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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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
30
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

"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."
"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."
"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."
"I have seen measurable improvements and concrete benefits, with time and productivity gains resulting in time savings with a ratio of twenty to thirty percent and an ability to deploy quite quickly, since we found modules that already existed or applications that already existed and in that case, we gained in power."
"In my experience, BiZZdesign HoriZZon is very stable."
"A big impact that BiZZdesign HoriZZon has on my organization is to improve the overview of the whole system for people around us."
"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."
"The tool's most valuable feature is that its collaboration part is very good."
"I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability..."
"The initial setup was really straightforward and the deployment was done within one day."
"Evolve is like a tank; you can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it."
"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."
"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."
"The ERwin tool helped to reduce the rate of design and deployment errors and increased the ease of validation."
"There is a model behind it. It's really nice that the Evolve front-end, as it builds a website, keeps those relationships in mind. You can even go to a procedure and see all the applications that are related to it. Then you can go into that application and see all the standard operating procedures that that application is a part of. It's just very connected."
"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."
 

Cons

"Customer support for BiZZdesign HoriZZon could be better. On a 1 to 5 scale, I would rate it a 3.5."
"The frame, the labeling, the text, everything, they are scattered."
"In my opinion, BiZZdesign HoriZZon could be improved especially in the management, for example, the management of licenses."
"This tool is something of a beast - it takes a long time to learn, and it isn't possible for casual users and most architects. Unless a person spends 500 or 1,000 hours on the tool or does very concentrated sessions using all its functionalities, it's very difficult to master."
"I do not recommend using BiZZdesign."
"It takes a long time to learn and understand, which is a learning curve you have to go through, but once you know how it works, it's very nice to work with."
"Integration definitely needs improvement. There are some restrictions. We've seen that it doesn't integrate with everything we might expect."
"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."
"I would like to see an improvement in the output of the solution."
"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."
"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."
"On upgrade– if the older models in the Workgroup Repository need to be upgraded, allow for a cascade update to newest version through the libraries."
"If it had fewer features to model all kinds of architecture, it would be less complicated."
"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."
"Would like to see canonical modeling supported for web services."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of this particular product usage, my clients currently only use per-user licenses."
"First and foremost within the scope of improvement for the solution would be the cost. It's very costly..."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"[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."
"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."
"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."
"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
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?
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.
906,781 professionals have used our research since 2012.