--- title: "Visual LANSA Software Reviews, Demo & Pricing - 2026" description: "Review of Visual LANSA Software: system overview, features, price and cost information. Get free demos and compare to similar programs." source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/app-development/visual-lansa-profile/" page_type: "product" language: "en" --- [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Application Development Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/app-development/) / Visual LANSA Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. Overview [Reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/app-development/visual-lansa-profile/reviews/) # Visual LANSA Review From $8.34/month Free trial 1 plan On this page - Overview - User Interface - Popular Alternatives - Pricing and Plans - Features - User Reviews ## Overview Visual LANSA 4.6 [(19)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/app-development/visual-lansa-profile/reviews/) Pricing Starting at $8.34 per month Top Alternatives ### 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. Do you work for Visual LANSA? [Manage this product listing](https://www.g2.com/products/visual-lansa-ide/claim_requests/new?auto=true) ## Visual LANSA User Interface ## Popular Visual LANSA Alternatives Main Product Visual LANSA 4.6 [(19)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/app-development/visual-lansa-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.21Ease of use - 4.24Value for money - 4.47Customer support - 4.26Functionality Pricing Starting at $8.34 per month Alternative Product [Shopney](https://www.softwareadvice.com/app-design/shopney-profile/) 4.9 [(42)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/app-design/shopney-profile/#reviews) Ratings Breakdown - 4.93Ease of use - 4.63Value for money - 4.97Customer support - 4.55Functionality Pricing Starting at $149.00 per month Alternative Product [Quickbase](https://www.softwareadvice.com/crm/quick-base-profile/) 4.4 [(333)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/crm/quick-base-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.15Ease of use - 4.12Value for money - 4.26Customer support - 4.27Functionality Pricing Starting at $35.00 per month Alternative Product [Creatio Studio](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bpm/creatio-appdevelopment-profile/) 4.9 [(34)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bpm/creatio-appdevelopment-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.85Ease of use - 4.90Value for money - 4.84Customer support - 4.94Functionality Pricing Starting at $40.00 per month Alternative Product [Caspio](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bpm/caspio-profile/) 4.6 [(249)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bpm/caspio-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.37Ease of use - 4.33Value for money - 4.47Customer support - 4.38Functionality Pricing Starting at $300.00 per month Alternative Product [Claris FileMaker](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bpm/filemaker-profile/) 4.3 [(208)](https://www.softwareadvice.com/bpm/filemaker-profile/reviews/) Ratings Breakdown - 4.10Ease of use - 4.01Value for money - 3.95Customer support - 4.28Functionality Pricing Starting at $16.50 per month ## 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 ## Visual LANSA customer ratings - Overall rating: 4.6/5 - Total reviews: 19 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 11 reviews (58%) - 4 stars: 8 reviews (42%) - 3 stars: 0 reviews (0%) - 2 stars: 0 reviews (0%) - 1 star: 0 reviews (0%) ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 4.2/5 - Value for money: 4.2/5 - Customer support: 4.5/5 - Functionality: 4.3/5 --- ### Lansa changed my whole development cycle - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Jon S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2018 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered 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: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### 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. --- ### Reduces technical baggage and allows you to focus on solving business problems - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Joe Y. - Industry: Staffing and Recruiting - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### 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. --- ### Order Entry Platform for 18 Years - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Robert D. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Media Production - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Ultimately satisfied our business and user needs. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### 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 --- ### LANSA has provided the easiest development effort for any platform of any tool I have used - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: David N. - Industry: Wholesale - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### 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. --- ### Best Low Code Development Software in the Market - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Benzy W. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Legal Services - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### 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 --- ### Easy to Use Development and Maintenance Tool - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Muhammad F. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Financial Services - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered 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: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### 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. --- ### 20+ years and it's never let me down - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: steve p. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Libraries - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### 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 --- ### Visual Lansa Frameworks product is the tool to Web enable a large Lansa based ERP Legacy system - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Marc L. - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: August 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### 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. --- ### This product has been a game changer for our company. Write code once and port to host/web/mobile. - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Meyer E. - Industry: Wholesale - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 6 months - Reviewed: July 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### 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. --- ### Visual Lansa Review - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Michael F. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### 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 --- Showing 1 - 10 of 19 Reviews [See All Reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/app-development/visual-lansa-profile/reviews/) ## See what companies are saying about Software Advice