I would like to see more complete university tools. For example, with UiPath, I have had a good experience related to a free course in order to provide some users some different levels of knowledge. This extra training helps users not only use the solution but to develop further within the tool."

"I wouldn't say their response time is long, but it could be quicker."

"Something I would like to see improved is an SQL database connection."

"The tool itself is pretty good, but the main area that we struggled with was the backend. The frontend development is really good, but the backend modeling can be streamlined a little bit. There are good integrations, but tying them through the data layer and then up into the frontend could be improved a little bit. It does read/write on the data source, and you can configure it to just write or just read, but there is a little bit of work involved."

"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."

"Authoring tool is slow to use resulted in limitations on how quickly solutions can be built."

"Appian could include other applications that we could reuse for other customers, CRM for example."

More Appian cons

"There has been a common acknowledgment among customers that this solution is an expensive tool and they often opt for cheaper tools like Comodo"

"They should enable the data-driven streaming feature inside it."

"The solution has room for improvement around decisional and real-time data analysis."

"The UI should be improved."

"Price is always a concern for many organizations. They often think Pega is expensive, and sometimes they don't fully understand the pricing model."

"The solution has room for improvement around decisional and real-time data analysis."

"It would be beneficial to enhance the pricing and support implementation options as they are currently quite expensive."

"For many of the clients, they have a separate system or separate layer of UI and a separate layer of the business rules engine, which Pega has taken care of in the recent releases."

More Pega CRM cons

"The user interface could be much improved, and the developer tools and sets can be improved greatly, they are lacking."

"A new user does need training or time to learn the solution before jumping in. It was very hard in the beginning to understand everything. I couldn't find the models I needed at the time."

"The technical support SLA can be improved because sometimes they take a long time to answer our queries."

"Some enhancements to the self-service platform would be helpful. That part is still a little barebone."

"There should be fewer clicks and faster integrations between solutions."

"Before implementing this solution, you should have the ITSM model in place for chain management requests. That is a prerequisite because you cannot perform tasks without it."

"There's always room for improvement in terms of the ServiceNow UI."

"The reporting, which also includes dashboards, needs to be improved, and there should also be the ability to turn on and off portions of Project Management. Currently, as soon as you install the new version, you've got to go back there and make all the tweaks. There should be just a configuration file that goes to the new version. The Project Management module does not leverage the knowledge base the way it should, and there is no built-in ability to get to the articles. Resource management should be easier. It would be amazing if they can make resource management a little bit more graphical. There are other solutions that I've seen where resource management was a more visual experience."

More ServiceNow cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The license is not very cheap. It's on the expensive side."

"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."

"It is fully managed, and I don't believe there are any additional expenses."

"The licensing will be on a monthly basis. We are estimating that cost to be around $2000 to maybe $3,000 per month. We don't foresee any costs above that."

"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."

"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."

"It's good value for the price."

More Appian pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is on the higher side."

"It is expensive."

"We have numerous uses of the solution in our organisation. Almost 72 applications are integrated with Pega CRM, and some of them are shutting down for various reasons including the high licensing costs. There is a strong focus in the market and offices on cost reduction."

"The pricing is on the high side, but if you look at the stability and option to work, it's kind of justified."

"While the option exists to pay for a monthly license, we are dealing with large enterprises and these typically involve multi-year licenses of ten or five years, at a minimum."

"We know that ServiceNow is not cheap, it's more expensive than other solutions. But we are trying to increase our ability to handle tickets so that the cost per ticket is less."

"The solution is expensive."

"The pricing is reasonable and affordable, making it suitable for businesses ranging from small to large scale."

"The price of the solution is comparable to industry standards. For the features that we received, it is reasonable."

"The licensing expenses are excessively high."

"There is an annual subscription to use this solution."

More ServiceNow pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Business Process Management (BPM) solutions are best for your needs.

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885,789 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	44

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	55
Midsize Enterprise	35
Large Enterprise	169

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Pega CRM?

The product's deployment phase was easy.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pega CRM?

The disadvantage of the tool stems from the fact that it does not allow users to make database-level modifications. I...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Pega CRM?

Pega CRM uses a layer cake architecture. Basically, the tool is a convenient application to use even if you are not a...

See all answers

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 t...

See all answers

Would you choose ServiceNow over Microsoft PowerApps?

Hi Netanya, I will choose ServiceNow because ServiceNow is a very good tool compared to Microsoft PowerApp. Because ...

See all answers

What do you like most about ServiceNow?

The solution has a user-friendly interface.

See all answers

Comparisons

Camunda vs Appian

Compared 9% of the time

Pega Platform vs Appian

Compared 7% of the time

IBM BPM vs Appian

Compared 5% of the time

Bizagi vs Appian

Compared 5% of the time

OutSystems vs Appian

Compared 4% of the time

More Appian Competitors

Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs Pega CRM

Compared 14% of the time

Salesforce Sales Cloud vs Pega CRM

Compared 10% of the time

TLDCRM vs Pega CRM

Compared 9% of the time

Genesys Cloud CX vs Pega CRM

Compared 9% of the time

Salesforce Service Cloud vs Pega CRM

Compared 8% of the time

More Pega CRM Competitors

BMC Helix ITSM vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Maximo vs ServiceNow

Compared 5% of the time

Zendesk vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

JIRA Service Management vs ServiceNow

Compared 4% of the time

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs ServiceNow

Compared 2% of the time

More ServiceNow Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Appian

March 2026

Download Appian product report

Buyer's Guide

Pega CRM

March 2026

Download Pega CRM product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow

March 2026

Download ServiceNow product report

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS

Chordiant

No data available

Overview

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:

Complete automation: Through complete automation, companies are able to coordinate and manage employees, existing systems, bots, data, and artificial intelligence (AI) in a single workflow. The solution offers a way to centrally manage all third-party automation vendors as well.
Low-code applications: Appian offers the ability to build applications faster with visual development and low-code tools. All applications are ready-made to be suitable for mobile.
Low-code data: Appian lets companies source data from multiple types of sources, eliminating the need for data migration. Through no-code and low-code solutions and industry-standard connectors, the platform also eliminates the need for data silos.
Enterprise ready: The platform offers options for companies to scale their businesses to an enterprise level without complications.

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:

Robotic process automation (RPA): Users of Appian can assign software bots to perform rules-based tasks that need to be repeated over a set course of time. This can improve efficiency and performance within an organization while saving human resources.
Intelligent document processing: The tool offers a feature for quick and accurate extraction and structuring of data. This can reduce time and costs for organizations because it eliminates the need for outsourcing such services.
AI: Appian utilizes artificial intelligence to enhance applications, workflows, and automation. AI is also used to address complex processes and unique situations.
Business rules: Organizations can automate and simplify work processes while adhering to their operating procedures.
Application development: Appian provides a low-code development feature that allows users to deploy applications over ten times faster than through conventional approaches. This feature not only allows for quick application building, but also applications that run on multiple types of platforms, seamless data integration, and business scalability.
Integrations and data: Appian allows for data integration from a wide array of sources without the need for migration. This contributes to easy access to data across systems, real-time data insights, improved user experience, and accelerated development.

Appian Benefits

The benefits of using Appian include:

The solution ensures seamless organization growth, as it supports various UX patterns, common data schemes, and upgrades, used to facilitate application development on a bigger scale.
Appian can increase process speed and deliver applications considerably faster compared to conventional development.
The platform is easy to use and suitable for complete beginners to build applications and workflows.
Appian offers a variety of design tools that facilitate development and deployment.
Appian offers detailed real-time data insight which allows organizations to access relevant information about their processes as they are developing.
The solution offers clients the ability to move data between the cloud, on-premise, and hybrid configurations.
The platform is easy to optimize, which allows businesses to utilize it according to their personal needs.
Appian offers connectivity across web, mobile, email, voice, and chat, providing a multi-channel experience for companies and their clients.

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.

Appian

Pega BPM streamlines your operations so you can reduce costs and improve business agility. Pega is recognized by leading analyst firms as the most comprehensive and unified BPM platform.

Pega

ServiceNow is a cloud-based task-management platform that specializes in IT operations management (ITOM), IT services management (ITSM), and IT business management (ITBM). ServiceNow allows users to manage their teams, projects, and customer interactions using a variety of different plugins and apps with which it easily integrates.

ServiceNow offers prebuilt applications to support any process, as well as a framework and tools that allow you to build your own.

ServiceNow’s service management solutions include change, request, incident, problem, and cost management, as well as HR, IT, field service, and facilities management solutions. They also cover business management solutions such as vendor performance management, financial management, performance analytics and project portfolio suite, as well as governance, risk, and compliance.

“The Smarter Way to Workflow”

ServiceNow’s activities, processes, and tasks are overseen as part of a comprehensive managed workflow that supports such features as real-time collaboration, communication, and resource sharing. ServiceNow’s suite of products allow for operation using serverless computing, and include the categories of Business Apps, Customer Service, HR, IT, and Security.

ServiceNow can be used to support most workflows because of the wide range of tools it offers. These include on-suite ticketing tools, predictive modeling to manage workflows, and benchmarking for the tracking of progress. ServiceNow can assist with artificial intelligence and machine learning processes and can be used to organize the cases of a help/service desk as well as for instance management and problem management. It also smoothly integrates with many legacy systems.

ServiceNow offers service management software for industries including:

Cloud services
Education
Financial services
Government
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Telecommunications

Reviews from Real Users

PeerSpot users prefer ServiceNow to its competitors because of its scalability, stability, and ease of use. It helps everyone in the company to be on the same page by creating a single source of record across all departments. One user stated that “I’ve definitely used over 20 project management solutions, but they can't be compared with ServiceNow.” Another said that “ServiceNow is an industry leader in multiple areas and provides an excellent ROI.”

ServiceNow

Sample Customers

Hansard Global plc, Punch Taverns, Pirelli, Crawford & Company, EDP Renewables, Queensland Government Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning (, Bank of Tennessee

The State of Maine, Aegis, Aegon, AIG Japan, ING

AAA, AstraZeneca, Becton, Dickinson and Company, Broadcom, Christus Health, Epicor, Equinix, GE Capital, Intuit, KPMG, Loyola Marymount University, OshKosh, Quantas, RedHat, Royal Bank of Scotland, Swiss Re, U.S. Department of Energy, Safeway, Yale University, and Zillow

Buyer's Guide

Business Process Management (BPM)

March 2026

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