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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
5th
Ranking in Business Process Design
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
26
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 July 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of BiZZdesign HoriZZon is 4.5%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Evolve is 3.5%, 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 HoriZZon4.5%
erwin Evolve3.5%
Other92.0%
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

"We can derive some meaningful insights from whatever data that we have, which is the main thing."
"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 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."
"BiZZdesign HoriZZon has positively impacted my organization and my clients' organizations by providing a common language between architects, solution architects, infrastructure architects, and the entire corporation so that we can change and understand our actions collaboratively."
"BiZZdesign HoriZZon is a fantastic tool for enterprise architecture and capability mapping that helps map capabilities by turning complex engineering data into clear design documents, which is very important for cross-functional alignment and onboarding teams so they can onboard faster and it acts as a single source of truth."
"In my experience, BiZZdesign HoriZZon is very stable."
"The tool's most valuable feature is that its collaboration part is very good."
"BiZZdesign Architect separates model from views and has a quite extensive set of analytical stuff built in to be very useful in complex environments."
"Evolve is scalable with multi-user ability, so multiple designers and engineers can work on the same data model simultaneously."
"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."
"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."
"I can send images in the PDF form, along with the relationships and the associations that are a very important part of what we do. It can show what is affected and what is impacted by a certain change in one area of the system architecture or enterprise architecture. I can very quickly draw those issues and topics to the fore."
"Erwin has enabled us to build and manage a portfolio of over 1,000 large data models across more than 60 lines of business, many of which are related and synchronized."
"This product is a cross platform database designer, data inventory control and metadata library, and supports soft link integration."
"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."
"The initial setup was really straightforward and the deployment was done within one day."
 

Cons

"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."
"BiZZdesign HoriZZon's technical support has presented challenges, as extra fees are required and the process is not straightforward."
"There is room for improvement in making it more seamless between the modeling and the analysis pieces."
"The automatic data collection and interface need improvement."
"The users of BiZZdesign should be able to enter their data or make modeling changes via HoriZZon."
"It is only available for Windows right now and it really is an outdated interface and framework that is being used."
"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."
"Scalability is a bit of a problem for BiZZdesign. There is always a possibility it will failover."
"If it had fewer features to model all kinds of architecture, it would be less complicated."
"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."
"Add some ability to do conditional Visualization on the models and in reports (some ideas) – maybe as a specialized Theme or Diagram or Display."
"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."
"Business process modelling could be improved."
"You can integrate it with almost everything, but you have to watch what you are doing because when too much is integrated it's really hard to manage your errors."
"They have improved the search engine a little bit but it can always be improved more. The more data you put inside it, the more you want to use it."
"Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The price is reasonable."
"I haven't found any issues with the scalability and licensing parts that are access-related."
"If one is very cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a seven out of ten."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."
"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."
"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
22%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Performing Arts
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
BiZZdesign could improve BiZZdesign HoriZZon in several areas. There are potential areas of improvement that should be addressed to make the product better.
What is your primary use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
BiZZdesign HoriZZon is primarily used for enterprise architecture processes. My clients mostly use it for architecture modeling and planning.
What advice do you have for others considering BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
I last worked with BiZZdesign HoriZZon recently. BiZZdesign HoriZZon is deployed on Amazon Web Services. I was not involved in the purchase process, as it is totally on the client side. I would rat...
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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: June 2026.
904,680 professionals have used our research since 2012.