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ARIS Architect and Designer vs erwin Evolve 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

ARIS Architect and Designer
Ranking in Business Process Design
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
erwin Evolve
Ranking in Business Process Design
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of ARIS Architect and Designer is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Evolve is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Angie Ibrahim Eissa - PeerSpot reviewer
Utilizing advanced features to optimize and improve process modeling capabilities
ARIS Architect and Designer needs to improve its cloud version reliability, as I experienced data corruption that reverted diagrams to earlier versions. This issue, especially with large-scale diagrams, led to significant inconvenience due to the lack of partial data restoration capability. Additionally, an academic license would be beneficial to accommodate educational purposes.
Asish Sahu - PeerSpot reviewer
The reverse engineering capabilities are quite useful.
Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate the solution overall a ten out of ten."
"The most important feature is ARIS's ability to turn a process design into data to analyze anything you want. For example, we have some analysis reports in ARIS that can guide us when we want to change a system. It shows us how this change will affect all of the organization's processes."
"We use the product for modeling, conducting process checks, doing process flow, running, and analyzing the report."
"Its user interface is highly regarded, especially when compared with Visual Paradigm."
"One of the most valuable features is how user-friendly ARIS is, compared to other BPM tools. This tool has very diverse types of assets available. ARIS also has a lot of customizable options, different model types, object types, a number of attributes, and a lot of customization is possible. In comparison, Signavio is very limited in terms of model types and object types. So these customizations ARIS offers are really valuable to any client who wants to create a BPM repository."
"It's really fast. It's much faster compared to Enterprise Architect."
"The user interface is easy to work with."
"The support team is very responsive."
"I can send images in the PDF form, along with the relationships and the associations that are a very important part of what we do. It can show what is affected and what is impacted by a certain change in one area of the system architecture or enterprise architecture. I can very quickly draw those issues and topics to the fore."
"Support for a broad range of data sources from relational to big data to the Cloud."
"One of the most valuable features is the website that sits on top of the database. There's a database of objects and how they are related, and you can make views and diagrams and visual elements out of that information on the website. The website is the part that is called Evolve and we use the Evolve Designer and publish the website out to our employees. They can click around and navigate and search, etc."
"The initial setup was really straightforward and the deployment was done within one day."
"We use erwin Evolve to publish to the website. This allows us to enable publishing our website using parameterisation features. In a very fast, quick way, we can publish a table or chart onto a website."
"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."
"I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability..."
"The most valuable features for us are impact analysis, where I can easily visualize the impact of change."
 

Cons

"This product could be improved by lowering the licensing cost. More organizations could use ARIS if they slashed the licensing costs even a little bit."
"We face problems when the product's capacity is increased."
"The simulation part still has some way to go. It's a good feature, and it's something that other vendors don't have right now, but it can still be improved. Some features are needed in ARIS Architect, so advanced users can do things through drag-and-drop functionality."
"Sometimes, it's not easy to convince customers to use this methodology because it's a bit rigid."
"The customer service of ARIS Architect and Designer was disappointing. It took forty days to conclude that partial data restoration was not possible, and it was suggested that the data might have been accidentally deleted, despite evidence to the contrary."
"You can have a collaboration feature, but it's necessary to have ARIS Connect which is a separate, costly product."
"Sometimes we feel that the designer needs more usability. I understand that the web module or the cloud version is much more user-friendly and easier to work on compared to the client that we download."
"The product is not flexible."
"Business process modelling could be improved."
"The way that we are using it for application management, we have several KPIs. We want to follow and monitor them regarding a number of solutions. We cannot calculate this today. We would like real-time calculations along with the KPIs in order to improve the user experience. We would like the tool to be able to display this, not only as signals, but as charts."
"There might be improvement required to better support some of the MPP databases for non-relational data structures and NoSQL databases."
"They have improved the search engine a little bit but it can always be improved more. The more data you put inside it, the more you want to use it."
"I would like to see an improvement in the output of the solution."
"Add some ability to do conditional Visualization on the models and in reports (some ideas) – maybe as a specialized Theme or Diagram or Display."
"Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product."
"erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"The licenses are very costly. I've seen many people who are hesitant or not able to use ARIS Suite just because of the license cost. Even though they like all the functionalities and understand the value of everything ARIS provides, they aren't able to implement it."
"Many customers find the licensing configuration confusing. There are many different sub-details in the licensing, making it very difficult for us to understand what we are buying and what we are using with what."
"The tool is a little bit expensive."
"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."
"The licensing enables you to differentiate between people who edit the content and the people who consume it. We are able to keep the licensing costs down by keeping the "contributor" licenses to a minimum, and we then just roll out the content in a read-only version for the rest of our users."
"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."
"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"The cost is something like $15,000, per license. But I haven't looked at those numbers in three years. It was over $100,000 to initially set everything up and get it all configured."
"I estimate that we pay between $40,000 and $50,000 a year for the solution, not including the upfront costs to buy things the first time."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Government
10%
Performing Arts
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with ARIS Architect and Designer?
Sometimes we feel that the designer needs more usability. I understand that the web module or the cloud version is much more user-friendly and easier to work on compared to the client that we downl...
What is your primary use case for ARIS Architect and Designer?
The type of ARIS platform we use is on premise. It is not ARIS Cloud. We use ARIS Architect and Designer for process modeling, EPC, mostly, and we do not use ARIS BPA or Risk and Compliance Manager...
What do you like most about erwin Evolve by Quest?
We can efficiently deploy business models into the databases and generate SQL scripts.
What needs improvement with erwin Evolve by Quest?
erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses.
 

Also Known As

ARIS Architect & Designer, ARIS Architect, ARIS Designer
erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tesco, Weifu, Airbus, Siemens, Proximus, Alicorp, Sekerbank, Bancor, Philips,Sky, Emirates NBD, Dubai Municipality, Suva, U.S. Army, Australia Post, Westfalen Weser Energie - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as the market leader for process excellence with more than 30 years of experience in the market, 10 million users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.
AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Duke University, ESPN, Fidelity, GE, JP Morgan Chase, KPMG, McGraw Hill, NASA, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Scotland, Teradata, Union Pacific, Vodafone, Wells Fargo.
Find out what your peers are saying about ARIS Architect and Designer vs. erwin Evolve and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.