Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Epicor ERP vs SAP Business ByDesign 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Epicor ERP
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
ERP (15th)
SAP Business ByDesign
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Cloud ERP (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Enterprise Resource Planning solutions, they serve different purposes. Epicor ERP is designed for ERP and holds a mindshare of 3.4%, up 3.0% compared to last year.
SAP Business ByDesign, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud ERP, holds 7.8% mindshare, down 8.3% since last year.
ERP Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Epicor ERP3.4%
SAP ERP17.0%
SAP S/4HANA9.2%
Other70.4%
ERP
Cloud ERP Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAP Business ByDesign7.8%
Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP21.0%
NetSuite ERP19.2%
Other52.0%
Cloud ERP
 

Featured Reviews

Khalid Jalal - PeerSpot reviewer
Requires extensive customization and fails to meet manufacturing needs
My overall experience with Epicor ERP is extremely bad. I just finished a call with the team, and the experience is really unsatisfactory. I will not recommend it to anyone. There's extensive customization required for Epicor ERP, and the standard process is not suitable. Though it is meant for manufacturing, it is not performing the manufacturing job effectively. Regarding the installation process, the implementation is not the problem as the installation is fine. The issue lies with configuration. Although it's supposed to be configurable, it requires customization for everything we need to do. When comparing to JD Edwards and in-house applications, a process that takes one minute in those systems takes ten minutes in Epicor ERP because users have to navigate through different screens constantly. If a user forgets to switch to one screen, the process remains incomplete, making end-user training extremely difficult. There's no automation and workflow feature that can be used without customization. Everything requires changes, making it similar to developing a new platform from scratch. Initially, we anticipated some benefits from using Epicor ERP, but based on the current outcome, it has been completely unsuccessful. The main issue is that everything requires customization rather than configuration. Unless they change their whole approach from customization to configuration, this product should not be used anywhere.
Majid-Mustafa - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides custom versions of reports personalized for users
For AI initiatives, you need to purchase a separate AI license to integrate with SAP Business ByDesign. I'd recommend SAP Business ByDesign for large companies that want to check data graphically, especially for monthly income, expenses, and taxes in the millions or trillions. Overall, for large-scale companies, I'd rate it ten out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There's good flexibility within the inbuilt tools such as alerts, business process management, dashboards, and screen customization."
"For the past two years, my focus has been fully on Epicor ERP, and there are many new features which we did not deploy in our platform."
"Epicor ERP paid for itself in the first year and a half, and continued to make the company lean and more profitable by providing tools to manage business operations better, such as production scheduling, finance, and estimating products."
"The product is stable with a rating of ten."
"The most valuable features of Epicor ERP are ease of use, powerful API, and comprehensive integration. It is a one-vendor solution, where other vendors need other software systems from multiple vendors."
"Epicor ERP is very technical friendly, if you want to do any customization, it's very easy."
"The solution is great for production planning because everything is out of the box. It smoothly handles the process from engineering to ERP, including version management and subcontracting. These features aren't in NetSuite."
"Real-time results make for faster decision making."
"The most valuable features of SAP Business ByDesign are customer invoicing and cost and revenue, from which I get the data for my project reports."
"I like the tool’s customization."
"I have found the consolidation of the business and group reports very useful. There is plenty of features and the manufacturing and finance aspect of the solution are strong."
"It has a quick implementation and onboarding of users. It is flexible with reports and powerful."
"SAP Business ByDesign is connected to our S/4 HANA system, and we have developed some APIs which help us integrate the system with S/4 HANA."
"The most valuable feature is the feature called Financial Closing Cockpit. This feature allows us to monitor our accounting and processing closely."
"The standard system is stable."
"I find the tool’s every feature valuable."
 

Cons

"Right now, it doesn't really have a good cloud story."
"The support rates at 50% because most of the time the support team needs to relearn the processes, especially when a new person is assigned."
"In the newer version of Epicor ERP, it's very difficult to find out that tracing."
"Epicor didn't care about user level and software applications. So, it's not so user-friendly for nontechnical people."
"Everything requires changes, making it similar to developing a new platform from scratch."
"There's a new version of the solution that has some bugginess. They're cleaning that up. The user interface is an area that needs improvement and they're improving."
"AI and additional improvements could be made."
"A number of bugs in 9.05 were only fixed in 10."
"The Arabic localization is neglected. It should have an Arabic interface. It lacks Arabic translation or support from right to left."
"With SAP S/4HANA, you can design your release strategy and modify it to include as many people as possible, which is missing in SAP Business ByDesign."
"SAP Business ByDesign can improve the flexibility and user-friendliness of the reporting during the implementations. Customizing the reports inside the device requires a lot of knowledge and most of the time a developer level is needed. For example, if you want to have a more specific reporting layout."
"SAP Business ByDesign is a very vast product, but it has to be a bit more centralized. All the models need to be more centralized for a better experience."
"The Purchase to Pay process could benefit from further sophistication and additional functionality. It would be helpful for the user community to receive clearer information about the future roadmap of the business. Unfortunately, there were some confusing articles in the German press towards the end of last year about the future of SAP Business ByDesign. Therefore, more clarity is needed in the support function to address this."
"The solution does not support customization for forms and reports. It's not flexible in case you need some enhancements in business processes."
"There might be some hurdles when integrating with SAP ECC, but integration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud is smooth."
"ByDesign could be improved by making screen modifications easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing isn't a big problem for the solution - I haven't seen them lose deals because of it."
"We bought an on-premise version of the solution. The cloud version is different. I've looked into it, but it's very competitive on the low end of the market."
"User support could be improved as well, as the consultant charges are very high."
"Epicor ERP is an expensive solution."
"When comparing Epicor ERP to the other related products, the pricing, additional enhancements, as well as implementation, are better."
"The initial cost may be a bit high, but the maintenance cost is lower."
"The cost starts anywhere between fifty thousand dollars and up depending on the number of licenses."
"The tool’s subscription is yearly. There is no flat pricing involved and everything has a range. Pricing depends on the functionality that you would use. You need to also pay for the additional hosting and maintenance costs."
"I rate the price of SAP Business ByDesign a seven out of ten."
"The tool’s pricing is expensive."
"The price of SAP Business ByDesign is less expensive than SAP S/4HANA. However, the price is on par with other similar competitors, such as Microsoft."
"We have to pay yearly."
"Everything is included in the licensing cost of the solution. However, they use a per-user model for additional charges."
"The pricing depends on company size. It's cheaper for small companies and more expensive for large ones."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which ERP solutions are best for your needs.
870,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
22%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Epicor ERP?
The licensing cost for Epicor ERP is a concern. The licensing becomes cheap, which leads people to opt for it, but then they encounter troubles similar to ours. The licensing was reasonable when we...
What needs improvement with Epicor ERP?
The cost management and product costing should be enhanced, along with issues in the manufacturing process. The downtime functionality in Epicor ERP is not functioning optimally.
What is your primary use case for Epicor ERP?
We are using Epicor ERP version 10.3.6. We utilize the complete process from P2P through to manufacturing, HR, and almost all other processes.
What do you like most about SAP Business ByDesign?
The most valuable features of SAP Business ByDesign are customer invoicing and cost and revenue, from which I get the data for my project reports.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Business ByDesign?
The price is high, as every year SAP increases the price by 3.5%.
What needs improvement with SAP Business ByDesign?
We received a few complaints about the slowness in SAP Business ByDesign last year, so I think SAP can focus on improving performance, particularly when it becomes slow during data saving and handl...
 

Also Known As

Epicor SaaS ERP
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Standard Bank of South Africa, AOK Bundesverband, PT XL Axiata Tbk, Tvoy Dom, Schaidt Innovations GmbH & Co. KG, DeLaval International AB, EMC Corporation, Lenovo, Castle Importing Inc., Unilever, Rifle Paper Co., RAK Ceramics, Rough Country, B&G Manufacturing, Life is good Inc., Joy Global Inc., City of Cape Town
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP, Microsoft, Infor and others in ERP. Updated: October 2025.
870,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.