Bonita Reviews

We are in the early stages of testing this solution. It is used for business process automation.

One of the most valuable features is you can create without coding, it is a low code platform.

There could be an improvement in IoT connectivity.

I have been using this solution for a couple of days.

We have used Novacura.

The installation was easy.

We have an internal team that does the implementation of Bonita.

The price of the solution is reasonable.

We have evaluated Pega.

I rate Bonita seven out of ten.

On-premises

We are an implementation partner, and we implement Bonita. Most of our implementations are on-premises.

It is used for process and workflow automation. When there is heavy customization in the process Bonita is the best compare to other products in the market. We have implemented 30+ processes for various customers (Pharma, Manufacturing, Financial). The tool is very easy to use and built on open-source technology. Easy to integrate with external systems.

Flexible and drag-and-drop type of UI is very valuable. The integrations are also very good. You can build workflows very quickly, which is my favorite activity. By using the GUI, you can build the entire mechanism, notifications, and all this kind of stuff.

I should be able to park the tasks that are within a process in a kind of container, and dynamically, a super admin should be able to connect these processes. This kind of feature might be helpful.

We have been using this solution for eight years.

It is stable.

It is scalable. It is robust enough to scale to additional properties. You can also have a clustering mechanism. It is robust enough for a workflow solution.

We have four active customers, and we have done implementation for close to eight customers.

We are their premium partners. They are very helpful and nice. They provide very good technical support.

It is a very straightforward process. It is a hassle-free installation. It took less than four or five hours.

We have a team of close to 20 members. For simple implementations, we have two to three members.

Licensing cost for the Enterprise edition comes out to be around 40,000 a year. There is also a Community edition, which is free. Some customers can go for the Community edition, but some of them require the Enterprise edition. Big companies go for the Enterprise edition, which comes with a lot of additional features such as a mobile app.

I would recommend this solution. Small and medium businesses can use this product.

I would rate Bonita a seven out of ten.

On-premises

I have been using Bonita to develop processes using the Bonita Studio. We have only been using it for simple, object console processes. 

The user interface is better than all of the open-source BPMs that I have tried.

I have run into a lot of problems because there is not enough documentation. They should include more examples, as well as sample source code.

We have to relied on community support because we are using the open-source version. There are community websites available to help.

We are using the Community Version, which can be used free of charge.

I was having some trouble running my processes so I have compared Bonita with some other open-source BPM solutions.

In general, Bonita is a very good solution. It is open-source and has a good UI. I find that it is the best in terms of management for BPM features.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Private Cloud

The solution has good graphics and a good user interface.

The community edition has limited module functionality. If they could release some of the functionality that's available in the enterprise edition that would be helpful to those learning to use the solution.

I've been using the solution for three years.

The solution is stable. Even the older versions are stable.

I'm not a developer and the community edition is limited, so I can't speak to the scalability of the solution. I'm the only user of the solution in the company. Currently, I'm testing it to see how it works.

I've never had to contact technical support.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The community version of the solution is very straightforward to set up. It was quick to deploy on the desktop.

We use the on-premises deployment model and the Bonita Community Edition of the solution.

I can recommend the solution. It's very robust. I'd rate it seven out of ten; I'd rate it higher if the community edition was able to offer more collaboration capabilities.

I use this as part of my solution for BPM (Business Process Management) development. 

The most useful feature for me is using Bonita as part of my modeling process. I use Bizagi and Bonita together to create the process, pages, and forms.

In my experience, the response with the desktop application and the mobile application lag a bit and the product needs to improve in that way. I should be able to type the text — for example, type the CSS — and the code should generate automatically with little lag at all. This would make Bonita much better.

I think Bonita is a powerful BPM but it seems to be lacking some features compared to other products. First, they need to improve the form builder and the page designer. If I could add to the product, there are features I think would make it more complete. For example, I recently researched ProcessMaker and it has additional features for the framework, support desk, and a workflow engine. Bonita does not have a workflow engine and I don't think that Bonita can connect to the API through other systems or not. If it doesn't have that ability to connect to web API to test their service, testing seems incomplete. So Bonita is easy to use but it seems to be missing some powerful features that competing products have. 

I think the most important feature I would like to add is a mobile version of the Bonita application. The organization manager, or other executives in the organization, need to be able to connect to the BPMS with a mobile application when they are outside of the company. It's very important that the BPMS supports a mobile application with full access to all of the features. For example, if I am in sales and I have a Bluetooth device, I need to be able to access all parts of the application from remote locations and it should be responsive. 

I have been using this product for about six months

Bonita is stable. The view of the resulting web pages is not always right in either the mobile or desktop version and needs revision for improving response time. But the product itself is stable.

Really I use two products at the same time for business process management. I think Bizagi is a powerful software or tool for organization, but Bonita is user-friendly and easy-to-use — easier to use for development. Bizagi has a lot of features that Bonita doesn't have. Together they have all of the functionality I need. 

The product installed easily and it was not hard to get started using it.

I did the installation myself.

For my R&D, I used trial versions to compare Bonita with the other BPMs like Bigazi, Appian, BPM Anywhere and Oracle Suite. After comparisons, I chose Bonita for my application because it was easy-to-use.

On a scale from one to ten where ten is the best, based on my experience, I would give it an eight. It is not a ten because it needs to improve in feature availability.

I am using it in a development/pre-production environment for testing.

not used in production.

I really enjoy using the workflow management tool.

We are workiong hard to get integrations nailed down.

I have been evaluating the solution for the last month.

I can't evaluate it yet as it has has not been moved into any UAT or production environment.

Not evaluated yet.

For most of the issues, I can find support in the Bonita community. There are useful resources from the Bonita community. It is easy to pull information from the community.

I found it when I was searching the Internet for open source solutions. I found a couple of recommendations for Bonita so we added it to our testing platform candidates. 

The initial setup is not easy, but manageable when in virtual environment. We are testing the docker container option.

In-house

The Community Edition comes free of charge.

We are considering Bonita over other BPM solutions because of its querying tools.

Rely on the community.

I have it working with Docker and Virtual Machines.

The ability to integrate with Java modules and Java injections is an advantage over other products in the market.

Other products are much easier to get started with because they offer wizards. It would be nice to have a wizard to help walk through the development process and create a backbone. Then, after this, you can just develop and create additional features through Java injections, etc. It should be possible to develop at a higher level.

A more user-friendly interface, especially for beginners, would be a good improvement.

Three years.

I have not had any negative experience with regards to the stability of the platform. I use other products, especially for Beta integration purposes, and these are not as stable as Bonita. Compared to other products on the market, Bonita presents a pretty acceptable level of robustness.

I do not have experience in scaling up the platform but I expect that it is similar to other products.

We have approximately fifty people using this solution, all of which are end users.

I did not have occasion to speak with technical support.

The solution that I used prior to this was developed in-house and it is difficult to compare because it does not exist as a market product.

The initial setup is not easy compared to other products. To me, it is acceptable, but there are other vendors who provide much more guidance for the customer.

Maybe for beginners, there are more friendly products, but for users who are a bit more experienced, and I'm not talking about experts, I think that Bonita is a pretty good choice.

I have not experienced any limitations that blocked our implementation that was agreed upon by the client.

My advice for people looking to implement this solution is to look at what Bonita can offer, and then review and compare other products. After this, gather some experience or review the market to search for experts who can facilitate or support the implementation. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

It is powerful in developing applications.

The GUI designer must be improved. When you generate a form it does not generate so well.

Three to five years.

I have not encountered issues with stability.

I have not encountered issues with scalability.

I would rate the level of technical support as highly effective.

I did not previously use a different solution. 

This solution was relatively complex to implement.

This is a very good financial choice.

It is a great product but it has a considerable learning curve.

• Process automation with Bonita BPM is really easy.
• Price to service ratio with Bonita BPM is good.
• Forms to interact with users are really good in Bonita BPM.
• Integration with existing systems is easy with Bonita BPM connectors.
• Java integration is powerful enough to solve any complex problems.

I have solved a lot of Banking problems using Bonita BPM, from customer hiring to credit evaluation.

We have developed more than 20 processes in banking industries using the Bonita BPM platform.

Automation in vacation of a human resources replacement would be a good improvement in the product.

I have been working with Bonita BPM for five years.

I have used Bonita BPM since version 5.10. The current version is 7.5.

The product runs steadily stable every time.

It is recommendable to use a stable version. This means do not use a new version. In example, if the last version is 7.6 it is recommendable to use the last update of 7.5. This is nothing different to other softwares.

I never had scalability issues.

I rate technical support with a nine out of 10. They have two support centers and they can cover all the time zones. Depending on the level of contracted support they can answer in a day or hours.

I do not use a previous solution but I tested some others before I used Bonita BPM.

I chose Bonita because their price/service relation. You have a good value for your money invested in Bonita BPM.

Initially with version 5, it was really simple to develop our first solution. We could to program our first solution without any training course. We used a consultant service just to configure our production server.

Now, I think that a training course is a good idea to apply the better practices using the product.

The price is good, but I do not like the process instance annual quantity pricing base used today.

Nowadays, I think the price would not be good for small companies. For medium and large companies, it could still be a really good option.

We considered ProcessMaker initially, but in those times (in the year 2012), Bonita was really the best option.

If you are trying to use a BPM solution for a core business implementation, I would strongly consider to use a subscription version (a licensed one). Do not use a community edition for business core implementations: Just because of the support service. In the community edition, you will be quite alone because Bonita BPM community is not as active, like others.

The most valuable features are:

• Development of forms and flows
• Flow execution
• Database connectors

In my MBA class, I use Bonita BPM to teach BPMN design and execution.

The Cloud version should have a different billing model. I have installed the image of Bonita BPM on Amazon AWS and there is just one option to use and pay for.

I have used this solution for two years.

Bonita BPM is simple and fast. It is very easy to install and use.

Scalability of the Bonita BPM Community version is low. The paid version may be better, but I don't have contact with it.

I use the Community version that doesn't have support. Documentation is weak.

Oracle BPM was too heavy and complex, I needed a simpler solution and that is why I selected this solution.

The setup was very easy.

We evaluated other solutions, such as Oracle, IBM, and MuleSoft.

The important criteria while selecting a vendor are support, good price, good quality and performance.

You should check also Oracle and IBM BPM on cloud. However, if your company doesn't have a big budget, then Bonita BPM could be a good option.

I was tasked with evaluating three different BPM vendors for my organization. Of the 3 I evaluated, Bonita was the best in:

• creating forms
• ease of customization of forms
• versatility of supported platforms (we have both Macs and Windows machines, and the Studio will work on both)
• It is the only BPM platform that I've seen so far that allows for versioning of artifacts.
• Though we'd like to have a totally non-programming implementation, Bonita facilitates scripts where needed. It doesn't use any type of proprietary scripting language, like I saw in some other BPM products.

Our first use case is not in production yet, but our business users have expressed how they feel it will add the needed checks and reviews to an area where data was updated without any type of review process.

The documentation and examples definitely could be enhanced.

6 months

Not in production yet.

It has been very stable in our dev environment so far.

It was very easy to install both the studio and the server engine.

We installed it via our in-house team.

BizAgi, Process Maker

Before choosing any BPM product, definitely do a real world POC with and test ease of connectivity to external systems via REST or SOAP, evaluate ease of form development, and ease of custimization.

1- Rapid Live Process Design and verification

2- Webservices and Connector

3- Form Builder

1- Designing processes is a two way street: you design and verify and the verification process usually is a guess work. But with Bonita BPM, you can run the process (as it will in the final stage) immediately after the design stage, giving you 100% control over the quality of your processes and flows.

2- Designing processes requires interaction with other systems to get, set, update and delete objects. With Bonita Connectors, it's really easy to design and run processes which interact with other systems.

3- Quick prototyping by utilizing the Form Builder, get your data as per your requirements and prototype the process/application FAST!

BPMN 2.0 notations are not all supported, would love to see them all coming in (e.g. complex gateway)

1. User friendly
2. Easy implementation
3. Reduced cycle time to implement a process
4. Bonita Studio provides a more look & feel and flexibility for changing the process and forms

BPM helps to automate complicated processes.

It requires improvements for better look & feel and for flexibility in changing the code in the portal.

It's been four years.

No issues.

Customer Service:

Good

Technical Support:

The community forums are very good for providing answers on technical issues.

It is a good product!

Real java-like hooks into development of the business process model. The Connector implementation is a great addition to an out-of-box solution providing robust features for the developer to build hassle-free integrations. I also really liked the way Bonitasoft lets you define and configure how your connector interface is exposed to others leveraging your custom connector.

Would love for some of the documentation to be better, since there are many great functionalities built into the product!

No

At times Bonita BPM Studio crashes, intermittently.

Customer Service:

9

Technical Support:

9

No, very straight forward.

In-house.

Process modelling and web screen development

The major improvement that I see is a paradigm shift to how work should be accomplished over how the industry has always been forced to do the work. Historically, there was a 'no man's land' between the business analyst and the developer. Web developers have been asked to understand the business process models without knowledge that the real business analysts have always had at their finger tips and visa-versa. 

BonitaBPM allows the BA's to model the processes and produce the base screens at the same time. This removes the need for back and forth exchanges between the team disciplines, reducing errors and time. It also allows the developers to spend their time doing what they know and are well paid to do, coding.

The menus likely would be more intuitive if read in French. Things seem to be under strange headings at times. With experience this is a minor issue for the gain.

We only use the open source product, so this is not a real complaint as much as a statement: Support for the open source is only at the highest levels of usage. Getting down to the details is an exercise one needs to plan for or purchase the commercial offering.

I hope to use this product for many years to come. It is more than helpful, it is worth the effort of learning to better our company.

• Ease of implementation
• Reduced cycle time to implement a process
• Studio provides an opportunity to get early feedback from real users and quickly change the process and forms

7 months

No

No issues.

No issues.

Customer Service:

Good

Technical Support:

Excellent

No previous solutions.

In-house

With our own processes, we have found the extensible connector system to be very useful (our processes can connect with legacy and 3rd party systems in a simple, well defined way).

When we interact with clients, the BPM workflows from Bonita BPM make defining processes and clarifying system flow much easier.  We used to draw system diagrams on whiteboards; now, we create simple models as functional demos. 

Our lead generation system involves both automated and human tasks. By centralizing the workflow to our internal Bonita BPM system, we have improved the conversion rate (leads to customers) and lowered the number of leads dropped. Things do not slip through the cracks any longer.

A number of the problem areas that we have run into in the past have been addressed in the newest version (7.0 beta). Things like custom app integration and human task forms have been greatly simplified.

That said, creating custom connectors for 3rd party applications and APIs is still a challenging task. Debugging, in particular, is difficult. I feel that when the development process for custom connectors becomes simpler, there will be many more available connectors.

We have been using this software internally and for our clients since 2011

We have always deployed servers using Apache Tomcat. Our team is most familiar with this Java Application Server. Since our applications have always run as stand alone systems, this makes sense - if they required a full JEE stack, we would look at JBoss (with it's increased functionality and complexity).

The deployed systems have been fairly stable. Most of the challenges we have run into have been as a result of the hardware and network infrastructures - not as a result of Bonita.

So far, we have not had to scale beyond a single server install. The software has scaled up to hundreds of concurrent processes and run well on the single server.

Generally, the customer service has been great. I have interacted with a number of people at BonitaSoft (Jon Sanchez and Olivia Halaimi stand out in my memory as particularly nice to work with), all have been pleasant and helpful.

Previously, we developed custom business systems. We switched to Bonita because it cut down development time and is easier to demo to prospective clients.

The initial install of Bonita Studio is very simple.

The jump from Bonita Studio to a full installation requires a solid understanding of IS and the resources to implement internal server deployments. It's quite a large jump from a demonstration with a desktop studio to even a simple deployment in a real world system.

We implemented with our in-house team.

The return on investment is difficult to quantify because Bonita BPM has become tightly integrated in all our internal processes.

I can say that 2014 saw a 50% increase in staffing and an 80% increase in gross revenue over 2013 (when we first implemented Bonita BPM internally). 2015 is on track to show even more significant increases.

We took a look at a number of the open source BPM solutions (including Activiti, JBPM and Drools). We found that Bonita BPM provided the best balance of clarity for non-technical users and development flexibility.

• User friendliness
• Ease of implementation
• Vendor responsiveness

Bonitasoft helped us automate complicated and labor intensive processes

No

No

Customer Service:

Good. Timely and adequate.

Technical Support:

Good. Timely and adequate.

No

In-house implementation

** Collaborative model based on a shared BPM repository ** Business process models and various integrated Look'n'feel Custom ** Assistance for queries creation, connectors and component services ** Java REST API + EJB2/EJB3 and Clustering ** Research data and processes + Error Handling ** Application server Tomcat, JOnAS, JBoss, and Weblogic and other ** Multiple connectors (ERP, CRM, Web Services, Social Networks, ECM, Google products, couriers ... etc..) for free use ** Mobile portal available (rendering and performance not tested yet) ** BPM engine used on platform or isolated ** Research modules on our implemented data and processes

N/A

* The support is mandatory to access all features (Subscription), may they can have a different business model * Requires programming knowledge for implementation and management of heterogeneous connectors. I'll advice to combine some features/connectors for internal offer without using an external editor * Rules engine recently added and with gaps, must be optimized

I used Bonita for prototypes and small projects to demonstrate its functionnalities

Yes, some because lack of knowledge on the product

No

I didn't test the product in greater perimeter.

Customer Service: Very good, also the commercial team !Technical Support: Perfect ! and the community is a great help also

No

A little complex for a non initiate person

I was the vendor...

N/A

Yes, for the study. ACTIVITI, IBM BPM and BIZAGI

It's a good product and a rich service behind that