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Alfabet Enterprise Architecture Management vs erwin Data Modeler comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alfabet Enterprise Architec...
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
18th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
erwin Data Modeler
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (9th), Data Governance (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Alfabet Enterprise Architecture Management is 2.7%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 8.8%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
erwin Data Modeler8.8%
Alfabet Enterprise Architecture Management2.7%
Other88.5%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

AlanJackson - PeerSpot reviewer
Great taxonomy support but raw business processing should be upgraded
Alfabet is not just a technology tool, it's also a business tool. And if a decision's made without the business involved, then Alfabet will not be in a position to deliver anything more than support for enterprise architect drawings and solutions drawings. It has to be the business. If you do that, it works well. If you don't and I've had the experience where they haven't evolved a business, then it just becomes a tech tool that the business doesn't care about. The stigma of having an environment that was so delayed in the maintenance caused lots of finger-pointing within the organization of who was right and who was wrong. It took a considerable period of time to move people past that point to actually look at it as a business tool supported by the technology team. I rate the solution seven out of 10.
JorgeSanz - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline data modeling and automate network changes for increased efficiency
The initial setup depends on the tool if you are using the data model environment. Stopping the server could be complex and require strong expertise. If you have everything set up and configured, Erwin is straightforward. You can deploy it in a few hours. In our case, it took a couple of months to address internal conditions, assign machines, and set up everything for the services. I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The taxonomy support across all the phases is the most advantageous feature."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its customizability, and flexibility in the configuration."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It takes two to three days to set up the environment. One person was able to handle the implementation."
"The solution is excellent in providing a visual representation of a database and can generate DDL for implementing changes. We use DDL for logical purposes to review with business people, ensuring they have the required fields for processing. We also use it as a data dictionary for the physical data model to understand all the purposes of the terms. This helps us map the logical and physical terms with the business definition to understand our data."
"One of the best aspects of the tool is its reverse engineering capability."
"The generation of DDL saved us having to write the steps by hand. You still had to go in and make some minor modifications to make it deployable to the database system. However, for the data lineage, it is very valuable for tracing our use of data, especially personal confidential data through different systems."
"It allows us to create logical data models. We can represent a database model in business terms, which is very useful for us."
"Another feature of erwin is that it can help you enforce your naming standards. It has little modules that you can set up and, as you're building the data model, it's ensuring that they conform to the naming standards that you've developed."
"It reduces monthly savings by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Think about a company like Costco and all of the points of sale systems in Costco, all of the systems, the applications, but if all the applications in Costco all had their own data model, trying to integrate those, upgrade them and manage their different versions of the same model throughout the store, is an absolute nightmare. It's phenomenally expensive. This helps reduce that cost significantly. I'm talking on the orders of hundreds of thousands of dollars."
"It supports a wide variety of databases, including the latest ones. We have chosen to go for a cloud-based database, and it supports that, which is very useful."
"We find that its ability to generate database code from a model for a wide array of data sources cuts development time. The ability to create one model in your design phase and then have it generate DDL code for Oracle or Teradata, or whichever environment you need is really nice. It's not only nice but it also saves man-hours of time. You would have to take your design and just type in manually. It has to take days off out of the work."
 

Cons

"The user experience, the layout and the different technologies behind the presentations are a bit old. These need to be updated. They should focus on web development. It's simply not supporting the current user experience guidelines."
"The product is not great at implementing security frameworks across an end-to-end supply chain."
"We would like to see the visualization of assets, as well as artificial intelligence techniques to assist us in making our decisions."
"The erwin ETL functionality has room for improvement when it comes to mapping databases with a classic entity-relationship model to a data warehouse model."
"The interface must be improved."
"The erwin Data Modeler is quite complex to use."
"I would like the solution to be more user-friendly to deploy."
"I would like to see improved reporting and, potentially, dashboards built on top of that. Right now, it's a little manual. More automated reporting and dashboard views would help because currently you have to push things out to a spreadsheet, or to HTML, and there aren't many other options that I know of. I would like to be able to produce graphs and additional things right in the tool, instead of having to export the data somewhere else."
"It does not have a cloud application."
"One of the things I've been talking to the erwin team about through the years is that every data model should have the ability to be multi-language... When I was working at Honda, it became very difficult to work with the Japanese teams using just one model. You can have two models, one in English and one in Japanese, but that means you have to keep the updates back and forth, and that always increases the risk of something not being updated."
"We can only get licenses through partners."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We've continued to use the product for many years and compared it with others on the market. The pricing is reasonable considering what the solution offers and what we pay. There are cheaper tools, but they may not be as robust and easy to use, so it's worth the money."
"The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors."
"erwin is expensive compared to other solutions. We are paying almost $6,000 per seat a month."
"The price of erwin Data Modeler is very expensive, in particular for this part of the world."
"There are two license options and the pricing is reasonable."
"Likewise, the solution is a little pricey."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
Forward engineering, DDL generation, reverse engineering, and reporting are the most valuable features of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I do not recall the pricing from about a year and a half ago, but it seems reasonable.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
erwin Data Modeler could improve its UI as it still feels old school and not very modern. There are many features, and I would expect good documentation detailing each feature, including when and h...
 

Also Known As

No data available
erwin DM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Metro Bank, Credit Suisse
 Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples
Find out what your peers are saying about Alfabet Enterprise Architecture Management vs. erwin Data Modeler and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.