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IBM BPM vs Make 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

IBM BPM
Ranking in Process Automation
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (7th), Application Infrastructure (6th)
Make
Ranking in Process Automation
31st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 6.6%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Make is 0.9%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Prince Mathew - PeerSpot reviewer
More customizable than IBM FileNet and useful for automation
One suggestion for IBM BPM is to provide better integration between their products, such as DataCap, which we use for scanning. Although the new CP4BA offers offline capabilities, not everyone is on CP4BA, so enhanced integration for those on older versions would be beneficial. Another major suggestion is to offer a migration path when a product reaches its end of life. For example, there was no migration path when we moved, so we had to redo everything we had developed over ten years completely.
Yaniv Ivgi - PeerSpot reviewer
An affordable cloud solution for automation and data manipulation
Make has a single IP. We cannot use a single IP because of the security. There are a lot of crashes when you work manually. Also, they need to provide more models. When you have an error, Make should inform them with guidance before you make the mistake. There is a lot of data you can confuse.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution has always been lacking in the user interface (UI), it needed to be improved a lot. However, from the acquisition of Spark UI, the UI is much better. Overall the solution is robust and has the ability to integrate with any product for complex workflows."
"We made the transformation to agile. Altogether with BPM, it is the total package."
"Its workflow and integration with SAP are the most valuable features. It is also a stable solution."
"Technical support is pleasant to work with and always available."
"IBM BPM is a stable solution."
"We like that it does not require a lot of hours to train our people."
"IBM BPM and Automation Anywhere working together automate manual tasks with a reduction in FTEs, creating about a 30% reduction in FTEs by automating processes."
"Good user interface and good add option."
"Make's front-end interface, the modular interface that it has, drag-and-drop interface, is very easy to understand, use, and integrate."
"Make saves a lot of time, and I have created really complex scenarios in Make."
"The most valuable features of Make are the additional options when compared to other similar solutions. For example, with Google my business, you can only do certain things with Zapier, whereas with Make, you can do a little bit more."
"Make's front-end interface, the modular interface that it has, drag-and-drop interface, is very easy to understand, use, and integrate."
 

Cons

"Performance in the development environment space. I know that they have been taking it off the desktop version and putting on the web, and it is not 100% yet."
"The setup was quite complex because the solution was cutting-edge at that time and IBM invested considerably in the implementation, likely at a loss to themselves."
"Integration with web services, especially in the standard version of the product."
"IBM BPM integrated with Spark UI and the UI is now much better, but they still need to improve the UI because competitors have predefined templates and other additional features. In these competitor's solutions, you are able to use the templates, map your data, and the form is ready to use. With this solution, you need to write a lot of code to have the same quality as the competitor's templates. It would be a benefit to make this platform more towards low-code or no-code."
"I'd like the tool to be more flexible."
"The initial setup process is complex for basic users."
"We are a government organization, and we are the largest government power sector in India. We generate around 30% of power in India. Therefore, our processes are quite complex. Although IBM BPM is a low-code or no-code software, if you want to have extremely complex workflows, just the business process diagrams are not helpful in creating those workflows. While implementing complex workflows, only the process flow diagrams did not help us. We had to write a lot of Java scripts and Java queries to achieve what we wanted. Its integration capabilities with the SAP environment have to be improved. At present, we are only talking at the web services environment level. Its price also needs to be improved. It is currently expensive. Previously, Active Directory required a heterogeneous environment, but now they want a homogeneous environment. We had onboarded employees through Microsoft Active Directory, and now I have to implement Microsoft AD only from the cloud for my vendors."
"Stability wavers. We have some opportunities for improvement in this space, especially as we approach our target volume of a million transactions a day. It is tough, because it is not necessarily the product. It is more around the platform and infrastructure to support it, so the connectivity to the database, web sessions, and reverse proxies in front of that."
"The pricing of Make at this point is through operations consumption, and it becomes really expensive in certain scenarios when iterations are involved."
"Make could improve the ease of use, it can be more complicated than other solutions. There are a lot of elements that are more technical than in other solutions."
"Make can be a bit difficult to use for new users, but for someone with technical knowledge and some coding skills, it becomes manageable, especially with Make's great UI features that really help."
"The pricing of Make at this point is through operations consumption, and it becomes really expensive in certain scenarios when iterations are involved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has a low cost to implement. You'll get your money back in the same year that you complete the project."
"I already compared some solutions related to business process management, and I saw that the cost of IBM BPM is more expensive compared with that of Camunda, for example."
"It's expensive. All software is always extremely high. The manufacturing cost that we have compared to the selling cost, it's not like you're building a house or building a car. But putting that aside, considering that it's expensive, it's a lot of money. If you compare it with some of the other alternatives in the market, it's a similar price. For instance, if you compare it with Pegasystems, it's a similar price."
"Due to its extensive features and capabilities, the product pricing is more aligned with medium—to large enterprises."
"We have a yearly licensing model. It is not expensive. There are no addition costs to the standard license."
"The price is good but could be a little lower."
"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."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The price of Make is approximately $20 per month for the platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Make?
I find the pricing, setup costs, and licensing costs of Make to be reasonable.
What needs improvement with Make?
I don't think there's anything else Make needs, but one improvement could be the addition of no-code steps that can be used within Make, similar to what Zapier offers with its own actions.
What is your primary use case for Make?
As an entrepreneur and a freelancer who also runs my own agency, I use Make to set up automations for my clients. Recently, the most use cases are of AI agent or AI calling agent, but when I starte...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
Integromat
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Buan Consulting, Armadia
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. Make and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.