Mendix is for organisations building a software delivery function. Cordango is for those avoiding one.
Mendix sits at the mature enterprise end of low-code. It uses AI across the delivery lifecycle rather than only at the moment of creation, it has proper application lifecycle management, and it deploys to public cloud, private cloud or your own Kubernetes. It is aimed at organisations that intend to build software as an ongoing capability, with the teams and the governance that implies.
Cordango is aimed at the opposite intention. Not a company building a delivery function, but one that wants several internal capabilities to exist without acquiring one. There is no deployment choice, no lifecycle tooling and no modelling language, because the foundation is fixed and the capabilities read it. Against Mendix that is a narrower product by a wide margin, and narrower is the argument rather than an apology for it.
Feature availability and pricing change. Every row is checked against the vendor's own current documentation, linked at the foot of this page.
Default means it is there without anyone setting it up. Available means the vendor supports it, sometimes only on a particular plan. Build or configure means it is possible and it is your work. Not a focus means the product is aimed somewhere else.
| Cordango | Mendix | |
|---|---|---|
| Building an app by describing it | Defaultthe normal way in, alongside ready-made capabilities | AvailableAI assists across the lifecycle. Modelling is still how applications get built. |
| Modelling and developer control | Not a focuspurpose-built screens from a shared vocabulary. There is no modelling language. | Defaulta full modelling environment, extensible with code |
| Shared company records across every app | Defaultorganizations and people are platform records. There is nothing to model first. | Build or configureshared domain models are achievable and are an architecture decision somebody owns |
| Application lifecycle management | Not a focusthere are no environments, branches or releases to manage. That is a limitation as well as a relief. | Defaultone of the strongest parts of the product |
| Organisation-level identity and roles | DefaultMicrosoft and Google sign-in on every plan, SAML and SCIM higher up | Defaultenterprise identity integration is well covered |
| Authorisation inside the app | Defaultenforced below the application, per entity, per field and per command | Build or configuremodelled per application, with fine control over the result |
| Audit across every app | Defaultfield-level history produced by the runtime, nothing to model | Build or configureachievable, and generally something you design into the application |
| Deployment choice | Not a focusCordango is a managed service in German data centres. There is no choice to make and none on offer. | Defaultpublic cloud, private cloud or your own Kubernetes |
| Somebody has to run the platform | Defaultnobody at your company does | Build or configureplatform owners, standards and a delivery process |
| German or EU data residency | DefaultGerman data centres, sub-processors published | Defaultdeploy where you like, including your own infrastructure |
| Track record at scale | Not yetCordango is onboarding early companies a handful at a time. We have no comparable deployment to point at. | Defaultlong-established in large enterprises |
| External assurance today | None yetwe hold no ISO 27001, SOC 2 or C5 certification and have commissioned no external penetration test. We say so on the DPA page rather than in a footnote. | Defaultan established enterprise assurance portfolio |
| Fit for a company without a delivery function | Defaultthis is the company Cordango is built for | Not a focusMendix rewards organisations that build one. That is a different customer. |
| One contract for the whole platform | Defaultapps are not priced separately. The tenth capability does not add a line item. | Availableenterprise licensing, usually negotiated rather than published |
Mendix answers a question Cordango does not ask: how does an organisation build and operate many applications well, over years, with many teams? Its answer is a modelling environment, lifecycle management, deployment flexibility and AI through the whole delivery process. For a company that intends to build software as a standing capability, that is the right shape.
Cordango assumes you are not going to do that. There is no modelling language, no environment strategy, no release process and no deployment choice. What replaces all of it is a company foundation that was decided before you arrived: organizations and people as platform records, rights checked underneath, one history across everything.
That is a much smaller product, and against Mendix it should be read as one. The case for it is that a great many companies need six internal capabilities and will never need a delivery function, and buying the platform that assumes otherwise is how you end up with neither.
Mendix is the better choice when the organisation intends to build software as a standing capability, when many teams will ship many applications, or when deployment to your own infrastructure is part of the requirement.
What we can show you, and what we cannot. Cordango holds no ISO 27001, SOC 2 or C5 certification today, and has not commissioned an external penetration test yet. We would rather you read that here than find it in procurement. Security and permissions at Cordango, and the data processing agreement in full.
Bring something you would otherwise scope as a low-code project. We will build it in the demo, on a company platform where the records, the rights and the history already exist.