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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 (18th)
LeanIX
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 16.0%, up from 13.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

ScottLawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables us to present data and objects visually, in diagrams, and to make them available via the web. Also enables web-based editing of data.
We tried their collaborative web modeling and we used it with a few people but we tend to not use that piece. We tend to collaborate with the people and then my team of architects draws up the diagram using the modeling tool. We then iterate through those. I would like to use it, but it was a little clunky when they first rolled it out. Overall, it's more about the company having room for improvement. What they need to do is to consolidate more of their products. For example, I was just looking and I couldn't figure out what erwin DT is. It's on the website but it would help if they could put information together and make it more clear as to what products they have and how they work with other things. I hear them talking in the support forums and, when I talk to the representative, they say they're going to do a bunch of stuff but it seems the progress is slow. The changes they need to make are to take their old, legacy product, which we use, and focus a lot on it so they can transform it into a modern cloud tool so that we have fewer little pieces to deal with. They could also fix their security model. It's very confusing to get new people onto the tool and to make sure that your content isn't being exposed to the wrong people.
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

"There is a model behind it. It's really nice that the Evolve front-end, as it builds a website, keeps those relationships in mind. You can even go to a procedure and see all the applications that are related to it. Then you can go into that application and see all the standard operating procedures that that application is a part of. It's just very connected."
"Evolve's reverse engineering ability is quite useful."
"We use erwin Evolve to publish to the website. This allows us to enable publishing our website using parameterisation features. In a very fast, quick way, we can publish a table or chart onto a website."
"Evolve is like a tank. You can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it. I think that it's not very aligned with the framework for enterprise architecture. MEGA is focused on these enterprise architectures, but it's only for that. With Evolve, you can do everything you want with professional services."
"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."
"Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets."
"The initial setup was really straightforward and the deployment was done within one day."
"I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability..."
"We've been able to develop some nice looking reports, and the dashboard's capability to map is very easy compared to Enterprise Architect."
"LeanIX has a great application information architecture."
"The solution provides a single window view of business, application, data, and technology views of the IT ecosystem."
"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."
"It offers neat visualization and referencing functionality while enabling the creation of landscape maps and showing the relationship between different applications."
"Ease of use is the most valuable feature. From an enterprise architecture perspective, it's not too cumbersome with too many functionalities, yet it has a lot of attributes for the content it covers."
"One of the product's most valuable features is its ability to configure hardware devices."
"I can develop a report and then do a presentation, or develop a report and some other diagrams and then put them all in one presentation, and from there, I can present things directly, so there is no need to move images."
 

Cons

"I would like it to be easier to make changes and then deploy them into production, especially when you have multiple web servers or front-ends. It would be nice to make a change and then have it propagate to the production servers in a more automated fashion."
"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."
"What they need to do is to consolidate more of their products. For example, I was just looking and I couldn't figure out what erwin DT is. It's on the website but it would help if they could put information together and make it more clear as to what products they have and how they work with other things."
"I feel that the UML drawing capability needs to be improved."
"I would like to see an improvement in the output of the solution."
"Add some ability to do conditional Visualization on the models and in reports (some ideas) – maybe as a specialized Theme or Diagram or Display."
"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."
"The solution's integration capabilities with other tools in our system has not been all that well done. We have people who use ARIS, who use System Architect and, of course, Visio. erwin has very limited ways to import and export from those kinds of tools. It's not a very easy thing to do."
"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."
"Adjustments related to specific organizational requirements are complex."
"What would make LeanIX better is more variety in terms of reporting, and more flexibility with its data importing feature."
"The initial setup has room for improvement."
"LeanIX experiences a lot of server timeouts. Nearly every transaction needs to be done twice due to these issues."
"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."
"It's hard to predict the pricing of the system."
"The solution needs to incorporate a data patch tool that moves within and irons data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
"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."
"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."
"As the tool is cloud-based, its cost is more affordable."
"I would rate the pricing a one out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"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."
"LeanIX uses application-based account licensing, where the cost is multiplied by the number of applications in the software implementation."
"The solution's pricing is based on a licensing model that is competitive and in line with other products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
11%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing 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 is associated with high costs. 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 first pricing ...
 

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: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.