I’ve been talking to a few teams who’ve implemented Camunda, and there’s this consistent story about development costs spiraling. One team said they burned half their budget just on custom development and ongoing modifications. That got me thinking—is that inherent to the platform, or is it about how teams approach workflows?
The issue seems to be that once you’ve got a workflow in Camunda, any change requires developer involvement. Business stakeholders can’t touch it. So you end up with this backlog of small modifications piling up. Add in the fact that you’re probably paying enterprise rates for developers to handle something that feels like it should be modifiable by someone closer to the business, and the costs climb.
I’ve been researching whether there’s a better way to handle this. Some platforms let non-technical people adjust workflows without turning it into a dev project. But I’m skeptical—usually those tools feel limited or require significant rework when you need something beyond the basics.
Has anyone actually solved this? Can you really let business users own workflow modifications without it becoming a support nightmare? What’s your real experience with keeping development costs down while maintaining flexibility?
This is something we struggled with early on. Camunda workflows are powerful but they lock you into the developer lifecycle. Small changes that should take hours would take weeks because you need a developer to adjust the flow, test it, and deploy.
We started allowing limited modifications through a visual builder tool our team built. That helped, but it was custom work and fragile. Real breakthrough came when we switched the builder mentality—instead of locking everything in Camunda, we used a platform that lets business users adjust workflows visually without breaking the logic underneath.
The difference was dramatic. What used to be a backlog of requested changes became something people could implement themselves. We cut development involvement in workflow modifications by about 70%. Developers focused on complex integrations and business logic instead of acting as workflow custodians.
The expense isn’t really Camunda’s fault—it’s a fundamental issue with treating workflows as code. Once you do that, all changes require the full development cycle. Version control, testing, deployment, rollback capability. For something that changes frequently based on business needs, that overhead is brutal.
We reduced costs in two ways. First, we separated stable core logic that lives in Camunda from variable workflow patterns that sit in a more flexible layer. Second, we gave business users editing capability on the variable layer. Sounds simple but it cut our average change request from three weeks to three days.
The core issue is that workflow management became code management. Camunda is excellent when workflows are stable or changes are infrequent. But in dynamic business environments, you’re paying developer rates for tasks that don’t require developer skills. The solution isn’t necessarily leaving Camunda—it’s using it as your stability layer and putting a visual abstraction on top for variations. That separation costs less to maintain and scales better as change requests increase.
separate stable flows from variable ones. business users handle variables
You’re onto something real. We hit this exact wall with Camunda. Every workflow tweak meant a developer ticket. We had non-technical people describing changes that should take minutes, and they’d queue for weeks.
We switched to a no-code builder where business users can construct and modify workflows without developer involvement. Same integration capabilities, complete visual control. The shift was immediate—modification time dropped from 15 days to 2 days on average.
The financial impact was substantial. We stopped burning developer hours on workflow custodial work. Developers still owned integration setup and complex logic, but business users could iterate on workflow patterns independently. Your TCO calculation completely changes when business users can make changes without opening a ticket.
It’s not that Camunda is expensive—it’s that treating workflows like code is expensive when those workflows need frequent business-driven changes. A platform built for non-technical workflow building cuts that cost significantly without losing capability.
If you want to see how this works in practice, https://latenode.com lets you build and deploy without developer involvement while maintaining enterprise capabilities.