Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Mendix
Score 7.2 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Mendix is a low code platform-as-a-service offering with mobile and social extensions. Mendix was acquired by Siemens August 2018.
$0
Power Apps
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
PowerApps is a low code / rapid application development product from Microsoft that allows users to quickly build apps.
$20
per month per user
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Visual Studio (now in the 2022 edition) is a 64-bit IDE that makes it easier to work with bigger projects and complex workloads, boasting a fluid and responsive experience for users. The IDE features IntelliCode, its automatic code completion tools that understand code context and that can complete up to a whole line at once to drive accurate and confident coding.
$45
per month
Pricing
MendixPower AppsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Editions & Modules
Free Edition
$0
Pro Edition
1,250
per month (billed annually)
Enterprise Edition
1,675
per month (billed annually)
Power Apps Premium
$20
per month per user
Professional
$45.00
per month
Enterprise
$250.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MendixPower AppsVisual Studio
Free Trial
YesYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MendixPower AppsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Considered Multiple Products
Mendix
Chose Mendix
PowerApps is much harder to learn. It lacks the robustness of Mendix; if a detail is lacking in PowerApps the app won't run and it takes much time to debug.
Mendix is build to work for Scrum teams. I think Microsoft could learn a lot from the way working on one app by diverse …
Chose Mendix
You can create applications faster as compared to other products, You can code easily just by creating flow charts, instead of thousands of lines of code. You can manage databases from the domain model of Mendix, you can also manage webservices very easily with Mendix Modeler.
Power Apps

No answer on this topic

Visual Studio
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio
Visual Studio can do what all of these alternatives can do and does them well. PowerApps is RAD and you just can't tweak apps like you can in Visual Studio. Xamarin is now supported in Visual Studio and IntelliJ is javascript which you can create inside of Visual Studio. Would …
Features
MendixPower AppsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Low-Code Development
Comparison of Low-Code Development features of Product A and Product B
Mendix
9.0
9 Ratings
7% above category average
Power Apps
7.9
24 Ratings
6% below category average
Microsoft Visual Studio
-
Ratings
Visual Modeling9.39 Ratings8.022 Ratings00 Ratings
Drag-and-drop Interfaces8.99 Ratings7.823 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Security9.09 Ratings8.723 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform User Management9.49 Ratings8.123 Ratings00 Ratings
Reusability8.89 Ratings7.423 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Scalability8.89 Ratings7.622 Ratings00 Ratings
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User Ratings
MendixPower AppsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(66 ratings)
9.3
(23 ratings)
9.0
(105 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(12 ratings)
9.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
7.8
(14 ratings)
9.7
(6 ratings)
8.8
(15 ratings)
User Testimonials
MendixPower AppsMicrosoft Visual Studio
Likelihood to Recommend
Siemens AG
Mendix excels in scenarios involving Business Process Automation, making it a strong choice for applications requiring workflow automation, including processes like request approvals, document management, and other business workflows.Conversely, Mendix may be less suitable for projects that demand highly customized solutions with extensive custom coding. Its primary focus on low-code development may not align well with the requirements of projects that heavily rely on intricate and specialized coding.
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Microsoft
Power Apps is ideal for scenarios that are neither too complex nor too large. It is easy to begin development in Power Apps, as it is one of the best tools for low-code development. Power Apps can be implemented for complex scenarios as well, provided there is strong knowledge of the tool and ample time for planning. Our applications benefit from Power Apps' cross-platform support, making it easy to use on any device, including desktops, laptops, and mobile devices.
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Microsoft
When working with base C# code for desktop and web projects, then Microsoft Visual Studio is ideal as it provides the libraries and interfaces needed to quickly create, test and deploy solutions. It is when slightly more complex scenarios are required that issues can arise. The built-in integration for things like PowerBI Paginated Reports and dashboards is far from ideal.
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Pros
Siemens AG
  • We're able to really easily develop different views that are very specific to a customer's needs or customer's different types of user needs. So for example, the production managers can have a certain view that's relevant to them and then certain line managers can have views that are specific to them that allow them to run different scenarios which they define. So it allows us to easily build customized apps for each different type of user.
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Microsoft
  • Power Apps has formats that are pre-built that don't require any coding which makes it easier to achieve your vision. This does become a challenge if your App needs don't fit into that format.
  • We deal with a ton of data so the fact that you can connect to any data source in addition to their pre-stablished data connections makes the process a breeze.
  • The online learning resources and tutorials are helpful as well for those who are tech savvy.
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Microsoft
  • I like how the tabs and panels are organized; everything is gathered together so you can find what you're looking for quickly.
  • If you can't find something, there's a thorough search engine that searches all of Visual Studio's features.
  • The Team Foundation Server feature is fantastic since it allows us to easily deploy and roll back changes on the server.
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Cons
Siemens AG
  • Earlier versions lacked in UI/Ux. This is still improving.
  • Since everyone and anyone can create custom add ons (widgets), Mendix could improve their quality checks (but not as rigid as eg Apple).
  • Upgradeability used to be somewhat of an issue. Version 7 looks to be handling this better than previous versions.
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Microsoft
  • Sometimes the cost of solutions is greater than the benefit. Licensing is expensive relative to the scope of some business user-created personal or team-level solutions.
  • While there is a starter-kit for Governance, it is complicated to stand up and requires dedicated resources to provide on-going governance operations. Many organizations are not going to be able to dedicate resources to governance and this causes the sprawl, solution duplication, silos, unneeded and unplanned licensing expenses, and a general "wild wild west" environment.
  • There needs to be better direction and best practices given around Power Platform Environment utilization and optimization.
  • The accessibility to the platform and ease for business partners to independantly create solutions is both a benefit and a negative. When the business outcome needed is a good fit for PowerApps it is a quick win, but when not a good fit it becomes a frustration for the business partner attempting to make the platform do something it is not well-suited for. The business partner entangles tech teams in the effort which drains resources and provides a lack-luster solution. All of this to say, it would be beneficial to have some tools that business partners could leverage to determine\understand if the type of business outcome they need is well suited to PowerApps or not.
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Microsoft
  • Would be great if there was a better way to save and restore open tabs.
  • The built-in test runner can be improved, for example, by adding the ability to save a set of commonly run tests, etc.
  • Better integration for Microsoft SQL server would be great.
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Likelihood to Renew
Siemens AG
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
VS is the best and is required for building Microsoft applications. The quality and usefulness of the product far out-weight the licensing costs associated with it.
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Usability
Siemens AG
A 10 would say I have nothing to wish for. A 9 means I haven't seen anything better.This tool really helps you in the whole creation and maintenace cycle, so from requirements to building/modeling to testing to deploying to capturing feedback.
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Microsoft
PowerApps is a great solution and I have spent the last year familiarizing myself with the platform and building custom applications to complete a whole range of tasks such as asset management, custom invoice generation, and item restriction tracking. We as a company have barely begun to scratch the surface of what can be achieved with PowerApps.
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Microsoft
I love the overall usability of Microsoft Visual Studio. I’ve been using this IDE for more than 20 years, and I’ve seen it evolve by leaps and bounds. Today, with AI and code-suggestion/completion features, developers no longer need to remember countless libraries, methods, or language syntax, or invest a huge amount of programming effort to complete a project. It truly offers everything a developer needs to program, debug, test, and deploy in a single IDE.
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Support Rating
Siemens AG
Response times are quick and you will get updates regularly about the status of your request. Even with very technical questions they have specialists that can help you with your problems it will give you an answer or help you with a work around.
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Microsoft
The community forums are extremely responsive to questions asked, there is a good body of online documentation and many community posts to draw from. Although the platform has changed, which means some of the posts are out of date and the solutions provided aren't relevant. Of relevance, I read over 400 articles plus documentation to get this first app built in SharePoint, move it to SQL and make it work exactly the way it should.
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Microsoft
There are many resources available supporting Visual Studio IDE. Microsoft whitepapers, forum posts, and online Visual Studio documentation. There are countless demonstration videos available, as well. If users are having issues, they can call Microsoft Support, but depending on the company's agreement with Microsoft, the number of included support calls will vary from organization to organization. I've found that Microsoft support calls can be hit or miss depending on who you get, but they can usually get you with the right support person for your issue.
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In-Person Training
Siemens AG
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
IT is very complicated to understand all the functions that the environment has if you are not familiar with this type of development environments. It is important to select a good in-person training to achieve to understand all the possibilities and the capacity of the application. In this case, you will be able to develop a lot type of different applications.
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Online Training
Siemens AG
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
If you are not accustomed to develop in this type of development environments it would be complicated to follow all the parts of the course because if the course does not include a great tour with all the concepts to develop you will not have the option to understand all the functions.
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Alternatives Considered
Siemens AG
Mendix would be my preferred system all the way. The system is designed for these kinds of works. I've worked with WP and DNN but they should be used just for websites. To create an app for a business value, I would suggest Mendix. Also, the offline capabilities of Mendix have greatly improved since the deployment of Mendix 7.13.
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Microsoft
1. PowerApps functionality comes with E1 over E3 License without adding extra costs 2. For Nintex you pay (at the beginning) for each workflow, so my intention would be, to do no workflows to prevent additional costs, but I want a platform with a fair price that allows me to create workflows without thinking about the price for each workflow and we use only some workflow and relative easy workflows and forms as a medium-sized company. 3. PowerApps provides a lot of functionality without needing to invest in premium features directly.
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Microsoft
I personally feel Visual Studio IDE has [a] better interface and [is more] user friendly than other IDEs. It has better code maintainability and intellisense. Its inbuilt team foundation server help coders to check on their code then and go. Better nugget package management, quality testing and gives features to extract TRX file as result of testing which includes all the summary of each test case.
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Return on Investment
Siemens AG
  • It helps to speed up application development because of its low code by the fact that it's low code. It allows professional developers to focus more on specialized application development rather than the more routine application development that business IT and super users can do for themselves with some coaching from the IT department. So it's just allowing the more specialist professional developers.net, for example, Java in our organization to focus on more complex engineering application developments.
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Microsoft
  • Automation of manual processes brings an ROI on labor costs.
  • Intake of data provides clean database design.
  • Connectivity to data-lake provides insights and trends into the data.
  • Able to scale operations with efficiencies provided by the app.
  • Can mature the process and workflows to do more.
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Microsoft
  • Using the integration between Visual Studio and our source control service, the cost of re-work and losing code is drastically reduced.
  • Paid versions of Visual Studio enable developers to be so much more productive than hacked-together open source solutions that it's hard to imagine developing in Windows without it.
  • When combined with support subscriptions and the vast array of free online help options available, Visual Studio saves our developers time by keeping them coding and testing, not wasting their time trying to guess their way out of problems or spend endless hours online hoping to find answers.
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ScreenShots

Mendix Screenshots

Screenshot of Agile Project Management: Collaborate. Manage. Iterate.Screenshot of Central App Management: Application Management Made Easy.Screenshot of App Store: Hundreds of building blocks to get you out of the gate.Screenshot of 1-Click Deployment: Efficient DevOps. Enabled.