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Appian pros and cons

Vendor: Appian

4.2 out of 5

65 reviews
95% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Appian offers robust form-building capabilities, thoughtful process modeling, and seamless integration with multiple systems via strong workflow engines. It boasts rapid low-code development, increasing ROI. Key features include Process Mining, Portals, and RPA alongside responsive technical support. However, limitations include evolving offline capabilities, lack of integration with enterprise tools, scalability challenges, and DevOps facilitation issues. Additionally, setup complexity, particularly for the on-premise version with JBoss, remains a hurdle.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Appian provides robust form-building capabilities and thoughtful process modeling.

Its rapid development with low-code reduces the time to break-even and increases ROI.

Appian integrates seamlessly with multiple systems and offers strong workflow engines.

The platform offers valuable features like Appian Process Mining, Portals, and RPA.

Technical support is highly regarded and responsive.

CONS

Appian has limitations with offline capabilities and mobility features, which are still evolving.

Lacks integration with typical enterprise development tools like Jenkins and Subversion.

Scalability issues exist, including managing large data quantities affecting performance.

Challenging to set up, especially the on-premise version, and JBoss complexity is notable.

DevOps and team development facilitation need significant improvement.

Appian Pros review quotes

PP

Enterprise Architect at Mobiliser

May 29, 2025

Form building capabilities and well thought out process modelling are key points to this product.

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RD

Digital Transformation Architect/Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Jul 21, 2017

Rapid development with low-code makes it easier to quickly get apps implemented and the time to break-even and ROI is much faster.

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Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Sep 12, 2017

Low code development: Code can be developed pretty quickly which leads to less turnaround time for automation of business processes.

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GL

Senior Business Analyst at a university with 10,001+ employees

Sep 17, 2017

It has created executable requirements and speeds up the SDLC process greatly.

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Vice President - Appian Lead Designer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 3, 2017

Appian is a very low code platform. It's very easy to learn and use.

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Team Lead

Feb 14, 2018

SAIL (Self-Assembling Interface Layer), a scripting language provided by Appian. It is the equivalent of JS and CSS. It allows creation of complex UIs which are also responsive. With SAIL, we have a single language for both the UI logic and its appearance. UI components can be built as reusable components and used in multiple UI interfaces.

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AA

Abdulmajeed Al-Suliman

Team leader at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 22, 2018

It reduces development time in half making us more efficient.

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IT Advisor to Banks at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Mar 15, 2018

The tech support is quite good.

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 IT senior consultant

Mar 22, 2018

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.

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Project Manager and Technical Leader at Exus

May 1, 2018

Call Web Service Smart Service - Web service integrations with other systems are super simple and fast to create, supported by low code menus.

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Appian Cons review quotes

PP

Enterprise Architect at Mobiliser

May 29, 2025

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

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RD

Digital Transformation Architect/Consultant at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Jul 21, 2017

The biggest areas of improvement would be in facilitating team development, DevOps, and integration with typical tools used in enterprise development (Jenkins, Subversion, etc.)

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Senior Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Sep 12, 2017

Architecture of product and scalabiility issues.

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Free Report: Appian Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Appian. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

GL

Senior Business Analyst at a university with 10,001+ employees

Sep 17, 2017

Form creation and SAIL proprietary language still basically require programming. The claim a BA type can do everything is hogwash.

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Vice President - Appian Lead Designer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 3, 2017

It has it's own built-in UI components and doesn't provide much flexibility to customize or extend those components.

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Team Lead

Feb 14, 2018

Offline capabilities and responsive capabilities could be better. The mobility features of Appian platform are still evolving.

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AA

Abdulmajeed Al-Suliman

Team leader at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 22, 2018

It would be nice if you could create your own customized apps when the business needed them.

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IT Advisor to Banks at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Mar 15, 2018

It needs better integration with our existing application ecosystem.

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 IT senior consultant

Mar 22, 2018

The reporting is not as good as in similar products. They could also improve the dashboards.

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Project Manager and Technical Leader at Exus

May 1, 2018

Even though the company has made great improvements in online documentation, featuring rich material which includes case studies of real-life use cases, the material could definitely be better in quality and coverage of use cases.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 57)

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