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BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs erwin Evolve comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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
4th
Ranking in Business Process Design
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
erwin Evolve
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
12th
Ranking in Business Process Design
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of BiZZdesign HoriZZon is 4.3%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Evolve is 3.4%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BiZZdesign HoriZZon4.3%
erwin Evolve3.4%
Other92.3%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2022765 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Consultant BI Z Zdesign Center Of Excellence at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Targeted stakeholder views have improved decision making and reduced architecture costs
BiZZdesign HoriZZon offers various valuable features. The best ones, besides those I have mentioned, include the AI space with the Diagram Describer and the Explorer functionality. I understand that BiZZdesign HoriZZon is also working on the Diagram Importer, which complements the Diagram Describer feature, providing full import and export functionality. Together with the contributor role and targeted stakeholder management, these features are essential. BiZZdesign HoriZZon introduced the Dynamic Solution Intent, enhancing the solution architecture by engaging diverse stakeholders with architectural artifacts. It supports the development of holistic solutions using reusable repository components. The deployment is hybrid cloud-based, specifically using Amazon Web Services as the cloud provider. I have also seen the implementation of return on investment features that contribute significantly to the organization’s overall effectiveness.
ScottLawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Director IT Architecture at QAD
Enables us to present data and objects visually, in diagrams, and to make them available via the web. Also enables web-based editing of data.
We tried their collaborative web modeling and we used it with a few people but we tend to not use that piece. We tend to collaborate with the people and then my team of architects draws up the diagram using the modeling tool. We then iterate through those. I would like to use it, but it was a little clunky when they first rolled it out. Overall, it's more about the company having room for improvement. 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. I hear them talking in the support forums and, when I talk to the representative, they say they're going to do a bunch of stuff but it seems the progress is slow. The changes they need to make are to take their old, legacy product, which we use, and focus a lot on it so they can transform it into a modern cloud tool so that we have fewer little pieces to deal with. They could also fix their security model. It's very confusing to get new people onto the tool and to make sure that your content isn't being exposed to the wrong people.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The main outcome is that we have centralized documentation instead of having information in emails or somewhere else, and it is easier for the whole organization to find information."
"We can derive some meaningful insights from whatever data that we have, which is the main thing."
"The initial setup of this solution was very straightforward."
"Everything being in one place really benefits me from an architectural perspective and also benefits the architectural, enterprise architecture team and the business."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Its flexibility and scalability to support all stakeholders in making informed decisions are powerful capabilities."
"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."
"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."
"Erwin EA provides superior, exemplar capabilities to scale across all stakeholders."
"It is a customizable tool that allows you to do a lot of architectural modeling for customers, and you can use different kinds of diagrams to represent the architecture setting."
"Evolve is scalable with multi-user ability, so multiple designers and engineers can work on the same data model simultaneously."
"The process of capturing all the standard operating procedures forced us to come to an agreement across all the divisions, as far as standardization goes."
 

Cons

"Since the accuracy is less, there is not much reliability, which means we need to cross-verify multiple times to ensure the data."
"It should be more open to integrating with other existing tools. Although there has been progress in the past."
"To improve BiZZdesign HoriZZon, I would say performance is crucial. We have had very bad experiences with performance over the years."
"We tested it, and we had support from BiZZdesign, including patches, but it just didn't do what we wanted."
"The repository of duplicate objects is bad."
"I haven't observed a significant positive impact of BiZZdesign HoriZZon on my organization, and it's difficult to point that out."
"The automatic data collection and interface need improvement."
"BiZZdesign HoriZZon can be really quicker than today as we are experiencing some performance issues, so that is the most important thing."
"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."
"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."
"For what it says it can do, it does a good job, but using it is too difficult."
"With the Excel importing, the "up to date" part is the challenge."
"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."
"Business process modelling could be improved."
"If it had fewer features to model all kinds of architecture, it would be less complicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."
"In terms of this particular product usage, my clients currently only use per-user licenses."
"[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."
"If one is very cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a seven out of ten."
"The pricing model is slightly on the high side and could be more competitive for long-term partnerships."
"First and foremost within the scope of improvement for the solution would be the cost. It's very costly..."
"I haven't found any issues with the scalability and licensing parts that are access-related."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."
"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"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
20%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
I noticed that there were times when the cloud version would get stuck or was not able to load. There were issues with the login capability, and that was some time ago, a few months ago. I am not s...
What is your primary use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
There was a merger that the client entered into, and following that merger, we inherited a large technology inventory from the acquired organization. The acquired inventory from the organization ha...
What advice do you have for others considering BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
The real experience I have had and seeing the result of using it in a large team where a large scale enterprise architecture and merger is happening is a very unique experience I have had with BiZZ...
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Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

HoriZZon
erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Shell, HSBC, Erasmus University, VIVAT Insurance
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. erwin Evolve and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,948 professionals have used our research since 2012.