Appian vs. Breakout (discontinued) vs. Shopify Flow

Appian works great for automating manual processes and integrating multiple systems through its toolset. It gives great flexibility for establishing rules for approvals, routings, escalations, and the like. Because of the low code toolset, it's very easy to deploy and make changes as needed as processes evolve and as the organization learns to utilize the system better. Minimal maintenance is required to support the applications build on the platform. Some of the automated testing integration with tools like Jenkins is limited so that may be an issue for some.

Incentivized

Breakout is well suited for the organizations where there is need of automating multiple recurring process to increase the productivity and effectiveness. For our IT department it has helped us in assigning the support and assistance requests made by different departments to our team members, keep the checklist that they need to follow and easy to use form to collect details and track their status of work.

Automatically highlights and holds potentially fraudulent orders:        - Based on the order risk level analyzed by Shopify (low, medium or high), Shopify Flow then interprets different actions to proceed with. Sending real-time alert emails based on the event conditions to designated teams.

Incentivized

• Allows at a glance workflow documentation which assists in the need we have for information readiation.
• Drag and drop interface for workflow development greatly speeds our apps time to market.
• Using the advanced features of Appian, we are able to create working sites in a fraction of the time it would take to do so using "traditional" development.

Incentivized

• Simple and easy to use interface
• Provides third party integrations
• Good support
• Brings in accountability
• Great for tracking

• Review high-risk orders before capturing payment.
• Automate product inventory management
• Automate notices to eCommerce operations for special events such as sharp increase of product reviews crossing a threshold

Incentivized

• Search issues when type ahead and database search are used in the same field.
• Buttons implementation where user is require[d] to click on the button description - if clicks on the button outside that text - button will not work.
• Problems with using certain off-the-shelf performance tools like WebLoad or Neoload. That is because of different dynamic variables being used internally in Appian - which these tools are unable to correlate. We are still investigating using other tools like Jmeter to overcome dynamic correlation problem for performance testing.

Incentivized

• Android and iOS still not available

• User permissions are not granular. A user can get full access to read and write or none.
• The event change log records minimum information and does not last for more than 72 hours in Shopify.

Incentivized

We recently renewed our license with Appian. We are convinced that its flexibility, relative ease of use, the support they provide, there mobile advancements and their general willingness and desire to see us succeed all contributed to our reason to renew our agreement with Appian

Appian is a low code environment, because of this, a very good visual interface is required. Appian is providing a feature-rich dashboard [that] we can use for building the dashboards and other interfaces. Appian also provides patches and releases to enhance these features. A developer can start off development just by going through a basic course from the Appian learning community.

Incentivized

Appian is one of the leading low code business automation platforms that support RPA, decision rules, case management, workflow automation, and machine learning all in a single bundle. But it is also harder to implement and replace the traditional business process.

Incentivized

As analyst I participated in a developer boot camp. At times it was hard to keep up but most of the time it made sense. Trainer took the time to explain and slowed pace down to answer questions etc.

Incentivized

Very boring; hard to get through quickly, but rather effective in demonstrating the use of the platform.

Incentivized

It was really seamless. SaaS in the true definition of the word. We logged on and started using the product. Very easy.

Incentivized

Appian has enormously transformed and keeps on updating the product every quarter to meet the latest needs of the world with new innovations & technologies being integrated within the platform. What gives more pleasure than a product that keeps on continuous[ly] improv[ing]?

Incentivized

Our organization had evaluated it for sometime, but it was on the higher side for the budget we had. Many of our departments used it for a while, even after the initial demo session many users from different departments had raised IT assistance requests. Keeping in mind these factors at hand we started exploring alternatives.

In my experience, Shopify Flow is very easy to use. It is free if you have a Shopify Plus license. At this time of writing, Shopify Flow can already integrate with some 3rd party apps and more is coming. I think there is high growth potential for Shopify Flow.

Incentivized

• I believe it has negatively impacted our release dates. There may have been a misunderstanding as to the learning curve, even though it is "low code."
• The look and feel of the applications created using Appian have uniformity and it's easier to have "reuse" between applications.
• There is less developer control when it comes to features. I think this mainly has to do with the amount of plugins available. I would think there should be many more available plugins. But again, our use case is probably different than most others.

Incentivized

• Increased efficiency
• Users haven't needed IT assistance at any point of time
• Made it easy for team leaders to track different tasks more conveniently

• Saving customer service team 15 hours monthly
• Reduce inventory backfill issues to 0
• Reducing fraud orders by 80%

Incentivized