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SAP Signavio Process Manager vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs Visio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of SAP Signavio Process Manager is 9.1%, up from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 9.1%, down from 12.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Visio is 12.5%, up from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Visio12.5%
SAP Signavio Process Manager9.1%
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect9.1%
Other69.3%
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Enas Selim - PeerSpot reviewer
Transforming banking process documentation with effective collaboration tools
The free trial needs to have more options for end users, such as including Process Intelligence as a trial version. Although mentioned on the website, the governance feature is not available in the free trial. More guidance from support is also needed, as users can get lost on the website when looking for specific features.
Milan Sterba - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Osama Nabih - PeerSpot reviewer
Has helped me communicate business processes clearly and improve documentation efficiency
The customer service experience rates a seven. It's very difficult to find the right person. When you have an issue and open a ticket, sometimes the wrong persons answer and don't know the solution. They shift you from one person to another and sometimes it takes weeks to find a solution for a problem. It happened with me more than one time. Sometimes the answer is misleading. For example, we had an issue in Enterprise Group in KSA, and we raised a ticket with Microsoft. They sent us a document of 170 pages with possible root causes and solutions. The cost to deploy this 170-page solution was too high and the needed time was months. It was almost not an answer. If they don't give me a specific reason, they haven't replied to my question. We neglected the document from Microsoft and started deep diving and finally found the solution ourselves.

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 user-friendly."
"One of the most valuable features is ease of use which has really been a good thing to put into the business. People like tools that they can just pick up and use straight-away."
"The visual representation is extremely powerful and easy to use in process modeling and analysis. I can show it to someone who doesn't know business process mapping, and they still understand because it's visually presented. It becomes easy to explain variants and what needs to change."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"This solution is innovative and simple to use."
"The ability to leave comments in the Collaboration Hub is a good and easy way for the employees to give feedback on the processes."
"The collaboration hub is good because it allows us to share the models that we've captured and to get comments back, and we don't all have to be in the same room, it can be remote and over time."
"The collaboration function in the project views is valuable because people can comment on the processes and we can respond."
"Sparx has got a range of modeling features, and I am comfortable with all its offering. I've used a lot of tools over the phone. I found EA Spark, probably the most feature rich product all in all compared to other products. The solution is very cost-effective and that is its best feature. It's a very good delivery architecture tool, which also has enterprise architecture capabilities, and it's got full life cycle processes and software development. So for me, it's a pretty comprehensive tool"
"Ability to model and create view under same roof."
"We have found the stability to be very reliable."
"It is a very rich tool in terms of the functionality, and the types of diagrams, that you can create in this tool."
"It is a handy tool for visual modeling that provides opportunities for analysis, design, and support of models using ArchiMate, UML."
"It is simple to build the first model for the solution."
"Artifact templates are most valuable."
"Some of the business processes are very easy to compare when you have the diagrams."
"Process modeling is a good feature."
"I like all the features. I go online, and everything pops there. It is in the cloud, and everything is there. Even if there is a crash, everything is still there. I don't lose anything. That's what is the most valuable and likable. It is really a professional solution for designing. The designs look really nice in the PDF."
"It is easy to learn and implement."
"What I like the most is the simplicity and ease of usage."
"The main reason I choose Visio is that it is easy to use. The user interface is familiar and straightforward. Additionally, it offers a variety of templates, such as those for Cisco solutions, which make it easy to create diagrams for specific use cases. For example, we use a Cisco Meraki switch and we can find the exact template for it, then we can easily drop in the components and connect the cables to create the diagram."
"It is pretty easy to use if you are looking for this type of solution."
"It's easy to embed Visio in a Word document."
"I like to use Visio because it gives me a quick view of the things I had to put in a model for a company. I don't use it as an interface, though."
 

Cons

"One of the most important points in Signavio that would be a great change would be the management of variants of the process."
"If you're going to use the tool the way I'm using it, which is to work with businesses and capture what they're thinking, it would be helpful to be able to insert other objects onto a diagram."
"I think the intuitive handling is an issue which they should be more focused on, especially as we have issues with the glossary. If you want to implement Signavio within procedures in contact with other software, it's quite difficult to integrate and you will have several points where you have to double and triple the work, because you cannot maintain the data centrally. With other solutions, we can integrate it and have only one data transfer, to import and export with other solutions. A glossary is still limiting us."
"Customized reporting can be improved to make this a more versatile tool."
"I would like to see more integration with the process manager in terms of the workflow accelerator."
"The licensing model could be better."
"The tool's navigation could be improved."
"The reporting is too slow and there is a limit of 250 processes."
"What should be improved are the integration capabilities of the solution with Bizagi."
"It could be more user-friendly. The tools could be more simple to use. It's a very complex solution. Because I am a business analyst, I use these tools to manage requirements, and I make models in UML, BPMN, and ArchiMate, and it's complex. In the next release, I would like to see more integrations."
"Inconsistent UI elements must be tidied up with the toolbox gaps removed."
"The dashboard and connectivity could be improved."
"Not visually appealing."
"The fact that you can do a lot yourself is a plus point, but it also becomes a challenge because you need an understanding of the programming languages to get things to work. It becomes challenging for those who are not very good at programming. You have standard reports, but if you want to make your own reports, you have to program it. Similarly, if you want validations rules, you have to take care of them yourself."
"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."
"I struggled with most of the features for this tool, as did the rest of our architecture team."
"The solution could improve by having more integration."
"I would like to see the project planning element improved, although it won't happen because Microsoft deliberately made it worse."
"The improvement I want to see in Visio is being able to edit it more quickly, particularly when pulling it out of another software and then editing it on that non-Visio software. Currently, the process affects the overall performance because it's not as quick as I want it to be."
"Visio can be more user-friendly."
"Transferring data was one of the issues that I expected Visio to have resolved. I use the older version."
"It would be nice if there is a database behind it. We have looked into this functionality, but all of the other solutions that have a database are very locked down, and you have to use them their way. You can't define your own stuff. For example, we have a system X, and I want to define system X myself and have it available. If I am ever going to make a change to system X, I want to pull up all the drawings that are associated with system X. I want to be able to search and pull all those drawings. Visio should have the ability to capture metrics associated with each step in the process. For example, based on a specific time, I should be able to link the data to a spreadsheet, which is kind of like the data analysis on the process."
"It's a very large install that uses many gigabytes."
"The design and the look and feel, need to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is quite expensive compared to other vendors."
"Although Signavio is a feature-rich solution, it is expensive for companies who haven’t reached a certain maturity level in their process management initiatives."
"The solution is expensive."
"SAP is always more expensive. The per-user cost is hard to calculate and forecast for a big company."
"I think we're spending about $150,000 a year on licensing costs."
"Lower than the competition with highly flexible licensing plans."
"We are only able to use the free academic licenses because we have a financial constraint. We are not able to pay for commercial licenses to use this kind of tool."
"This solution provides really great value for the money."
"The license I use is on-premise. We haven't gone to the cloud where we have to pay monthly or something like that. Sparx is cheaper than most similar tools."
"Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is priced well. The price we pay is approximately $20 per month. Other solutions I have found to be much more expensive."
"There is no license required for this solution."
"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."
"They have the price on their site for the enterprise version, and we do receive a small discount."
"It's reasonably priced for large organizations."
"I think our license costs roughly $1,000 a year, but I could be wrong."
"This product has a paid license, with a yearly subscription option."
"I don't have any issue with the pricing. It has a subscription-based model, and the subscription is done on a yearly basis. Of course, we need internal approvals in place."
"It is a free solution for us. It is integrated with our pack. We are trying to use the solutions that we already have."
"The yearly cost is approximately $400 CAD ($300 USD)."
"I give the cost of Visio a five out of ten."
"Visio is the cheapest solution because it has the basics. Everyone starts with Visio for designing processes because doing it in PowerPoint is a mess. I'm still a student, so I don't pay for licensing."
"The price is reasonable for individual use but for an organization, the costs is high."
"The price of Visio is reasonable."
"I think costs are on a per user basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise43
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise58
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Signavio Process Manager or Celonis?
SAP Signavio Process Manager is a very robust industrial-grade business process modeling tool. It is easy to use and ...
What do you like most about Signavio Process Manager?
The visual representation is extremely powerful and easy to use in process modeling and analysis. I can show it to ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Signavio Process Manager?
The price of SAP Signavio Process Manager was quite high but could be afforded by an organization with a sensitive da...
What do you like most about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
The stability has been good and satisfactory. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.
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...
What needs improvement with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not stra...
How easy is it to migrate process flow charts (modeled using tools like Visio) into Bizagi?
I have been using Bizagi with a major project for a state government agency for about four years now. It is pretty st...
What do you like most about Visio?
The diagrams Visio creates are quite impressive in the sense that we can cooperate with more colleagues in one task a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Visio?
One of the main problems with Visio is its licensing options and associated issues, which lead to discussions about t...
 

Also Known As

Signavio Process Editor
No data available
Microsoft Visio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DHL, Coca Cola EP, Prudential, Zalando, T-Systems, Jabil, Endress+Hauser, Rakuten
OmniLink
Thomas College, Hamburg Port Authority, Portigon AG, Conseil G_n_ral du d_partement des Hautes-Alpes, AAA Auto a. s., Commonwealth Financial Network, ICA, Abu Dhabi National Energy Company
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Camunda, Bizagi and others in Business Process Design. Updated: October 2025.
869,160 professionals have used our research since 2012.