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IBM BPM vs ServiceNow Orchestration 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)
ServiceNow Orchestration
Ranking in Process Automation
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
16
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 ServiceNow Orchestration is 4.4%, up from 4.3% 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.
ShaheenKapery - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to integrate, stable solution and incredibly good customer service
It is a long setup. It was customized to our company's requirements. Bearing in mind that there is not just an IT team. You've got an IT team consisting of end-users, consulting, and user support sides. Install support, ServiceNow support, application support, and so on. What ServiceNow does is it's really good at getting the tickets to the right person. That's the power of it. There's no issue with it. But you need to set that up in advance. You need to know the structure and who is responsible for each task. The initial setup does take a long time, and the organization might face some issues. But once you've got that resolved, it's amazing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features come in the bundle, the design process, creating services, creating BPDs, creating coaches, and UI/UX."
"I liked its robustness the most. It was a very robust platform in my experience. It seemed like a very stable and powerful tool for handling lots of concurrent users and hammering at the system."
"Initially, the process architecture studio was very helpful and it was compliant with BPMN standards."
"It helps maintain, and in many instances, lower costs, as well as to maintain those costs, keeping them stable."
"We are implementing the tool to triple our monthly transaction volume."
"With the Process Center, I can go to one place and view what all the environments are doing."
"It excels at analytics. It provides visibility across all activities of a company's processes and performance."
"Its workflow and integration with SAP are the most valuable features. It is also a stable solution."
"It has competitive AI capabilities."
"Great with IT processes and business processes."
"The product has a flexible interface for development."
"There are a lot of ready to use orchestration custom packs."
"It's probably the best product out there."
"It is a very stable product, highly affordable."
"Orchestration is commonly utilized by major corporations. The process of linking methods in ServiceNow, known as the RTS chain to parent methods, is executed seamlessly and efficiently. It's quite impressive and significant in its impact."
"It's scalable."
 

Cons

"Needs better reporting. I do not think that we are fully taking advantage of what it already has yet."
"Could increase vulnerability and security patches to make it more robust."
"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."
"The engine itself tends to accumulate a lot of data that needs to be cleaned up, and that's the kind of thing that keeps it from, in some scenarios, scaling as much as it needs to. And then, when you're building solutions, if you're not careful to keep the screens from being associated with too much data, if you're going to just do things the way that a lot of people would just assume that they can do, without having experience of having made those mistakes before, it will accumulate a lot of data, and that will cause it to perform very badly."
"The initial setup was complex."
"We had hoped that the product would provide us with plug-ins like Salesforce. Its development environment needs to improve. We expect to see elastic features like containerization. We don't just need an on-prem virtual machine."
"There is a lot of room for improvement of the dashboards."
"UI is an area with a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"There is still room for more integrations. Or, it would be nice to bundle multiple products together rather than selling everything as a model as that turns out to be a bit costly."
"We cannot perform GUI automation using the tool."
"It is a highly complex platform to work on."
"There should be connectors to cover at least the top industry applications, and they should be easier to configure in a plug-and-play fashion."
"The automatic remediation needs enhancement, particularly integrating ServiceNow with tools like SolarWinds and Logic Monitor. It is functional, but it needs improvement."
"From my space, the only thing that I can say is the spinning up with Google Cloud Services."
"Frequent upgrades may negatively impact the performance of instances. Therefore, for now, I don't recommend any additional upgrades."
"The deployment requires awareness among the project staff."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"The pricing is very high."
"Price wise, IBM BPM is cheaper than other similar solutions and has excellent pricing."
"The solution might be expensive, but I can't give you a precise number. In the market here, I've seen two main products for BPM: IBM BPM and Camunda. Camunda is very popular and open-source, so there's no direct comparison."
"It gives us a good return on investment."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"It is not very expensive."
"In terms of price, this solution is at the higher end of what you'll find."
"ServiceNow doesn't give a clear cost indication. They have different contracts with different organizations and it's all about negotiation, so you don't know how they are doing at the cost level."
"This is an expensive product, but it is the best in the market considering the features and lack of competitors."
"Pricing is custom to every customer."
"The solution is costly and orchestrations are very expensive."
"The cost of the solution is based on the number of plugins, conductors and integrations used and is charged annually. The licensing cause has been increasing gradually which makes it difficult to access. Initially offer free features but over the time the charges rise which make it an expensive solution with limited features. Along with that, the integration issues persist and require additional middle where and internet connectivity for effective usage."
"It is quite expensive because we've had some customers come back and say it's quite pricey because in order for them to go ahead with Orchestration, they must have already been paying for Discovery, service mapping, and a few other things."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about ServiceNow Orchestration?
The interface of the solution is very user friendly and it is easily accessible via a simple URL. This makes it easier to complete the UI based tasks but using other features require expertise in l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Orchestration?
The cost of ServiceNow Orchestration is considered medium; it is expensive but powerful. I would rate the pricing experience as a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Orchestration?
The third-party integrations are challenging when the tools are not from ServiceNow ( /products/servicenow-reviews ) partners. This presents issues when integrating solutions from other vendors.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
No data available
 

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
experian, BEACHBODY, HealthPartners, Banosoft
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. ServiceNow Orchestration and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
858,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.