Make vs. Kissflow vs. OutSystems

Integromat is the best tool for business automation in my opinion because unlike Zapier it allows us to integrate with any API even if the app is not available which allows us to create automation even with the less known apps that we use or the ones that we built internally for our own company.

Incentivized

We've used Kissflow [School Cloud] in order to track parent requests for transportation in the SpEd department. It has been user friendly for parents to input a request and staff to review, double check school sites and locations, and set up specific routes to meet the needs of students and communicate the info back to parents.

Incentivized

Well suited for internal exposure of business processes (invoicing, API layer to other systems, customer maintenance etc), whether a UI is required or not. Not so well suited for full fledged web design. An OutSystems application must serve one particular business need, if gets too much functionalities and responsibilities it tends to get chaotic and complex.

Incentivized

• UI/UX Simplicity and Features
• Workflows are explained in details and even people without IT background can use the tool.
• Consumption is nicely tracked.
• Myriad of existing templates, solutions, and readymade connectors.

• They know what they are. You aren't going to get a Workflow program that also wants to be a CRM. You will get the equivalent of an electronic assistant going from station to station, taking care of business and giving you the end result.
• Paper. It reduces the amount of paper needed for menial tasks tremendously. You can automate an entire process. As an educational institution, you may still need paper copies, but you aren't waiting for John Doe to sign Line 3, then Jane Doe to initial, and so on and so on with a paper form.
• Tracking. If you need to know where things are in the process, the fact that this program is dedicated to workflow makes it incredibly easy to identify where people are in the sales flow.
• Customer appreciation. When your workflow is stronger, faster, and better, the customers feel it. They feel like you are right there with them and getting things moving.

Incentivized

• Developing end user interfaces with ease and speed with a modern look and feel.
• First class low code development to reduce time to market with visual programming
• Their technical support team is fast and responsive. We've yet to have any issues they could not resolve.

Incentivized

• There are always new platforms and connections that we'd like to see
• More flexibility in paying for operations (tasks) on a sliding scale, instead of by tier
• More thorough support documentation on connecting various platforms and troubleshooting errors

Incentivized

• Workflow Design: There isn't a copy/paste function when creating the workflow, and you can't move a workflow task between parallel branches. This becomes a pain point when an item has 98% of what you need, but you can't copy it and place it in another branch to make the last tweaks. Instead, it needs to be completely recreated
• Interface: While I like the current design features, which make it easy for an end-user to find their tasks and items, it would be nice to also have some flexibility within the platform. Things like being able to groups apps under a category or tailoring the look and feel of the page a little more would be a welcome addition.

Incentivized

• Price – The licensing model of OutSystems is very expensive and not suitable for small scale developments. This is offset by the time to develop and stability for larger scale developments
• Flexibility on PaaS version – The PaaS hosted version of OutSystems limits your flexibility to access the front end and backend database systems which can significantly restrict your options on high data volume developments or where anything requiring slightly out of the ordinary access is required
• Same price for PaaS and self-hosted system. Licensing model dictates that you pay the same price even when you host the system on your own hardware which effectively means you pay more to manage the infrastructure yourself

Incentivized

At this point, it is firmly embedded in the DNA of the business and to give up the ability to automate workflows and create integrations on the fly would be a terrible idea.

Really love the product. Was pleasantly surprised that it has been easy to use for parents

Incentivized

We are very happy with OutSystems and our developers deliver good work. OutSystems lets us build new software on a regulare (2 weekly) basis, which is highly flexible and adjustable. Even without very much experience, our developers manage to build usefull software, which is working a lot better than our previous (legacy) software.

Make's easy to understand user interface helps you to visualize what's happening at all times. Could use some tweaks around the navigation from a scenario specifically in the folders and back navigations. I can't tell you the amount of time wasted in that area. When you branch, you can't bring a branch back together in the same scenario which is kind of a bummer as well.

Incentivized

The system has room to grow as it's limited by not being able to edit POs after they've been approved. The system is great for registrations and syncing to other systems while including the attachments. The reporting from Kissflow is also easy to setup to link to other platforms such as Looker

Incentivized

OutSystems has a feature in which we can develop a functionality in a application and can use that functionality in another application without developing it again. That is main plus point for the development team so they can work with different functionalities rather focusing on the same thing again and again. if we want to make any change on the user side then we can make it live with just the deployment using the service center.

Incentivized

The pricing schema is very attractive, almost 50% lower than the competition. You could start from free and then grow. It has a pretty big library of connections to other apps and services, which really helps you when everything is a mess. Integromat has a really easy-to-use interface. You could do almost everything with fewer than 5 clicks. Scenarios (automation steps to complete a routine) have graphics so you can configure them more easily.

Incentivized

I haven't encountered a need for support with KiSSFLOW. It's not a perfect platform, but it's functional, dependable, and reasonably intuitive. I can't fault a support team just because their product works!

Incentivized

The tech support is very reachable. Usually by [email] from but also by phone if needed. We had some difficulties at the start with understanding "what our machine was doing" under high performance load. After some good sessions understanding our needs they delivered good solutions for our problems we had in the beginning.

Excellent material full of hands on that improve the understanding of the platform.

The online training material is well designed and explanations are step by step, helping trainees to understand and follow each exercise and new concept.

In a large company, patiently and consistently work the behind the scenes politics with business and IT partners across the firm.
This is transformational - you will need a solid set of key business partners to lock arms together to move forward.

Incentivized

Integromat allows us to do everything we used to do on Zapier but it doesn't limit us to only the popular apps, with Integromat we're integrating custom APIs and we get data from different servers through GET requests and it's exactly what we needed and Zapier couldn't provide it.

Incentivized

KiSSFLOW is much easier to set up, less coding and easier to explain to those that are being trained. The company already had SharePoint, but it is a very difficult system to set up. A class had to be taken, along with getting books in order to understand the process of the workflow. With KiSSFLOW, it is simple to understand, the helpdesk is quick with their response, help topics are laid out simply and you can even talk with someone on that side to ask your questions. Overall, KiSSFLOW is a much easier workflow and system to use.

I tried to use WordPress with some success. Also looked at Joomla. But when I saw OutSystems I knew I had been wasting my time there. It takes you longer to get going with OutSystems - but even I as a novice realized immediately that Outsystems is simply in another league. Outsystems is powerful. (Can you compare WordPress and Joomla to Outsystems - I don't think so).

• We used too many credits multiple times and had to buy them additionally, there are no prevention systems to setup to alert before it happens.
• Some consumption is difficult to understand and requires time and digging.
• It requires heavy internal effort to simplify things in Make in order for it to operate cheaper.
• Initial IT setup is paramount and determines a lot.

• The only real hard number savings that we have had with KiSSFLOW is the money we have saved in forms being printed, especially multi-part forms. So for a small college like us that it probably in the $5000 to $10000 per year range. We have certainly saved money in increased efficiencies of the processes that we have moved to KiSSFLOW. But that is harder to calculate.

• The ease of use of the OutSystems development process has been the biggest ROI for us. We have developed our Framework product and maintained/enhanced it with only 4 workers.
• OutSystems has enhanced their product very significantly over the last 4 years. They have gone from a simple to use tool to a very simple to use sophisticated tool that covers the standard mainframe-based computing apps and the apps used on handheld mobile devices all using the same basic set of development tools.

Incentivized