

Appian and Salesforce Platform are leading solutions in the business development sector. Appian’s focus on quick ROI and rapid development gives it an edge for businesses seeking speed, while Salesforce excels in extensive CRM functionalities and integrations, making it ideal for comprehensive CRM needs.
Features: Appian supports rapid development through its low-code capabilities, enabling swift app deployment, including mobile and browser support with agile workflow creation. It’s advantageous for businesses prioritizing quick return on investment. Meanwhile, Salesforce provides exceptional CRM capabilities with extensive customization and automation potential. Its strong partner ecosystem enhances its utility for businesses requiring rich CRM functions and seamless integration with other systems.
Room for Improvement: Appian faces limitations in UI customization and scalability, posing challenges in enterprise integration and offline functionalities. Additionally, architectural flexibility is restricted. Conversely, Salesforce needs to enhance its integration capabilities with external data sources and address performance issues. Its pricing also presents challenges for smaller businesses.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Appian provides diverse deployment options, including public, private, and hybrid clouds, with robust on-premises support. Customers value its attentive service, albeit with occasional limitations due to demand. For Salesforce, its deployment options are versatile, backed by strong public cloud support. While its technical support is responsive, it can be costly. Users appreciate its broad support network, but experiences vary in personalized service.
Pricing and ROI: Both platforms are expensive but offer distinct value propositions. Appian is praised for flexible pricing and cost-efficiency, leading to rapid ROI through its low-code model. It is often more affordable than competitors like Pega. Salesforce justifies its higher cost with extensive CRM capabilities and customizability, making it a preferred choice for large enterprises seeking comprehensive CRM solutions.
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.
Salesforce saved about 40% to 50% of my time by allowing me to manage and maintain client data and account progress.
In terms of productivity, my ROI is definitely at an eight or nine out of a scale of one to ten.
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.
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.
Salesforce's scalability was not a problem.
Salesforce Platform is absolutely scalable for us.
We are using it globally in thirty countries.
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.
On occasion, we had to log in and out frequently, open tickets with our IT team for account reconfiguration, or request permissions to access the system.
We have never had any problems with it.
It is definitely very stable.
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.
Salesforce could improve by adding more capabilities to the dashboard, such as additional fields for more filters and more control over what I would like to see.
Salesforce could improve by offering AI features or functionalities to help business decision-makers analyze business history, suggest forward strategies, and participate in events.
Using AI extensively to make the platform easier to use would also be beneficial.
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.
Salesforce Platform may be on the expensive side.
It is on the expensive side, unfortunately.
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.
This integration allows us to manage customers from all aspects in one place, providing a clear view.
The biggest benefit is seamless usage in terms of an easy-to-use interface and GUI that makes it easy to interact with the entire platform and generate reports effortlessly.
Salesforce offers control over the opportunities to see where we are and gives me high-level dashboards on each opportunity stage.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Salesforce Platform | 4.8% |
| Appian | 5.8% |
| Other | 89.4% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 20 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 9 |
| Large Enterprise | 42 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 39 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 26 |
| Large Enterprise | 39 |
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.
Salesforce Platform is a tool that provides application building with open application programming interfaces (APIs), integration tools, back-end services, starter templates, and developer environments. With a low-code interface, users are able to build applications and benefit from automated processes. The product helps customers to increase work productivity and save on IT costs through efficient, easy-to-understand, methods for creating applications.
Salesforce Platform allows companies to build and operate intelligent applications at scale and share them with employees and customers in real time. The tool secures companies' data while connecting and synchronizing it simultaneously across their Customer 360 accounts. The main components of the product are:
Salesforce Platform Features
Also referred to as a “drag and drop app builder," this solution offers various features for customers to create intelligent applications and build personalized services for clients, partners, and employees within the apps.
Salesforce Platform Benefits
The benefits of using Salesforce Platform include:
Reviews from Real Users
A vice president at a healthcare company values Salesforce Platform because it is flexible and user-friendly with helpful pre-built schemas.
Peter G., a senior technical consultant at a tech services company, rates Salesforce Platform highly because it is intuitive, quite easy to learn, and stores all kinds of relevant sales information.
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