I am a consultant, and I use this solution to model various business needs to show my clients. I run this solution in a Linux environment.
I like the fact that this solution is complete. It doesn't matter whether I want to draw a quick UML model, or a mind map, or some architecture or business motivation. It's in the tool, and there's not much that I can't do with it.
This product has a very low learning curve and I like the user interface.
I would like to see something for visualizing innovation work maps. I created my own template in LibreOffice Draw, but it would be nice if there were something like that in Visual Paradigm. What I do now is to use the export functionality in Visual Paradigm to save the images and then place them into LibreOffice Draw. That way, I can make a nice, A0 paper-sized visualization of the innovation work map. It would be nice if it were integrated so that I could do it all within the Visual Paradigm, and have one export.
The other thing that needs improvement is pricing. I have considered halting my license and not upgrading from the current version because of this.
More than ten years.
I've never had any crashes, so I am very happy with the stability of this solution.
Since I am a one person company, I am not sure about scalability. These days there is a cloud repository, which could be interesting, but in the end, you just install it on your local machine and you connect to the repository. It shouldn't be hard to scale.
Technical support for this solution is excellent. In the past, there have been a couple of occasions where I spoke with support, many years ago. They were very helpful and I am still a satisfied customer.
The initial setup is easy. In all of these years, I have only had issues installing it one time. It is a Java-based script, and it just runs.
When I first started using Visual Paradigm, one of the things that I liked was the price. It was not too expensive for a low learning curve. Over the years I've seen an increase in price, and it makes it difficult for a single person company, like me, to decide whether to extend the license.
We evaluated other products before selecting this one, including Enterprise Architect.
When it comes to using the product, there is a learning curve, and it depends on how you want to start using it. If it's just for quickly modeling something to visualize the problem or explain stuff, it's not that hard. If you really want to build your enterprise repository, of course, you still need a lot of principles and guidelines on how you want to use it for the enterprise. With the tree structure for modeling, it's actually pretty easy to change things.
My advice is simply to start using it. I know the ARIS and Enterprise Architect products. I also know tools like ArchiMate. Then there are visual design tools for architecture, but in the end, of all of the products that I've seen so far, Visual Paradigm has one of the lowest learning curves.
I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.