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Nintex Workflow Cloud (which begins at $625 per month) is a low-code development platform in which everything is geared around automated workflows. Most low-code platforms start with data modeling and then move into visual app development and layer workflow automation on top. But in Nintex, everything from the forms to the analytics and integrations are informed by the business process that workflow is targeting.
Nintex has been building low-code software for more than a decade, historically focused on Microsoft SharePoint. Nintex currently has separate offerings for Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365 ($69.99 Per Year at Microsoft Store)(Opens in a new window) , but has begun to integrate its product portfolio within Nintex Workflow Cloud, its platform-agnostic, low-code platform announced earlier this year. While its drag-and-drop workflow automation is arguably the most polished of all the tools in this roundup, Nintex’s lack of integration with its AppStudio mobile and web app user interface (UI) designer makes it difficult to see the app creation process through. Next to Editors’ Choice platforms Appian (Visit Site at Appian)(Opens in a new window) and Microsoft PowerApps (7.00 Per User Per Month at PowerApps)(Opens in a new window) , Nintex’s integration-dependent database philosophy and siloed experience between app creation and process modeling makes it more of a workflow automation tool than a true low-code platform, until the experience becomes more unified.
Pricing and Plans
Nintex Workflow Cloud (which can be bought through partner vendors(Opens in a new window) or from Nintex directly) begins at $625 per month for the Standard edition. This gets you a starter pack of five workflows plus 25 forms, as well as access to document generation, mobile forms, and standard support. The pricing lets businesses pay as you go, buying another “pack” of workflows as you need it.
There’s also the Enterprise edition priced at $938 per month. This plan includes access to the Nintex AppStudio for mobile app creation, workflow analytics through Nintex Hawkeye, and premium support. According to the company, depending on your organizational needs, Nintex and its partner channels will also offer the product through custom per-user or site-wide license pricing, and gives companies the option to buy a 5-pack of workflows at a time as needed.
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Building a Low-Code Business App
Nintex has traditionally been an on-premises SharePoint vendor, so Nintex Workflow Cloud represents a ground-up rebuild for the company. This is Nintex’s first integrated offering, pulling together its capabilities around low-code web and mobile app development, workflow automation, analytics and reporting, team collaboration, document management, and a full array of third-party integrations in a single Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution.
As such, Nintex is still in the process of pulling all of its disparate tools together in a unified UI. Nintex AppStudio, the most powerful tool in the platform for designing application UIs using mobile templates, is not currently integrated into the Nintex Workflow Cloud UI and must be accessed separately. Otherwise, the Nintex dashboard is well-integrated and straightforward.
As with all the low-code platforms in this roundup, we tested the platforms from both an average business user’s perspective and from a developer standpoint. To test Nintex Workflow Cloud from a business user perspective, we built a basic scheduling app. The goal of our testing was to create an app that could add a new event with fields for event name, date and time, and duration. In terms of features, we wanted the ability to invite users to events and sort the events list in a calendar or chronological view.
Less busy than the main UIs of fellow low-code veterans Mendix (0.00 For Up To 10 Users at Mendix)(Opens in a new window) and OutSystems (Visit Site at OutSystems)(Opens in a new window) , Nintex gives you a straightforward user experience (UX) where everything builds around workflows. The first thing you see on the dashboard in a big Create Workflow button, below which is a sparse left-hand navigation menu with workflows, instances (status of workflows currently running), tasks, connections (meaning, available data integrations), and what Nintex calls Xtensions. These are custom integrations that a developer can enable with an application programming interface (API).
In terms of integrations, Nintex offers a solid selection. You can download and import prebuilt workflows from the Nintex Xchange(Opens in a new window), and in the Connections tab of the dashboard, I was given the option to add a new connection to pull in data from about 20 different document management and cloud storage apps, including Box, Dropbox Business ($12.50 Per User Per Month at Dropbox Business)(Opens in a new window) , and Google Drive, as well as customer relationship management (CRM) platforms such as Salesforce (Visit Site for Pricing at Salesforce.com)(Opens in a new window) and Microsoft Dynamics, along with collaboration and helpdesk apps including Slack, Zendesk, and of course Microsoft SharePoint Online ($5.00 Per User Per Month at Microsoft 365 for Business)(Opens in a new window) .
To start, I created a new workflow. This takes you directly to the visual designer where you can start adding logic. As opposed to a tool such as TrackVia (Visit Site at TrackVia)(Opens in a new window) (or really all the other tools we tested) that focus first on data modeling and UI design before layering workflow automation on top, Nintex does the opposite. The design philosophy of the platform is for data to flow through Nintex Workflow Cloud without the platform actually owning any of that data.
In trying to create a workflow for my scheduling app, I added variables for date, time, and event name, as well as logic for sending an email to invitees. The designer also gave me options to pull in data from all the connected services listed above, but there’s no form-based option for creating a database from scratch. Once the basic workflow was created, I went looking for the Nintex AppStudio to pair it with a user-facing app experience.
The company said there was a link to Nintex AppStudio from the dashboard, but the link is buried deep in the settings menu and required a separate authentication from the Nintex Workflow Cloud trial we used to test the product. This is where the primary app UI design and form-based customization takes place in the product but, until it’s better integrated into the experience to go directly from workflow design to app creation in a step-by-step experience, Nintex is an incomplete experience as a low-code platform.
The Developer Experience
To test Nintex Workflow Cloud from an IT-focused perspective, our developer used the tool to build a small-scale customer relationship management (CRM) application called Crowd Control. The goal with this app was to build a simple, collaborative contact manager with the ability to add photos and multiple notes to each contact. The app was to have a contact list page, contact detail page, and a new contact page. It was also important to add new data model fields and change existing fields in the finished app to ensure the IT department would be able to update and modify that app over time.
Overall, our developer was partially successful in building the app. Nintex targets a different use case and so is not entirely comparable to tools such as Mendix or Quick Base (25.00 Per User Per Month at Quick Base)(Opens in a new window) because, as mentioned earlier, it’s workflow-based rather than an app connected to a database. For Crowd Control, it was easy to pull in contacts from Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, but beyond that, the database vendor options for CRM are relatively limited, and they don’t give you data access to more enterprise-focused platforms such as NetSuite or SAP.
The data types available were also limited, which isn’t surprising given this is a workflow editor. You can also run queries against a database or CRM in order to render a list on a web page, but this tool really is fundamentally different from the others. To test the tool for project maintenance, the developer found it easy to add new fields to an existing form, with the only gripe being that the fields are added to the top of the form rather than the bottom. Changing existing fields proved tricky, with only field reordering permitted. Even if you removed all references to the field from all workflow actions, you still could not make any edits.
In terms of the UI itself, our developer found it to be a slick drag-and-drop workflow editor with more intuitive automation and logic creation abilities using Nintex Rules Builder than Salesforce App Cloud (Visit Site at Salesforce.com)(Opens in a new window) , requiring no additional coding or additional scripting as is required in Zoho Creator (Starts at $8 Per User Per Month, Billed Annually at Zoho Creator)(Opens in a new window) .
Slick Workflow Automation, Messy Development
As a workflow editor and visual platform for building automated logic between various third-party services, Nintex Workflow Cloud is the most capable tool we’ve tested. But, when it came to building the app itself within an end-to-end low-code experience, Nintex needs some work. The company is in the process of integrating a number of its tools, including Nintex AppStudio, its Nintex Hawkeye workflow analytics solution, and Nintex Document Generation into Workflow Cloud, which was only released earlier this year.
Ultimately, the company promises a full dashboard integrating all of these processes, as well as packaging its Nintex Xchange marketplace more prominently within the platform. As constituted, Nintex is an experienced low-code vendor that’s slowly but surely evolving to combat the newer players and a cloud-based world. We’d like to see a more unified UX and additional database options (or, ideally, a built-in database and database manager) to bring all of the disparate aspects of the experience together. Nintex is fundamentally trying to solve a different problem than the rest of the tools in this roundup. But, if the platform pairs better app development and database management capabilities with its superb workflow automation, it’ll be a force to be reckoned with in the low-code space.
2.5
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Nintex Workflow Cloud has arguably the best visual workflow editing and automated logic environment of all the low-code development platforms we’ve tested, but its basic app UI design and database capabilities need deeper integration and improvement.
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Source link : https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/nintex-workflow-cloud