Bonita vs IBM Blueworks Live comparison

Bonitasoft and IBM are both solutions in the Business Process Design category. Bonitasoft is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.3. Bonitasoft holds a 4.4% mindshare in BPD, compared to IBM’s 3.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Bonitasoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Bonita

Read 27 Bonita reviews

2,259 Views
1,243 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

IBM Blueworks Live

Read 20 IBM Blueworks Live reviews

2,080 Views
1,192 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Bonita

IBM Blueworks Live

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

Bonita and IBM Blueworks Live are prominent contenders in the process management software category. Bonita is favored for its cost-effectiveness and service quality, while IBM Blueworks Live appeals to users seeking comprehensive features and advanced functionality.

Features: Bonita provides customization capabilities for flexible process modeling, integration, and a user-friendly interface. It supports mobile portal access and includes numerous connectors for different systems. IBM Blueworks Live offers robust process design with intuitive visual tools and extensive collaboration features, focusing on cloud-based accessibility.

Room for Improvement: Bonita could enhance its ease of use and reduce setup time. More comprehensive built-in error handling and support for non-programming implementations would be beneficial. IBM Blueworks Live could improve its cost-effectiveness and service flexibility. Enhancements in customization options and further advancements in process modeling tools are also areas for growth.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Bonita supports on-premise deployment with extensive resources for smooth integration and flexible deployment options. IBM Blueworks Live, as a cloud-based service, offers straightforward deployment with continuous updates. It provides reliable support, with some noted constraints in flexibility.

Pricing and ROI: Bonita is known for competitive pricing, lower setup costs, and strong return on investment due to reduced operational expenses. IBM Blueworks Live involves higher initial costs but offers potential long-term ROI through advanced process optimization. Its pricing is seen as valuable for organizations prioritizing feature-rich enhancements.

To learn more, read our detailed Bonita vs. IBM Blueworks Live Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Bonita vs. IBM Blueworks Live

July 2025

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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

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Management (BPM) (19th), Process Automation (15th)

IBM Blueworks Live

Ranking in Business Process Design

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of Bonita is 4.4%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 3.5%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Business Process Design

Featured Reviews

Paparao Nadipineni

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.

Read full review

AjarMathur

Global Innovation Director at Ernst & Young

An easily scalable and affordable solution that enables users to document and digitize processes with ease

IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts. There is only one kind of BPMN 2.0 diagram. It is a process diagram. It doesn't have the concept of separate tools, which other products offer. If I had to do a hardcore BPMN 2.0 modeling, the product would have its own reservations. There were features we could not explore from a BPMN 2.0 perspective. Most of the time, people who are shifting from Microsoft Office tools to a digitized way of working still want the reporting capabilities to be strong. Some tools, like ARIS or Signavio, offer customized solutions from the reporting perspective. If I have documented my whole finance process and want to fetch out a complete SOP report in a very customized manner, IBM Blueworks cannot provide it. We have to rely on some other services. So that's one area in which we always struggled, how to really customize the reporting aspects. I understand that we need to keep the tool a little more asset-light. It's very difficult to keep adding many options, but at least a few BPMN 2.0 options were needed. We have been suggesting to IBM that we should have some way of customizing the reporting. At least we should get a custom way of reporting it into different formats like Excel or putting up a logo for one of the clients so that their SAP can be printed that way.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The user interface is better than all of the open-source BPMs that I have tried."

"We use the tool to validate and give access to the users. It is for access management."

"Process automation with Bonita BPM is really easy."

"I really enjoy using the workflow management."

"This product is very easy-to-use and user-friendly."

"Development of forms and flows."

"It is a great product that is powerful in developing applications."

"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."

More Bonita pros

"For me the most valuable feature is that it's one depository for our bank. So it's not like everybody has their critical processes on SharePoint or on their desktops. Everything is centrally located. It's very intuitive, easy to use. The support that I get from IBM is always great."

"It has the ability to document in different formats. It is not tied to a specific model. You can look at it from different angles and see the intuitive nature of it. It always generates a valid diagram. You cannot create something that is not BPMN compliant."

"Valuable features include real-time modeling and design work, the ability to perform workshops with clients in real-time with the tool, and getting instant output."

"It has a built-in capability to capture process owners and managers against processes along with other process governance roles."

"The business process discovery is excellent. The diagram or blueprinting functionality of the solution are very good. It's quite easy. You can link the sub-processes and get a big overview of the whole process then."

"It's very easy, very quick to create a process map. It has templates. The look and feel is very nice. What we want to achieve out of the process map, we can achieve it using Blueworks."

"The solution is stable. All the refreshes run very well."

"The stability is pretty good. It is highly available, which is key. You don't lose your work and can autosave."

More IBM Blueworks Live pros

Cons

"I have run into a lot of problems because there is not enough documentation."

"There is a considerable learning curve."

"The interface is advanced and quite good, but it could improve."

"There could be an improvement in IoT connectivity."

"It would be nice to have a wizard to help walk through the development process and create a backbone."

"Installation could be made easier."

"The community edition has limited module functionality. If they could release some of the functionality that's available in the enterprise edition that would be helpful to those learning to use the solution."

"The main issue with Bonita is that the workspace crashes sometimes."

More Bonita cons

"The solution is a very basic discovery product so it doesn't have that much modeling capability. This can be improved."

"We haven't yet been able to dabble in case management with Blueworks Live, as it is not yet offered with the product."

"In the solution Signavio, they have a customer journey mapping feature that should be added to IBM Blueworks Live. It's valuable to map or document the customer journey to identify the pains and opportunities in this process."

"We'd also like to see it be Six Sigma or Lean compatible, a lot of people have asked about that."

"Some of the import functionality was a bit restrictive, in terms of loading data in from other data sources. Something as simple as Excel, loading data tables from Excel, wasn't great. And vice-versa. Some of the export and import functionality with something like Visio - which, I know it's a slightly different tool - but being able to work seamlessly with those other tool sets would've been quite useful. I know it was something that was in the pipeline to be looked at. So that would be useful."

"In the Blue Works Live software boxes and lines are automatically placed by the programme and can't be easily manipulated."

"The APIs are great, except the normal business user doesn't know how to create APIs. So it's hard because IBM comes to us as the business users and tell us to create reporting with APIs, except we don't know that, so we have to turn around and flip it to our IT people."

"I would like to see integration with ERP systems. This would help us to simulate the process and see where the problems are. Though IBM Blueworks Live is a good tool for documenting, it is not good for simulating."

More IBM Blueworks Live cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The Community Edition comes free of charge."

"The price is fair for what we are using the solution for."

"Price to service ratio with Bonita BPM is good."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"We are using the Community Version, which can be used free of charge."

"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."

"You pay an annual fee and can have an unlimited number of processes and users."

More Bonita pricing and cost advice

"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."

"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."

"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."

"The solution is very, very cost-effective."

"The solution is not very expensive."

"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."

"Making it less expensive would be good."

"Based on the licenses purchased, from a footprint perspective, you can have as many people as you want. You have multiple different categories of licenses to keep the cost low."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

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 Bonita, you can build the entire mechanism using the GUI, it’s that simple. You c...

See all answers

What do you like most about Bonita?

The user interface is easy to use.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bonita?

The Enterprise edition is very expensive.

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Blueworks Live?

The solution is easy to operate. Also, there is an automatic mode to make the business flow. You don't have to put any lines or arrows in a decision point in IBM Blueworks Live; it's very automatic.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?

The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Blueworks Live?

Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively.

See all answers

Comparisons

Camunda vs Bonita

Compared 54% of the time

Bizagi vs Bonita

Compared 15% of the time

Flowable vs Bonita

Compared 8% of the time

IBM BPM vs Bonita

Compared 5% of the time

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs Bonita

Compared 3% of the time

More Bonita Competitors

Visio vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 30% of the time

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 23% of the time

Lucidchart vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 13% of the time

ARIS Cloud vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 12% of the time

ARIS BPA vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Blueworks Live Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Bonita

July 2025

Download Bonita product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Blueworks Live

June 2025

Download IBM Blueworks Live product report

Also Known As

Bonita BPM

IBM Lombardi Blueprint

Overview

Bonitasoft helps innovative companies worldwide deliver better digital user experiences for customers and employees. The extensible and open Bonita application platform unleashes the full potential of multidisciplinary development teams to create Living Apps: applications that allow continuous and incremental improvement, connecting tailored user interfaces with reliable back-office operations.

Bonitasoft

IBM Blueworks Live is a cloud-based business process modeling tool that helps you discover, map and document your processes. It is easy to use, allowing you to learn and perform business process modeling in minutes.

With Blueworks Live you can:

Simplify business process modeling
Quickly build business processes in a straightforward, cloud-based interface designed for both IT and business users.

Improve process efficiency and accuracy
A central process repository eliminates version control and consistency issues by providing users real-time access to process workflows.

Enhance cross-team collaboration
A shared team workspace engages all business process owners, encouraging cross-team participation and continuous process improvement.

IBM

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.

Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council

Buyer's Guide

Bonita vs. IBM Blueworks Live

July 2025

Free Report: Bonita vs. IBM Blueworks Live

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