Mendix Review
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Mendix is being used as our enterprise web platform for several customer facing portals. These applications solve a number of business needs, including: prescription engine, reporting tool, order interface, program enrollment, and much more. These applications are heavily integrated with our CRM, Salesforce.com.
Pros
- Development is Mendix is generally quick going. The time from whiteboard to deployed application can be a matter of days. The business side loves this and allows for continuous enhancements and modifications.
- We heavily use the feedback loop built within the application. This is used for our internal QA processes as well as for customers to submit ideas, bugs, etc. This has become a valuable asset to our team.
- The business logic capabilities are quite comprehensive and allows going back to review "code" relatively painless
Cons
- The documentation and user community could be stronger. With any other (well established) software, a quick Google of a problem will yield hundreds of results, solutions, blogs. That's not always the case with Mendix. This has improved, however, in the few years our organization has been using Mendix.
- Styling pages, forms, etc., within Mendix is a bit tedious. Without a solid foundation of css, forget about making your app look anything like you would want, aside from the out-of-the-box styling packages/templates Mendix offers.
- The Helpdesk Support is sub-par. Often times a few days will pass and a "try this... no no, try this. I meant try that..." idea(s) are thrown back. The true understanding and knowledge seems to lie with only a few individuals. Although, this too has improved in the years of using the software.
