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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)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th), Process Automation (5th)
ProcessMaker
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
35th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 4.1%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ProcessMaker is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM BPM4.1%
ProcessMaker0.9%
Other95.0%
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Ateeq Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
Unit Head System Implementor at Allied Bank Limited
Automation platforms streamline processes and offer flexibility, but AI integration and version upgrades pose challenges
In the technology world, there is always room for improvement. Technologies evolve day by day, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence and generative AI models. Although IBM BPM is a substantial product, adopting and integrating new technologies quickly is not easy due to the migration and upgrade paths involved. Every time new versions are released, we face business and production challenges that make rapid adoption challenging. The main concern bothering me today regarding IBM BPM is the integration of AI components.
UchechiSylvanus - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead, Process Improvement & RPA at Fidelity Bank Plc
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 has helped us automate business processes."
"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."
"With the Process Center, I can go to one place and view what all the environments are doing."
"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."
"IBM BPM should become cloud-native. It should also add a cloud deployment feature."
"This solution has streamlined our operation and improved the TAT of sales, operations, and underwriters."
"The most valuable feature for the organization is the Document Store."
"The initial setup process is easy."
"What I like most is the seamlessness of the workflow capabilities."
"Its performance, stability, and security are fine."
 

Cons

"The product is extremely complex to use and administrate."
"The major issue is the pricing, which is very high. IBM BPM also lacks smaller solutions, so I must purchase multiple solutions to start with workflows and applications."
"IBM BPM can improve the dashboards and reports. It only has two dashboards, and reporting is very difficult to build."
"It is a really powerful tool, but its entry price is so high, which makes it a very exclusive club for who gets to use it. The thing that seemed to be the most intolerable was that you could put lots and lots of users on it, and it worked fine, but if you put lots and lots of developers on it, it sure seemed to have challenges. The biggest challenge was the development because of the Eclipse tool. It just seemed like irrespective of the development team that you put together, whether it had 10 or 50 people, you would end up having to reboot the development server throughout the day when you concurrently had lots of people hammering on the system. The development server just got sluggish. This was true for every project I was on. Once you got more than about five people working on the system at the same time, it would just get slower and slower during development work, and the only way to fix it was to reboot the server. It became just like a routine. Sometimes, we would reboot at lunch or dinner time, which is silly. After the cloud instances started rolling out, I never saw that again. That was probably the one big advantage of the cloud version. Instead of using an independent Eclipse-based process development tool, we moved to web-based process and design. The web-based tool definitely had greater performance than the Eclipse-based tool. I never got onto another project after that with 50 people, so I don't know how the performance is when you get a large team on it, but it definitely seems that the cloud design tool was a massive improvement."
"Our developers are complaining that it's too complex to maintain."
"We have been experiencing bad performance and instability."
"The front end is not customised for a good user experience."
"The solution can improve integration with SAP, CRM, and Salesforce, which is not capital-intensive."
"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."
"Its interface should be a bit more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is highly-priced."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten."
"It is pricey."
"IBM could improve the price. It is far too expensive."
"It gives us a good return on investment."
"Licensing is managed by the client, but we know it is yearly. Camunda is relatively cheaper. There is not much difference in pricing of IBM and PEGA. For large licensing, there are discounts as well."
"The cloud and license of the subscription model for IBM BPM can be complex. There are a lot of alternatives to choose from."
"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."
"We have a yearly license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
11%
University
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise72
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
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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: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.