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Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs Visio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Sparx Systems Enterprise Ar...
Ranking in Business Process Design
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (2nd)
Visio
Ranking in Business Process Design
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Mind Mapping Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 10.6%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Visio is 12.6%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Tugrul TASCI - PeerSpot reviewer
We have seen return on investment in the form of time savings but should have more design tools
I am generally using Visio to create some diagrams Visio should implement more complex tools or graphics to facilitate processing and use flexible templates. It should allow users to easily drag and drop some previously created diagrams. The tools supplied or provided are very basic, and there…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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"
"The solution allows us to quickly present designs and concepts to customers and get their feedback, thereby moving the project forward step by step."
"It is a useful tool for modeling and testing automated processes."
"It provides good utilization and it's a convenient tool for building exact architectural work."
"We use it to develop and maintain the Enterprise Conceptual Model, migrated from erwin a couple of years ago."
"Its ease of use and the breadth of the toolkit are most valuable. It has an incredible repository of artifacts to work with, and they're all cross-referenced. It works with a whole bunch of different standards. It works with BPMN, which is Business Process Modeling Notation, and it also works with something called TOGAF, which is the Open Group Architecture Foundation. There are different layers when you're dealing with architecture. There is the user interface, application, data, data servers, and all that kind of stuff. You have the infrastructure, hardware, and software layers, and then you have the application and business capability layers. You can model a business process and decompose it into all of the applications, data, and hardware to support it."
"Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect supports multiple modeling languages like ArchiMate for database design, software lifecycle visualization, and team management."
"The features I find most valuable is the ability to create a document and then put it into a OneCare artifact."
"The most valuable features are process mapping and identifying responsibilities."
"Good interface and good tool configuration."
"On the scalability front, the aspect of increasing the number of endpoints is relatively easy to handle."
"One of the most valuable features of Visio is its extreme flexibility."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Visio has improved my workflow by making it easy to create charts, diagrams, and basic illustrations that I can use in my client reports and proposals. It has saved me a lot of time I would otherwise spend creating visuals for clients by hand."
"It's a very flexible solution."
"The primary functionality revolves around the creation of flow diagrams and diverse Building Information Modeling (BIM) using contemporary and pre-established notations. In my perspective, these ready-made notations prove highly beneficial. Despite being a compact tool, it is effective for tasks such as drawing organizational charts, making it a straightforward and uncomplicated tool."
 

Cons

"The documentation could be better. Where I work, we speak French and we don't speak English, so we don't have anything in French. It's perfect in English, but we need something in French."
"Using EA involves a steep learning curve if you want to understand its capabilities and functionality."
"I have found the solution is lacking options. The general usability needs improvement and more compliance to CML definitions."
"Because its easy to create diagrams one needs to be vigilant on the housekeeping of orphaned fragments - I have written my own scripts to do this, maybe they are available now."
"The reporting needs improvement."
"More challenging than other tools to maintain documents and document versions for an architecture board review."
"The UI is a little bit outdated. It should be more fresh and clean."
"The dashboard and connectivity could be improved."
"There should be more items available from a variety of other products that can be integrated."
"The price could be better."
"In terms of features, it could provide more automation to display data flowing through architecture."
"Some of the improvements that have been made in Visio have not been beneficial, at least to me, personally. Too many things have been added to it, and it makes it kind of clunky sometimes. There is an overwhelming desire or competition to continue to improve it when the product is and has been pretty good, and some of what is done tends to clutter it. In some cases, the updates make it more difficult to use. It is already pretty feature-heavy and continuing to add stuff is not productive from my perspective."
"One issue I've noticed is that when working on a shared video link with a friend for Visio, there can be a delay in changes reflecting on their screen after I've made them. This also occurs when we're working on the same document. It would be beneficial if changes could be reflected in real-time. Additionally, I've experienced some text size issues with the flow task feature. Sometimes when I enter text, it appears very small, and increasing the size causes it to extend beyond the diagram, creating formatting issues. It would be helpful if these text and formatting issues could be addressed."
"They have to improve shapes. It has good shapes, but it certainly can have more shapes. There are no U shapes. It also requires more customizations. There are a lot of icons, but they can be modernized more. These icons have to be more customizable so that we are able to change the color and things like that. It should also have more integration so that we can use it with other tools on the web. We don't use Microsoft Teams. We use Discord, which is more for gamers. It would be helpful if Visio is integrated with Discord. I can then show my work to my team. We use Visio, and it is a must-have solution for us, but being a startup, we don't have the money to use the whole Microsoft system. Some day we will use Office. For companies like us, there should be connectors for other software. We should be able to use a connector with the software that we are using or with the new generation solutions. Connectors will make it very easy to transfer data."
"The solution is pretty expensive."
"It should natively enable importing diagrams or reference architectures from any of the vendors whose solutions are used by the customer or proposed by solution providers such as DXC"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It’s the best deal in town, by far."
"I think our license costs roughly $1,000 a year, but I could be wrong."
"I use my own license. So, I just bought the professional version, which costs $800 or something like that. In the company where I am working, we have floating licenses. They are probably more expensive. Its licensing is affordable, but we are talking about a large organization, and there could be modelers or viewers of the models. We don't know how much that would cost us."
"The pricing for ultimate version is steeply high."
"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 had a yearly license."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"It is cheaper than other solutions. Its cost is around $686 per year. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Our license for Visio is including with the Office 365 subscription."
"The cost of the software is reasonably priced."
"It has a lower price point than the competition."
"My company does pay toward the licensing costs of Visio. It is a cheap product based on my experience, and since I purchased Visio for my own use."
"I believe Visio to be priced pretty reasonably."
"We pay annually for the Visio license and it is expensive."
"The product is expensive, but it is cheaper if you buy it as a part of a bundle or an enterprise-level agreement."
"I think costs are on a per user basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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-performance ratio. While it might be cumbersome to learn, it still delivers exc...
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 straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not ...
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 straightforward to load in files that are BPMN 2.0 compliant. The option to load V...
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 and see the flow of the process.
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 the price with a Microsoft representative. If asked to rate the price, I would gi...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Visio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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 Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs. Visio and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.