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AWS Step Functions vs Appian comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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
9.5
AWS Step Functions reduce development time and costs, enhance scalability and reliability, streamline workflows, and improve ROI.
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.
 

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
6.6
AWS Step Functions support is generally effective, especially for enterprise users, though experiences can vary for smaller organizations.
The technical support for Appian rates as 10 out of 10 because they have a great support team.
Their customer service is responsive, and the team is very prompt for support.
The technical support is generally good.
The speed of reply and the content of their responses usually solve the problems that arise.
I use enterprise support, which is excellent, providing responses within fifteen minutes.
 

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
7.6
AWS Step Functions is scalable and adaptable, efficiently handling high demand and diverse business needs for various users.
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.
Starting separate Step Functions for each request, making it highly scalable.
 

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
8.5
AWS Step Functions offers strong stability and reliability, ensuring uptime with contingency plans and integration of third-party services.
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.
If one zone fails, others handle the demand, ensuring high availability.
 

Room For Improvement

Appian needs improvements in flexibility, integration, scalability, team collaboration, mobile features, documentation, licensing, and handling complex processes.
AWS Step Functions needs better data handling, integration, pricing clarity, and dynamic coding to improve performance and usability.
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.
I would like to see more enhancement in the user interface to allow more freedom in designing the sites and pages.
If there is a very complex process that includes a lot of data transitioning and memory-centric processes, it consumes a lot of memory.
It would benefit from more integration with different applications or services.
 

Setup Cost

Appian offers flexible pricing with cloud and on-premise options, but costs can rise with usage and require negotiation.
AWS Step Functions pricing is complex and variable, with mixed reviews on cost-effectiveness and integration benefits.
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.
Pricing for Step Functions is very cheap.
The cost is average, provided it is configured correctly.
 

Valuable Features

Appian provides low-code development, easy integration, scalability, and strong AI-enhanced features with a user-friendly interface and robust support.
AWS Step Functions simplify pipeline creation with integration, visualization, automation, and advanced workflows, enhancing application development and execution.
The zero-code integration feature is remarkable, allowing for ease of data transfer and workflow enhancement.
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.
I can create tables, perform database-related activities, and create multiple tables.
Step Functions provide seamless integration with AWS services, which enhances the speed of application development.
AWS Step Functions offers advanced workflows that save time and enhance efficiency by reducing delays and ensuring consistent orchestration among various services.
It was particularly valuable for its integration capabilities, allowing for execution of scripts and data migration.
 

Categories and Ranking

Appian
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (8th), Rapid Application Development Software (9th), Low-Code Development Platforms (6th), Process Mining (7th)
AWS Step Functions
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Appian is 6.0%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Step Functions is 2.3%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

RAVIRANJAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Low-code with good reliability and good workflows
We have a partnership with Appian. We have worked with Appian to deal with issues. They have already incorporated many things into their platform. One of the things we have discussed, which I can highlight, is related to Excel manipulations. They have incorporated their Excel manipulations so it's far better than the earlier version. Earlier, we had to go with a plugin for even a simple Excel or spreadsheet calculation. Now, they have included all those things in their own out-of-the-box functionality. It's definitely a tool and does not require high code language. There could be a scope of enhancement for capturing the variety of use cases. One thing, for example, is Excel manipulation, which they now provide in their out of box functionality, however, that can still be improved.
Carlos Alberto Marangon - PeerSpot reviewer
Automate complex workflows with seamless AWS integration
Step Functions provide seamless integration with AWS services, which enhances the speed of application development. The JSON app launched recently allows us to define data execution more easily. The Standard Workflows feature includes error replay capabilities, which are crucial for efficient error management. The Amazon State Language (ASL) in JSON format facilitates workflow automation and accelerates the deployment of Step Functions.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
27%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
 

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 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 Amazon Step Functions?
The integration capability is easy, whereas building state machines is tricky.
What is your primary use case for Amazon Step Functions?
The primary use case was the execution of scripts and data migration related to data lakes. We were using Python and other AWS Step Functions ( /products/aws-step-functions-reviews ).
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Step Functions?
I would recommend AWS Step Functions to others. Overall, I rate AWS Step Functions an eight out of ten.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
Amazon Step Functions, Step Functions
 

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
Alpha Apps, The Guardian, SGK, Bigfinite
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Step Functions vs. Appian and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.