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ARIS BPA 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 BPA
Ranking in Business Process Design
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (8th)
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 BPA is 7.5%, down from 9.1% 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

Tamer Eldamanhouri - PeerSpot reviewer
Empowers teams with robust business process modeling capabilities
They should examine competitor solutions to identify differentiators. One issue related to ARIS BPA is its integration with AI; it has AI features for cloud solutions, yet many in the government sector in Kuwait do not view the cloud as viable. Software AG should focus on developing AI models for ARIS BPA on-premises, particularly in user interfaces, as well as creating predefined business processes for common areas such as HR and finance. This aspect is crucial for adapting to the market's needs and streamlining custom solutions. While they have been helpful regarding pricing, I cannot compare ARIS BPA to other business process modeling tools because I understand some competitors have significantly lower costs than ARIS BPA. To maintain market share, good discounts should be provided to customers.
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

"Business Process Analysis: We can simulate, optimize, and analyse business processes based on various business requirements. It assures our rolling out the best processes."
"The most valuable features are business process modeling and reporting."
"The solution's basic features are easy to use, overall designed well, and it has good process mining analysis."
"I am impressed with the tool's integration. It also facilitates collaboration in the organization."
"The stability of the ARIS BPM platform is quite good. The nice thing about it is the central database, where we can use all of our data. We can even manage users."
"There is a really powerful reporting API that allows you to create almost any kind of report you want out of your process and document repository."
"ARIS Reporting – Helps download valuable content from the tool in multiple formats."
"The whole ARIS BPM solution is a bit special, because from the very beginning it was targeted more to Business users and the Management."
"The most valuable features for us are impact analysis, where I can easily visualize the impact of change."
"Support for a broad range of data sources from relational to big data to the Cloud."
"I really liked that it mapped out processes and was able to attach the data model to the appropriate process. You could map out the process, then when you got down to a specific couple of data elements, you could attach the table in the database that supported that process. You could connect it with erwin Data Modeler for that."
"You can use different kinds of diagrams to represent the architecture setting."
"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."
"I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability..."
"By placing the data and the metadata into a model, which is what the tool does, you gain the abilities for linkages between different objects in the model, linkages that you cannot get on paper or with Visio or PowerPoint. That is a huge discriminator."
"Forward and reverse engineering were valuable features."
 

Cons

"The solution's processes are huge and it is not easy to get an overview of how things work. It needs to improve the interface. I would like to see the product include a better overview of processes and improve search."
"Some improvements have been done, after Software AG acquired ARIS, but I don't believe it's still integrated with the other tool WebMethods in a perfect way."
"The tool must provide more documents."
"There should be a more intuitive tool when creating reports."
"Newer versions (9.x) are technically more difficult to maintain."
"Simulation is one area that is a bit complex."
"ARIS BPA needs to be more accurate when generating documents."
"One thing that could be improved is regarding the handling of the content itself. Maybe ARIS could provide a set of best practices, or best processes, so that people do not have to start from scratch."
"The solution needs to focus on allowing for more integrations."
"Business process modelling could be improved."
"It could have had a more streamlined navigation. It seemed that when you went to the explorer panel, there were just so many different ways of doing the work that I could not remember, "How did I do this? How did I get to that point in that model to get back to it?" If I wanted to build a new one, where do I start? It just seemed like there was such a smorgasbord of ways of doing it that it was just overwhelming."
"I feel that the UML drawing capability needs to be improved."
"There might be improvement required to better support some of the MPP databases for non-relational data structures and NoSQL databases."
"What they need to do is to consolidate more of their products. For example, I was just looking and I couldn't figure out what erwin DT is. It's on the website but it would help if they could put information together and make it more clear as to what products they have and how they work with other things."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is a bit pricey."
"Pricing for ARIS BPA is average, not cheap or expensive. It's cost-effective and worth the money we pay."
"The solution has a fair price for the value it delivers."
"It is an expensive solution."
"​It is on the higher side."
"The product is expensive."
"Usually, our company buys technical support from the Software AG site. We bought the technical support for the first year of usage for ARIS version 6 and 7. So, when we migrated to ARIS version 7, we bought support only for the first year. Then, we didn't use it the next year. Our experience was that we use it only one to three times during the first year. Therefore, there wasn't much value for us to buy this service because we have no problem with using ARIS after the first year."
"We have a concurrent license system."
"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."
"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."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."
"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 think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
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 do you like most about ARIS BPA?
The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are its flexibility and reporting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ARIS BPA?
Pricing for ARIS BPA is average, not cheap or expensive. It's cost-effective and worth the money we pay.
What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?
ARIS BPA needs to be more accurate when generating documents. While it covers many blueprints and functions that I need, the document generation feature could be enhanced for better accuracy.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

ARIS, ARIS BPM
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 BPA vs. erwin Evolve and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.