ServiceNow App Engine vs. Workato vs. Zapier

I suggest that people in ServiceNow start by building apps in App Engine through learning plans on the ServiceNow Developer site. It is a very guided process, and it is fun to do. Newcomers in ServiceNow can learn a lot about configuring tables, fields, behavior of fields, roles, Flows, UX, and many more. App Engine tends to make development work simpler and faster to ship. However, it can be a difficult concept for people new to ServiceNow to understand scoped applications. So there should be a brief on the App Engine homepage that mentions what can be built and includes a link to learn more about scoped apps.

Incentivized

Workato is brilliant to make separate applications work together without much effort or specialists being needed. When specific events on software A should trigger actions on B (or more) and you want that to happen without any development or big budgets, that's where Workato comes into play. It's a great help if you want tasks automated, communications flowing and data synced between different applications.

If you have processes that are now managed and controlled using a spreadsheet, Zapier will give you a lot more control over what is happening and will help you increase productivity by eliminating simple steps such as sending emails and sharing information with your colleagues. It frees time for very transactional activities.

Incentivized

• App Engine can be used by non-developers to create Applications on the go, without coding.
• App Engine has all the important aspects of the application available for adding or editing within a single record. Hence, it is easier to modify.
• App Engine has a delegated development option which can be granted to specific developers or groups to manage a specific area for Scoped App Development without giving admin rights.

Incentivized

• The Workato product interface is brilliantly thought through and designed. The learning curve for first timers is easy enough to get started and build useful things, and Workato really shines in their ability to handle complex triggers and interactions. Workato allows people to build software apps so much faster than by coding each functionality.
• Workato has fantastic documentation, making things accessible without any holes in the product. The product just works, never has any bugs, never lags, and just generally allows us to see and change exactly what we need to.
• Workato has an absolutely amazing support team. We tried the free version for a while, then realized it was the single most important software tool we have, and we upgraded. The support at the paid tier is A+, seriously the best from any company we've worked with. Feels more like a good friend then a support rep.

• Ease of use - multiple people in the organization can set up and run Zaps per their specific use cases without much training.
• Connectivity - Zapier is able to connect to multiple applications we use on a regular basis.
• Functionality - Zapier provides embedded functionality within the app itself (email, data conversion), but also appropriate triggers and actions for apps it connects to.
• Versatile - Zapier can execute complicated and simple tasks and thus has many use cases.

Incentivized

• The scoped app prefix should be shorter to allow appropriate application naming if it exceeds the character limit. Either the scoped app name limit shall be increased, or the limit on scoped app prefixes shall be increased to allow better naming for scoped apps.
• It's challenging to make citizen development work at scale. Businesses want experienced pro code developers rather than citizen developers to work on this feature.

Incentivized

• Customer support - responsive, but often not equipped to help efficiently identify root cause of issue. Need to improve escalation to technical resources and turnaround time
• Recipe organization and sharing. Can be challenging to copy recipes, or grab recipes from publicly available site. There are often dependencies and errors that have vague descriptions.

Incentivized

• Being able to turn off one leg of a Zap without having to delete it or turn the whole Zap off
• Not all fields populate when using certain aspects of Salesforce, but that could be an SF issue
• Communication when support is actually needed basically doesn't happen

Incentivized

There are limited use cases where we are just using the service now app engine as of now

Incentivized

We need to develop Enterprise Application Integrations and Workato was not designed for this

Zapier is now very much an integral part of our business and we could not operate without it!

Incentivized

Overall, very much usable for anything that happens in organisation. Able to track and discover each asset in the underlying infrastructure of the organisation and manage them. It is easy to understand the impact if any asset fails and hence risk mitigation becomes easier. It is a simple tool but with everything an organisation requires to go live with maximum customer impact and satisfaction

Incentivized

The sheer work Workato eliminates from people's daily jobs is simply a great contribution to people's productivity and a boost to capability. It actually strikes the balance between business and tech teams. It also reduces dependency on developers, and speeds up their delivery too. The only reason it's not a full 10/10 is for the price - it's a bit expensive for what we'd like, and their batch or high data volume processing can be improved.

The interface is very user-friendly, and there are also many tools to help a brand-new user get started. For example, you can put your Zap idea into the AI bot, and it will basically build a shell of your Zap to get started on. The format for each step within a Zap is also very helpful (set up the connection/app, set up the fields/details, then test).

Incentivized

Almost 100% available on time

Incentivized

They tried their best to resolve our queries every time we contacted them about any technical support

Incentivized

They employ an extremely knowledgeable team of problem solvers. I've never had a disappointing interaction or one that has left me still searching for answers. I know that when I ask for help, they'll partner with me until we find a solution together

Incentivized

Before we purchased Zapier, I contacted support and asked them if Zapier could support my intended workflow (this is actually a selection on their support form - awesome). Within 2 hours, I was contacted by a support team member who seemed sure it would work, but granted me premium access for 2 weeks to try it out for myself. Sure enough, it did! Ever since then, support has replied rapidly to any problems I have experienced and answered my questions within a few sentences.

Incentivized

App engine can be used just to process the minimal amount of the data which is being received from the user. We are service now catalogue items or any other data technology.

Incentivized

We discovered that we could not use Workato for our more complex, large enterprise integrations. It was useful for simple workflows that matched the prebuilt recipes.

There were no options from the other products because ServiceNow App Engine is a large product with many different modules, growing each year, which allows you to recreate your business processes in a very short time, making the migration to ServiceNow very easy.

Incentivized

We already used Zapier, but since it doesn't support NetSuite we had to choose another automation platform. Now that we've been using Workato for a few months, we have plans to move the stuff we're going through Zapier to Workato. We set up a trial account with all the other platforms, and they were all more expensive and A LOT more complicated than Workato.

We actually utilize both Integromat and Zapier at our company, for all the reasons detailed in this review. Though Zapier is excellent for simple client integrations, we often run into internal use cases that require complexity that Zapier cannot provide. Specifically working with API calls (not just webhooks), complex multi-step integrations with Routing/parsing/etc, and large volume integrations. Integromat is perfect for these use cases, but doesn’t provide the simplicity and account scalability that Zapier offers.

Incentivized

It is scalable but not reliable

Incentivized

• We have managed to close the un applied cash item from 56% to 89% in a given five working days period by using ServiceNow App Engine
• By automating and entire money laundering process, we have managed to provide the background check data as quickly as within a day, which was actually taking weeks Same reports when we were doing the things manually.

Incentivized

• As business consultants, Workato has greatly improved our offerings to our clients as well as improved the time frame to implement automated workflows and integrations.
• For our clients, the return on investment is almost immediate. Once a Workato recipe is up and running (which can be done very fast), data is integrating, duplicate data entry and user errors are eliminated, and cross-company KPI metrics are easier to report than ever.

• It has saved me the money in hiring an administrative assistant
• It also saved me the time it took to do these tasks
• It also allowed me to automate things that increased my lead generation
• It also allowed me to automate several processes

Incentivized