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Avolution ABACUS vs LeanIX 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
LeanIX
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.7%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LeanIX is 16.0%, up from 13.8% 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…
Umit Sengul - PeerSpot reviewer
A platform that facilitates efficient IT architecture management and integration, improving organizational coordination and decision-making
LeanIX is primarily used to create and manage architectural models, link capabilities, activities, and products and generate comprehensive reports. It serves as a central platform for overseeing the IT landscape within EON, a large organization, streamlining operations and enhancing governance…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."
"Scalable and stable tool for roadmapping and modeling, with a good dashboard, end-to-end impact analysis, and portfolio management."
"The ease of modeling and the ease of showing interconnectivity and relationships is the most valuable. It is fairly simple and out of the box. It is customizable in many ways. It is a pretty good tool."
"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."
"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."
"The technical support is very good. They are responsive and the answers they provide are detailed."
"It's more than just an enterprise architecture tool as it has a lot of nice features, e.g. messaging, simulation, etc."
"Avolution ABACUS allows for flexible enterprise architecture analysis."
"One of the most valuable features of LeanIX is the Enterprise Architecture Management tool."
"Among the most valuable features are the easy-to-use interface and the ability to get quick results... Many tools that I have seen are great for technical people and for giving technical and business information as well, but they're not as friendly and easy as LeanIX... It works well for both technical and business users. It provides a good combination, enabling you to quickly put valuable information in for both technical and non-technical people and derive results."
"I like LeanIX's ease of use in general."
"The most valuable features are the clean user interface and the fact sheet feature in Application Portfolio Management. The tool integrates well with ServiceNow, which is the usual CMDB platform."
"It offers neat visualization and referencing functionality while enabling the creation of landscape maps and showing the relationship between different applications."
"I like the tool’s integration and maps."
"LeanIX has good usability and stability. This SaaS is intuitive, easy to use, and comes with a nice reporting feature."
"The solution has a very useful assessment tool that automatically populates from input data to produce a detailed analysis of customer's environments."
 

Cons

"The usability of the tool is an area with shortcomings that need improvement."
"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."
"While this is one of the most powerful tools on the market it does not integrate well with Microsoft Office or others."
"The reporting could be easier to configure."
"The most valuable features are the catalog and the diagram."
"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."
"The company needs to update the UML version they are using for the product as it is quite old."
"LeanIX experiences a lot of server timeouts. Nearly every transaction needs to be done twice due to these issues."
"The initial setup has room for improvement."
"They should improve the out of the box connectors that they provide. They should see if clients are really ready to adapt them."
"Improvements in user interface simplicity could be made, particularly with the reporting and filtering capabilities."
"It's hard to predict the pricing of the system."
"They're probably positioned pretty well. I hope that they would not focus that much on the business architecture, and they would focus more on the overall cloud strategy and how we can leverage multi-cloud and transition back and forth from other cloud providers. With a lot of current vendors, you get locked in with one cloud, and then you try to migrate to someone else, and it becomes very problematic. What they need to do is to look at the overall data strategy, and they probably need to amplify their data strategy, especially around multi-cloud."
"The solution’s API integration needs to improve. I would like to see a digital screen watch feature also in the solution."
"The solution uses Gartner's time-based framework for application rationalization. One more thing that you can consider is having some add-on frameworks for the same, not just Gartner."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"
"It is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is not an issue."
"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."
"The cost of Avolution ABACUS is reasonable, given the features they offer in comparison to other tools."
"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."
"The pricing is quite good compared to the competition and it is part of the reason we chose the product."
"LeanIX uses application-based account licensing, where the cost is multiplied by the number of applications in the software implementation."
"As the tool is cloud-based, its cost is more affordable."
"I would rate the pricing a one out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is based on a licensing model that is competitive and in line with other products."
"There is a sweet spot of where they need to be on pricing right now. They could go up a little bit in pricing, but it has to do with the cost savings, and it has to do with the practitioners using it. I use it where I get cost savings and I can justify it, but they probably have the ability to flex a 10% up channel on their sales on that. So, they could increase their settle price, not their offering price, when they sell. They can probably hold that up a little bit higher than it is because there are cost savings that we can drive from it."
"The tool needs to include more flexible licensing options. We do not use the tool all the time. So pricing should be considered only when we use the tool."
"The pricing is very good. We definitely get good value for the money."
"It cost me $91,000 a year for 300 applications. For any enterprise, 300 applications are minimal, as many have well over 1,000 applications."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
6%
 

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...
Any experience with Strategic Project Portfolio Management Solutions?
Hi @Cheryl Joseph ​Looking at the crossover between Project and Portfolio management with EA, then Planview could be a good choice. If looking at Portfolio Management from an EA perspective then Le...
What do you like most about LeanIX?
The ability to import data and generate reports from it. That's where its power lies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LeanIX?
LeanIX is associated with high costs. It cost me $91,000 a year for 300 applications. For any enterprise, 300 applications are minimal, as many have well over 1,000 applications. The first pricing ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays
adidas, Bosch, Chico's, Haworth, Helvetia, KuKa, Osram, Telekom, TUI, Santander, Swarovski, Vaillant, 7Eleven, and Zalando.
Find out what your peers are saying about Avolution ABACUS vs. LeanIX and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.