ARIS BPA vs erwin Evolve by Quest comparison

Software AG and erwin by Quest are both solutions in the Business Process Design category. Software AG is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3, while erwin by Quest is ranked #19 with an average rating of 9.0. Software AG holds a 7.6% mindshare in BPD, compared to erwin by Quest’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Software AG users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of erwin by Quest users who would recommend it.

ARIS BPA

Read 66 ARIS BPA reviews

4,394 Views
2,417 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

erwin Evolve by Quest

Read 19 erwin Evolve by Quest reviews

535 Views
114 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

ARIS BPA

erwin Evolve by Quest

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

ARIS BPA and erwin Evolve compete in the business process analysis category. ARIS BPA appears to have an advantage with its extensive modeling capabilities and comprehensive reporting features, while erwin Evolve is noted for its flexibility and strong system analytics.

Features: ARIS BPA is recognized for its comprehensive reporting, process analysis, and centralized repository, which supports effective documentation and collaboration. Users benefit from its object reusability and ability to model across various processes. Conversely, erwin Evolve is valued for its flexibility, strong system analytics, and notable integration and collaboration functionalities.

Room for Improvement: ARIS BPA users suggest enhancements in usability, integration processes, and streamlined reports generation. The complexity of its scripting language and dual interfaces also need improvement. For erwin Evolve, better integration with other systems and improved navigation and user-friendliness are desired.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ARIS BPA provides on-premises, hybrid, and cloud deployment options, and its technical support is generally rated positively despite some inconsistency. Erwin Evolve operates on public cloud and on-premises configurations, with reasonable support that customers appreciate for its direct approach but would prefer improved response times.

Pricing and ROI: ARIS BPA is considered costly with high licensing and maintenance costs, but worth it for large enterprises due to process transparency and efficiency gains. Erwin Evolve’s pricing is also high, posing challenges with licensing models. However, its adaptability and collaboration features offer benefits for ROI, especially in environments requiring extensive architectural modeling.

To learn more, read our detailed ARIS BPA vs. erwin Evolve by Quest Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ARIS BPA vs. erwin Evolve by Quest

June 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Management (BPM) (8th)

erwin Evolve by Quest

Ranking in Business Process Design

19th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Architecture Management (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of ARIS BPA is 7.6%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Evolve by Quest is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Business Process Design

Featured Reviews

Cirvesh-Daga

Director at T-Systems International GmbH

Capable of handling a wide range of business processes but presents users complexity with two interfaces (Java application and web interface)

ARIS needs to make a better user interface. The user interface sucks. The problem with ARIS is that they have two interfaces for the same product. You can use either a Java application or a web interface. The web interface doesn't give you access to the same features as the Java application. You have to switch between the two interfaces to get some things done. The web interface is more intuitive, but it lacks the functionality of the Java interface. So I'd give it a six for that reason. The Java interface has more functionality, but it tends to run out of memory and has its own set of problems. So, I'd also give it a six out of ten because of the technology choice. It was really frustrating having two UIs for the same product, with some functionality in one and not in the other. They've got to do something about that.

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Asish Sahu

SPM at Infosys

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ARIS BPA has a good directory option, which helps to keep track of all of your metadata, and that's very useful."

"I am an advanced user. ARIS BPM is intuitive for me because I know the UML, BPMN, and EPC methodologies implemented in this tool. It is very easy to create processes for restructuring a company with some descriptions."

"Also, the UML parts have been improved very much in the last two years. And it's very powerful now to combine the BPMN and UML parts in the product, because you can make a connection between them, so that you have the right interoperability between them. So if you're doing data modeling, you can use your class diagram and bind that to the BPMN part."

"One of the many advantages of ARIS is that it is supported by a very strong BPM community, which is critical for us. Although it has been in business for many years, it is still at an early stage of evolution. There are so many instances where your specific use case or requirement for using ARIS hasn't necessarily been matured across the sector. So, you need access to a very active community to help you explore possible solutions and ways in which ARIS can be used to achieve those use cases."

"The solution's basic features are easy to use, overall designed well, and it has good process mining analysis."

"The tool has good navigation."

"It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"In addition to our applications, we have also stored, in ARIS, the footprint of where those applications have been implemented. That means we know in which country a given application has been implemented. With embedded geolocation, we have a very visual world map, where we can see the footprint of each application."

More ARIS BPA pros

"Forward and reverse engineering were valuable features."

"Evolve is like a tank. You can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it. I think that it's not very aligned with the framework for enterprise architecture. MEGA is focused on these enterprise architectures, but it's only for that. With Evolve, you can do everything you want with professional services."

"You can use different kinds of diagrams to represent the architecture setting."

"We can efficiently deploy business models into the databases and generate SQL scripts."

"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."

"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."

"Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets."

"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."

More erwin Evolve by Quest pros

Cons

"Displaying role allocation matrix models in ARIS Connect needs improvement."

"The areas of ARIS where we see room for improvement are actually related to the background services that support it. Over the last number of years, Software AG has moved from an on-premises solution into deploying a SaaS solution to their enterprise base. That has been really successful from my point of view, as I have been a customer of ARIS, managing the relationship, for a couple years. Certain support functions around the knowledge base, customer service, and the cross and upselling of modules within the core ARIS component are lagging behind the SaaS movement."

"It needs external API and the ability to navigate back, similar to "Back" in web browser."

"There are reports available in ARIS and you can modify them a bit if you want something more specific, but it's not that easy to adjust them and make modifications. It would be nice to have some kind of tool to do that, something that is more user-friendly for people who are not too technical, so that they could create reports the way they want them."

"Regarding stability, when there are any customized settings being done at customer end - post upgrade to newer versions - it makes the customer environment unstable for a short duration."

"There are some things in the collaboration module that could be improved a little, such as the functionality which dynamically pushes notifications to interested people when a process changes during the Release Cycle Management workflow."

"Its governance tool and integration with ESB and execution engine can be improved. Their partner support can also be improved."

"The reporting capabilities and the ability to create custom reports need to be simplified and made easy so that people even with a good functional understanding of the tool can leverage it to create their own custom report."

More ARIS BPA cons

"erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses."

"I would like it to be easier to make changes and then deploy them into production, especially when you have multiple web servers or front-ends. It would be nice to make a change and then have it propagate to the production servers in a more automated fashion."

"The solution needs to focus on allowing for more integrations."

"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."

"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."

"If it had fewer features to model all kinds of architecture, it would be less complicated."

"The solution's integration capabilities with other tools in our system has not been all that well done. We have people who use ARIS, who use System Architect and, of course, Visio. erwin has very limited ways to import and export from those kinds of tools. It's not a very easy thing to do."

"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."

More erwin Evolve by Quest cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"Negotiate. Price is high so make sure you’re getting the best deal."

"From my point of view, no, it is not cheap, but it is not too expensive because you get this big organization behind it, technical support, and all those things. It's not so expensive to use. It's a Rolls Royce in this field, I know that. Even for small organizations, they can get so much effect from using this tool, in a very fast way, so the money will be back in the customer's pocket very fast."

"Prices are high. However, they are worth it if the organization utilizes the tool to its full potential."

"ARIS BPA is too costly from a licensing perspective."

"The price could be better."

"ARIS has different licensing mechanisms for different modules, but they are perpetual licenses. So you pay once."

"We have a concurrent license system."

More ARIS BPA pricing and cost advice

"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."

"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."

"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."

"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?

I find it difficult to access the database as I want with direct querying. I must write scripts, which requires specific knowledge. Software AG could improve this by making the database more open. ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering erwin Evolve?

I rate erwin Evolve by Quest a nine out of ten.

See all answers

What do you like most about erwin Evolve by Quest?

We can efficiently deploy business models into the databases and generate SQL scripts.

See all answers

What needs improvement with erwin Evolve by Quest?

erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 24% of the time

ADONIS vs ARIS BPA

Compared 10% of the time

Camunda vs ARIS BPA

Compared 7% of the time

Bizagi vs ARIS BPA

Compared 6% of the time

Visio vs ARIS BPA

Compared 6% of the time

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Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Evolve by Quest

Compared 23% of the time

LeanIX vs erwin Evolve by Quest

Compared 17% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Evolve by Quest

Compared 12% of the time

Avolution ABACUS vs erwin Evolve by Quest

Compared 9% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Evolve by Quest

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ARIS BPA

June 2025

Download ARIS BPA product report

Buyer's Guide

erwin Evolve by Quest

June 2025

Download erwin Evolve by Quest product report

Also Known As

ARIS, ARIS BPM

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture

Overview

ARIS is the market-leading solution for professional business process management and modeling. Whether you want to document the "as-is" state of your operations for quality or certification reasons or design the "to-be" in terms of continuous improvement in your transformation program, ARIS is the best choice for establishing a single source of truth regarding all process excellence topics in your organization. It is for any organization looking to digitally transform their business, increase operational excellence and customer experience and ensure compliance in execution. ARIS helps you to make the most out of your processes with Process Mining, Risk & Compliance Management, RPA and much more.

What makes the difference?

The most comprehensive platform for process excellence in the market
Easy to use
Covers business & IT architecture from all angles
Full flexibility and >100 diagram types
Customer-driven development based on best practices
Strong partner ecosystem

ARIS is the market-leading solution for any organization and ideally suited to digitally transform the organization, increase operational excellence and customer experience and ensure compliance in execution.

Software AG

erwin is used by more than 50,000 professionals in 60+ countries to get big results from their enterprise data initiatives. erwin is the #1 choice in virtually every industry, from government and healthcare to retail and finance.

erwin Modeling provides a collaborative environment to manage enterprise data through an intuitive, graphical interface. With a centralized view of key data definitions, you can leverage information as a strategic asset and more efficiently manage your data resources to save time and money.

erwin by Quest

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.

Buyer's Guide

ARIS BPA vs. erwin Evolve by Quest

June 2025

Free Report: ARIS BPA vs. erwin Evolve by Quest

Find out what your peers are saying about ARIS BPA vs. erwin Evolve by Quest and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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