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IBM BPM vs Temporal 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
Businesses using IBM BPM reported improved efficiency, automation, and cost savings despite high costs and moderate ROI.
Sentiment score
6.0
Temporal's cost-effectiveness reduces maintenance costs, essential for high-reliability needs, automating processes and saving time and expenses.
The ROI is apparent in terms of business case automation; previously, a bunch of people filled in data in NetSuite or managed stocks between warehouses and Amazon, but now everything is automated, saving time.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
IBM BPM customer service is generally positive, with effective support, though response delays and communication issues are noted.
Sentiment score
6.7
Temporal service excels through active forums and Slack, despite time zone delays; users praise its responsive support.
The customer service is outstanding.
We had a contract that provided on-site support, which was very satisfactory.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
IBM BPM offers impressive scalability, efficiently managing high user volumes with varied experiences and requiring occasional careful tuning.
Sentiment score
7.1
Temporal excels in scalability, managing numerous workflows while requiring robust infrastructure like Cassandra and Kubernetes for optimal performance.
The solution has scalability issues; on a scale, I would rate it at eight out of ten.
I found IBM BPM to be scalable to a certain level but it struggled with large volumes of concurrent transactions.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
IBM BPM stability varies; recent versions improve reliability, but issues remain with infrastructure, configuration, and developer expertise.
Sentiment score
6.7
Users find Temporal stable with minor SDK challenges, suggesting better documentation and diagnostics for enhanced stability perceptions.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM BPM needs improved customization, integration, and user-friendliness, addressing complexity and high cost with enhanced API and AI features.
Improving Temporal's user-friendliness, documentation, visualization, features, and support would enhance usability for beginners and non-technical users.
IBM BPM also lacks smaller solutions, so I must purchase multiple solutions to start with workflows and applications.
 

Setup Cost

IBM BPM's high costs suit large enterprises, while flexible Cloud Pak and tiered licensing offer varied pricing options.
Temporal provides cost-effective, flexible pricing with open-source tools, offering savings over competitors, especially for self-hosted deployments.
SAP is more expensive, but IBM BPM is very expensive.
 

Valuable Features

IBM BPM offers integration, scalability, and low-code development with strong UI, enhancing efficiency and reducing complexities.
Temporal streamlines workflow management with robust automation, fault tolerance, language integration, and easy deployment via Kubernetes and Docker Compose.
The integration capabilities of IBM BPM are excellent.
The deployment process is quite straightforward as it provides both Kubernetes and Docker Compose versions, allowing us to run it in ECS containers.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM BPM
Ranking in Process Automation
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (7th), Application Infrastructure (6th)
Temporal
Ranking in Process Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 6.3%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Temporal is 7.5%, up from 0.8% 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.
AbhishekDash - PeerSpot reviewer
Orchestrates infrastructure tasks like deployment, deletion, and management
Temporal focus on developers rather than business users. In contrast to older workflow orchestration engines like Camunda, which are more business-oriented and strongly emphasize UI and workflow authoring, Temporal is geared toward developers. It provides extensive capabilities for building complex workflows. A standout feature of Temporal is its handling of long-running workflows, a significant advantage over many other solutions. Temporal excels in managing distributed transactions and application state durability, especially in microservice environments where transactions might fail due to network issues. Temporal simplifies these challenges by managing retries, fail-safes, and circuit breakers. As a result, developers don't need to implement these features manually; Temporal handles them implicitly, though it also allows for tuning based on specific needs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Temporal?
In terms of pricing, Camunda is indeed costlier than Temporal. The cloud deployment costs differ, and while Camunda 7 can be cheaper due to its integrated setup, comparing latest versions between T...
What needs improvement with Temporal?
The only area for improvement in Temporal is the UI. I know it is a non-UI first product, but comparing Camunda versus Temporal UI, there is a difference. Moreover, n8n, being a no-code platform, i...
What is your primary use case for Temporal?
The main purposes for using Temporal are automation flows, especially financial automations and supply chain automations. Our company name is SR, we are a digital-first CPG brand making company, ma...
 

Comparisons

 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. Temporal and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.