Appian vs. Heroku Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Appian
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Appian is a low-code development and business process management platform. It features drag-and-drop design for app building, automated work processes, unified data management, and cloud-based deployment.
$0
Heroku Platform
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
The Heroku Platform, now from Salesforce, is a platform-as-a-service based on a managed container system, with integrated data services and ecosystem for deploying modern apps. It takes an app-centric approach for software delivery, integrated with developer tools and workflows. It’s three main tool are: Heroku Developer Experience (DX), Heroku Operational Experience (OpEx), and Heroku Runtime. Heroku Developer Experience (DX) Developers deploy directly from tools like…
$85
per month
Pricing
AppianHeroku Platform
Editions & Modules
Appian Community Edition
$0
Application - Input-Only
$2
per month per user
Application - Infrequent
$9
per month per user
Application - Standard
$75
per month per user
Platform
Custom Quote Priced per user with unlimited apps.
minimum 100 users, no maximum
Unlimited
Custom Quote Priced per development with unlimited apps.
unlimited
Platform
Custom Quote Priced per user with unlimited apps.
Minimum 100, no maximum
Unlimited
Custom Quote Priced per development with unlimited apps.
Unlimited
Production
$25.00
per month
Advanced
$250.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AppianHeroku Platform
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AppianHeroku Platform
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
AppianHeroku Platform
Low-Code Development
Comparison of Low-Code Development features of Product A and Product B
Appian
9.1
75 Ratings
5% above category average
Heroku Platform
-
Ratings
Visual Modeling8.873 Ratings00 Ratings
Drag-and-drop Interfaces8.972 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Security9.171 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform User Management8.872 Ratings00 Ratings
Reusability9.475 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Scalability9.473 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Appian
-
Ratings
Heroku Platform
8.1
44 Ratings
1% below category average
Ease of building user interfaces00 Ratings7.627 Ratings
Scalability00 Ratings8.244 Ratings
Platform management overhead00 Ratings7.643 Ratings
Workflow engine capability00 Ratings8.329 Ratings
Platform access control00 Ratings7.043 Ratings
Services-enabled integration00 Ratings8.042 Ratings
Development environment creation00 Ratings8.739 Ratings
Development environment replication00 Ratings8.638 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification00 Ratings8.242 Ratings
Issue recovery00 Ratings8.339 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes00 Ratings8.344 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AppianHeroku Platform
Small Businesses
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quixy
Quixy
Score 9.8 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.2 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AppianHeroku Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(139 ratings)
6.9
(48 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(19 ratings)
9.5
(6 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(95 ratings)
9.2
(17 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(118 ratings)
8.7
(19 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(2 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
1.0
(5 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
AppianHeroku Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Appian
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.
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Salesforce
Heroku is very well suited for startups looking to get a server stack up and running quickly. There is little to no overhead when managing your instances. However, you'll need a background in basic DevOps or system management to make sure everything is set up correctly. In addition, it's easy to accidentally go crazy on pricing. Make sure you're only creating the server instances you need to run the base application and set up an auto-scaler plugin to handle peaks.
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Pros
Appian
  • 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.
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Salesforce
  • Heroku has a very simple deployment model, making it easy to get your application up-and-running with minimal effort. We can focus on our efforts the unique aspects of our application.
  • The robust add-on marketplace makes it easy to try out new approaches with minimal effort and investment -- and when we settle on a solution, we can easily scale it.
  • Heroku's support is quite good -- their staff is quite technical and willing to get into the weeds to diagnose even complicated problems.
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Cons
Appian
  • 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.
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Salesforce
  • Large price jumps between certain resource tiers (2x Dyno for $50 per month versus Performance Dyno for $250). Free Postgres next jumps to $50 per month.
  • Marketing/Branding to non-technical stakeholders. As the years pass, I've had to fight more to convince stakeholders on the value of Heroku over AWS.
  • Improve Buildpack documentation. This is one area where Heroku's documentation is fairly confusing.
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Likelihood to Renew
Appian
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
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Salesforce
Heroku is easy to use, services a ton of functions for you out of the box, and provides a means to get a software product off the ground and managed quickly and easily. The tools provide allows a small to medium size org to move very quickly. The CLI tools provided make managing an entire technical infrastructure simple.
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Usability
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.
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Salesforce
Easy to use web based console and easy to use command line tools; deployment is done directly from a GIT repository. What more could you ask for? The one thing that keeps me from giving it a 10 is that custom build packs are almost incomprehensible. We used one for a while because we needed cairo graphics processing. Fortunately, I was able to figure out a different way to do what we needed so that we could get off the custom build pack.
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Reliability and Availability
Appian
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Heroku availability correlates pretty strongly to AWS US EAST availability. We had a couple of times where there was a Heroku-specific issue but not for the last 7-8 months.
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Performance
Appian
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
The only issue that I ever have is that about 1 out of 20 deployments (git push) will hang and need to be cancelled and done again.
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Support Rating
Appian
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.
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Salesforce
I've used it for many years without facing any major problem. It's not hard at all to get used to it, it's documentation is outstanding and simple. We are close to 2020 and I don't think most of the existing companies or startups should still face old problems such as wasting time deploying code and calculate computing resources.
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In-Person Training
Appian
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.
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Salesforce
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Appian
Very boring; hard to get through quickly, but rather effective in demonstrating the use of the platform.
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Salesforce
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Appian
It was really seamless. SaaS in the true definition of the word. We logged on and started using the product. Very easy.
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Salesforce
Be ready to pay a bit more than expected in the beginning if you're migrating from a big server. The application is probably not ready for the change and you have to keep improving it with time.
It's also important to consider that you can't save anything to the disc as it will be lost when your application restarts, so you have to think about using something like S3.
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Alternatives Considered
Appian
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]?
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Salesforce
Heroku is the more expensive option for hosting compared to some of the cloud platforms we investigated, but it's worth it for us because of the plug-and-play nature of Heroku deployment. We can be up and running in a few minutes and know with precision how much it will cost us each month to run the application, unlike Amazon Web Services where you have to go to great pains to configure it correctly or else you might end up with a shocking monthly bill. Overall, spending the time to configure Amazon Web Services or one of its competitors is likely the more affordable and powerful choice, because you have control over so many specifics of the configuration. But it also requires the burden of continuing to maintain and update your AWS instance, whereas with Heroku they take care of security fixes and platform upgrades. It's a great service and we are happy to pay the extra cost for the value-adds Heroku provides.
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Return on Investment
Appian
  • 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.
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Salesforce
  • It has been critical in seamlessly operating our platform with runs all of our programs.
  • It has been impressive with its ability to scale quickly which results in the growth of our work.
  • It allows for tracking of different features which allows for quick problem solving which saves us time.
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ScreenShots

Appian Screenshots

Screenshot of Low-Code DevelopmentScreenshot of Business Process Management SuiteScreenshot of Dynamic Case ManagementScreenshot of Mobile App DevelopmentScreenshot of Appian RPA with Blue Prism