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
Quickbase
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Quickbase helps users tackle any project, no matter how complex. Quickbase helps customers see, connect and control complex projects. Whether it’s raising a skyscraper or coordinating vaccine rollouts, the no-code software platform allows business users to custom fit solutions to the way they work – using information from across the systems they already have.
$700
per month
Salesforce Agentforce Service
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Service Cloud is a customer service platform that helps businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries and issues. It provides tools for case management, knowledge base, omni-channel support, automation, and analytics, enabling companies to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.
$25
per month
Pricing
Appian
Quickbase
Salesforce Agentforce Service
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
Enterprise
Full Customizable
per month/billed annually
Business
Starting at $2,200
per month
Team
Started at $700
per month
Starter Suite
$25
per month
Pro Suite
$100
per month per user
Enterprise
$165
per month per user
Unlimited
$330
per month per user
Agentforce 1
$550
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Appian
Quickbase
Salesforce Agentforce Service
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Quickbase offers three key plans, with feature distinction, simple and consistent entitlements, and a flexible licensing model, giving users the option of either user based or usage based licensing across all 3 plans.
Appian has more functionality and features which I can use but it is difficult to achieve same in QuickBase. Again it depends on the requirement we have but Appian is surely the future because i can see its evolution.
Appian is much more complex than Quickbase, another low-code platform. Quickbase development is much simpler and the platform is much more stable, but Appian has much more functionality.
QuickBase stood out in front of them in terms of time to market, maintenance cost, and expertise required to build applications. QuickBase was better in terms of our standard requirements meeting against these other products. It was also better in terms of flexibility of the …
Verified User
Employee
Chose Quickbase
We like Quickbase because it is truly low code and easy to learn. We are able to quickly get new staff up to speed using the Quickbase University. The price is also much more reasonable than other options.
QuickBase is adaptable, easy to use and can scale quickly. With either option for a simple drag and drop solution or a more complex code written for a specific application, QuickBase is clearly the winner here.
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.
I no longer think that Quickbase is the way of the future. They do not fix major bugs in a timely manner, and are releasing basic functionality behind a paywall. I believe that Enterprise Level Tier should be given certain things, like SLAs on Support and up-time. However, as a low-code no-code platform the majority of the accounts, "builders", and users are not going to be able to justify the cost of an Enterprise Tier Plan, and won't be able to use the features that Quickbase continues to advertise.
I think Service Cloud is best suited for medium to large operations that require both proactive and reactive service. It’s a great fit for post-sales support. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for very small companies because it can be quite costly, and many of the features may go unused. Salesforce also performs best when you have a capable team managing it, so it’s important to consider your organization’s size and readiness before starting. Once you do, I recommend exploring other parts of the Salesforce ecosystem—Service Cloud works even better when integrated with Sales Cloud, since it allows better visibility across teams.
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.
Email to case is an interesting piece of it. The threading is very strong, sometimes too strong, but it does very well at handling the incoming emails.
The omnichannel routing, using skill-based routing is really effective.
Pathing. So making the workflow and helping the team understand what it is that they're trying to do, what they have to accomplish, those step-by-step pieces. That's really helpful.
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.
I'd like to see a link on email notices that take you directly into said notice. On an app that only has 1 or 2 email notices firing, there's no issue. However, we have some tools that are so complex that they have about 20 email notices firing at any given time based on the action users take. In this case, if we have to go in to modify a notice, we have to guess or scroll down the long list of notices to see which one we need to customize. It would be great if Quickbase had the URL of said notice somewhere at the footer of that notice so when Administrators click on it, it takes them into the exact notice they need to update.
When filling out or reviewing a lengthy form, I'd like to see the Save & close button, as well as a Save & next option at the bottom of the form rather than having to scroll back up to the top of those forms just to click on those choices.
We had a principle initially to try and use Omni as much as we can from the user experience perspective, but have found that fairly restrictive. It was very difficult to actually get the right customer experience and customer engagement going. So we're actually on a journey at the moment to replace all of our Omni with Lightning web components that gives us that flexibility. That's probably one area where we've had some challenges in terms of how we've used the product out of the box.
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
For our use-case of QuickBase, there really aren't any other products out there that can offer us the same out-of-the-box solutions they provide to us. We're also so integrated with it in our daily processes that to move away from it abruptly would cause mass chaos, so it's going to be renewed for at least the next several years.
Professional edition works best for a small company with lower call volumes and is very useful but as you grow exponetially I think it has limited ability to do all the things we want to - SLA management, defect, release management to name a few. Reports and dashboards being available in real time.
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.
Quick Base has done everything we have asked it to do and then some. Our original goal was to have one system for CRM that encompassed both the sales process and the customer management. We have gone w-a-y beyond that with analytics, project management, system bug logging, and historical effort reporting.
I had Salesforce experience prior to using Service Cloud which made it a little easier to learn and navigate, but overall my team (some who had no Salesforce experience) caught on very quickly and found Service Cloud to be easy to use.
Once we did get Quick Base configured and customized it was reliably available when we needed it. We may have had one or two occasions when the product was inaccessible but those were few. The greatest challenge with its availability was its difficulty with integrating with our systems.
Working on an application that caters to customer needs requires a platform that acts as a mediator between the actual person and the client. This mediator handles the customer and resolves many of their doubts, helps them map through the entire process, and automates the processes. Such a platform is Salesforce Service Cloud. For queries that cannot be serviced by the platform, it creates a separate ServiceNow ticket for us, and it is assigned.
Some of our tables that hold over a million records are starting to perform poorly, with some summaries taking over 20 seconds to load. This may be an indication that it is best to archive old data when reaching large volumes like this.
The Salesforce Service Cloud generally has very good performance, however the overall new Lightning user experience can bring that down. For example, if you have too many tabs open, then it can take a while for the Lightning UI to load. This UI is probably not well equipped to handle loading of all of that information at once, but Users tend to leave their tabs open all day long. It can also be fickle depending on which browser you use, what extensions you have installed, and whether you've cleared your cache. This can be the downfall with any software as a service though, not just Salesforce
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.
If you utilize the community, the support is amazing. Unfortunately, I find their actual support system a bit underwhelming. They don't seem to have a great process for interacting directly with an issue and often sweep significant issues under the rug by categorizing them as "Enhancement" ideas or legacy items.
Salesforce offers support, although it generally gets routed to overseas support teams first, and once they are unable to help, it gets escalated up the chain to higher tiers. Frequently, the answer back from support is that there is no native solution, and we either have to turn to the AppExchange for some solution provided by another developer, or custom build our own solution.
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.
Our in-person training was provided by our implementation partner and it was quite good. This was in part because we were already working with them and so it naturally leant itself to a good training relationship. And because they were building our customizations and configuring things, they could then provide training on those things naturally.
Quick Base already is having a separate portal of providing training to customers and it is very easy to use and updates as per the new features added in to the application
Trailheads are great but it was often unclear what actually applied to our organization. This made it difficult to get a whole lot out of it. Part of it is that because the basic Salesforce features didn't quite work for us, we had to add customizations, which then nullified a lot of the training.
I was not directly involved with the initial account implementation, only a bystander. For the app I directly implemented for my department only, I wish I had know to create an app diagram first. I don't remember if that was suggested. I think that would be a great help tip tool when a new app is created, to have a page with a check list of what is needed or how to get started. If you are a regular app builder, then you can bypass it or have the ability to turn it off in the app settings.
I would go through an implementation very differently knowing what I know now. It was difficult coming from systems we liked in post-sales service and having to adapt to the clunky and underwhelming feature set in Salesforce. I would trim back our expectations
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]?
Well, there's a plethora of low-code tools out on the marketplace and, you know, there's a reason that we've decided to partner with QuickBase because it has all the right balance of the ability to integrate with the ability for a citizen developer to create apps successfully. So if you look at something like Zo Ho's low-code offering, for example, yes, there are some similarities there, but they're really dependent on all of their other licensed products to get you where you want to be, where with QuickBase you have the ability to truly create something custom.
We selected this product because we already had some competencies in Salesforce. We own a Salesforce partner with expertise in this area, and on top of that, Salesforce purchased it — it was originally called Velocity. When Salesforce decided to acquire it, that finalized the decision for us.
It has evolved really well with our company, but there is a hard limit to the table size that has begun to affect us and not let us grow. The table size limit is set at 500 MB and we have had to jump through quite a few hoops to be able to get by.
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.
ROI is HUGE. Our company saved over 3.5 million in one year alone based on developments that year in Quickbase that saved time for many teams
Less user error - implementing automations and standardized workflows has led to less user error as was previously seen by maintaining spreadsheets or Smartsheets
We have cut our service team in half over the past 5 years due to the efficiency of the tool
The amount of direct inquiries to our technical team is less than 10% compared to the number support tickets that get entered in the system for them to work in a more organized manner
Responses are 100% more timely because tickets can be responded to by any individual in the queue or on the team, as opposed to direct emails to just one person
