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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 tool's most valuable feature is that its collaboration part is very good."
"After that implementation, the way the architecture and inventory got streamlined, we did not need a really big architecture team, which helped the company overall save costs by repurposing the architects in different other departments where they were needed and helped streamline resourcing and save costs in enterprise architecture itself."
"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."
"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."
"All of the banks, and all of the agencies that are my clients, they are really happy with the design, from the results provided by it, and 100% they are relying on the results because they have been using it for years now."
"Everything being in one place really benefits me from an architectural perspective and also benefits the architectural, enterprise architecture team and the business."
"BiZZdesign helps us look at everything in our enterprise architecture through a business capability lens, rather than in EA language."
"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."
"One of the most valuable features is the website that sits on top of the database. There's a database of objects and how they are related, and you can make views and diagrams and visual elements out of that information on the website. The website is the part that is called Evolve and we use the Evolve Designer and publish the website out to our employees. They can click around and navigate and search, etc."
"Its flexibility and scalability to support all stakeholders in making informed decisions are powerful capabilities."
"Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets."
"Forward and reverse engineering were valuable features."
"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."
"Erwin EA provides superior, exemplar capabilities to scale across all stakeholders."
"The feature that stands out for me is the ease of configuring objects and the screens to show them. It's really easy to add a new type of object in this reference. Creating a new type of object, using it, and evolving it a little bit in terms of what we can document about it are the main features that made us decide to use this provider."
 

Cons

"The users of BiZZdesign should be able to enter their data or make modeling changes via HoriZZon."
"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."
"To improve BiZZdesign HoriZZon, I would say performance is crucial. We have had very bad experiences with performance over the years."
"It is only available for Windows right now and it really is an outdated interface and framework that is being used."
"In HoriZZon, there are different matrices. In some of the cases, there is an option to aggregate them, but in other cases, we have not done this, e.g., to see the proper costs. For example, if I have 10 different matrices, then I need to create an aggregate view out of those 10 matrices somewhere. That is where we have been struggling a bit. We have a counterpart from the HoriZZon product team with whom we have bi-weekly discussions. We have suggested to him that this can be improved."
"Scalability is a bit of a problem for BiZZdesign. There is always a possibility it will failover."
"The repository of duplicate objects is bad."
"BiZZdesign should really work on its documentation and user acceleration to enhance the experience."
"For what it says it can do, it does a good job, but using it is too difficult."
"erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses."
"Few clients looking are going with Evolve these days because I don't think they even appear on Gartner's Magic Quadrant."
"With the Excel importing, the "up to date" part is the challenge. If we had a real-time integration, we could keep things up to date for whatever kinds of change points we had. With Excel, it is more that you have to export from one system then import it to another, so it's better for data that doesn't change that often."
"The implementation process is too complicated."
"Add some ability to do conditional Visualization on the models and in reports (some ideas) – maybe as a specialized Theme or Diagram or Display."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"[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."
"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."
"In terms of this particular product usage, my clients currently only use per-user licenses."
"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 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."
"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."
"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"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 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
7%
Construction Company
13%
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?
BiZZdesign HoriZZon could improve with features such as whiteboarding or canvasing, currently being developed on the Unify platform. Adding these features to BiZZdesign HoriZZon would simplify coll...
What is your primary use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
My main use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon is as a read-only content platform primarily for everyone. BiZZdesign HoriZZon was introduced to us as a read-only platform, and we have added value by targ...
What advice do you have for others considering BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
While we covered most topics, I wish I had prepared more metric data. My advice for others considering BiZZdesign HoriZZon is, if you are already a customer, explore all features BiZZdesign HoriZZo...
Ask a question
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.
909,563 professionals have used our research since 2012.