Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Avolution ABACUS vs BiZZdesign HoriZZon comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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

Avolution ABACUS
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
BiZZdesign HoriZZon
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
6th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.6%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BiZZdesign HoriZZon is 4.9%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

JoseCamacho - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports evaluating architecture through corporate objectives
I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommendations I conduct evaluations to identify potential improvements and make recommendations, forming a…
BijoyTalukder - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to get a clear overview of our enterprise architecture, especially when dealing with multiple departments
One area where BiZZdesign HoriZZon could use some improvement is in its REST APIs. While the platform offers REST APIs, they have limitations when it comes to retrieving and exporting data. Obtaining detailed information at the individual application or component level, including IDs, costs, and deployment-related data, can be challenging through these APIs. This limitation makes it difficult to smoothly export such granular data. I have raised this issue with the BiZZdesign team, and they expressed interest in addressing it, but I'm not aware of the current status of this improvement effort. Nonetheless, improving the usability and flexibility of the REST APIs for data extraction is an area that could enhance the platform's capabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is easy to use and well-structured for the integrations we need it to make."
"The most valuable feature is the traceability, you can trace any object to the other."
"There are plenty of features available such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard."
"Scalable and stable tool for roadmapping and modeling, with a good dashboard, end-to-end impact analysis, and portfolio management."
"The technical support is very good. They are responsive and the answers they provide are detailed."
"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."
"The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating with other tools like BI, Power BI, or Grafana requires setting up pipelines between them."
"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."
"The powerful editing function in teamwork project-based, common or shared modeling, based on a powerful repository and knowledge sharing in a portal are the most valuable features. These are the most important features for me. I can add the integration of individual modeling notations like Archimate plus BPMN and DMN, and so on. We travel from one location to another and the tool allows us to keep track."
"It is very easy to use. I can just click on an application component and find out if we are using this particular component. This provides us flexibility."
"I used BiZZdesign HoriZZon at two organizations. At Manchester Metropolitan University, I used it with a small team for architectural modeling of the student record system. We modeled teams, process objects, and their interactions with applications. We also used it to model a gradual rollout with plateaus showing migration over time. At the BBC, I used it to model software services for publishing content online. I showed key model views to senior stakeholders using Horizon, allowing them to modify and score applications and services."
"The tool's most valuable feature is that its collaboration part is very good."
"One of the main advantages of this solution is that they have representation in the Open Group Forum, which means that any changes in ArchiMate are immediately implemented in BiZZdesign."
"The feature I find most valuable is that the start times and loading times are short. It takes only a few seconds to load the repository and whenever I want to open diagrams, they are there almost immediately."
"The most valuable features are the application, portfolio, data, architectures, and modeling things."
"BiZZdesign HoriZZon is scalable, and I'd give it an eight out of ten for scalability. Our customers are enterprise level companies, but the solution is suitable for small and mid-sized companies as well."
 

Cons

"While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product."
"The reporting could be easier to configure."
"Avolution ABACUS has the drawback of needing data filtering at the development level, unlike some tools that offer filtering at deployment. Two areas where Avolution ABACUS could be improved are regional support and flexibility in model selection. Sometimes, it's challenging to access support or updates in certain regions, which can slow down progress. Additionally, it would be beneficial if the tool allowed more flexibility in selecting multiple models within a single unit."
"In the future, there could be improvements in integration and enhancements."
"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."
"Having more control over page size is lacking in this product. Print utilization also needs to be improved."
"Their local presence in the Middle East could be scaled more, particularly in customer service. It would be good if they'd also have mobile dashboards for executive management out of the box."
"While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product."
"I have seen table charts where, if the chart is a little too big, it does not fit in HoriZZon and it is not at all visible... There have been several times where we could not publish a chart properly and we had to break the chart into small tables and create multiple artifacts, creating a complete mess. This should be seriously taken up by BiZZdesign because there is a lot of scope for improvement in terms of usability. It's not at all good, unfortunately."
"The ability to generate charts and deal with a use case involving Kibana was quite difficult."
"It lacks capabilities with regard to infrastructure modeling."
"The automatic data collection and interface need improvement."
"It takes a long time to learn and understand, which is a learning curve you have to go through, but once you know how it works, it's very nice to work with."
"There is room for improvement in making it more seamless between the modeling and the analysis pieces. Sometimes you have to do some work in the backend to ensure that the HoriZZon portal really gets all of the information the way you want it. They are working on the seamlessness between what they call Enterprise Studio and HoriZZon."
"One area where BiZZdesign HoriZZon could use some improvement is in its REST APIs."
"There's room for improvement. When I finished using it over a year ago, I discussed implementing C4 notation with BiZZdesign HoriZZon.They've likely done this now, but I haven't seen it. Setting up interactive views for stakeholders to score services was a bit difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"
"It is expensive."
"To get a fairly extensive license for Enterprise Architects from Spark is approximately US $400.00, maybe less, but with Avolution Abacus it was approximately US $2000.00 per year, and that includes maintenance with the Abacus tool."
"I'm paying on a yearly basis. I don't know whether it's a highly expensive tool or not. I'm getting a single version of it, and I don't have the enterprise part on it because I don't need the server component, and I don't need a web browser component. My estimate would be that it's a very reasonably priced tool given that you don't need to have licenses with everyone in order to get the information and the decision support capabilities out of the tool. You use the enterprise edition on top of the studio, which is the heart of the tool. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."
"The pricing is quite good compared to the competition and it is part of the reason we chose the product."
"The solution's pricing is not an issue."
"It is competitive. It is not chump change. I am just using the studio version. I am not using the full enterprise version, which would probably cost me three times more for single-use, but it gives a lot more capability and analysis. It is server-based as well, and it is reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other tools. There are other tools that have other sorts of capabilities, but in order to use them, you'd really have to have like 50 users for the price to become justifiable."
"If one is very cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a seven out of ten."
"In terms of this particular product usage, my clients currently only use per-user licenses."
"First and foremost within the scope of improvement for the solution would be the cost. It's very costly..."
"[The] Orbus... pricing model was based on every single functionality having a price. The pricing was comparable but if we wanted to scale, it would have ended up being a lot more expensive. BiZZdesign gave us one price with all of the functionality, and we could scale as much as we needed."
"We were customers and bought licenses from them. We used their remote instance initially but upgraded to the on-device version due to lag. For pricing, we paid about 2200 pounds a year per seat for the client installation at an educational rate. I'm not sure about commercial rates. I managed to get a free copy at BBC since it was for evaluation purposes."
"The pricing model is slightly on the high side and could be more competitive for long-term partnerships."
"I haven't found any issues with the scalability and licensing parts that are access-related."
"The price is reasonable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Architecture Management solutions are best for your needs.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Educational Organization
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Avolution ABACUS?
The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating wit...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avolution ABACUS?
It's pricey compared to Essential, Deltek, or Essential Cloud. However, its diagramming capabilities and metamodel design make it worth it. But it's not for large user bases. It has modules for app...
What needs improvement with Avolution ABACUS?
While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product. It would be beneficial to have seminars or other met...
What do you like most about BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
This is one of the best tools, especially because of its collaborative nature. Anyone using it can access previous projects and related data. It's definitely a strong collaborative tool.
What needs improvement with BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
There is room for improvement in BiZZdesign HoriZZon. It's quite robust and has good online forums where people discuss it, though maybe the interface can improve, but I don't want to criticize it ...
What is your primary use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
The typical use case with BiZZdesign HoriZZon is basically for enterprise architecture and also for business process modeling.
 

Also Known As

No data available
HoriZZon
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays
T-Mobile, Shell, HSBC, Erasmus University, VIVAT Insurance
Find out what your peers are saying about Avolution ABACUS vs. BiZZdesign HoriZZon and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.