Planview Portfolios vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect comparison

Planview Portfolios vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

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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

Planview Portfolios

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Project Portfolio Management (4th)

Sparx Systems Enterprise Ar...

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

4th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Design (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Planview Portfolios is 2.8%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 8.9%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect	8.9%
Planview Portfolios	2.8%
Other	88.3%

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

Monabi Kingsley

Project Manager at 3M

Centralized planning has improved resource visibility and supports data‑driven financial decisions

The best features Planview Portfolios offers are visibility enhancement, robust system performance, and comprehensive resource management. This enhanced visibility in Planview Portfolios ensures that all users can easily track progress, identify bottlenecks, and make informed decisions to optimize workflow efficiency. When discussing robust system performance, the system's robust performance in meeting our various work requirements effectively and efficiently stands out. It is very stable and reliable, contributing to a seamless user experience, which enables users to focus on their tasks without disruptions. I also love the financial breakdown, planning and prioritization, and attribute collection on projects in Planview Portfolios. Planview Portfolios has positively impacted my organization since I started using it. It has enabled me to gain insights into the full scope of work consuming resources. I am able to know where the resources are being consumed more, especially which resources are consuming the most. I have been able to leverage resources management and resource time reporting, which enabled the generation of $90 million in annual revenue through labor billing to customers.

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Milan Sterba

Senior Enterprise Architect at Deepview S.r.o.

Efficient documentation generation through organized model structure with a good price-performance ratio

Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not easy for even experienced users to find their way without guidance. This is not the most user-friendly solution.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We provided whatever feedback we had to the Planview team, and they went in and built those additional features that we requested. For example, they created a great way for our users to search for a specific resource, project, program, or role. We were not using some of the features, and we wanted them to not be visible, and they helped us with that. They also brought a feature to provide visibility into when a resource was never assigned to any task. There was no visibility to this before. This feature was really very good for visibility into the resource portfolio."

"It gives us flexibility in configuring assignments. We can do both Agile Teams and non-Agile Teams. This flexibility affects our ability to meet our company's particular needs by allowing us to work in a hybrid model, some Agile Teams, and some non-Agile Teams."

"Our reporting is much better, there is much more visibility on projects, schedules, tasks, and in our milestones, and now we have a consistent way of reporting out to the committees and getting all of our schedules and milestones."

"The biggest impact has been the visibility into our IT assets."

"At the time of evaluation, there were only four or five environments in the entire world that could have met our requirements, and Planview by far was the best."

"We use expenditures quite a bit. We put in forecast expenditures and then we actualize them below the line in the little box in the bottom tray. Being able to track the project with relevant milestones is also valuable. Milestones are valuable because it helps us to keep the project on track. The expenditures are valuable because we need to be able to understand expenses that are beyond the regular resources in the projects."

"The solution is flexible. Planview is always introducing new releases and functionality, which ends up being beneficial to the company. We are able to do some customizations on our own along with our IT department, and that's very helpful."

"I would say it works really well for forecasting remaining effort, especially in terms of forecasting the dollar amounts. We've gotten pretty good at adjusting rates because we have a lot of contract workers."

More Planview Portfolios pros

"In terms of product features, I'm very happy with the support for UML 2 diagrams, Archimate, TOGAF and the collaboration capability using a RDBMS back-end."

"Sparx is more complex but in terms of functionality, it is easier to use."

"Sparx technical support is good."

"A feature I like most about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is its ease of use."

"The solution allows us to quickly present designs and concepts to customers and get their feedback, thereby moving the project forward step by step."

"Its most valuable feature is the Zachman Framework."

"Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is very flexible and it is simple to define the metamodel. Additionally, it is lightweight on resources."

"I have found the Meta Model tuning feature useful as it provides me with an overview of all my work needs."

More Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect pros

Cons

"Its support to legacy paying customers is something PlanView is not handling well. We were unable to implement due to lack of professional support by PlanView. "

"I would like to be able to integrate with Oracle to supplement what we're currently doing with reporting."

"While Planview Management provides robust reporting and analytics capabilities, further enhancements could include more advanced data visualization options, predictive analytics features, and customizable dashboards to provide deeper insights into project performance and trends."

"Its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects is very limited. In terms of the out-of-the-box reporting for summary reports, the reporting that we typically leverage is around forecasting for resources, timesheets, and actuals, and just looking at what is the capacity. There is no real summary of what work is being done and how work is being accomplished. So, what we typically do is that we get a copy of the data files from Enterprise One daily, and then we have a team that manages the data mod outside of Enterprise One. They use data from Enterprise One as well as other additional sources to provide the reporting that we share with the management. So, we leverage a lot of Enterprise One data for reporting, but we don't use the reporting capabilities within Enterprise One. So, reporting can be improved, and they could help us make more customized reporting. I know it is very configurable out of the box, but we have to leverage an outside data mod that pulls in a lot of data from Enterprise One. So, the reporting function, and being able to customize reports, is the area that could be very beneficial."

"It is not an end-user-friendly product, and that's really the biggest thing. The hardest or the biggest hurdle I've ever had to face was adoption. I did the installation of the HP product in 2011. The company used it from 2011 to 2015, and the adoption was very high. When I was given the Planview product, adoption was very low. It wasn't as extensively used. We actually had people who wanted to go back to HP PPM because the interface of Planview was so broken, and it still is to some degree. So, it is not user-friendly. It doesn't flow the way a project manager thinks. What we did with HP PPM was a lot more manual programming. It wasn't as nice in terms of the interface, and it wasn't as pretty, but you could design it and build it so that everything flows with the way you worked, but Planview doesn't quite do that. There are a lot of screens. You have to jump back and forth. There are so many different places you have to go to just to do some basic tasks. That's the biggest thing that has really hindered adoption."

"Customer service is hit and miss. Most of their support team will not respond to requests for real-time conversations and the gap in email responses drags what turn out to be simple solutions into days-long aggravations."

"The outcome management and work resource management in terms of teams needs improvement."

"The financial piece of the tool could be better. While it may have to do with the complexity of the work that we do, it seems that the tool should be able to drill down a bit deeper into the financial area."

More Planview Portfolios cons

"Yes one must invest a little time in learning how to use the tool."

"I think the product is good. When I'm trying to do something specific for some part of project documentation, it's hard to get it figured out if you don't use it all the time. It's such a massive tool, it's hard to figure out how to dig in and get to the documentation where you have to be to get some idea of what to do. There are not a lot of examples that I'm aware of to be able to do that."

"The model integrity is not the same as MagicDraw, so MagicDraw is a bit better as a tool."

"The Portfolio Management features can be added in the next release. As it helps you to manage more portfolio of projects and architectures of cost projects on a portfolio level. This would be an important feature in the next release."

"The product needs better tools for defining report templates."

"I think that collaboration can be better."

"Weak in regards to data modelling. No logical or physical modelling or migration from conceptual to physical."

"It is weak in regards to data modelling. It does not provide logical or physical data modelling or the ability to migrate from conceptual to physical and back."

More Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think all in we are at $33,000 a year and that includes Projectplace and Planview. We used to have the integration to JIRA, but we don't pay for that anymore."

"With the costs, they were very understanding. Knowing that we were an existing customer, they were very much willing to work with us to make sure that we were able to transition to Enterprise One from PPM Pro."

"I don't think we have necessarily purchased everything that I would have liked to have seen."

"We recently did a new bundle for all of Enterprise One. It includes some of the newer pieces, like Projectplace and LeanKit. It bundled our CTM in with it as well. I think the total came out to be about $900,000 a year. This is for unlimited licenses."

"We overbought our licenses. We looked at our needs three to four years down the road and tried based our contract on that. However, we were over aggressive. We use about a third of the licenses that we have. We're looking to adjust the makeup so we can start utilizing the amount of money that we are spending. Right now, we're overspending, and my organization is not seeing the value in Planview because we are paying so much for licenses that we're not using."

"Our licensing costs are probably $150,000 to $180,000 a year with 270 licenses total."

"Planview is a little pricey. From a licensing perspective, for just a simple timesheet user who does nothing in the system but reports time, the licensing is a little pricey, but you have to look at it from what it is that you get. We have 6,000 users, and I don't manage the system at all. I just have to do add them to the system. The servers, maintenance, OS levels, security patching for the OS, and all other things are not something that we maintain. So, you have to look at it from an operational perspective. It is not just the product itself. A holistic view has to be taken when you look at the product and how you're going to support it. I would have to hire an entire operation staff to bring it in-house, and at the end of the day, that might cost me more."

"The licensing part is a bit costly in comparison with the other available PPM tools."

More Planview Portfolios pricing and cost advice

"We paid 1200 euros as a once-off cost. All add ons and integrations come at an additional cost."

"Licenses are pretty low cost compared to, for example, ARIS."

"In terms of cost, Sparx EA is probably one of the cheapest tools I have ever used."

"Enterprise licensing is competitive. What would be helpful if they load the pricing for consultants, you know, people who are consultants for clients. So the license is fine for end-user organizations. Still, they should consider lowering the license to support this adoption, particularly for people who are consultants like myself."

"We have an annual license, and it's very affordable."

"It's affordable. The only additional cost that we haven't yet figured out is the floating license. If you buy a floating license, you have to have a license management server, which comes at an additional cost that's not discussed. So, we haven't yet used the floating license. That’s because I haven't had a chance to figure that out."

"The licensing is not as expensive as some of the other data modeling tools such as Erwin."

"It’s the best deal in town, by far."

More Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Construction Company

Marketing Services Firm

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	66

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	39
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	58

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Planview Portfolios?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that Planview Portfolios is one of the best and a very cost-effective tool.

What needs improvement with Planview Portfolios?

Planview Portfolios can be improved as the user interface defaults to the last opened portfolio, which can waste a lot of time loading a large portfolio if that is not what I need at that moment. J...

What is your primary use case for Planview Portfolios?

My main use case for Planview Portfolios is to ensure governance and decision auditability by incorporating embedded workflows, approval management, and key document retention supporting a single c...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?

One of the reasons many public sector institutions in the Czech Republic use it is that it provides a very good price-performance ratio. While it might be cumbersome to learn, it still delivers exc...

What needs improvement with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?

What is your primary use case for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?

We are mostly using the ArchiMate language to describe enterprise or solution architecture, along with a bit of use cases. We are producing quite large models, with over 10,000 elements and relatio...

Broadcom Clarity vs Planview Portfolios

Comparisons

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Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

LeanIX vs Planview Portfolios

Compared 3% of the time

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No Magic MagicDraw vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

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Product Reports

Planview Portfolios

Download Planview Portfolios product report

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

Download Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect product report

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect report

Also Known As

Planview Enterprise One, Troux

No data available

Overview

Planview Portfolios empowers executives, finance, and portfolio leaders by enhancing strategic investments, improving market responsiveness, and connecting strategy and execution for optimal visibility.

Planview Portfolios offers comprehensive strategic and project portfolio management to organizations. Automating and scaling these processes, it enhances speed-to-value, aligns strategic objectives with execution, and connects business and technology planning for optimal funding and resource capacity. Users gain end-to-end visibility, track progress, and improve decision-making by utilizing integrated financial and capacity planning.

What key features does Planview Portfolios offer?

Strategic Alignment: Aligns objectives and OKRs with execution to ensure strategic goals are met.
End-to-End Visibility: Tracks performance across the organization to support timely decision-making.
Dynamic Planning and Funding: Utilizes scenario modeling for flexible strategic investment funding.
Flexible Capacity Planning: Balances programs and staffing levels against available capacity.
Connected Technology Strategy: Aligns technology investments with strategic digital initiatives.
Adaptive Program Management: Manages dependencies, risk, and progress through integrated planning.

What benefits can users find in reviews of Planview Portfolios?

Workflow Efficiency: Enhances efficiency by minimizing bottlenecks and optimizing execution.
Improved Decision-Making: Provides comprehensive insights for better informed strategic decisions.
Financial Insights: Offers detailed financial tracking across projects for greater transparency.
Organizational Agility: Increases productivity and adaptability through a unified platform.

Planview Portfolios is implemented across projects in industries requiring strategic planning, resource allocation, and financial tracking. Organizations manage project lifecycle and integration with ERP systems on a centralized platform, utilizing customizable workflows and reporting tools to enhance efficiency and streamline team processes.

Planview

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect supports modeling standards like UML, ArchiMate, and TOGAF. Its strengths include collaboration, scalability, and affordability, making it adaptable to enterprise architecture tasks.

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect provides a robust and versatile platform for enterprises by offering comprehensive modeling capabilities and integration with diverse tools. It supports diagram creation, automatic documentation, and reverse engineering, making tasks efficient. Though user interface improvements are needed for intuitiveness, its overall framework support and affordability remain attractive. Users typically integrate it with other solutions for enhanced functionality, benefiting from its version control and adaptability in IT landscapes.

What are the most important features?

Support for Multiple Standards: Offers UML, ArchiMate, TOGAF compatibility.
Collaboration Capabilities: Encourages effective teamwork and data sharing.
Scalable Solutions: Grows with enterprise demands.
Extensive Framework Support: Provides diverse modeling options.
Automatic Documentation: Generates essential documents efficiently.
Reverse Engineering and Code Generation: Supports software development processes.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Affordability: Cost-effective compared to competitors.
User-Friendliness: Easy to navigate for experienced users.
Integration: Works well with existing systems and tools.
User Flexibility: Adapts to specific needs without significant cost.

In specific industries, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is often implemented for developing detailed architecture frameworks and business process models. Organizations leverage its capabilities in establishing application inventories and managing projects. Its use in data modeling and solution design is particularly valued in sectors requiring comprehensive IT landscape mapping.

Sparx Systems

Sample Customers

UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO

OmniLink

Planview Portfolios vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect