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BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs erwin Data Modeler 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

BiZZdesign HoriZZon
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
6th
Ranking in Business Process Design
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
erwin Data Modeler
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
3rd
Ranking in Business Process Design
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of BiZZdesign HoriZZon is 5.2%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 8.8%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
erwin Data Modeler8.8%
BiZZdesign HoriZZon5.2%
Other86.0%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
JorgeSanz - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline data modeling and automate network changes for increased efficiency
The initial setup depends on the tool if you are using the data model environment. Stopping the server could be complex and require strong expertise. If you have everything set up and configured, Erwin is straightforward. You can deploy it in a few hours. In our case, it took a couple of months to address internal conditions, assign machines, and set up everything for the services. I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"t's a good tool. My colleagues that are making use of it for application, business processes, or data modeling, are very satisfied with it. They find it easy to use. The graphical representation is simple but therefore efficient, so I know that they are planning a very good commencement on the use of these tools."
"The tool's most valuable feature is that its collaboration part is very good."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is that it allows you to work with different methods, using the same tool."
"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 most valuable features of BiZZdesign HoriZZon, from my experience, include its out-of-the-box connectors, such as integration with ServiceNow, Excel, and SQL databases, making data repository management more efficient."
"The most valuable features of BiZZdesign HoriZZon include the diagrammatic representation of BPMN models, which I find good for modeling, and things such as capability maps."
"We find that its ability to generate database code from a model for a wide array of data sources cuts development time. The ability to create one model in your design phase and then have it generate DDL code for Oracle or Teradata, or whichever environment you need is really nice. It's not only nice but it also saves man-hours of time. You would have to take your design and just type in manually. It has to take days off out of the work."
"Any tool will do diagramming but I think the ability to put the stuff up in a graphical fashion, then think about it, and keep things consistent is what's valuable about it. It's too easy when you're using other methods to not have naming consistent standards and column consistent definitions, et cetera."
"We can create mappings in erwin and possibly data dictionaries."
"The solution's ability to compare and synchronize data sources with data models is fantastic. We use it for that on a regular basis to make sure that changes haven't been made to the database outside of the modeling process. I can take existing databases and reverse engineer them and understand their structure within 15 minutes. If I didn't have Data Modeler it would take hours. It increases our productivity and helps in understanding our legacy application."
"The modeling portion of the tool is the most valuable. There are some notes, naming standards, and other functions that we use as well. There's a whole boatload of functionality in this thing and we use maybe 10% of it. It seems to be pretty common that not all the functionality is fully utilized. But it's just got gobs and gobs of stuff that you can implement if you so choose to."
"What has been useful, I have been able to reverse engineer our existing data models to document explicitly referential integrity relationships, primary/foreign keys in the model, and create ERDs that are subject area-based which our clients can use when working with our databases. The reality is that our databases are not explicitly documented in the DDL with primary/foreign key relationships. You can't look at the DDL and explicitly understand the primary/foreign key relationships that exist between our tables, so the referential integrity is not easily understood. erwin has allowed me to explicitly document that and create ERDs. This has made it easier for our clients to consume our databases for their own purposes."
"It allows us to create logical data models. We can represent a database model in business terms, which is very useful for us."
"I have worked with erwin Data Modeler for quite some time and familiarity is its most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"We tested it, and we had support from BiZZdesign, including patches, but it just didn't do what we wanted."
"The users of BiZZdesign should be able to enter their data or make modeling changes via HoriZZon."
"The repository of duplicate objects is bad."
"It should be more open to integrating with other existing tools. Although there has been progress in the past."
"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."
"Integration definitely needs improvement. There are some restrictions. We've seen that it doesn't integrate with everything we might expect."
"The automatic data collection and interface need improvement."
"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."
"The Bulk Editor needs improvement. If you had something that was a local model to your local machine, you could connect to the API, then it would write directly into the repository. However, when you have something that is on the centralized server, that functionality did not work. Then, you had to export out to a CSV and upload up to the repository. It would have been nice to be able to do the direct API without having that whole download and upload thing. Maybe I didn't figure it out, but I'm pretty sure that didn't work when it was a model that sat on a centralized repository."
"It is not a very stable solution. I rate the stability five out of ten."
"erwin is not as robust as a data warehousing project I've been on in the past."
"I am not so happy with its speed. Sometimes, it can have problems with connections."
"One of the things I've been talking to the erwin team about through the years is that every data model should have the ability to be multi-language... When I was working at Honda, it became very difficult to work with the Japanese teams using just one model. You can have two models, one in English and one in Japanese, but that means you have to keep the updates back and forth, and that always increases the risk of something not being updated."
"The solution's model mark could be better because it crashes sometimes."
"I find the UI very clunky and very difficult to use. If I add columns to a table the whole workflow could be so much easier. I get frustrated using it. I've tried other tools. I've tried to get off of erwin a few times. I always come back to it because every tool has its own set of problems, and it seems like if I have to pick my poison, I stay with erwin. But so many things that are clunky with it."
"I would like the solution to be less rigid in terms of its theory."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of this particular product usage, my clients currently only use per-user licenses."
"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."
"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."
"If one is very cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a seven out of ten."
"The price is reasonable."
"I wish it wasn't so expensive. I would love to personally buy a copy of my own and have it at home, because the next job that I'm looking at is probably project management and I might not have access to the tool. I would like to keep my ability to use the tool. Therefore, they should probably have a pricing for people like me who want to just use the solution as an independent consultant, trying to get started. $3,000 is a big hit."
"The primary reasons that erwin was selected were that it was much more affordable for us [than Embarcadero] and it was easily maintainable."
"Price-wise, erwin Data Modeler is okay. You can purchase a single license and it is not very expensive."
"erwin is expensive compared to other solutions. We are paying almost $6,000 per seat a month."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"We've continued to use the product for many years and compared it with others on the market. The pricing is reasonable considering what the solution offers and what we pay. There are cheaper tools, but they may not be as robust and easy to use, so it's worth the money."
"It is not a very expensive solution. Only the licensing and maintenance fee needs to be paid."
"This company had bought the license for three years, and it's not an individual license. While you can buy a license for each individual, that would be very expensive. There is something called concurrent licenses where you can purchase licenses in bulk and 15 to 20 people can access the license and model. Concurrent licenses are scalable to the number of users and are proportional to the cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What do you like most about erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
Forward engineering, DDL generation, reverse engineering, and reporting are the most valuable features of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I do not recall the pricing from about a year and a half ago, but it seems reasonable.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
erwin Data Modeler could improve its UI as it still feels old school and not very modern. There are many features, and I would expect good documentation detailing each feature, including when and h...
 

Also Known As

HoriZZon
erwin DM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Shell, HSBC, Erasmus University, VIVAT Insurance
 Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples
Find out what your peers are saying about BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. erwin Data Modeler and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.