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LeanIX vs erwin Evolve by Quest comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 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

erwin Evolve by Quest
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (19th)
LeanIX
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of erwin Evolve by Quest is 2.7%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LeanIX is 15.9%, up from 14.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

Asish Sahu - PeerSpot reviewer
The reverse engineering capabilities are quite useful.
Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product.
Umit Sengul - PeerSpot reviewer
A platform that facilitates efficient IT architecture management and integration, improving organizational coordination and decision-making
LeanIX is primarily used to create and manage architectural models, link capabilities, activities, and products and generate comprehensive reports. It serves as a central platform for overseeing the IT landscape within EON, a large organization, streamlining operations and enhancing governance…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can efficiently deploy business models into the databases and generate SQL scripts."
"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."
"Support for a broad range of data sources from relational to big data to the Cloud."
"Forward and reverse engineering were valuable features."
"Evolve's reverse engineering ability is quite useful."
"Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets."
"You can use different kinds of diagrams to represent the architecture setting."
"One of the most valuable features is the website that sits on top of the database. There's a database of objects and how they are related, and you can make views and diagrams and visual elements out of that information on the website. The website is the part that is called Evolve and we use the Evolve Designer and publish the website out to our employees. They can click around and navigate and search, etc."
"The solution provides a single window view of business, application, data, and technology views of the IT ecosystem."
"The most valuable features are the clean user interface and the fact sheet feature in Application Portfolio Management. The tool integrates well with ServiceNow, which is the usual CMDB platform."
"LeanIX has a great application information architecture."
"I like LeanIX's ease of use in general."
"The most valuable features include the reporting capabilities and the LeanIX Academy's educational resources."
"The solution has a very useful assessment tool that automatically populates from input data to produce a detailed analysis of customer's environments."
"The most valuable features are that it's user-friendly and the user experience. It's easy to map the fact sheets."
"The usability is very high. It almost looks like a Facebook for Enterprise architecture, it's pretty nice. It's HTML5 based. The repository is very easy. It has 10 different ways of sorting the objects you have in your architecture repository. Maintaining new data or to add data to your repository is very easy."
 

Cons

"I feel that the UML drawing capability needs to be improved."
"They have improved the search engine a little bit but it can always be improved more. The more data you put inside it, the more you want to use it."
"It could have had a more streamlined navigation. It seemed that when you went to the explorer panel, there were just so many different ways of doing the work that I could not remember, "How did I do this? How did I get to that point in that model to get back to it?" If I wanted to build a new one, where do I start? It just seemed like there was such a smorgasbord of ways of doing it that it was just overwhelming."
"With the Excel importing, the "up to date" part is the challenge. If we had a real-time integration, we could keep things up to date for whatever kinds of change points we had. With Excel, it is more that you have to export from one system then import it to another, so it's better for data that doesn't change that often."
"The solution needs to focus on allowing for more integrations."
"They need to develop Evolve's user experience. For example, MEGA has a useful client view that helps with impact analysis. MEGA provides information about the processes, services, infrastructure, and portfolio of applications in one central view. It lets you see the periphery and relationships among components. This view is impressive, and Evolve doesn't have it."
"There might be improvement required to better support some of the MPP databases for non-relational data structures and NoSQL databases."
"erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses."
"I find LeanIX's pricing expensive for the functionality it offers. However, with the acquisition by SAP, the pricing might become more affordable due to scale and tiered application pricing. Currently, it offers different tiers for the first 400 applications: 400 to 600 and 600 to 1,000, making it expensive from a pricing standpoint."
"LeanIX has limited in-build diagramming capabilities, requiring the purchase of another tool. That is the main drawback of LeanIX because they don't have a built-in add-on product for diagramming."
"It would be beneficial to have additional features and capabilities to enhance mapping between applications, especially across domains where the relationships may not be direct."
"Improvements in user interface simplicity could be made, particularly with the reporting and filtering capabilities."
"Adjustments related to specific organizational requirements are complex."
"They're probably positioned pretty well. I hope that they would not focus that much on the business architecture, and they would focus more on the overall cloud strategy and how we can leverage multi-cloud and transition back and forth from other cloud providers. With a lot of current vendors, you get locked in with one cloud, and then you try to migrate to someone else, and it becomes very problematic. What they need to do is to look at the overall data strategy, and they probably need to amplify their data strategy, especially around multi-cloud."
"I think the tool's main issue might be direct integrations."
"Does a poor job of being able to allocate detailed costings to components within the network."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing enables you to differentiate between people who edit the content and the people who consume it. We are able to keep the licensing costs down by keeping the "contributor" licenses to a minimum, and we then just roll out the content in a read-only version for the rest of our users."
"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."
"The cost is something like $15,000, per license. But I haven't looked at those numbers in three years. It was over $100,000 to initially set everything up and get it all configured."
"I estimate that we pay between $40,000 and $50,000 a year for the solution, not including the upfront costs to buy things the first time."
"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
"The solution's pricing is based on a licensing model that is competitive and in line with other products."
"As the tool is cloud-based, its cost is more affordable."
"The tool needs to include more flexible licensing options. We do not use the tool all the time. So pricing should be considered only when we use the tool."
"There is a sweet spot of where they need to be on pricing right now. They could go up a little bit in pricing, but it has to do with the cost savings, and it has to do with the practitioners using it. I use it where I get cost savings and I can justify it, but they probably have the ability to flex a 10% up channel on their sales on that. So, they could increase their settle price, not their offering price, when they sell. They can probably hold that up a little bit higher than it is because there are cost savings that we can drive from it."
"I would rate the pricing a one out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"It cost me $91,000 a year for 300 applications. For any enterprise, 300 applications are minimal, as many have well over 1,000 applications."
"The pricing is very good. We definitely get good value for the money."
"LeanIX uses application-based account licensing, where the cost is multiplied by the number of applications in the software implementation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about erwin Evolve by Quest?
We can efficiently deploy business models into the databases and generate SQL scripts.
What needs improvement with erwin Evolve by Quest?
erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses.
Any experience with Strategic Project Portfolio Management Solutions?
Hi @Cheryl Joseph ​Looking at the crossover between Project and Portfolio management with EA, then Planview could be a good choice. If looking at Portfolio Management from an EA perspective then Le...
What do you like most about LeanIX?
The ability to import data and generate reports from it. That's where its power lies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LeanIX?
LeanIX pricing ranges from moderate to high. Our usage and costs depend on the number of applications, and as the number of applications grows, so does the cost. We have aligned our usage with appl...
 

Also Known As

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Duke University, ESPN, Fidelity, GE, JP Morgan Chase, KPMG, McGraw Hill, NASA, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Scotland, Teradata, Union Pacific, Vodafone, Wells Fargo.
adidas, Bosch, Chico's, Haworth, Helvetia, KuKa, Osram, Telekom, TUI, Santander, Swarovski, Vaillant, 7Eleven, and Zalando.
Find out what your peers are saying about LeanIX vs. erwin Evolve by Quest and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.