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Bizagi vs IBM Blueworks Live 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

Bizagi
Ranking in Business Process Design
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (6th), Process Automation (8th), Rapid Application Development Software (15th), Low-Code Development Platforms (11th), No-Code Development Platforms (4th), Process Mining (5th)
IBM Blueworks Live
Ranking in Business Process Design
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of Bizagi is 10.7%, up from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 3.6%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Paparao Nadipineni - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables budget review efficiency with open source advantages and workflow orchestration
Definitely, right now, it is purely open source, and we don't have much community support. If they add a few more capabilities like AIML and DocGen AI, these features would be good. Reporting capabilities can be improved more, and community support should be increased. Otherwise, people cannot onboard that particular technology easily.
AjarMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
An easily scalable and affordable solution that enables users to document and digitize processes with ease
IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts. There is only one kind of BPMN 2.0 diagram. It is a process diagram. It doesn't have the concept of separate tools, which other products offer. If I had to do a hardcore BPMN 2.0 modeling, the product would have its own reservations. There were features we could not explore from a BPMN 2.0 perspective. Most of the time, people who are shifting from Microsoft Office tools to a digitized way of working still want the reporting capabilities to be strong. Some tools, like ARIS or Signavio, offer customized solutions from the reporting perspective. If I have documented my whole finance process and want to fetch out a complete SOP report in a very customized manner, IBM Blueworks cannot provide it. We have to rely on some other services. So that's one area in which we always struggled, how to really customize the reporting aspects. I understand that we need to keep the tool a little more asset-light. It's very difficult to keep adding many options, but at least a few BPMN 2.0 options were needed. We have been suggesting to IBM that we should have some way of customizing the reporting. At least we should get a custom way of reporting it into different formats like Excel or putting up a logo for one of the clients so that their SAP can be printed that way.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The approval process is simple."
"The visualizations and attachments provided by the product are valuable."
"Bizagi is a very useful tool because it does not require you to program. The user logic is very easy to understand even for people who are not engineers or developers."
"It automates a completely manual, complicated process."
"The product allowed users to connect with flow chart elements with ease."
"This solution is easy to use and it is a good tool for process modeling."
"It improves visibility and quality, and basically, it avoids human errors."
"One of the features I like is that when drawing any task, when putting a task on the process model canvas, I can simply click on it and see the other task icons for that task. It's just one quick, simple, straightforward connectivity from task to task."
"We are you using the product as a process mapping tool and as part of a larger process improvement project. We use it with IBM BPM and IBM ODM. We get an automated workflow solution for our customers, an improved workflow automation."
"For me the most valuable feature is that it's one depository for our bank. So it's not like everybody has their critical processes on SharePoint or on their desktops. Everything is centrally located. It's very intuitive, easy to use. The support that I get from IBM is always great."
"The reporting that we can generate from IBM Blueworks Live has been interesting. We found the KPIs, risks, process modeling, format, and colors, to be very good. We use the EY template and it is interesting to generate reporting in this format."
"It is a stable solution since there has not been any downtime. Everything loads fast."
"It enables decisions based upon processes that we do model, and ultimately move forward with."
"Valuable features include real-time modeling and design work, the ability to perform workshops with clients in real-time with the tool, and getting instant output."
"The solution is stable. All the refreshes run very well."
"Collaboration is most valuable. You can collaborate online with many people. People can comment, and you can comment back. It is just like a social network, and that, for me, is very good."
 

Cons

"Framework approach, which extends to reusability in tools, like Pega, for deployment management could be improved."
"I don't know if it's a problem with my operating system or a Bizagi problem, but many times I see that when I try to connect different activities, they show up as not connected."
"For the small business, this is very bad because it is still fragmented. The licensing policy should be more flexible and small company oriented. In micro-small companies, there should only be one or two. That's not the problem. Maybe it is too flexible, there are so many pieces that you need to put together. When you have a small business, it can be a little complicated, not so easy."
"Bizagi needs a way to define categories such as process groups like the APQC framework, PCF, and handle the processes within it."
"I would like to see more in terms of analytics and better reporting."
"The open source version lacks the option to publish."
"Its performance needs to be improved. The main thing is that it is limited, especially in terms of the response times. When the processes become a bit large, it is very awkward to work with the Bizagi modeler. When you have already modeled but start to rearrange, it is quite a bit of an effort to change the stuff. When you rearrange lanes or have new structures, it goes rather squiggly up and down and so on, which could be improved. The visual outputs of the DIREPs of the process models are pixelated and have a bad image quality. It is a PNG or JPEG, and you cannot export it as a PDF. When you have rather large processes, you should be able to arrange them hierarchically. Currently, it is not supported. If you use sub-processes and inflate a process, suddenly the arrangement is totally different, and although you know the process, you have to look where is it now. You need a good understanding of the levels of your processes before you start in Bizagi. It can have automatic support for optimal presentation. In BPM, you should have it from the top left to the bottom right. However, in most cases, people don't know how they should arrange it. Therefore, it would be nice to have a suggestion system for different arrangements to be able to better present the process."
"The performance could use improvement. We couldn't connect the processes to on one file. The performance is an issue for us."
"The objects that the solution creates are not unique."
"In the solution Signavio, they have a customer journey mapping feature that should be added to IBM Blueworks Live. It's valuable to map or document the customer journey to identify the pains and opportunities in this process."
"There should be an option to import from and export to Microsoft Visio. Being able to move files back and forth between Blueworks Live and Visio would be good."
"I can't insert any images. For example, within the process map, if I want to put it in the box or rectangle, or circle. If I have to use one image or icon, that's not possible."
"In the Blue Works Live software boxes and lines are automatically placed by the programme and can't be easily manipulated."
"We'd also like to see it be Six Sigma or Lean compatible, a lot of people have asked about that."
"The font size is really, really small and it's really not useful to print out process models because you cannot read what's written in different boxes. This makes it necessary for people to have access to the tool. We view licenses to see how the printing or output is. It's not very good."
"We haven't yet been able to dabble in case management with Blueworks Live, as it is not yet offered with the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We use the free version of the solution because the price is in dollars, making it expensive for where we are in Brazil."
"From what I know of the market, I think Bizagi is a cheap solution for process engineering. Out of the solutions I've tried, from cheapest to most expensive, would be Vizor, Bizagi, Signavio, and then Siemens. I used a version of Bizagi that my university provided for free, so I have never paid for a license."
"This is a free solution."
"This solution would be expensive for a company that has a lot of users."
"It has a very high price. Many clients complain about the price for maintaining the application on Bizagi."
"Make sure that your requirements are explicitly defined from the outset. This will help you choose the right setup and licensing for your needs."
"The product must improve its cost."
"I think that its price is reasonable."
"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."
"The solution is not very expensive."
"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."
"The solution is very, very cost-effective."
"Based on the licenses purchased, from a footprint perspective, you can have as many people as you want. You have multiple different categories of licenses to keep the cost low."
"Making it less expensive would be good."
"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."
"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How easy is it to migrate process flow charts (modeled using tools like Visio) into Bizagi?
I have been using Bizagi with a major project for a state government agency for about four years now. It is pretty straightforward to load in files that are BPMN 2.0 compliant. The option to load V...
What do you like most about Bizagi?
The natural notation is the best feature of Bizagi because it makes it compatible with other products.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bizagi?
Bizagi's pricing is very aggressive, and it was one of the reasons we chose it. It was less expensive than some of the other tools.
What do you like most about IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution is easy to operate. Also, there is an automatic mode to make the business flow. You don't have to put any lines or arrows in a decision point in IBM Blueworks Live; it's very automatic.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.
What needs improvement with IBM Blueworks Live?
Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Lombardi Blueprint
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

adidas, Audi, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Post DHL & many more - 500+ customer globally.
Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council
Find out what your peers are saying about Bizagi vs. IBM Blueworks Live and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.