Visual LANSA 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

Name: Visual LANSA
Rating: 4.6 (19 reviews)

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On this page

Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
User Reviews

Overview

Visual LANSA

4.6

(19)

Pricing

Starting at $8.34 per month

About Visual LANSA

Visual LANSA is an integrated development environment (IDE) that allows users to develop and maintain cloud-based and desktop applications. Key features include application generation wizards, SQL support, data modeling and integrated compilers. Deployment options include Windows, IBM i and Linux, as well as cloud-based deployment.

Users can create cross-platform software through LANSA’s RDML (rapid development and maintenance language) and independent metadata repository. Leveraging LANSA’s portable metadata repository, users can create an application with access to JDBC, IBM i and ODBC- compliant databases.

Developers can work with field and file definitions, validations, relationships and components stored in the metadata repository from one screen for web, Windows desktop, 5250 and server-based applications. Users can test applications with a Windows system and deploy to a variety of platforms such as Windows, IBM i and Linux. Visual LANSA also provides an online client and remote server RDML debugger.

Visual LANSA Screenshots

Visual LANSA Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $8.34 per month

Free Trial

Free Version

Basic

$8.34

per month

No plan information available

Visual LANSA Features

Popular features found in Application Development
API
Collaboration Tools
Compatibility Testing
Debugging
Deployment Management
Drag & Drop
Pre-built Templates
Source Control
Third-Party Integrations
Version Control
More features of Visual LANSA
Access Controls/Permissions
AI-assisted Development
Business Process Automation
Change Management
Code Development
Code Editing
Collaborative Development
Data Aggregation and Publishing
Database Support
Data Import/Export
Data Modeling
Design Templates
Feature Library
For Developers
Forms Creation & Design
Graphical User Interface
Integrated Development Environment
Integrations Management
Iteration Management
Mobile Development
Prototype Creation
Reporting/Analytics
Software Development
Template Management
Templates
Testing Management
Visual Modeling
Web App Development
Web/Mobile App Development
Website Development
WYSIWYG Editor

Visual LANSA User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.6

Ratings Breakdown

58%

42%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.2

Value for money

4.2

Customer support

4.5

Functionality

4.3

Jon S.

Verified reviewer

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed June 2018

Lansa changed my whole development cycle

We use Lansa for all new development ranging from iSeries green screens to Windows native to cross-browser web development to Mobile. It has turned staffs of mixed talent to single cohesive teams.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Time to deployment and reduced investment in having to always learn new skills to keep up. Historically, as interesting as it is for developers to learn new tech and find ways to engage the user and make things easier, this learning curve is time consuming and costly. It also does not insure consistency from developer to developer or adherence to standards. Lansa literally removes all of that. The developer is extracted from that layer and only has to focus on a single development environment that continues to improve and present simple ways to accomplish the latest technologies. It even insures adherence to standards through its common repository and wizards to create many of the most common processes. To take this whole picture to the next level, all of the code is portable, not only from system to system, but between OSs! If your company is using an iSeries and decides that it is time to move to another platform; you can move with it. No new learning curves. No re-development. Pick it up and move it over. I can't emphasize enough how valuable these traits are in environments that do not have the luxury of time and money to continually retrain.

Cons:

Hang on tight with the training. Its important and well worth it in the end. But it is easy to get bored with. I find documentation to be sufficient if you have the basis of the training. Once you are through that and understand the concepts and the language, its gold.

Joe Y.

Staffing and Recruiting

201-500 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Reviewed July 2017

Reduces technical baggage and allows you to focus on solving business problems

By reducing the amount of technical baggage typically associated with web development, the time from conception to production is radically reduced. This also means that I can focus significantly more of my effort on solving business problems then solving technology problems.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I thing I like the most is being able to leave the technical baggage behind and really focus on solving problems for the company. For example, a full stack developer has a host of technologies they have to master to be effective and efficient at their job. If you are developing modern, responsive web applications chances are you are using something along the lines of Angular, React, Ember etc. Besides being yet another thing to know, it brings compilation, packing and deployment issues to the front-end development process. I don't worry about this any more. I develop a component and Visual LANSA handles the compilation, packing and deploying it to the browser for me. On the back-end side you have other frameworks to know. You've got to handle requests with WebAPI, MVC or Spring etc. You have to handle data access with Entity Framework, JPA, Hibernate etc. Then you may have an IoC container bringing everything together. With Visual LANSA Server Modules handle the request and you have just a handful of commands to interact with the database. All of the underlying plumbing that you normally have to deal with is removed as Visual LANSA takes care of it. One last thing that is really nice is the Visual LANSA Framework. If you are doing back office web development, i.e. not consumer facing, then the "Framework" becomes a huge time saver. Its essentially a "Shell" that you plug your components into and it handles all the complexities of the UI for you.

Cons:

The thing I like the least is the debugger. The debuggers in Visual Studio, IntelliJ, Chrome's Dev Tools etc, set pretty high expectations and this where I think Visual LANSA could use the most help. Performance when debugging web components is pretty poor. Debugging non-JavaScript based objects like Server Modules, Functions, Windows Forms etc. is good. It's just JavaScript based components that seem to bog down and make stepping through code a very time consuming process. One example is not being able to inspect the contents of a list. You can see how many entries are in it, but you cannot see those entries without iterating the list. This typically leads to a lot of trace messages and essentially debugging through tracing.

Robert D.

Verified reviewer

Media Production

10000+ employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed February 2020

Order Entry Platform for 18 Years

Ultimately satisfied our business and user needs.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Satisfied our order entry GUI needs for our entire enterprise for over 18 years, and still going.

Cons:

Ultimately we needed stronger integration and easier deployment options, and are slowly phasing out our LANSA GUI.

Vendor Response

Robert, How great to hear Visual LANSA has been solid for you for 18 years! Are you on our latest version? 14 SP2 is geared toward easy integration and deployment. Even be on the lookout for some updated features to your concerns really soon.

Replied March 2020

David N.

Wholesale

201-500 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Reviewed July 2017

LANSA has provided the easiest development effort for any platform of any tool I have used

Visual LANSA allows us to substantially increase our development productivity and its ability to generate applications in multiple environments without new developer training allows us to "redeploy" developer resources from legacy technologies to modern functionality.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Business Rules can be defined by Business users, eliminating the need for developers to implement libraries or classes to handle the rules, and can be changed "on the fly" for a more agile application. The same skill set can be used for developing windows apps, web pages, and server side services. The developer does not need to learn how to use AWS,REST, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SOAP, etc. They only need to understand how to use the Visual LANSA development environment and language to build full featured applications and services. When HTML5 was introduced, we were able to take advantage of the new functionality without a learning curve. Visual LANSA provides an integrated WYSIWYG for CSS definition. There is no need for creating the text files necessary, or writing the underlying definition code for these products as LANSA does this for you. In addition, LANSA provides a built-in end-user Application environment, the Visual LANSA Framework, This set of programs allow the developer to design the overall application, along with connectivity functionality, cross-program communications, and a uniform end-user experience. The Framework may be deployed in either windows or web/cloud (or both) without redefining the application! Time to market has been significantly reduced and user satisfaction has increased.

Cons:

There is a "black-box" aspect to the product that can be a little frustrating when the execution environment does not act as expected. Also, the integration with external components and libraries can be somewhat obtuse. The biggest con is the limited number of developers currently using the product, which limits the amount of community interaction and "Tip" sharing. More developers would mean even more advances in the capabilities of the tool set.

Benzy W.

Verified reviewer

Legal Services

201-500 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed February 2020

Best Low Code Development Software in the Market

Used Lansa tools to solve new and or existing business flows and logic. Used Lansa to switch over from various legacy systems (G/L, order entry, sales etc...). Back a few years we also used Lansa Integrator to interface with Lotus Notes database to create a uniform experience - which including using the data between the two platforms for web applications.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Reusable code. Really, reusable code. Write once and rules follow the data around without the need to re-code depending on the interface. Transparent enforcement of the business rules and logic. Can write as granular as needed for your specific requirements. Once that has been accomplished you can concentrate on UI design and coding.

Cons:

To many ways to skin a cat with the options to tackle problems. It's great working with various interfaces but sometimes there is limited (or no) documentation to those interfaces (such as when MS released Office 16, little information avaliable to access Excel .net newer features).

Reasons for choosing Visual LANSA

Easier to understand how to code with the Lansa tools than other products. Could use existing talent to create richer applications without having to learn new skills.

Reasons for switching to Visual LANSA

Needed a seamless environment. Needed control of features for the end user and ability change requirement that external stakeholders required of the legal industry. Plus needed something to pave the way for future enhancements. We knew we had to be able to integrate with the internet, Lotus Notes, the court systems, PayPal. Also needed to get away from green screen and work with GUI interfaces as well as some standard desktop software.

Vendor Response

Benzy, We are thrilled Visual LANSA is making a positive impact on your application development process! We are working hard to address our issues with limited documentation. We have some exciting improvements coming in the near future!

Replied February 2020

Muhammad F.

Verified reviewer

Financial Services

201-500 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed August 2022

Easy to Use Development and Maintenance Tool

Visual Lansa is unmatched hybrid low code development platform that amazingly helps for creating responsive web or desktop applications either for cloud or on-premise. It has ability to access data on various platforms then make it available on a web or mobile interface.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Visual Lansa is easy for development and modifications, it is user friendly and intuitive software. It also allows interaction with various Microsoft products. It enables user to perform complicated programing tasks with few commands. It performs well in a batch environment and interacts well with other programs.

Cons:

It is not easy to automate the process of deployment. The initial install of IDE may be seems more intuitive but sometimes IDE got crashed. Online documentation and debugging tool need to be improved enough.

steve p.

Verified reviewer

Libraries

51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed February 2020

20+ years and it's never let me down

exceptional. i've said many times "if you can't do it in Lansa, you probably don't need to do it." (at least in a business application - you won't write an image processor or a protein sequence analysis program but you can probably integrate with the back end data.) the recent acquisition by Idera has given some pause to the community (there were a flurry of exits from long-timers as well) but so far it seems to be working out.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

it's not just the software - it's the entire Lansa ecosystem. been using it for over 20 years and it is hands down, the best business software development platform (especially for the IBMi) i've ever dealt with. it's flexible, intuitive, and can do make integration easy and FAST. (side by side, doing something in Lansa vs develop something in RPG or COBOL is 2-3x as fast and 10x more intuitive). in the 20 years, it has always been able to keep up with what needs to be done in the business (and i've seen the product evolved from a green screen, SEU/PDM like interface to one that you can develop robust windows, web, and mobile apps with).

Cons:

IDE can be a bit slow (especially when you've just started it) and is a few steps behind a visual studio type interface.

Reasons for choosing Visual LANSA

every shop i've worked in was Lansa (and green screen) before i got there. options considered included Synon, RPG, and COBOL. and in each case, Lansa was selected because of the ability to ramp up, be productive, and "get stuff done" very quickly.

Vendor Response

Steve, Wow! It is really great to hear how Visual LANSA has been a reliable solution for you for over 20 years. Thank you for sharing your feedback on the IDE. We are always looking for ways to improve our product.

Replied February 2020

Marc L.

Computer Software

2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 12 months

Reviewed August 2017

Visual Lansa Frameworks product is the tool to Web enable a large Lansa based ERP Legacy system

The greatest benefit is being able to create a professional looking Web site, serving large amounts of ERP information, without having to master many technologies. Lansa handles the continued need to modernize the look and feel as the internet capabilities expand. Small teams who understand the business can master object oriented programming techniques and rapidly expand the web presence for an organization.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Visual Lansa Frameworks (VLF) has made it possible to professionally and rapidly Web enable our existing ERP with the following advantages. The legacy ERP system was developed using data modelling relationships and repository based rules. VLF using prototyping which lets us replicate the existing relationships and therefore the application is quickly built and we can just concentrate on user modifications. Secondly, another reason this product builds quickly is because the framework handles the plumbing tasks such as user authentication, menus, tabs, updating multiple windows simultaneously, hiding and restoring windows, printing, filtering columns, etc. Over the past year Lansa VLF updates continue to modernize the Web presentation while insulating the developers from the swift technology changes. Our team can concentrate on the business requirements and programming while Visual Lansa keeps the web site up to the latest state of the art.

Cons:

Visual Lansa Frameworks uses component technology to build the application. Our development team had to establish a methodology to ensure all objects were promoted to production when a new release of the Web site is required. This past month Lansa released a new version of VLF with task tracking capability which will keep track of all software objects. Lansa continues to listen to the user community and now our biggest concern using the product has been eliminated.

Meyer E.

Wholesale

201-500 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Reviewed July 2017

This product has been a game changer for our company. Write code once and port to host/web/mobile.

Ability to access data on different platforms and present it on a web/mobile interface (see the FrameWorks portion of Lansa). This product enables us to leapfrog a number of technologies and I don't need to hire extra staff to develop the UI, security models, font/back-end javascripting, etc. We expanded the capabilities of our current staff and brought them to the future with little pain and not an extensive learning curve from their previous capabilities. A lot of the power that Lansa delivers is hidden under the covers and this saved us a ton of money, time and hiring extra resources.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

As a database admin I appreciate how you can easily find what object I need changed - be it structure, attribute or a file/field level rule. From that object I can collect all the other related objects in a list that should be compiled as a result of my changes. It won't let me save a change if I didn't do it properly and the software gives me indication exactly where if found an issue so I can resolve it. The software designers provided a feature rich user interface. There are a number of built in capabilities (that I'm not even sure when I will get to using them) so I'm sure we're not going to be outgrowing this product any time soon.

Cons:

When checking out/in or compiling there are a number of queues set up to handle these different requests. I would actually like an option to have 1 queue so if I know I am compiling 100 files and want to check them back in I would like to queue up that sequence and not need to wait for the compiles to finish before making my request to check them back in. Would also like audible feedback if a compile failed or an object was locked when checking in so I can work on other things and be interrupted only when necessary. Right now I'm a little glued to the process to verify everything is going as planned until the next action can be taken.

Michael F.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

1001-5000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed February 2020

Visual Lansa Review

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The IDE's inherent usability and straight-forward integration features.

Cons:

Not very much documentation or presence online when a problem occurs.

Vendor Response

Michael, Thank you for your review of Visual LANSA! We understand our lack of documentation and online presence has been an issue and we are really working hard to improve our customer experience in those areas. Be on the lookout for some exciting improvements in the areas of documentation and online training.

Replied February 2020

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