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Magic xpa Application Platform vs OutSystems comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Magic xpa Application Platform
Ranking in Mobile Development Platforms
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Application Server (10th), Application Infrastructure (16th)
OutSystems
Ranking in Mobile Development Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Rapid Application Development Software (4th), Low-Code Development Platforms (2nd), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Magic xpa Application Platform is 3.5%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OutSystems is 12.0%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OutSystems12.0%
Magic xpa Application Platform3.5%
Other84.5%
Mobile Development Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Mylsamy T. - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate - IT at Himalaya Wellness Company
Enables us to develop more than 90 applications in-house, which are used across our organization
It's a bit difficult to work with purely web-based applications to get the data and display it. There have been a few times when the connection was disconnected between the server and your browser. The connectivity on browser-built applications needs to be improved. The mobile application development could be easier. They could include different external applications, like finger sensors. I'm not sure whether it's in version 3.8 or not.
MA
Software Developer Advisor at NTT DATA Services
OutSystems facilitates rapid application development and effective project management
What I find valuable about OutSystems is that it has a very good learning curve for developers. Within two weeks, we can gain knowledge in OutSystems, and it is very easy to learn. With my background being .NET, OutSystems is straightforward to learn, which is beneficial. Developing applications in OutSystems is good, and the flexibility allowed by OutSystems for application development is excellent compared to my experiences with other low-code technologies, where I've faced some challenges. The clean separation of concerns in the architecture provided by OutSystems is a key benefit compared to other platforms. OutSystems integrates with our existing tech infrastructure and provides flexible integration. If we want to integrate with third-party services, OutSystems has SOAP and RESTful services that allow us to consume external services, integrate with external databases such as SQL or Oracle, and includes integration studio for writing custom .NET code. After developing a .NET component, we can reference it in service studio, creating a reference file that makes integration easy. OutSystems officially supports various integrations and also includes an API discovery tool for consuming and exposing services, providing a lot of information about incoming URLs, similar to how we use Postman.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Speed of development and database connectivity (MS SQL, Oracle, DB2, Btrieve/Pervasive PSQL, ODBC, MySql, and SQLite)."
"What I found most valuable in the Magic xpa Application Platform is that it has a client-server and web browser technology that's perfect for company users."
"The best feature of Magic is the development time. The time it takes to develop something is incredibly fast if you compare Magic with, for example, Java."
"Magic is rapid, it's a tool which we use to develop, change and maintain our programs. xpa has a lot more features onboard and it gives us the opportunity to do such things so that we can easily adapt and maintain our programs. It gives certain benefits to stay with our customers and the market."
"The solution makes the managing and adapting of the software very easy."
"xpa gives us a fast development speed."
"Typically an experienced Magic developer can do the work of two to three experienced C#/.NET developers. Customers are amazed at how quickly most new features can be added and bug fixes implemented. I have worked for four employers - including myself - using Magic, and in most instances, bug fixes are addressed and deployed in under six hours."
"Magic’s unique approach to development ensures that the programmer stays focused on the objective of the program (i.e. display all customers in California), instead of the repetitive tasks that surround it (i.e. connect to database, open customers table, create the query to retrieve records within the specified criteria, fetch the result of the query, connect it to a data grid, etc.)."
"OutSystems has no issues so far, the drag and drop environment is quite dynamic, and we can create our own UI on top of it."
"OutSystems' best feature is that you can build tests with the flow, so even the tests are made in the PDD framework in a low-code way."
"Refactoring with TrueChange is very simple."
"I like the mobile features the most, and there are also various features around the portal we created that I enjoy."
"The most important features of this tool are its visual modeling capabilities and drag and drop functionality. You can see what you are coding which makes it easy to understand and maintain. They have also created a big revolution in digital transformation by introducing native mobile app development under the same IDE."
"The OutSystems' most effective features for speeding up development cycles are the process orchestration and the drag-and-drop updating of business processes."
"OutSystems is a hybrid framework and supports my mobile and web application development needs. This means I don't have to write separate code for mobile applications. It adapts the UI and functionality, whether I'm developing for web or mobile interfaces. All I need to do is provide the layout during development."
"You can go huge - so it is definitely a scalable solution."
 

Cons

"When you have several tasks, you open a screen in a task in developing mode, and you don't see the parent screens. Debugging lacks the effects to solve problems. You have to do it first in a kind of studio. Then you have to be sure that you can do it in Magic because there is almost nothing to debug it. It's practically impossible to debug. You have to be sure before you put your snippets."
"It is missing basic charting tools for bar/pie/series charts. It is left to the developer to acquire and deploy charting tools or the customer to purchase a third-party reporting tool to produce charts."
"There is room for improvement in Magic's marketing and licensing. I would like to see more integration of web functionality."
"Support is very bad."
"The configuration of the xpa RIA mobile environment is complex and a discouragement to new developers. Also, Magic's documentation can be less than complete at times which leads to frustration for new developers. (I encourage new Magic developers to join the Magic Users Group)."
"Magic has a tradition, when it adds new technologies/features to the Magic development tool, to provide either no documentation or documentation that does not provide an organized approach for bringing this new technology/feature to experienced Magic programmers."
"The user interface could be improved to be more friendly for developers."
"I would like to see a spell checker included with optional language support. Currently, this has to be purchased from a third-party."
"While I can't speak to the market impact, as a developer, I've seen significant reductions in development time across different versions of our applications. One area for improvement would be the UI controls in Service Studio. Sometimes, controls don't appear in the IDE, requiring us to check them in the web browser instead. Overall, our experience with OutSystems has been positive, though improvements in UI development would be welcomed."
"The small-scale businesses may find OutSystems costly because of its high cost and pricing due to the licensing cost."
"The dashboards in OutSystems could improve. There are a lot of tabs in the service center that can be confusing."
"I would like to see OutSystems improve its integration capabilities, especially with emerging technologies like AI and GPT."
"The customer service and support are maintaining a two-day SLA for everything. 48 hours is very high."
"There are not enough resources on the market."
"The resource availability needs to be increased."
"I think OutSystems needs to improve in many areas. First, sometimes Service Studio becomes really slow and even hangs for long periods. Also, if I have not published my module in some time, and some kind of Service Studio exception occurs, I lose my work."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is too costly."
"It's not cheap. The licenses are not cheap. Not at all. They cost much money. There are other tools with free licenses but Magic asks for a lot of money."
"There are different licenses, we have the application and the online application. There are two different licenses for two different program sites for the Magic xpa Application Platform."
"The licensing cost varies because nowadays Magic has tailor-made offerings for clients. I think the solution is worth the money."
"Magic is not the cheapest IDE out there. If you are considering Magic xpa, you should do a cost-benefit analysis to feel comfortable with your decision. The Magic sales staff is very helpful in providing pricing."
"The cost for developers is high because you have to pay for licenses as well as runtime."
"My clients have to purchase additional licenses in order to use what I built. It's not a fair approach."
"The main problem with the Magic xpa Application Platform is pricing. You have to pay a lot of money for development, and you also have to pay a lot for the deployments and runtime, while in most competitors, you have to pay a lot for one of the two and not both."
"It's not cheap. It's pretty expensive."
"I believe they have two pricing options. One is approximately $4000 USD a year and the other is approximately $10,000 USD a year."
"For one developer to use, the cost is around $5,000."
"The subscription is billed on a yearly basis."
"The solution is expensive. The platform is not suitable for all of my clients. I work with labor unions and other smaller organizations that would not be able to afford the platform's current pricing model. It would be beneficial if there were a scaled-down version or a tiered pricing option that would allow me to build an app or a web app that is more cost-effective for my clients. Currently, the platform's pricing is too high for many of my clients, who would not be able to afford something in the $50,000 to $100,000 range."
"I would rate it five to six out of ten."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to OutSystems. It is an expensive product."
"You should contact OutSystems for more details but my opinion is that it is not for small business budgets."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

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Which solution is better for developing non-ITSM applications: OutSystems or Service Now?
The short answer is that OutSystems is far better for 2 main reasons. Firstly, with Service Now you are locked into that platform for good. The business model is to lock in and then keep pumping th...
What industries do you think OutSystems is most useful for?
I cannot really name an industry in which OutSystems cannot be beneficial. Who does not want to make top-notch applications that work in no time? And OutsyStems does exactly that. The low-code plat...
How did you decide which OutSystems edition was the best one for you?
We started using OutSystems fairly recently, so we are still on the free version of it. My company is still testing how we like the platform, but so far, we have been satisfied with it and will li...
 

Also Known As

uniPaaS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ADD, Cape plc, Adecco, Kuno Kinzoku Industry Co., GE Capital, Dove Tree, CBS Outdoor, Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center, Allstate Life Insurance Company, Titan Software Systems
Randstad, Warner Brothers, HP, Intel, ING, Banco Popular, Thrivent Financial, Bacardi, Kent State University, Bacardi, FICO, ING, Vodafone, AbbVie, Estafeta, Siemens, Vopak
Find out what your peers are saying about Magic xpa Application Platform vs. OutSystems and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.