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Bonita vs erwin Data Modeler 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

Bonita
Ranking in Business Process Design
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (29th), Process Automation (28th)
erwin Data Modeler
Ranking in Business Process Design
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (1st), Data Governance (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of Bonita is 3.0%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 3.2%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
erwin Data Modeler3.2%
Bonita3.0%
Other93.8%
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Paparao Nadipineni - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at Evoke
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.
Sushree Panigrahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Snowflake Data Engineer| Senior PLSQL Developer |Data Modeler|Assitant Vice Pre at Jp Morgan Chase & Co.
Data modeling has transformed regulatory reporting and collaboration across cloud environments
In erwin Data Modeler, areas that have room for improvement include performance improvements. I see that large models sometimes cause it to be slow when opening. Impact analysis can lag as well. Version control is another aspect. If we have developed a current version, it is not integrated with Git where we can easily compare different versions. UI modernization is also something we cannot utilize as it is primarily for development. Additionally, cloud-specific optimizations are needed when it comes to Snowflake or Databricks. When it comes to AI aspects, auto-suggestions for normalization or identifying primary, foreign, or surrogate keys are areas that can be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Compared to other products on the market, Bonita presents a pretty acceptable level of robustness."
"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."
"Development of forms and flows."
"Bonitasoft helped us automate complicated and labor intensive processes"
"I really enjoy using the workflow management tool."
"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."
"We use the on-premises deployment model and the Bonita Community Edition of the solution."
"Bonita is user-friendly."
"The biggest lesson I have learned from erwin is the old cliche, that a picture is worth a thousand words, and when a person asks for a set of tables and they actually see that diagram visually, it really assists in any meeting that you will have."
"The modeling product itself is far and above anything else that I've seen on the market."
"The product lets us import different types of models from various databases."
"The solution is good for organizing the data and the scripting part is very powerful. It's easy to create technical scripts for models."
"It reduces monthly savings by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Think about a company like Costco and all of the points of sale systems in Costco, all of the systems, the applications, but if all the applications in Costco all had their own data model, trying to integrate those, upgrade them and manage their different versions of the same model throughout the store, is an absolute nightmare. It's phenomenally expensive. This helps reduce that cost significantly. I'm talking on the orders of hundreds of thousands of dollars."
"One of the ways Data Modeler has benefited our company is that it gives us the ability to engage with the business alongside IT, because it's friendly."
"The accuracy and speed of the solution in transforming complex designs into well-aligned data sources makes the cost of the tool definitely worth it."
"Any tool will do diagramming but I think the ability to put the stuff up in a graphical fashion, then think about it, and keep things consistent is what's valuable about it. It's too easy when you're using other methods to not have naming consistent standards and column consistent definitions, et cetera."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is not easy compared to other products."
"The solution is stable. However, we have experienced a few bugs."
"It is missing some important features that other products have."
"Scalability of the Bonita BPM Community version is low."
"The community edition has limited module functionality."
"Automation in vacation of a human resources replacement would be a good improvement in the product."
"I should be able to park the tasks that are within a process in a kind of container, and dynamically, a super admin should be able to connect these processes. This kind of feature might be helpful."
"There is a need for more components in the library and additional customization options for these components."
"The reverse engineering in Oracle Databases needs improvement, as there are issues."
"We can only get licenses through partners."
"The modeling product itself is far and above anything else that I've seen on the market. There are certain inconsistencies when it comes to keeping up with other platforms' databases in the reverse-engineering process. It should also support more database platforms."
"The erwin ETL functionality has room for improvement when it comes to mapping databases with a classic entity-relationship model to a data warehouse model."
"I'd really like to see the PDF function become available. It would make my life much easier than what it is at the moment because whenever I need to collaborate with people that do not have erwin, I have to go through the wonkiness of going to Word and then save it from Word into PDF. There's a lot of differences between erwin 4.4 and 2020."
"I find the UI very clunky and very difficult to use. If I add columns to a table the whole workflow could be so much easier. I get frustrated using it. I've tried other tools. I've tried to get off of erwin a few times. I always come back to it because every tool has its own set of problems, and it seems like if I have to pick my poison, I stay with erwin. But so many things that are clunky with it."
"While I do not have knowledge about pricing for erwin Data Modeler, I think it could improve by having a feature that allows the publishing of models, similar to how Power BI allows for dashboard publishing for different users within an organization, not just data modelers."
"We find erwin DM less valuable creating initial drafts and reverse-engineering databases and there are still a lot of extensions to the scripting language that are not included with the erwin product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe this is a very good financial choice."
"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."
"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."
"We are using the Community Version, which can be used free of charge."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"have installed the image of Bonita BPM on Amazon AWS and there is just one option to use and pay for."
"I am using the free version of Bonita."
"The price is fair for what we are using the solution for."
"This company had bought the license for three years, and it's not an individual license. While you can buy a license for each individual, that would be very expensive. There is something called concurrent licenses where you can purchase licenses in bulk and 15 to 20 people can access the license and model. Concurrent licenses are scalable to the number of users and are proportional to the cost."
"The price of erwin Data Modeler is very expensive, in particular for this part of the world."
"We've continued to use the product for many years and compared it with others on the market. The pricing is reasonable considering what the solution offers and what we pay. There are cheaper tools, but they may not be as robust and easy to use, so it's worth the money."
"erwin Data Modeler by Quest is an expensive solution."
"There are two license options and the pricing is reasonable."
"I don't specifically know what we're paying now. About three years ago, in another organization, I have this memory of 6,000 AUD a seat or something like that, but I am not sure. In the mid-2000s, it was something like 1,200 AUD a seat. I get the impression that there was a price jump when it was spun off from CA as a separate company, which is understandable, but it could sometimes be a barrier in some organizations picking it up. I haven't talked to erwin people yet, but I'm going to suggest to them that they could perhaps think of having an entry-level product that is priced a bit lower, and then, you can buy the extra suite."
"There is either a one-year or three-year license. It is not a pay-as-you-go license like a SaaS solution. It’s more of a traditional licensing. They are a little bit on the pricier side."
"Pricing is very high compared to any other product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise40
 

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 Bonita, you can build the entire mechanism using the GUI, it’s that simple. You c...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I have no idea about the setup cost because I did not buy the license.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
The UI in erwin Data Modeler can be improved significantly because when any new person opens the tool, all the toolbars are kept open with many tools in view, making it appear chunky. If possible, ...
What is your primary use case for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I primarly use erwin Data Modeler for modeling purposes. Once we have the business requirement, we create the models in erwin Data Modeler, and then we perform forward engineering to get the query ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Bonita BPM
erwin DM
 

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.
 Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples
Find out what your peers are saying about Bonita vs. erwin Data Modeler and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,647 professionals have used our research since 2012.