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Appian vs Zoho Creator 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:
 

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
3.6
Zoho Creator offers cost-effective solutions by replacing expensive software, saving labor costs, and improving data processing for financial benefits.
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.
I have seen a return on investment with Zoho Creator because we eliminated a point of sale software that was charging us 5 lakhs per year across all 26 malls.
Using Zoho Creator is affordable for my business as it helps save time.
When considering overall cost-effectiveness and return on investment (ROI), I find that Zoho Creator is beneficial due to the solutions it offers.
 

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
5.0
Zoho Creator's customer service is responsive and effective, but complex issues and email responses can experience delays.
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.
I would rate the technical support 10 out of 10 because they provide excellent assistance.
I would rate technical support as a nine on a scale of 1 to 10.
If a remote session is needed, they provide immediate help.
 

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
5.6
Zoho Creator's flexibility handles varying user needs but faces challenges with large data and rising costs.
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.
When my customers' needs are growing, Zoho Creator is able to adapt to these growing needs because it's a build-it-yourself application.
We cannot manage big data efficiently, struggling with managing 50K records or updating records from one to another due to issues such as runtime errors and API call limitations.
While every Zoho application has limitations in accessibility and certain functionalities, we often manage to create effective alternatives for clients.
 

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
6.2
Zoho Creator is stable and reliable, scoring high ratings despite minor issues, with improvements in the latest version.
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.
You can't rely on any software in business if it's not going to be stable and reliable.
Offering versatile flexibility for various integrations, such as WhatsApp and email API integration.
I have created many ERP solutions on Zoho Creator, and they are all working reliably with maintained data integrity.
 

Room For Improvement

Appian needs improvements in flexibility, integration, scalability, team collaboration, mobile features, documentation, licensing, and handling complex processes.
Zoho Creator needs UI and UX improvement, better integration, customization options, and enhanced performance for large datasets and automations.
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.
In terms of scalability, there are certain limitations if the data volume is large due to execution limits.
I want to see improvements in Zoho Creator focusing on AI capabilities because there currently seems to be very little AI usage in Zoho compared to the advancements in other software.
Improvement could come from the ability to implement and create custom dashboards or subforms in Zoho Creator.
 

Setup Cost

Appian offers flexible pricing with cloud and on-premise options, but costs can rise with usage and require negotiation.
Zoho Creator offers diverse subscription-based pricing, starting at INR 480 per user/month, potentially costly for larger user bases.
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.
Zoho offers customizable pricing options, such as Zoho One, which provides access to all 40 applications for 1250.
For INR, the standard cost is 480 per month, the professional tier is around 1,200, and the enterprise level is 1,500, based on the subscription level per user for Zoho Creator.
Pricing is a little on the higher side for the Indian market, especially for mid-sized and small-sized companies with 30 to 40 users.
 

Valuable Features

Appian provides low-code development, easy integration, scalability, and strong AI-enhanced features with a user-friendly interface and robust support.
Zoho Creator offers flexible custom app development with low-code interface, extensive customization, strong integration, and multi-layered security features.
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.
For analytics, we employ two tools: Zoho Creator itself and Zoho Analytics, where we can use SQL queries to fetch data from multiple platforms.
We can generate QR codes for free, whereas in CRM, QR generation requires external purchases.
The most valuable feature of Zoho Creator is that we can easily create applications because there is 360-degree flexibility available.
 

Categories and Ranking

Appian
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
10th
Ranking in Low-Code Development Platforms
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (9th), Process Automation (7th), Process Mining (7th)
Zoho Creator
Ranking in Rapid Application Development Software
14th
Ranking in Low-Code Development Platforms
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Rapid Application Development Software category, the mindshare of Appian is 7.9%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho Creator is 1.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rapid Application Development Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Appian7.9%
Zoho Creator1.0%
Other91.1%
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.
VishalKumar7 - PeerSpot reviewer
User experience metadata and workflow customization have been streamlined
The creator needs improvement; for instance, if I create a widget that has dynamic data, it cannot get published. When we publish a page that contains a widget, dynamic data does not appear. That is the problem with Zoho Creator, so it needs improvement. The portal user aspect is also costly; for example, purchasing 250 portal users can be expensive for clients who require them monthly. It creates a financial burden similar to how customer logins on e-commerce websites such as Flipkart or Amazon are generally free. Thus, Zoho Creator needs to offer free access for all portal users as they are essential for the application's usage. In Zoho Creator, we cannot work on UI customization as expected; if I want an application resembling a Figma design, there are limitations on UI changes.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise41
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
 

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...
What do you like most about Zoho Creator?
The deployment process is quite straightforward.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zoho Creator?
The pricing depends on business requirements. Zoho offers customizable pricing options, such as Zoho One, which provides access to all 40 applications for 1250. For small-scale companies, it might ...
What needs improvement with Zoho Creator?
My impression of Zoho Creator's dynamic form builder is that it's pretty good. The downside is that it looks very functional but not always the prettiest looking app. If you're building something t...
 

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
Estate Crush Winery, Integra Services, Avidpays, Napa Valley Film Festival, Marionnaud, The Institute of Hormonal Health, Stone Tapert
Find out what your peers are saying about Appian vs. Zoho Creator and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.