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Appian vs Salesforce Platform vs ServiceNow 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
Salesforce Platform enhances efficiency, reduces information silos, boosts revenue growth, and cuts client data management time by up to 50%.
Sentiment score
7.0
ServiceNow enhances efficiency, project management, and resource management, offering quick ROI through automation and optimized system integrations.
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.
They have removed the costs associated with on-prem infrastructure, including data center costs, power costs, and physical server costs.
The return on investment is good when implementing for ourselves and for other clients.
Manually, there are huge numbers that come up because these integrated tools help organizations make the right decisions with all the information in one place, while manual methods lack visibility.
 

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
6.7
Salesforce Platform generally provides solid support, but response times vary, with users appreciating community resources and premium service benefits.
Sentiment score
7.0
ServiceNow's support is praised for knowledge and community resources but criticized for inconsistent response times and outsourced interactions.
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 support is exemplary and deserves a perfect rating.
Obtaining support for maintenance is the current challenge because they don't have a presence in the local market.
I have contacted them four to five times over the past two years, and they have been quite helpful.
 

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
7.8
Salesforce Platform's scalability is highly rated for handling large user bases and offers flexibility in expansion and customization.
Sentiment score
7.5
ServiceNow offers scalable, cloud-based solutions that support seamless growth and integration for enterprises, with strong user satisfaction.
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.
Salesforce's scalability was not a problem.
Salesforce Platform is absolutely scalable for us.
We are using it globally in thirty countries.
There are no limitations or performance issues with ServiceNow; it is cloud-based, so it is highly scalable and performs well.
It is capable of vertical scaling with no issues.
I rate the scalability of ServiceNow as an eight on a scale of one to ten.
 

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
8.1
Salesforce Platform is stable and reliable, with minor issues and performance hitches being exceptions, ensuring high user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.7
ServiceNow offers stable, high-performance IT service management with minimal downtime; customization requires best practices to maintain optimal performance.
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.
Sometimes the system is stuck when many users are using it.
It is cloud-based, so it is highly scalable and performs well.
I haven't faced any issues with stability; I've rarely seen any downtime.
ServiceNow is stable enough.
 

Room For Improvement

Appian needs improvements in flexibility, integration, scalability, team collaboration, mobile features, documentation, licensing, and handling complex processes.
Salesforce Platform needs improvements in pricing, reporting, integration, UI, automation, scalability, and support for better user experience.
ServiceNow requires enhanced UI, documentation, integration, performance, training, and mobile features to boost user satisfaction and accessibility.
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.
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.
There is a need for bug or error tracking in ServiceNow.
Their customer support could make it a great solution, not just product support but also their relationship with partners and training initiatives in different regions.
From a functionality perspective, the features in ServiceNow are acceptable as, at the moment, the ITSM modules rank highly, being 13 plus Pink Elephant certified, which is a good aspect to have.
 

Setup Cost

Appian offers flexible pricing with cloud and on-premise options, but costs can rise with usage and require negotiation.
Salesforce is costly but offers extensive features, flexibility, and benefits, making it worthwhile for large enterprises despite additional costs.
ServiceNow is costly for small companies but flexible for enterprises, with complex pricing needing negotiation for discounts.
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.
Salesforce Platform may be on the expensive side.
ServiceNow's pricing can be justified if more functionality is required.
ServiceNow does come with a price.
ServiceNow is expensive for all regions.
 

Valuable Features

Appian provides low-code development, easy integration, scalability, and strong AI-enhanced features with a user-friendly interface and robust support.
Salesforce Platform offers customizable, scalable features with intuitive UI, aiding agile development and efficient automation for enhanced data management.
ServiceNow's customization and integration capabilities enhance operational efficiency and align IT operations with business needs effectively.
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.
This integration allows us to manage customers from all aspects in one place, providing a clear view.
Salesforce offers control over the opportunities to see where we are and gives me high-level dashboards on each opportunity stage.
The most valuable features of Salesforce are its level of customization and integration.
ServiceNow provides a wide range of functionality, covering all the necessary modules, unlike Jira which is primarily for IT.
Automation capabilities are impressive, bolstered by a vast repository of out-of-the-box connectors and plugins that facilitate integration with various applications worldwide.
The features of ServiceNow that I find most valuable include its ability to easily access ticket details if you know the ticket number, monitor the timeline of when the ticket was created, and see the current status.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Rapid Application Development Software category, the mindshare of Appian is 8.8%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 6.0%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow is 10.8%, up from 10.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rapid Application Development Software
 

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…
Yasser_Anter - PeerSpot reviewer
Has customization and integration capabilities which increase efficiency
Salesforce could improve by offering AI features or functionalities to help business decision-makers analyze business history, suggest forward strategies, and participate in events. The previous version had a complicated interface where multiple pages and data entries were required, which was not pleasant for sales teams or business users. Also, deploying Salesforce took a long time, about four to five months, which is not ideal for any business.
Nikhil Gohil - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables effective incident management and seamless workflow automation with valuable mobile accessibility
I haven't thought deeply about improvements for ServiceNow or what might be missing right now. There are so many modules and features in ServiceNow that I haven't explored them all, so it's hard to say what might be missing or should be improved. I suggest making the cost more affordable for smaller companies.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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...
How would you choose between Microsoft PowerApps and Salesforce Platform?
I think it depends on your use case. If your organization uses Microsoft Enterprise products, PowerApps will work be...
How does Salesforce Platform compare with Azure?
Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is not easy or intuitive to deploy. The difficulty will be impacted by the type of...
Do you build applications using low-code or pro-code builders on Salesforce Platform?
At my organization, we have only used Salesforce Platform's low-code builder. The reason for this is not because we d...
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about ServiceNow?
The solution has a user-friendly interface.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
Salesforce1, Force.com, Salesforce App Cloud
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
ADP
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    
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, ServiceNow, Oracle and others in Rapid Application Development Software. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.