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Appian vs Control-M 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
7.4
Control-M improves efficiency and cost savings by automating tasks, reducing errors, and enhancing integration with existing applications.
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.
The main return on investment with Helix Control-M has been a reduction in downtime and minimization of manual interventions, which has improved our operational efficiency.
You can run a million batch jobs or tasks at night when all of your highly skilled people are at home sleeping.
It has reduced the total cost of ownership by 30% to 40%.
 

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
7.4
Control-M support is responsive and knowledgeable, offering 24/7 assistance with high satisfaction, timely solutions, and valuable resources.
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 technical support is very polite, helpful, and available 24/7.
If something fails at 3 AM in the morning, you need to fix it and get it back up and working really quickly.
The immediate acknowledgment and solutions provided by BMC's support team make it stand out compared to other tools.
 

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
Control-M efficiently manages growing job counts across enterprises, offering straightforward scalability despite some cost and cloud integration concerns.
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.
It can absorb more workload wherever needed.
As the workload on Control-M increases, its scalability is much higher.
I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
 

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
7.7
Control-M is highly stable and reliable, efficiently handling large workloads with minimal issues and strong Unix platform 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.
The downtime is higher compared to AWS.
The testing and development phases need to be more rigorous before releasing patches.
The stability of the Helix Control-M solution is good.
 

Room For Improvement

Appian needs improvements in flexibility, integration, scalability, team collaboration, mobile features, documentation, licensing, and handling complex processes.
Control-M users seek enhanced analysis, flexibility, and integration while desiring cost-effective, streamlined interfaces and better API documentation.
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.
They could provide more documentation and tutorials to make the initial setup easier to understand.
There should be an automation system for developers to set it up more easily and quickly.
What they've done about scheduling, other people are still trying to figure out.
 

Setup Cost

Appian offers flexible pricing with cloud and on-premise options, but costs can rise with usage and require negotiation.
Control-M's pricing is high, with complex licensing, but offers robust features that larger enterprises may find valuable.
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.
The licensing cost is very high, and they often consider switching to IBM Workload Scheduler or other options.
Pricing is generally affordable, though some features cost a bit more.
The best cell phone will always be more expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Appian provides low-code development, easy integration, scalability, and strong AI-enhanced features with a user-friendly interface and robust support.
Control-M offers robust orchestration, automation, and integration features, enhancing productivity and minimizing manual efforts across large-scale environments.
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.
Automation is more advanced, deployment is fast, and version control has been simplified.
The user interface is comprehensive and lets me view all my jobs on one page, monitor everything, and access the job history.
Control-M provides workflow orchestration, including scheduling, deploying, managing, and monitoring workflows.
 

Categories and Ranking

Appian
Ranking in Process Automation
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (12th), Rapid Application Development Software (10th), Low-Code Development Platforms (5th), Process Mining (8th)
Control-M
Ranking in Process Automation
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (3rd), Workload Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Appian is 5.9%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Control-M is 4.6%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

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…
Ujjwal Sachdeva - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient automation and boosted workflow but needs better integration methods
Control-M is a bit faster compared to other solutions. The job and coding are easier. Also, my DevOps and Ops teams work collaboratively with it, enhancing its efficiency. The workflow is much easier compared to the ACS services we were using. Automation is more advanced, deployment is fast, and version control has been simplified.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Educational Organization
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
 

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...
How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?
Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful because nothing gets left unattended since it is all visible in one place, and th...
What do you like most about Control-M?
First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?
Its cost can be more competitive. One of the main things customers look at is the cost. It's not affordable. The cost is very high, according to my customers. The licensing cost is very high, and t...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Appian BPM, Appian AnyWhere, Appian Enterprise BPMS
Control M
 

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
CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
Find out what your peers are saying about Appian vs. Control-M and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.