1. Home
  2. Low-Code Development Platforms
  3. Appian Reviews
  4. User Review of Appian
Appian: Not the best for new or inexperienced users; steep learning curve
October 12, 2021

Appian: Not the best for new or inexperienced users; steep learning curve

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Appian

It is being used to automate our IT automated procurement processes. It allows the process of getting quotes from vendors to the approval person to be done much faster. We also use it to automate sending reminders to relevant employees to continue the tasks left unfinished in dev, test, and prod environments.
  • Automate processes like reminders
  • Keeping data secure
  • Process modeling
  • Most of the platform is hard to use
  • Difficult for new users
  • Little to no explanation on how to do things
  • Not very good at advice on use-cases
  • Not aesthetically pleasing, especially compared to its competitors
  • Our IT automated procurement process has sped up time to get paid by a few days on every transaction
  • Our approvals are more organized as a result of being put in digitally
  • Managing our own tenant requires more than we have available, given the quarterly updates
  • Since we have business-critical functions running in the platform, we have to thoroughly review every note of every update. Because of this we skip half of the updates since we don't have enough time to review these changes four times a year.
I haven't used Appian support before.
I think what it does well, it does really well, but the platform as a whole is not very new-user friendly. As someone who works in IT, I can almost guarantee that someone who works on the business side would be completely clueless and not be able to derive any use from being the primary user of the platform.
I personally think Appian will win the discussion of pricing between itself and Microsoft Power Automate currently, but since I don't feel as though the average person would be able to learn how to automate processes on Appian, I have to give the nod to Microsoft Power Automate and the rest of the Power platform. I believe it is far better for citizen development and overall ease of use. Unfortunately, the Power platform did have a recent data leak, so it is not yet considered suitable for using confidential data per my company's rulings.

Do you think Appian delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Appian's feature set?

No

Did Appian live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Appian go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Appian again?

No

It is well suited for business-critical automation, especially when sensitive data is involved. It is not good for citizen development. It is definitely more suited to pro developers who write code for a living. Quick apps are helpful for those not well versed in the platform. Automated reminder emails are consistently and frequently sent out looking very official and full of detail.

Appian Feature Ratings

Low-Code Development
5.5
Visual Modeling
5
Drag-and-drop Interfaces
5
Platform Security
9
Platform User Management
2
Reusability
3
Platform Scalability
9

Using Appian

20 - Approving budgets and spending, approving the use of various forms of software financially
3 - Strong coding background, maybe a CS degree, serious dedication to learning the platform as it is not easy or enjoyable to pick up the first time around.
  • Automation
  • Reminders
  • Organization of the digital tasks occuring
  • Speeding up time to receive payment from vendors
  • We don't currently know of ways to further use Appian in way that is simple, inexpensive, and highly effective
Business-critical functions are now performed on this platform; transitioning them to another system would be far too cumbersome of a task to do with our current resources

Evaluating Appian and Competitors

  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Reputation
Price, security, automation capabilities
The Power platform would be much more of a contender in the selection process

Appian Implementation

Appian Training

  • Online training
Very boring; hard to get through quickly, but rather effective in demonstrating the use of the platform.

Appian Support

ProsCons
None
Difficult to get immediate help
I think we did since we knew we would not be experienced in the platform at first.

Using Appian

ProsCons
Consistent
Unnecessarily complex
Difficult to use
Requires technical support
Slow to learn
Cumbersome
Feel nervous using
Lots to learn
  • Process modeling
  • Any kind of automation
  • Personal site management
  • User access management