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Bonita vs IBM BPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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 Management (BPM)
20th
Ranking in Process Automation
16th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (11th)
IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
7th
Ranking in Process Automation
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Bonita is 3.0%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM BPM is 5.9%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM BPM5.9%
Bonita3.0%
Other91.1%
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Mohamed Guermazi - PeerSpot reviewer
The user interface is easy to use, and the product performs well, but the dashboard and the monitoring features are limited
We use the product to design workflows. We model and install them on the server. We use the Community edition The modeling features are easy. The performance of the tool is good. The user interface is easy to use. I have used the product for complex processes and sub-processes successfully. The…
Ateeq Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation platforms streamline processes and offer flexibility, but AI integration and version upgrades pose challenges
In the technology world, there is always room for improvement. Technologies evolve day by day, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence and generative AI models. Although IBM BPM is a substantial product, adopting and integrating new technologies quickly is not easy due to the migration and upgrade paths involved. Every time new versions are released, we face business and production challenges that make rapid adoption challenging. The main concern bothering me today regarding IBM BPM is the integration of AI components.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is easy to use."
"The solution is stable. Even the older versions are stable."
"Bonita is user-friendly."
"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."
"I find process management and user interface designing the most valuable features."
"This product is very easy-to-use and user-friendly."
"Process automation with Bonita BPM is really easy."
"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 installation was straightforward."
"The possibility to add Java code as embedded .jar, that increases the flexibility of the solution."
"The performance is fine."
"It has reduced a lot of manual errors and processes."
"It has improved my organization quite a bit. It brought awareness to what the business processes are, even to the business side, who did not necessarily know what they are."
"The most valuable features are the integration capabilities - BPM can connect with almost any legacy or advanced system."
"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."
"IBM BPM is both scalable and stable."
 

Cons

"The dashboard has limited features."
"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."
"It is missing some important features that other products have."
"The main issue with Bonita is that the workspace crashes sometimes."
"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."
"There is a need for more components in the library and additional customization options for these components."
"We are struggling a bit with integrations."
"I would like to improve the product's load balancing."
"Importing and exporting between multiple environments is more difficult with other tools."
"There are a few areas, like triggering mechanisms, externally exposed variables, and changing its values."
"User Interface components could be further refined to enhance and extend customizations dictated by end clients."
"I would say the scalability is very good but it's not perfect. It is much more scalable than it has been in the past but... it does require some work to keep it stable. So that is an area that should be improved."
"Some of the features are not enough for my business. We need to build custom user management for the many end users affected by BPM."
"It might not be suitable for entry level clients because it comes with a huge number of modules for processing that at times might not be necessary for upcoming clients."
"There needs to be better documentation for IBM BPM in a central place. There is not any standard documentation for each component available and has been a barrier for developers."
"Process versioning was tricky, not straightforward."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am using the free version of Bonita."
"You pay an annual fee and can have an unlimited number of processes and users."
"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."
"have installed the image of Bonita BPM on Amazon AWS and there is just one option to use and pay for."
"The price is fair for what we are using the solution for."
"We are using the Community Version, which can be used free of charge."
"The product's pricing is acceptable. Pricing is yearly."
"I believe this is a very good financial choice."
"The solution is expensive since it is an enterprise application."
"It may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet."
"It is pricey."
"IBM could improve the price. It is far too expensive."
"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."
"Its price is on the higher side, and it can be improved. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs."
"When considering the features of the solution the price is expensive compared to competitors."
"It gives us a good return on investment."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
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 Business30
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise71
 

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 do you like most about Bonita?
The user interface is easy to use.
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 interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
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
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.
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 Bonita vs. IBM BPM and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,019 professionals have used our research since 2012.