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Bonita vs Camunda vs IBM BPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Bonita is 3.6%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Camunda is 20.9%, down from 21.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM BPM is 7.3%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Paparao Nadipineni - PeerSpot reviewer
A simple and lightweight college course automation system with third-party integrations
The initial setup is straightforward and can be completed with the environment within an hour. First, take the latest from the git repository and check the git code to the monitor studio and a bar file, a deployable Bonita archive file. Then, take that process to the Bonita server, running at runtime on another server. Finally, deploy and enable it by selecting the proper organization.
FABIO NAGAO - PeerSpot reviewer
Reduces costs with hardware abstraction and simplifies scaling
There is an issue where, in some situations, I need to scale up by observing both CPU and memory usage of containers, yet under the current options available at Amazon, this is not possible. I have to choose between monitoring CPU or memory to scale my solution. Not every software is built for deployment as a container service, although the current architecture trend is changing this.
Muhammad Kamran - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient processes and intuitive workflow with many valuable features
You will have access to make any needed changes. Additionally, the review will be published on PeerSpot.com in written or audio format, available to other people. You can stay anonymous if you wish. Notifications and the use of the review are subject to PeerSpot's terms of use, which you can find at PeerSpot.com/TOS. I would give the solution an overall rating of ten out of ten points.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Bonita is simple and lightweight and is flexible to integrate with third-party systems. The UI is now flexible, whereas it was previously rigid. Any technology can be used as a frontend, including ReactJS, Angular, and others."
"Process automation with Bonita BPM is really easy."
"I really enjoy using the workflow management."
"We use the tool to validate and give access to the users. It is for access management."
"Compared to other products on the market, Bonita presents a pretty acceptable level of robustness."
"Flexible and drag-and-drop type of UI is very valuable. The integrations are also very good. You can build workflows very quickly, which is my favorite activity. By using the GUI, you can build the entire mechanism, notifications, and all this kind of stuff."
"The most valuable features of Bonita are the connectors, detailed documentation, and web applications. The documentation was useful because it is how I learned how to use it."
"The solution is stable. Even the older versions are stable."
"We have a lot of users, almost 1,800, and we needed something affordable, stable and something that could be used by a large financial company. This solution truly fit the bill."
"I think that the positives of Camunda Platform are that our customers can start with the free version. I think it is the most important."
"It has an open BPM"
"We can easily define and deploy business processes. Camunda provides the tools that allow business people to design business processes. We don't have to have developers for it. It is so easy to use that our business people can go into the tool and model their business processes. We get time to do other things than just designing business processes."
"Ease of use and ability to streamline a process model."
"When I compare it with other BPM tools, like IBM, it is great, open source, and free when you use the community version."
"We have been able to save costs using this solution compared to the product we used before."
"The architectural part of Camunda for workflow design is highly valuable, especially the Camunda Modeler, which allows quick process design and implementation."
"Enabled us to convert most of the paper-based work into an automated workflow process, and some of them were converted into straight-through processing, with no human interaction involved whatsoever."
"It helps improve your process through continual measurement."
"This solution has streamlined our operation and improved the TAT of sales, operations, and underwriters."
"It is a very powerful solution."
"We like that it does not require a lot of hours to train our people."
"Provides the power to understand and automate processes."
"One of the most notable things is how you can develop use cases with the customers, internal customers, but directly within. The software process model that BPM supports is really exciting in that aspect."
"For me, the most important feature is the easy-to-use business process dashboard. It's simple to orchestrate business processes, and the interface is clean and intuitive. Once your workflow is designed on paper, it's easy for the business process manager to implement and follow it. Another IBM product that was good in the past is the IBM Case Manager. I haven't used it for three or four years, so I'm unsure if it's still available, but it was quite effective."
 

Cons

"It is missing some important features that other products have."
"The dashboard has limited features."
"There is a need for more components in the library and additional customization options for these components."
"I would like to improve the product's load balancing."
"Bonita must add a rule engine. We are a 360-degree partner of Bonita. We can integrate with any kind of rule engine. We have a dashboard related to engine performance, but getting a configurable dashboard for the Buildium or transactional data will add value."
"Bonita can improve by offering more flexibility. The developer does not receive the code of the application to modify it. Most of the other solutions I have used allow the developers to change or improve the code that is generated."
"It would be nice to have a wizard to help walk through the development process and create a backbone."
"There is a considerable learning curve."
"If Camunda could develop something that creates user forms that would be a great feature to have. They also need to improve the UI."
"Collaborations and process documentation in Camunda Platform are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."
"There are a few things that I'm missing. For instance, the user interface creator, which I know other systems have, like Aurea or Lombardi, which are IBM solutions. The interface creator, including the data model creator or some module which would allow the users who are not programmers or business consultants and who are not technically skilled in database and Java programming, to create data models and user interfaces."
"I have faced problems in bringing up the Cockpit in terms of GUI processes. I think that there is room for improvement in those areas."
"Especially when you use the open-source version, there are issues with performance."
"I don't like the UI of the Camunda Platform, I have found the Signavio solution to be much better for me to create the process designs and execute them. Additionally, I have found the tools in the Camunda Platform are not compatible with some of my other tools. They should improve this in the future."
"Documentation can be improved."
"It lacks some preset features and configurations which would make it more plug-and-play for customers."
"Process Server is no more available than new products out there, but in general IBM has a high cost and complex setup."
"The initial setup can be tricky because IBM BPM is not based on a popular stack, and it's difficult to hire a developer for this product."
"Performance in the development environment space. I know that they have been taking it off the desktop version and putting on the web, and it is not 100% yet."
"Initial setup is very complex. Too many steps need to be done at the database and server levels, and complex configurations. From what I see, a lot of these steps can be and should be automated."
"I would like to see more inclusion of RPA technologies. If we have more manual processes, we can use robotic process automation and integrate that in with the solution."
"One area for improvement is the scripting languages used within the solution. They could integrate other languages such as GoMango or Python than JavaScript."
"It is a rather thick stack because you have to have WebSphere skills, IBM BPM skills, and an understanding of how the product runs on WebSphere. A lot of this will start to get a lot easier as they put it in containers, which will allow the platform to manage itself in some regards."
"One suggestion for IBM BPM is to provide better integration between their products, such as DataCap, which we use for scanning. Although the new CP4BA offers offline capabilities, not everyone is on CP4BA, so enhanced integration for those on older versions would be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is fair for what we are using the solution for."
"I am using the free version of Bonita."
"Licensing cost for the Enterprise edition comes out to be around 40,000 a year. There is also a Community edition, which is free. Some customers can go for the Community edition, but some of them require the Enterprise edition. Big companies go for the Enterprise edition, which comes with a lot of additional features such as a mobile app."
"I believe this is a very good financial choice."
"The Enterprise edition is very expensive."
"The product's pricing is acceptable. Pricing is yearly."
"have installed the image of Bonita BPM on Amazon AWS and there is just one option to use and pay for."
"The product is not cheaper, not costlier; it is reasonable. Bonita’s license is very flexible, with options to meet the needs of different customers and clients. Previously, it was less flexible, but now, many different licensing options are available."
"The price is competitive with products like Bonitasoft and RHPAM (Red Hat Process Automation Manager). We have two versions of Camunda. The first version was open source, without support, but then we got a supported version."
"When compared with the proprietary products, the pricing costs are much less, even though it is an enterprise edition."
"The license is quite expensive, which is why we went with the community version."
"We're using the free version. We used the Enterprise version for some time. If I compare free versus what we paid at that time, the Enterprise version costs a lot. For the additional functionality that we got with the Enterprise version, it was too costly."
"We're using the open-source version for now."
"We have an annual subscription to this solution."
"We pay for the license of this solution annually."
"The cost of this solution is better than some competing products."
"It should provide more flexibility to connect with external systems, and there should be in-built services that can be used to integrate with other systems quickly."
"I wish it was less expensive. I don't know why their pricing model is so high for a piece of software that could benefit so many. It just seems to me that they could have a lower cost, maybe with fewer features or whatever, but it should be possible to do a lower cost workflow software that uses the same interface and underlying engine but does not cost so much that you have to be a Fortune 50 company to buy it. It is annoying to me. There are a lot of solutions that IBM has that are really powerful but nobody can afford them. They know their business, but I still feel that there are a lot of customers who would benefit from this sort of thing. I don't know what this elitism is all about. I am sure they have people doing the money numbers, but it seems like you can make a lot more money by selling it to way more people for a little bit less."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is expensive since it is an enterprise application."
"The solution might be expensive, but I can't give you a precise number. In the market here, I've seen two main products for BPM: IBM BPM and Camunda. Camunda is very popular and open-source, so there's no direct comparison."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten."
"Its price is on the higher side, and it can be improved. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs."
"I think it's a reasonably priced tool, but it's important to consider which customers should buy this solution. It's designed for enterprise customers, not small ones."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Bonita compare with Camunda Platform?
One of the things we like best about Bonita is that you can create without coding - it is a low-code platform. With B...
What do you like most about Bonita?
The user interface is easy to use.
Which do you prefer - Appian or Camunda Platform?
Appian is fast when building simple to medium solutions. This solution offers simple drag-and-drop functionality with...
Which would you choose - Camunda Platform or Apache Airflow?
Camunda Platform allows for visual demonstration and presentation of business process flows. The flexible Java-based ...
What do you like most about Camunda Platform?
The solution is useful for small projects.
Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user inter...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Bonita BPM
Camunda BPM
WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

With more than 1000 customers in 75 countries, and its ecosystem of more than 120,000 members, Bonitasoft is the largest provider of open-source Business Process Management, Low-code and Digital Transformation software worldwide.
24 Hour Fitness, Accruent, AT&T Inc., Atlassian, CSS Insurance, Deutsche Telekom, Generali, Provinzial NordWest Insurance Services, Swisscom AG, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VHV Group, Zalando
Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Apache, Automation Anywhere and others in Business Process Management (BPM). Updated: April 2025.
851,042 professionals have used our research since 2012.