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

IBM BPM vs ProcessMaker comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 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 Business Process Management (BPM)
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th), Process Automation (6th)
ProcessMaker
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
37th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 6.8%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ProcessMaker is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Kamran - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient processes and intuitive workflow with many valuable features
You will have access to make any needed changes. Additionally, the review will be published on PeerSpot.com in written or audio format, available to other people. You can stay anonymous if you wish. Notifications and the use of the review are subject to PeerSpot's terms of use, which you can find at PeerSpot.com/TOS. I would give the solution an overall rating of ten out of ten points.
UchechiSylvanus - PeerSpot reviewer
Works well, but its interface should be a bit more user-friendly
We use it for our process flows and levels of approvals, but I am not managing it directly Its performance, stability, and security are fine. Its interface should be a bit more user-friendly. I have been using this solution for close to a year. It is stable. It is easy to scale. We currently…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is stable."
"It has improved my organization quite a bit. It brought awareness to what the business processes are, even to the business side, who did not necessarily know what they are."
"Responsive Portal + Process Federation Server. This set of solutions offers a unified worklist to our customers."
"The installation was straightforward."
"The initial setup process is easy."
"Initially, the process architecture studio was very helpful and it was compliant with BPMN standards."
"The solution is stable."
"I think the best way it can be it improved, is to make it easier to install. It's a very complicated piece of software, and there are a lot of things you have to do to get it set up. It's not just running an installer. You install WebSphere. You install the BPM product, and there's a large host of other steps you have to do: run queries against the database, you have to manually configure a bunch of properties files for your environment. I think if they could streamline all that, so it wasn't a considerable effort to install, that would be very useful. Because from an engineering point of view, you want to spend as little time as possible actually installing a product."
"Its performance, stability, and security are fine."
"What I like most is the seamlessness of the workflow capabilities."
 

Cons

"IBM BPM needs to have a better and modified interface."
"I suggest establishing a developer forum for better communication and issue resolution. Also, the administration panel could be improved for task management."
"IBM BPM's price could be improved."
"It's a bit technical, related to the instance of migrations. It's a tough thing to handle, in every new release, in every upgrade, that we have to do things in the applications or in the product. I think IBM is working on it but I know there are a lot of requests coming in from different organizations on this."
"The debugging needs improvement. There is some confusion surrounding the debugging."
"Needs better reporting. I do not think that we are fully taking advantage of what it already has yet."
"Although IBM BPM is a substantial product, adopting and integrating new technologies quickly is not easy due to the migration and upgrade paths involved."
"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."
"Its interface should be a bit more user-friendly."
"This solution only supports basic text, but we would like to be able to insert components such as rich text, graphs, charts, pictures, and other objects."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the pricing an eight out of ten."
"The cloud and license of the subscription model for IBM BPM can be complex. There are a lot of alternatives to choose from."
"The price of the solution is fair for an enterprise solution that has both cloud and on-premise deployments and when comparing to competitors. Recently IBM has introduced Cloud Pak which allows for more flexible licensing options for automation and other features."
"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."
"When considering the features of the solution the price is expensive compared to competitors."
"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."
"I think it's a reasonably priced tool, but it's important to consider which customers should buy this solution. It's designed for enterprise customers, not small ones."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"We have a yearly license."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Business Process Management (BPM) solutions are best for your needs.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
9%
University
8%
 

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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
ProcessMaker Workflow Management & BPM, ProcessMaker BPM
 

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
Tulsa Community College, Sirius College, Mcredit Vietnam, Oregon City Schools, Lakozy Toyota, HyperCube
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. ProcessMaker and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.