

Appian and Zoho Creator both compete in the low-code application development category, offering solutions for different business needs. Appian seems to have the upper hand in enterprise environments due to its robust process management and rapid deployment capabilities, whereas Zoho Creator stands out for its cost-effectiveness and ease of use, particularly for small and midsize companies.
Features: Appian is known for rapid low-code development and robust process management capabilities, actively used in enterprise-scale applications. It supports dynamic UI creation with SAIL, integrated case management, and seamless updates. Zoho Creator offers flexibility, customization options, and low-code/no-code environments, enabling faster app development. It features an intuitive form builder with seamless integration with Zoho apps.
Room for Improvement: Appian users suggest better UI customization and enhanced integration with external systems. Improvements in advanced RPA features and error reporting are also needed. Zoho Creator users recommend enhancements in UI/UX design and AI capabilities, along with better handling of large-scale data and broader integrations outside the Zoho ecosystem.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Appian provides multiple deployment options, including private and hybrid clouds, but its customer service, although strong, is sometimes stretched thin due to increasing demand. Zoho Creator operates mainly in the public cloud, with reliable yet less responsive support, balancing this with a competitive pricing strategy that appeals to smaller firms.
Pricing and ROI: Appian offers strong ROI for enterprises with fast deployment and scalable solutions but comes at a premium price point. Its licensing costs are high, but justified by its comprehensive capabilities. Zoho Creator is affordable, with competitive pricing plans designed for small to medium businesses, delivering significant value and improved productivity at a lower cost.
Using Appian is saving us five full-time employees, which is significant since we currently have only four team members.
They see return on investment in terms of cost savings, time savings, more efficient processes, and more efficient employees.
The Return on Investment is significant.
For instance, a company I worked with compared spending on Salesforce, which was 15 crore, to our expenses with Zoho Creator, which was only 2 crore annually.
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.
I would give Appian's customer support 10 out of 10 due to their next-level support.
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.
I would rate the technical support 10 out of 10 because they provide excellent assistance.
Delays arise once the support team must refer to backend processes or developers, highlighting the need for enhancement in their overall support system.
All documentation exists, detailing even the smallest elements; by reading through it properly, one can manage without additional support.
On a scale of one to 10, Appian rates as a nine for scalability.
Our volume has increased by 20% in the two years since using Appian, and it can handle the increased volume effectively.
Initially, without much coding, I can easily handle five thousand records.
Being browser-based allows me to drag and drop components immediately, deploying in seconds on a live application.
We are continuing to build on top of what was initially created for them, ensuring that scalability is never an issue as long as you understand how to utilize Zoho properly.
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 have tested Appian during peak usage and off-peak times, and we have not experienced any issues such as lagging or system disruptions.
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 core elements of coding and daily scripting remain unchanged despite interface updates, assuring continuity in my work.
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.
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.
Appian can be improved by adding a geo-location tagging feature, which would be really helpful for identifying remitter addresses.
It also suggests the best automation process that can be configured within Appian.
In terms of scalability, there are certain limitations if the data volume is large due to execution limits.
Enhancing the user interface could also be beneficial, as the company's focus seems more on functionality.
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.
Appian provides value for money, is easy to use, has a straightforward setup procedure, and offers great support from the Appian team.
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.
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.
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.
After switching to Appian, it can extract data from MT103, eliminating the need for manual data entry.
The seamless integration with third-party applications and services in Zoho Creator greatly enhances its utility in my business environment, as the ease of integration is impressive.
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.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Appian | 5.8% |
| Zoho Creator | 1.3% |
| Other | 92.9% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 20 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 9 |
| Large Enterprise | 44 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 22 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 4 |
| Large Enterprise | 7 |
Appian is a unified low-code platform and solution used by businesses to build enterprise applications and workflows. This product adapts to the needs of clients and the technologies they are already using to combine their data in a single workflow and maximize resources. The platform has four main components through which it transforms the work process for companies of various sizes. They are:
Appian is utilized across a diverse set of industries, including automotive and manufacturing, energy and utilities, education, financial services, telecom and media, transportation, retail, insurance, healthcare, and life sciences. The most frequent use cases of Appian are customer journey, governance, risk and compliance, operational efficiency, supply chain, distributed order management, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) management.
Appian Features
Appian has various features that allow users to create solutions for their businesses. These features can be separated into a few groups according to function, including automation, low-code application development, and integrations and data. Some of the most frequently used features of Appian include:
Appian Benefits
The benefits of using Appian include:
Reviews from Real Users
A practice leader - digital process automation at a computer software company values Appian highly because the product is easy to develop, low-code, and has a good user interface.
Alan G., an advisory board member at Codecon VR, Appian offers a clear application life cycle, easy to learn documentation, and comes with a fundamentals course.
Zoho Creator is a web-based platform that lets everyone build custom business applications without any prior technical knowledge
Zoho Creator offers a first of its kind drag-n-drop interface to create tables/forms, design, schedule workflows and perform a variety of automated actions.
Zoho Creator's powerful tools for data collection and management, analysis, reporting and collaboration make it the smart choice for small to large organizations to run their business online, without any additional costs, infrastructure, or software.
Zoho Creator is used by more than 400,000 users and 100,000+ apps have been already created. Don't let complex looking workflows and business rules scare you.
Zoho Creator is completely non-programmer friendly. Use the intuitive and feature-rich platform to build your custom database applications. Just write your business rules and let the software handle deployment and hosting. You can create your own forms/tables afresh or import data from standard formats (.xls .csv .mdb) and get your database application online within minutes, really!
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