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Visio vs erwin Evolve comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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
Ranking in Business Process Design
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (12th)
Visio
Ranking in Business Process Design
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Mind Mapping Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of erwin Evolve is 2.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Visio is 7.0%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Visio7.0%
erwin Evolve2.3%
Other90.7%
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

ScottLawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Director IT Architecture at QAD
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.
NitinSharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Specialist at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Created detailed rack and network diagrams that streamline documentation and collaboration
For creating diagrams, I definitely use Visio for HLD, LLD, and traffic flow diagrams. Apart from Visio, I use Jira only if the customer specifically requests it; otherwise, I do not use an in-house version of Jira in my organization. One of the good features of using the Microsoft umbrella product is that if I create a big diagram and then work on the HLD or LLD in Word, I can select everything from Visio and paste it as an image without needing to resize it, which streamlines the process of creating documentation for customers. The main benefits Visio provides me include simplifying processes, saving time on manual work with diagram creation, and delivering a clean architecture, whether it is network architecture or application flow. I have created diagrams for AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premises data centers, including rack elevation diagrams and organization charts. Modifications can be made easily and reflected immediately, and I can create PNG images to share with the executive team.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature that stands out for me is the ease of configuring objects and the screens to show them. It's really easy to add a new type of object in this reference. Creating a new type of object, using it, and evolving it a little bit in terms of what we can document about it are the main features that made us decide to use this provider."
"The most valuable features for us are impact analysis, where I can easily visualize the impact of change."
"It is a customizable tool that allows you to do a lot of architectural modeling for customers, and you can use different kinds of diagrams to represent the architecture setting."
"I can send images in the PDF form, along with the relationships and the associations that are a very important part of what we do. It can show what is affected and what is impacted by a certain change in one area of the system architecture or enterprise architecture. I can very quickly draw those issues and topics to the fore."
"I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability..."
"The initial setup was really straightforward and the deployment was done within one day."
"The ERwin tool helped to reduce the rate of design and deployment errors and increased the ease of validation."
"Without this tool, we couldn't have made and defined all the new processes."
"You can also use it for so much more as it's a very versatile tool."
"This is a very straightforward product and I don't think that anything needs to be simplified."
"It provides a lot of options and it is very user friendly and it definitely provides a lot of value."
"The solution makes it very easy to make exciting pictures and designs. Everything is very intuitive and simple to figure out."
"What I like most about the solution is that It's quite easy to use."
"Overall, it's very easy to use, it's very intuitive and if you're documenting business processes, it does the trick."
"Without this product, I would struggle to do my work."
"I like that once you create what you need, you can group that, at least within that drawing, and you have access to that new stencil object or that custom object throughout that drawing."
 

Cons

"Add some ability to do conditional Visualization on the models and in reports (some ideas) – maybe as a specialized Theme or Diagram or Display."
"I feel that the UML drawing capability needs to be improved."
"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."
"The solution needs to focus on allowing for more integrations."
"The solution's integration capabilities with other tools in our system has not been all that well done."
"The way that we are using it for application management, we have several KPIs. We want to follow and monitor them regarding a number of solutions. We cannot calculate this today. We would like real-time calculations along with the KPIs in order to improve the user experience. We would like the tool to be able to display this, not only as signals, but as charts."
"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."
"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."
"The platform has limitations in managing aspects like repositories."
"The user interface could be more robust."
"There are too many features."
"For professional use layout configuration is sometimes a little difficult to use."
"Lacks an interface with workflow capability."
"I would like to see Visio become some kind of enterprise architecture, which it is not."
"I would like to see the project planning element improved, although it won't happen because Microsoft deliberately made it worse."
"I think that it feels a bit outside with respect to the icons that are available."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."
"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 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."
"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."
"We probably have an M-365 E3 license."
"I haven't looked at the prices lately. We have an older copy, and it was a couple of hundred dollars for this software. That's a huge expense."
"Visio is a pricey tool. It's a five out of ten, cost-wise. It would be great if it had a pay-per-use licensing model because my company uses it sparingly."
"I believe Visio to be priced pretty reasonably."
"My company does pay toward the licensing costs of Visio. It is a cheap product based on my experience, and since I purchased Visio for my own use."
"The solution is expensive. The solution does come bundled in other packages."
"The yearly cost is approximately $400 CAD ($300 USD)."
"If I want to buy Visio for myself, I think it will be around 80 to 120 USD, though it is important to consider that I am unsure of its actual costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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How easy is it to migrate process flow charts (modeled using tools like Visio) into Bizagi?
I have been using Bizagi with a major project for a state government agency for about four years now. It is pretty straightforward to load in files that are BPMN 2.0 compliant. The option to load V...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Visio?
The pricing is reasonable now. Whereas before, I had used it when it was paid for by my work, but then as I moved to different projects, I wasn't paying $2,000 to have it. Visio is supplied by the ...
What needs improvement with Visio?
I would have said the pricing, but the pricing is fine now, so it's a good tool and a powerful one. When you know how to use it, it's very intuitive. People who don't know how to use it might want ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture
Microsoft Visio
 

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.
Thomas College, Hamburg Port Authority, Portigon AG, Conseil G_n_ral du d_partement des Hautes-Alpes, AAA Auto a. s., Commonwealth Financial Network, ICA, Abu Dhabi National Energy Company
Find out what your peers are saying about Visio vs. erwin Evolve and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.