Appian vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Appian
Score 8.3 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
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$75
per month
Pricing
AppianTableau Desktop
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
Tableau
$75
per month per user
Tableau Enterprise
$115
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AppianTableau Desktop
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AppianTableau Desktop
Considered Both Products
Appian
Chose Appian
Appian is lighter and easier to get started with.
Chose Appian

We have evaluated three products, Like K2, XTRAC. Some of the key highlights are: Whilst XTRAC participated in the POC, it was mutually agreed that XTRAC does not support the extended BPM requirements which form the must-have core platform process requirements. XTRAC, …

Tableau Desktop

No answer on this topic

Features
AppianTableau Desktop
Low-Code Development
Comparison of Low-Code Development features of Product A and Product B
Appian
9.1
75 Ratings
8% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Visual Modeling8.873 Ratings00 Ratings
Drag-and-drop Interfaces8.972 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Security9.271 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform User Management8.872 Ratings00 Ratings
Reusability9.575 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Scalability9.573 Ratings00 Ratings
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Appian
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.4
175 Ratings
2% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings8.0145 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings9.1174 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.1151 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Appian
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.3
172 Ratings
3% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings8.5167 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings8.4170 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings8.0126 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings8.5165 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Appian
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.3
166 Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.0155 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings8.0154 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.3120 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings8.6128 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.778 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Appian
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.3
164 Ratings
4% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings8.5162 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings8.5156 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings7.57 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Appian
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
9.0
149 Ratings
6% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings9.0145 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.9125 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.7136 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.010 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings9.283 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Appian
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
7.9
141 Ratings
2% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.7130 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.3101 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings7.4122 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Appian
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
7.7
67 Ratings
1% below category average
REST API00 Ratings8.259 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings7.753 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.851 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings8.248 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.354 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings8.148 Ratings
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AppianTableau Desktop
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User Ratings
AppianTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
9.4
(139 ratings)
8.8
(203 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(19 ratings)
7.5
(41 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(95 ratings)
8.2
(73 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(118 ratings)
1.0
(57 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
1.0
(5 ratings)
8.0
(34 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(4 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AppianTableau Desktop
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.
Read full review
Tableau
The best scenario is definitely to collect data from several sources and create dedicated dashboards for specific recipients. However, I miss the possibility of explaining these reports in more detail. Sometimes, we order a report, and after half a year, we don't remember the meaning of some data (I know it's our fault as an organization, but the tool could force better practices).
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Tableau
  • An excellent tool for data visualization, it presents information in an appealing visual format—an exceptional platform for storing and analyzing data in any size organization.
  • Through interactive parameters, it enables real-time interaction with the user and is easy to learn and get support from the community.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Pricing should be more user-friendly and usage-driven
  • Making edits to the production reports is fairly tough and has a vast scope of additional capabilities
  • Tableau Desktop should be able to differentiate itself from the Tableau server else there is no major meaning of two different products being offered
Read full review
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
Read full review
Tableau
Our use of Tableau Desktop is still fairly low, and will continue over time. The only real concern is around cost of the licenses, and I have mentioned this to Tableau and fully expect the development of more sensible models for our industry. This will remove any impediment to expansion of our use.
Read full review
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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Tableau
Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Appian
No answers on this topic
Tableau
When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.
Read full review
Performance
Appian
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau support has been extremely responsive and willing to help with all of our requests. They have assisted with creating advanced analysis and many different types of custom icons, data formatting, formulas, and actions embedded into graphs. Tableau offers a weekly presentation of features and assists with internal company projects.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Tableau
It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.
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Online Training
Appian
Very boring; hard to get through quickly, but rather effective in demonstrating the use of the platform.
Read full review
Tableau
I think the training was good overall, but it was maybe stating the obvious things that a tech savvy young engineer would be able to pick up themselves too. However, the example work books were good and Tableau web community has helped me with many problems
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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.
Read full review
Tableau
Again, training is the key and the company provides a lot of example videos that will help users discover use cases that will greatly assist their creation of original visualizations. As with any new software tool, productivity will decline for a period. In the case of Tableau, the decline period is short and the later gains are well worth it.
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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]?
Read full review
Tableau
I have used Power BI as well, the pricing is better, and also training costs or certifications are not that high. Since there is python integration in Power BI where I can use data cleaning and visualizing libraries and also some machine learning models. I can import my python scripts and create a visualization on processed data.
Read full review
Scalability
Appian
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.
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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.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau was acquired years ago, and has provided good value with the content created.
  • Ongoing maintenance costs for the platform, both to maintain desktop and server licensing has made the continuing value questionable when compared to other offerings in the marketplace.
  • Users have largely been satisfied with the content, but not with the overall performance. This is due to a combination of factors including the performance of the Tableau engines as well as development deficiencies.
Read full review
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