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Joscelyn Jean - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Solution Architect at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Oct 13, 2022
Open-source, easy to define new processes, and easy to transition to new business process definitions
Pros and Cons
  • "We can easily define and deploy business processes. Camunda provides the tools that allow business people to design business processes. We don't have to have developers for it. It is so easy to use that our business people can go into the tool and model their business processes. We get time to do other things than just designing business processes."
  • "Before Camunda, we had a lot of people interacting with the invoice daily, and with Camunda, those people are now handling only more complex checks and validations, and our processing time for an invoice is reduced from about 30 days to 10 days with about 70% saving of time."
  • "We're trying to put the people from the business to do it. We are using APIs, and we have open APIs to define our APIs and the request-response that each call requires and sends. So, to base the mapping on that, there was nothing to help. I know that with some tools, such as Oracle tools, you can see the input and expected output. With drag and drop, you can take one property from the left and drag it to the right, and it does all the mapping itself, but that's not the case with Camunda. So, for me, this is something that can be improved."
  • "We had to do a lot of tweaking; it hasn't been stable from the beginning, but with some effort, it can become stable."

What is our primary use case?

It is usually used to orchestrate or automate flows of interaction between our systems. It is basically for integration. For example, for a permit that needs to go through several systems, in Camunda, we have a business process that orchestrates all the steps where the permit needs to be processed. All the systems are notified of this permit, and if there are people who need to interact with a specific permit, they get notified. They can then take action. That's the kind of use case for which we use Camunda in our organization.

For myself, the use case is similar, but it is for invoicing. When we receive an invoice, we need to process it. It goes through the business process. There are a lot of business rules that are applied to it. For example, we will check whether the total amount is balanced with subtotals and tax, and if that's not the case, with Camunda, we can create what's called a user task. It allows us to make an agent to take care of this invoice and fix the data that is related to it. These are the use cases that we are trying to achieve with Camunda. The goal is to clean up the invoice and make sure that the information related to it is correct so that it can be transferred to our ERP to pay suppliers.

It is on-premise, and we've been able to put it in a Docker container. It is deployed in Kubernetes in our organization.

How has it helped my organization?

The main benefit is automation. When you don't have such a tool, you take a business process and try to interpret it in terms of code. You don't have visibility. Camunda helps an organization to see the process. If you see that something is wrong in your process, you can easily adjust it to fix the issues. There is a tool that comes with the Enterprise version of Camunda that allows you to see where most of the tasks or processes are merging in your business process. So, you can update and optimize that. If your organization uses Camunda to automate processes, you can have enormous gains from that.

It is a great tool. It was our choice to use it. It works well as a universal process orchestrator for complex business processes. It allows us to focus on the business process itself. If you want to orchestrate multiple calls to external systems and you want to be sure that all the systems are notified, it works great. My use case was more business-oriented, and it worked great for that. As a universal orchestration tool, it is good and powerful.

It allows business users to create, update, and execute complex workflows. This is important for us. We are more project-oriented, which is also the way most organizations work. We have a lot of developers during the development, but when we reach a point where the solution is built and we are in an operational state, we prefer to have a tool that can be used by the business. They should be able to configure and personalize their solution without requiring developers to do it. They should be flexible and autonomous in doing that, and we in IT don't necessarily have to have developers for that. We can focus on other projects. There are a lot of benefits to working like that.

Its ease of use is important in allowing us to automate processes. For my personal use case, it simulates a type of virtual agent. It allows us to gain greater value because people don't have to work on basic things. Camunda is doing it instead. We are adding great value by using Camunda for small things.

It has the ability to integrate with a variety of automated and digital systems, which, for us, was a prerequisite. It was important because if it could not interact with our system, it would have been hard to automate anything. It would become just like a business process to orchestrate people instead of the system. Therefore, it was important that we have connectivity with other systems. In the version we have, there are no specific connectors. There are more generic connectors, such as HTTP connectors. This might have changed in the new version, but the ability to interact with other systems was a prerequisite for us. If it didn't have this functionality, it wouldn’t have been interesting to use Camunda.

It helps bridge communication gaps between our development and business departments. Because everything is visible, the developers could see exactly what the client is trying to accomplish. To have something that we can see or even touch was interesting. It reduced the gap between two things. Only connectors were a little bit hard to understand for the business people, but developers were there to assist in configuring the connector. They had to work together, but the main focus was on the business, and it helped the developers in understanding what the business was trying to achieve.

Camunda automation has freed up our staff's time to focus on other valued tasks. When we are developing our solution, we have sprints of two weeks. We organize our work for two weeks, and regularly, we have tasks related to the business process and how we need to update it to adjust to some reality. Now, we have people from the business who are doing it, but it is still visible to the developers. It has saved the time of at least one developer for the two weeks because the business is able to work on that alone. We have five or six developers, and now, they can focus on the technical side of the solution.

Before Camunda, we had a lot of people interacting with the invoice daily. We had, for example, an agent who was doing 300 invoice checks and validations per day. With Camunda, those people are now handling only more complex checks and validations. Our processing time for an invoice is reduced from about 30 days to 10 days. There is about 70% saving of time.

What is most valuable?

We can easily define and deploy business processes. Camunda provides the tools that allow business people to design business processes. We don't have to have developers for it. It is so easy to use that our business people can go into the tool and model their business processes. We get time to do other things than just designing business processes. They are called business processes because it is the business that's driving them. So, it is better that they can design them because they're the right people to design them. The tool is great for that.

Transition-wise also, it is good. For example, if you have a defined business process with an invoice, and then for some reason, the business people decide that they want to add the business rules in their business process, they just can take the latest version of the business process, add the business rule, and easily deploy the new process to Camunda. Magically, all the new invoices will go to the new process, and the old ones will remain until all the invoices are processed. It is very easy to transition between all those business process definitions. These are the two most interesting features that Camunda provides.

What needs improvement?

We're trying to put the people from the business to do it. We are using APIs, and we have open APIs to define our APIs and the request-response that each call requires and sends. So, to base the mapping on that, there was nothing to help. I know that with some tools, such as Oracle tools, you can see the input and expected output. With drag and drop, you can take one property from the left and drag it to the right, and it does all the mapping itself, but that's not the case with Camunda. So, for me, this is something that can be improved.

If you stick to the basics, it can be pretty easy. If you need to extend, as we did with custom plugins, this is rather hard because the documentation is not that great. Everything is there. It is an open-source tool, and we had access to classes and documentation, but there was no great explanation on how to use them. There were also not many examples. It was pretty hard to go this way, but if you stick with the basic functionality, it is a great and easy tool.

Another thing that we struggled with has already been fixed. They now offer a SaaS version of Camunda. We struggled a little bit with how to deploy Camunda in our infrastructure. The way it was designed was that the database can easily become a performance bottleneck. It is something that they could improve. They can provide more examples of how to implement a scalable solution using Camunda.

Buyer's Guide
Camunda
May 2026
Learn what your peers think about Camunda. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

My organization has been using it for around five years. For me, it has been around two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We had to do a lot of tweaking. It hasn't been stable from the beginning, but with some effort, it can become stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is limited. The way it works is that when you are starting, you have to create a full autonomous Camunda instance with its own database. It can work, but it is not out of the box. If you want to have minimal scalability of Camunda, you can do it, but it will be linked to a single database, which can become a bottleneck. So, if your database sizing is not great enough, when you scale Camunda, there will be a performance issue. Usually, it works great, but it depends on your business case and your intent in using Camunda.

How are customer service and support?

Our experience was great. Usually, they were assessing what we did. They were asking us to provide our configuration, and they were responding fast. It is different for different organizations, but I personally always prefer that they don't do the work for us. They should provide more advice and then we learn from that. They had the same approach, and I was happy with that. We used their consultant two or three times, and each time, it was a great service. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We started with Camunda. 

How was the initial setup?

We have three instances of Camunda running, and inside Camunda, there are multiple business processes for different solutions. For example, we have different types of permits. Each one has its own business process, and everything is deployed on Kubernetes. We have about 10 or 15 endpoints that are used through connectors.

Its setup was a little hard. The documentation was not that great at that time, and they had a lot of versions. What made it hard was that their recommendation was changing. For some time, they were providing a Docker image, and then they changed to what they call a green stack where we were using spring boot to achieve that. I'm not sure what it is now, but I know that it changed again. So, it was hard to follow the best practices related to Camunda at the beginning. It came down to documentation.

Overall, it took weeks. To have something running was fast and took days, but we had a lot of tweaking to do. To be advanced in our solution development, we did stress tests and had a few problems with that. We were trying to adjust the configuration, and the documentation was not always easy to read. Sometimes, the configuration was easy because we had to adjust the configuration just with the XML file. Sometimes, we had to go a little further in Java. There were different levels of tweaking. Overall, it was fast to have the initial version of Camunda running, but it took us a lot of time to have something production ready.

What about the implementation team?

We started doing it in-house because we wanted to acquire knowledge about that. After a few weeks or months, as we were getting closer to our production date, we got the Camunda Enterprise version. One of the things that came with that license was support from Camunda. So, we contacted them just to update how we did our configuration. They found that we had a lot of instance processes, and because of our level of history, it had a lot of extra data. They provided us with scripts to help clean our database from unrequired data. So, in the beginning, we didn't take any help from a consultant or Camunda, but as we were near our delivery dates, we took some help. Even when we were in production, we had some issues. We contacted Camunda for some things that were not working correctly. It was just to get advice on how we installed things. It was okay, but it required some adjustment.

In terms of the number of people involved in its deployment, because it was something that was considered complex, I did it myself just to have the basics, and after that, when there was something to adjust, the team did it with me. So, it was me, and there was a team that came after.

In terms of maintenance, the way they have made it, it is pretty low maintenance. If you want to upgrade the version of Camunda, you just have to go into the dependencies to adjust the version. Inside the version, there's always a migration script that is embedded in the version. So, it isn't self-maintenance, but you just have to change the version, and everything is done magically.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We're using the free version. We used the Enterprise version for some time. If I compare free versus what we paid at that time, the Enterprise version costs a lot. For the additional functionality that we got with the Enterprise version, it was too costly.

The feature that appealed to us in the Enterprise version was the migration plan. If you have a business process, for example, with an invoice, and you deploy a new version with a new invoice, for certain times, you will have two business processes running, but we wanted to have only one process instance running at a time. So, we have to migrate the old process instance to the new process definition. They provide the APIs for doing that, but it can be hard. If you are at the node in the old process, you need to tell the engine that you want to migrate it to another node in the new process definition. Doing that manually can be hard. If your business process doesn't change that much, it can be okay, but in the case where it changes a lot, the Camunda Enterprise version provides a user interface to help map the migration between the nodes. We have long-running processes. For example, we could have invoices that are stuck in this process for 10 or 20 days. So, to migrate, we can't wait for the invoice to be processed because it is taking too much time. So, the tool helped us to do this migration planning, and that was one of its greatest features. 

Another appealing feature was that if something happened in your process and you want to debug to see what is going on, the Enterprise version provides a user interface to easily follow the progression of your process. For each node, you can see what changed at what time. That was very helpful when we had a problem with our process. These were the two features that helped us a lot because, at some point, we had some problems using Camunda. Having the Camunda Enterprise version helped us to fix those problems and helped us migrate, but when you have something more stable, as we have right now, those features are less important. We are no longer using the Enterprise version.

In terms of TCO, because it is an open-source solution, it was limited to the time that we spent integrating it. It took us a full year to integrate it into our system. It took a lot of time, which cost us a lot. The cost is also related to the infrastructure. For example, our database is getting bigger every day, but it is not much. Overall, it didn't have a big impact on our functional budget.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

At that time, it was one of the few open-source solutions available in the market. For us, it was easier to go with Camunda. We are a government organization, and we need to go through the request of proposal process to acquire a solution, but we didn't for Camunda because it was open source. 

We quickly liked how it was working. It was a no-brainer at the time. We knew that we wanted a workflow engine, and it was only Camunda that provided the level of flexibility that we were searching for and was open source. That's why we went with Camunda. We didn't find any other interesting providers. Now, I know there are a lot more solutions. So, if we have to start over with a new solution, we will take time to see if there are any other tools that can achieve the same.

What other advice do I have?

The most important thing would be to do a proof of concept before going too far. Some tools are very stable and you can go with them right away, but with Camunda, just because there is so much to know, it is better to do a proof of concept before going all in.

The connectors provided by Camunda can be enough. It depends on your use case. By default, there is an HTTP connector, and there is also a SOAP connector. It is easy to use the connectors. They provide a base connector, and you can build it more. In our case, we had to go a little further and develop plugins in Java, which was a bit of an issue because it is not our main technology stack. We don't develop much in Java. So, there was a learning curve for developers, but overall, it went well.

I know that Camunda offers a user interface for people when they need to interact with it. We didn't use it in our case because we found the user interface too simple. It was not providing us with enough information. and the other thing was that if a user is working in system A and had to interact with Camunda, he had to leave his context to go to system B and do the task. So, in our case, we decided to integrate it into the same system to provide all the information that a user needs to accomplish a task. So, it is a bit limited in that aspect, but the fact is that when you use Camunda, what you're trying to achieve as a goal is to prevent people from interacting too much with the process. So, it may not be a problem if the user interface is not as rich and complex.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Anmol Rane - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Business Analyst at Allianz
Real User
Jan 31, 2024
A zero-code and no-code platform with exceptional stability
Pros and Cons
  • "It is an absolutely stable solution."
  • "The support offered by the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is used in my company, where we deal with insurance.

In our company, we use Camunda to automate our process to reduce the need for human tasks. In short, my company uses the product to reduce the need for manual work. The tool can help automate processes like insurance claims, onboarding, and other areas that are managed manually. Various processes in our company can be converted to automated ones with the help of Camunda.

What is most valuable?

The best feature related to the product is that it offers users a zero-code or no-code platform, so people can use the product without being developers or knowing Java or other microservices.

What needs improvement?

The support offered by the product is an area of concern where improvements are required.

Though Camunda offers one of the best support services in the market, I know that Camunda Platform 8.0 is still in the development phase. The tool can have more guidelines and best practices that can be made available over the internet to help people who are researching the solution as it is a new product in the market.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Camunda for a year. My company currently uses Camunda Platform 8.0. I am just a user of the product.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is an absolutely stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution.

Camunda is a new product in our company, but once we show the abilities of the tool and showcase it by going live with the solution, our company's entire client base will open up.

There are no admins required to take care of Camunda.

My company plans to use more of the product in the future.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Camunda is the first tool that we have used in our company. I believe that Infosys was using IBM, but they also moved to Camunda recently.

How was the initial setup?

The product's initial setup phase was neither an easy nor a difficult process, though my company did receive support from Camunda, considering that I work in a big company with firewall products in place. There were some hurdles during the setup phase, making it a not-so-smooth process, but my company was able to deploy the product successfully in the environment.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises and on the cloud model.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Compared to some of the major players in the market, like IBM, Camunda is a cheaply priced product, making it one of its major USPs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

My company chose Camunda since it has two parts, one of which is Camunda Rule Engine, while the other one is Camunda BPMN. When it comes to Camunda Rule Engine, Camunda passes a set of rules through the tool itself, a process that doesn't happen in the system but happens externally through validation checks called the Camunda DMN Decision Engine. After a certain period, my company realized that Camunda's main feature lies in what Camunda BPMN provides to its users. After getting a demo of Camunda, my company was impressed with the solution, and we decided to try it.

What other advice do I have?

Camunda's website is filled with a lot of knowledgeable stuff, so it is important to get in touch with a person from Camunda. By just going through the website Camunda, it is possible to strengthen your understanding of the fundamentals of the product. Camunda also provides free courses to those who want to learn more about the product.

I rate the overall tool a seven and a half out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Camunda
May 2026
Learn what your peers think about Camunda. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Muhammad  Yasir Arfat - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Arcana
Real User
Apr 16, 2024
Easy to set it up, user-friendly and offers strong SLA agreement
Pros and Cons
  • "It is very user-friendly compared to IBM BPM. It's much simpler – it's more streamlined. That means even non-technical departments can use it."
  • "It would be helpful to have more readily available use cases on the internet. Camunda's documentation feels less comprehensive."

What is our primary use case?

I worked on a project in Pakistan. For this project, I replicated processes on Camunda, including BPDs (Business Process Diagrams) and activities. Currently, I am working on the forms aspect of the implementation.

I appreciate Camunda's strong SLA agreement, my current bank client required customized forms. Camunda forms are built on Angular, and I'm currently involved in a headless reporting project with Camunda.

Camunda's front end is built in Angular, while I'm integrating the Java backend services. I'll consume the Java services and handle integration with Angular on the front end.

When deploying Camunda, I prefer a headless approach. This means Camunda acts as middleware while the front end is built using a different technology. And back end will be from the different technology. 

 I've integrated a database with Camunda's process engine. This allows me to generate emails and update the database as needed.

What is most valuable?

It is very user-friendly compared to IBM BPM. It's much simpler because it doesn't have the process admin and process inspector roles and separate pages – it's more streamlined. That means even non-technical departments can use it. 

If we don't need complex, high-level workflows but just a small form-based process, Camunda can be used by any type of client – technical or non-technical.

What needs improvement?

I don't see a lot that needs improvement in the core functionality. With the on-premises version, the task list has issues, and user creation is not as straightforward as in IBM BPM with its Process Admin role. 

Camunda also lacks some of the initial documentation that helps with onboarding. I often rely on Udemy courses for help.

So, basically, on-premises user management needs improvement.

I'd recommend a feature like the Process Inspector that IBM BPM offers. This is where you can troubleshoot and manage running processes. It would be very helpful for non-technical users, as sometimes they need insight into where a process is stuck. 

Camunda Cockpit has similar functionality, but it's a bit more complex. I'm a technical person, so I understand it, but our clients are often from non-technical backgrounds. My clients are mostly common users from commerce backgrounds. 

So it would be better for Camunda to be able to easily view their processes and troubleshoot process instances.

The Process Portal in IBM BPM is basically a dashboard view. If Camunda could offer a similar dashboard for users, it would be a big benefit for their organizations.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for six months. I use version eight. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I would rate the scalability a five out of ten. Scalability would be improved with better documentation and resources. IBM BPM, for instance, offers extensive documentation and support teams for various issues. Camunda's documentation feels less comprehensive in comparison.

Additionally, it would be helpful to have more readily available use cases on the internet. This is important for doing POCs [Proofs of Concept] and showcasing how Camunda can be used. IBM BPM has many example use cases for systems like currency exchange or HR management. 

Camunda lacks this, often showing only very small processes that can be difficult for clients to envision within their own needs.

So, the lack of readily available use cases affects the ability of Camunda to adapt to your customer's needs.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have experience with both IBM developer tools and Camunda. 

Due to cost considerations, we often recommend Camunda to smaller clients where IBM solutions might be too expensive in Pakistan, especially for small companies. 

I also do POCs [Proofs of Concept]. The demands I receive from customers are varied, but they want to move forward with the technology. If Camunda fulfills their requirements, they will definitely adopt it. Before Camunda, I also worked on Appian, but it wasn't as exciting as Camunda.

I'm doing a Master's in Data Science, so I know how crucial decision-making is for customers. Once my first POC is done, I'll definitely explore decision modeling. Camunda is still in its early stages in Pakistan.

There aren't as many resources in Pakistan as there should be.

How was the initial setup?

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a nine out of ten, with ten being easy. Installing Camunda on your machine is incredibly easy. It's even easier than installing MS Office. I also installed IBM BPM on a virtual machine, and that took me one or two weeks to configure fully. Camunda is much simpler in comparison – the process is similar to installing MS Office.

Most customers I have are in the banking sector, so they prefer on-premises deployment. 

It takes around three days to deploy the solution because it includes things like permissions etc. Camunda is significantly quicker to deploy in comparison to IBM BPM, which takes around ten days. 

I'm a developer, not an administrator. So, I usually work with the administration team for the actual deployment. Typically, we need a few key files: one for the setup and one for the Camunda server itself. I'm familiar with the server file since I have Camunda installed for development on my own computer.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Compared to IBM BPM or Appian, Camunda's pricing is good.

Camunda is significantly cheaper than IBM BPM, especially considering the SLA agreement. Of the three products, it offers the best price-to-value ratio.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

I'd recommend it if you're currently paying a high annual fee for a solution like IBM BPM. Camunda is much more affordable while still offering a strong SLA agreement and security. 

It's worth trying – perhaps initially with a smaller process in your organization. You could even test it on a UAT environment before going live. I often recommend this approach to clients, as it's a good solution for many use cases.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. msp
PeerSpot user
Hemed Kaore - PeerSpot reviewer
CUSTOMS OFFICER at Tanzania Revenue Authority
Real User
Jul 28, 2023
A stable and flexible tool useful for business process optimization that is easy to deploy
Pros and Cons
  • "It has been a stable solution so far since it meets our needs, including data modeling, which we need to do before we embark on analyzing and optimizing the business processes."
  • "Collaborations and process documentation in Camunda Platform are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."

What is our primary use case?

My company uses Camunda Platform as a business process optimization or business process engineering tool.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is flexible. I want to see if the tool is good enough for my company to continue with its use or if there are some limitations. If, at our company, we are sure that it would take us to complete your business processes engineering exercise up to the level of enterprise architecture, then we would really be able to appreciate the tool. I am unsure of the product's capabilities because I am unfamiliar. I want to get someone experienced enough to suggest to me which is the best choice for a BPM tool.

What needs improvement?

Collaborations and process documentation in Camunda Platform are areas with shortcomings that need improvement. It would be appreciated if we were more flexible in managing the processes.

I am unsure if we can get a beta version of the tool with many features, including data modeling, apart from process modeling. If we get something that can be achieved with data modeling and collaboration features for any tasks, including the ones from outside, it would be much more appreciated.

We want a common platform for taking care of customs and domestic taxes since that could be a good thing for our business process across our entire company.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Camunda Platform for about three months. I am a user of the product.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It has been a stable solution so far since it meets our needs, including data modeling, which we need to do before we embark on analyzing and optimizing the business processes.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

My company has 6,000 employees, out of which around 100 people use the product.

How are customer service and support?

I contacted the solution's technical support since I wanted them to give me some facts regarding the points raised by a person from GBTEC, a German company, who claims that Camunda Platform can't fulfill some expectations since its imitations in terms of capabilities, especially collaboration features. I dropped an email to Camunda Platform so that someone from the support can let me know about the product's data modeling and whether it can go up to the enterprise architecture level or if something is missing in it, because of which we might have to get a beta or higher version.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very easy and flexible.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Camunda Platform is an open-source product.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We, the employees, had suggested the company authorities opt for Camunda Platform. I was looking into certain facts from Camunda's support team so that I can suggest a good way to help my company design business processes. Our company has to look after customs and domestic taxes, and BPMN in Camunda Platform has been done using the custom function.

What other advice do I have?

We intend to do a few things with the product, and I am unsure if it would raise or drop the product's rating in the future.

So far, considering the modeling purposes for which we used the tool in the last month, I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user

Check SpiffWorkflow.org for Business Process Optimization


Collaboration and process documentation is our thing :)


We are open-source, low-code, developed on top of a Python visual workflow library and use standard BPMN.


You can e-mail me for more information: 


elizabeth.cruz (at) sartography (dot) com

Product Owner at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Dec 12, 2022
Supports BPMN, integrates well, and saves time
Pros and Cons
  • "One reason we selected Camunda or Cloud/DB is that it comes with the support of the BPMN notation, which helps to define processes in a standard manner. Another reason was that Camunda Cloud, as the name says, is designed for a new cloud era."
  • "There should be a multi-tenant solution for the platform where it supports multiple organizations on one platform instead of having to spin up multiple clusters for each organization. There should be an easy way to integrate different departments into one platform without having to operate multiple platforms. The operations should be easier with the enterprise solution. It should not create more overhead for the operations people."

What is our primary use case?

We only use the engine, and we have implemented our solution around Camunda Cloud.

We have a lot of use cases. In the past, the major use case was related to infrastructure ordering. If users wanted to onboard their applications to the cloud, the whole process was run by us. They would go to the ITSM tool that we have, and from there, the whole process of onboarding the application was run by us. For example, if you required certain access, all these accesses were provided by us. So, mainly, it was related to the infrastructure processes where you order something and have to talk to AD, Exchange, or other kinds of infrastructure products and systems you have in the company.

How has it helped my organization?

When I compare the old legacy platform to the current one, the number of incidents has reduced massively. Our platform is much more stable. We don't have the issue of any bottlenecks. In almost a year since we migrated all the workflows, there have been a limited number of incidents with regard to the platform.

It has definitely saved time. Due to the fact that we have fewer incidents, people were able to concentrate on platform improvements and automation of the platform itself. We are trying to automate as much as possible from our side. We could focus on improving Dev backups or CI/CD. We also improved a lot also with regard to implementing or POC'ing new features. We have much more time now to focus on new solutions that we can offer to our customer base.

Our team is called Oasis, which is a short form for Orchestration and System Integration Service. It's sort of our core that we want to integrate all the systems and orchestrate on the system. That's one of our key selling points. We have a team that has knowledge of most of the systems and how to integrate them. Camunda enables us to integrate, but the actual work is done by our team. All the brain power comes from the team.

We were able to cover all the use cases we had in the past. We were able to integrate with legacy systems, and we are also working on cloud-based solutions, such as Azure Functions, and other cloud services. I usually say to my customers that if their application or end system provides a proper interface such as REST, we will be able to integrate with their system. So far, we have been able to integrate with all the systems. We always try to find a solution, and so far, we have been successful in that part. With regards to RPA bots, we have not yet tried out the use case. It's yet to be proven from our side. We are currently testing out the decision engine and trying to promote that in the business areas. Depending on the success or basically on how people are adapting to that, we might also extend that, and it would probably be a new use case.

It can cover everything through code. That's really beneficial. In the past, you had to do certain configurations and things that usually were hidden in configuration, sub-configuration, and so on. So, only the ones who implemented the process would understand it, but now, due to the fact that everything is as code, everyone is able to read what's going on in the process. It's easy to see how the process is configured. It's more transparent for us to see how to change things, and it's easier to transfer tasks from one person to another. In the past, you had to deal with the subject matter expert on a specific process and the handover took much longer. Nowadays, it's much more fluid to understand the process and its implementation.

What is most valuable?

One reason we selected Camunda or Cloud/DB is that it comes with the support of the BPM notation, which helps to define processes in a standard manner. Another reason was that Camunda Cloud, as the name says, is designed for a new cloud era. That's why we went for that part. We were very early adopters of this solution. We introduced it even before version one was out. We hope that going forward, on the scalability side, we have the potential to scale the platform for future demand.

It's lightweight. It comes with a lot of flexibility, which, on the other hand, means that you have to have certain knowledge to handle features. You have the potential to change things, and it's easy to introduce new functionalities or new features to the platform. 

It's open source, which was another key factor for choosing Camunda. Its being open source helps us to understand the platform better and also integrate better with the platform.

What needs improvement?

They should focus more on enterprise challenges. We are using the enterprise license, and I would like to see more interactions with Camunda. The enterprise license should cover enterprise challenges. We would need more touchpoints so that Camunda understands better what's going on at the enterprise level. That's an area where Camunda could improve. They can understand the challenges of an enterprise and try to come up with solutions from their side for the enterprise.

As an enterprise license owner, if we have some ideas for features, we expect them to release the features faster than now. So, a bit faster feature release is an area for improvement.

There should be a multi-tenant solution for the platform where it supports multiple organizations on one platform instead of having to spin up multiple clusters for each organization. There should be an easy way to integrate different departments into one platform without having to operate multiple platforms. The operations should be easier with the enterprise solution. It should not create more overhead for the operations people.

Another improvement area is the licensing model. We are yet to find out a smart licensing model for Camunda. We are mainly using the CP engine, and we require only a support and service contract, but this is not yet possible. Their licenses were probably made 10 or 20 years ago, but we need tailor-made licenses for the implemented use case. As a platform owner, I have to provide our customers with a static price tag. The price should not increase exponentially, and we should be able to tell them that we are not overcharging them. If the cost gets too high, it's likely to not be used in the future.

For how long have I used the solution?

We started the evaluation in 2019, and in 2020, we got everything approved. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

From '21 to '22, everything has been quite stable after all the workload migrated to the new platform. Nowadays, it's stable. There are some hiccups, but they are more related to introducing the new changes. Usually, we are able to deal with them in a meaningful timeframe so that they don't affect the customer base too much.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, we didn't face an issue with scalability. We started before version 1, and we are currently on the verge of moving to version 8. I would have more input after we have fully migrated to version 8.

How are customer service and support?

I have interacted with them many times. Usually, the response is quite fast. I would rate them a 7 out of 10.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using a different solution previously.

How was the initial setup?

I was here during its initial setup. It took quite some time because it also had to adhere to our architecture. We had to do some modifications to achieve this. It was quite intensive at the beginning. At the time, Camunda also provided Helm charts and other things, but in the end, we had to adjust too many things. So, we basically prepared our own automation in order to deploy the platform. It took us some time to make that automation ready. We wanted to have an easy way to apply the platform, and that took us some time. It was like an arrow that was dragged back, but in the end, it made us faster for new changes.

In terms of the deployment model, we provide it only as an internal service to Swiss Re itself. Currently, it's a hybrid setup. Parts of the solution are in the public cloud and parts of it are in the private cloud. It's deployed at multiple locations where the orchestration part is in the public cloud and the majority of the workers are in a private cloud. We have this sort of distribution of the platform.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we started the evaluation in 2019. We had multiple products. We did the proper requirements engineering and decided to go with Camunda. Before going to production, we organized Hacktoberfest where we invited our existing customers who were on the legacy platform. We let them try it out to see how it is for them. We got quite positive feedback from them, and based on that, we started the process of onboarding it.

Within Swiss Re, there's a standard process called the digital governance framework. We have to go through this extensive process where licenses are reviewed with regard to security, architecture, exposure to the network, etc. All these things are reviewed in this process. Within that process, we also have to do penetration testing to see if the system is viable for our use case and if it's secure. It was 2020 when we got everything approved. From there, we started with the migration. Along with the migration and complete evaluation, we onboarded new people to the team who had different skill sets required in order to run the platform in the future. So, we built up a new team in Budapest and also upscaled our existing team.

In the first phase, we mainly targeted people with a certain knowledge of IT and engineering. For them, it was easy to implement the workflows and so on. In the next or current phase, we are trying to introduce the platform to business users. In order to do that, we have to further improve the UI so that it's also easy for a business user to create a business process in the future. We are not there yet. It's an iterative process where we sit together with business process owners and try to find out their demands and adapt according to the demands. We are trying to avoid big-bang approaches and proceed in an iterative way, and with Camunda, we have the capability to iteratively improve ourselves.

For developers with a development or software engineering background, it's quite easy to implement Camunda. For those who do not have that knowledge, my team provides a service. We go to the teams and help them with the implementation of the workers and the workflows. So, we support it on an end-to-end basis. We get the requirements, document them, test them, and develop them. We cover all these things as an end-to-end service, but the goal for us is to move more and more toward a self-service platform. Until then, we will operate in a hybrid mode. So, currently, there are people who can do it themselves and deploy workflows, and there are people who require help from our side. Until we close the gap with self-service, we will support the people or designers. For business users, it's very important that it becomes very easy to use. Having an easy UI where they can drag and drop in their workflow and test it in a non-intrusive way is quite important going forward. It would be a success factor in the end. If we want to succeed in the business areas, we have to provide an easy platform that can be utilized by any person with limited knowledge of software engineering.

What was our ROI?

It hasn't had any effect on the cost of design, but the overall cost of operations and management is reduced. It has made our life a bit easier in terms of the reduction of incidents and the maintenance of the platform.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We are using the paid edition because there is no separate support and service license yet. We are yet to find a suitable licensing model for Camunda because we only use the engine, and we have implemented our solution around Camunda Cloud. So, we are mainly interested in the support and service, and that's what we mainly use in the paid edition.

It was a fairly new solution at the time, and we wanted to support the open-source community with that. So, we wanted to ensure that this product has some sort of backing so that it can continue.

To someone who has the free edition of Camunda and is considering upgrading to the paid license, I would say that it depends on the use case and the criticality of their system. In our case, if we have production issues, we want to post them quite fast and we want to have quite fast feedback cycles. One of the reasons why we have taken the license is to ensure that we have a proper response in a meaningful timeframe. If that's not a requirement, probably the open-source license makes sense. It also depends on the appetite for having new features on the platform.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated multiple options. We evaluated classical BPM solutions such as Activiti, Bonitasoft, and the Camunda BPM platform. We also looked at jBPM. On the non-BPM side, at the time, we looked at Uber Cadence and Netflix Conductor.

What other advice do I have?

It's important to have the customers on board and work closely with them. That's because if they don't get what you are doing, you will not have customers. It's very important to work closely with the customers to be successful. It's important to make sure that customers understand what the platform does and how it's achieving. The training part and creating awareness are important. You need to create awareness about automation and what it can provide to customers.

Most of the time, people are too busy to do any automation, even though it will help them in the long run. What I learned is that you can't delegate it to a team. You have to be hands-on with the team and help them to make the automation. That is important.

From the Camunda perspective, you can start with the open-source version, and then at a later stage, evaluate if you require the enterprise features for your use case.

When it comes to connectors, we sometimes use the implementation provided by the community, but so far, we have not used the standard connectors provided with Camunda because, in Swiss Re, there are a lot of custom implementations, and sometimes, the connectors don't work straight away. So, we usually implement our own workers.

I would rate it an 8 out of 10. Once it has the improvements we need, I can give it a 10.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1954143 - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff Software Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Sep 19, 2022
Process diagrams help stakeholders understand processes, and connectors enable us to standardize our integrations
Pros and Cons
  • "The integration with almost any language, product, and even human tasks, is valuable. It's very seamless to integrate into existing systems. It doesn't require you to rewrite a lot of your existing system. That's where it really stands out."
  • "Since day one, our goal was to build reusable components that can be used in other projects, and we recently did a discovery for one of our projects and we found that we could reuse 80 percent of what we had developed on the Camunda platform, and the microservices and the connectors were reusable and that really reduced the development effort drastically for that use case."
  • "While it's very scalable, it would be great if auto-scaling capabilities were added to it... one area that really could help out would be to have dynamic resizing of the cluster. Right now, you have to do capacity planning."
  • "While it's very scalable, it would be great if auto-scaling capabilities were added to it. Right now, you have to do capacity planning."

What is our primary use case?

We have an event-based architecture and Camunda works as an orchestrator for our microservices.

Over the last three years or so, we have been using Kafka a lot. We wanted to bring in an orchestration engine to integrate seamlessly with our nesting system. We had a lot of existing applications that are not that old, and we did not want to rewrite software components that we own to get the benefits of orchestration. That was where there was a need. One of the factors that will decide if we will use it for more use cases at our company or not, is the ease of integration.

How has it helped my organization?

As an organization, we don't want to reinvent the wheel, so it's important to us that the connectors are available out-of-the-box and reusable. We don't want our developers to write boilerplate code. Having the connectors ensures that we have standardization in the way that we are integrating with other parts of our ecosystem. It also allows us to put some best practices into those standards. For example, we can implement three tries for a connector. That helps us be declarative. It provides a good tradeoff between low code and no code.

It has a ubiquitous language across stakeholders. When we are talking to stakeholders about how a process evolves over time, or about the complexity of a process, it's a lot easier to explain without having to go through Confluence pages or through a lot of sessions with product people explaining to them how a particular system works. They have a good amount of understanding by looking at the process diagram. That really helps me, personally, in communicating with them.

We have also been able to build out dashboards for our asynchronous processes. Those dashboards have been really helpful. Otherwise, we would have to rely on the data analytics team to provide us with any analytics data around the events that are flowing in our system. Now, for some of our purposes, we can build dashboards ourselves using Camunda.

In addition, we have built dashboards that show important statistics about our business process and key changes that happen in our process definition. Those changes communicate a business value to our business stakeholders. For example, in the last seven days, how much traffic have we ingested into our system, and where has most of it gone? That kind of information is now more of a self-service for everyone. The dashboards we have built are giving us a good amount of information about what's happening in our systems. We are also using the BPMN designs for our design discussions with the product team.

We have been more agile because we don't now have to keep the Confluence documentation up to date. When you put something in Confluence, it's hard to keep it updated and make sure that it's up to date with the latest implementation. Now, the business process flows are code. They are modeled as BPMN files, so we don't have to make extra effort to maintain the business process. And while we are discussing our product, we can communicate how the small things that are part of a process could build up and what role they are playing in the overall process. It also helps us find out, if some part of our process were to fail, what impact it would have on the overall process execution. That's something that teams have recently started discussing more.

Since day one, our goal was to build reusable components that can be used in other projects. We recently did a discovery for one of our projects and we found that we could reuse 80 percent of what we had developed on the Camunda platform. The microservices and the connectors were reusable and that really reduced the development effort drastically for that use case.

We are now spending more time looking at the bigger picture, and not just looking at a particular microservice. The developers can now see where their microservice fits into the flow and how their microservice responds, whether in a successful manner or in failure.

What is most valuable?

The integration with almost any language, product, and even human tasks, is valuable. It's very seamless to integrate into existing systems. It doesn't require you to rewrite a lot of your existing system. That's where it really stands out.

We have used a couple of connectors, including the Kafka connector a lot because we have mostly a Kafka-based architecture. The connectors are really seamless. They just fit in. They don't require you to make a lot of changes to your existing infrastructure. That's what connectors are primarily meant for, to enable enterprise-level integrations. We also build out custom connectors for our use cases.

In addition to Kafka, we can easily integrate it using any microservice or legacy microservice. All you need to do is include their library and put in a couple of annotations on your existing methods, and they can act as Camunda workers. You can transform your existing code into Zeebe components and that requires very minimal coding. We are also working on building more connectors, and that will smooth out further adoption of this technology within our ecosystem. We can orchestrate almost any remote system if it's accessible over the network and it implements any protocol. If it's reachable, we should be able to orchestrate it via the Camunda platform.

In terms of its ease of use for engineers, it's pretty easy. We have an engineer who joined us two weeks back and he has been onboarded. He's able to make changes in the BPMN. That's very important for modifying business processes.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Camunda Platform for a little less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We anticipated the load for one year, at least, and we have done load tests. The system is pretty reliable. We have not had even a single issue in production using their product. It's very reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. It's built on a similar architecture to Kafka, which we know is a very scalable platform. The scalability has been one of the most important features that they have designed their product with. They had scalability in mind from the start. 

We have tested it for thousands of process instances per second. There are some blogs from Camunda that show it even goes to millions of process instances per second.

While it's very scalable, it would be great if auto-scaling capabilities were added to it. We haven't seen any issues in production related to scalability, but one area that really could help out would be to have dynamic resizing of the cluster. Right now, you have to do capacity planning. You plan for the capacity that you need in the next couple of years and then size your cluster accordingly.

Having said that, I haven't seen problems with the product so far.

How are customer service and support?

I would rate their technical support a nine out of 10. The one thing that I feel there could be more of is their exposure to AWS. I'm not saying that they don't know about AWS, but I think a lot of their customers are using Google Cloud. I think they, themselves, deployed it on Google Cloud. But AWS is the market leader and there are a lot of customers on AWS.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used AWS Step Functions.

How was the initial setup?

They provided help charts, so it was pretty straightforward. But when you want to tune it or run it on an enterprise level, you will want to try out a few of the parameters they have provided, and play around with them, to ensure that the software components that your cloud provider has can be used smoothly for deploying Camunda. Initially, you might have to make some effort to set things up on your own cluster, but they have good documentation and help charts for deployment on your Kubernetes.

We have different environments, including development, testing, staging, and production. We could even implement a CI process for our workflow instances and BPMN files, as they can be deployed using a CI/CD pipeline. Microservices can be deployed at their own pace in a CI/CD pipeline. That was the strategy for deployment.

What about the implementation team?

We did it in-house, but we did use some consulting from Camunda during some of our initial days. One of their solution architects was really good in terms of technical knowledge. He knows the product really well and he guided us through some of the parameters and tuning of our clusters while we were deploying.

In addition to me, we had one more person doing the deployment. One of our senior people took care of the deployment on our side. I was overseeing things but he did most of the work.

What was our ROI?

So far, we have been very pleased with what we have achieved with Camunda. We are still within our initial one-year contract but we have seen value from it.

In the use case where we were able to reduce 80 percent of the development effort with reusable code, that equated to man-hours that are directly related to cost. If you reuse code for more use cases, the cost can be justified.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We have an on-premises, self-managed installation because of some internal decisions. There is a bit of scope for improvement in how the licensing and pricing are done. They are based on the number of processing instances you execute on the cluster. They have two modes of deployment, one is their cloud version and the other one is the self-hosted mode. For the cloud version, it definitely makes sense to have it based on the number of processing instances you run, but on the self-hosted mode, the pricing model should be customized. If it were customized a bit more, it would be better for us.

We purchased their workflow engine, Zeebe, and consulting. We also operate the tool with which you can monitor your process instances. There are a couple of more tools available in their product suite, but these three aspects were most compelling for us. If we are running mission-critical workloads, we definitely need support if things go wrong on a given day. We need their expertise, so the consulting is very important for us. The workflow engine itself is also very important, as that is why we evaluated Camunda in the first place.

If data privacy is not an issue, then definitely go for the cloud version of Camunda because then you don't have to worry about managing the cluster and capacity on your own. It's more seamless than having to manage your own cluster. But if you're considering upgrading from the free version, the consulting is definitely important. They also do BPMN consulting as part of the contract. You can ask for BPMN reviews and you can ask for sessions with their solution architects. They also have a 24/7 hotline that you can call in case there are any issues.

They have an excellent open-source community. I have not seen many other forums that have developers who are as active as Camunda's developers are on their forums. The technical advice that we get from Camunda is really helpful. They know best about the product they have built over the last few years. You definitely need to have expertise on a product that you're thinking of using. The people who have built it provide a great additional value.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did take a look at some of the options available in the market, solutions that allow you to do process automation, including Cadence/Temporal.

We selected Camunda due to a few important reasons. It's a product that solves a problem that many organizations don't even realize exists in their architecture: visibility. It gives us visibility into the complex processes that are often implemented in software or if some of the tasks are done by humans. Camunda, with its integrations and great tools for reporting, like Optimize, allows us to see where the bottlenecks are in our processes.

It also has companion tools, like Operate, that allow you to visualize the flow of a particular business process. And you can find some really cool statistics about how much of a process is actually done or where it is blocked. Those are some of the really important features that any workflow orchestration or engine should have, and Camunda supports them pretty well.

What other advice do I have?

Take a look at their co-founder and CTO, Bernd Ruecker's, blog. He has a lot of good write-ups about the platform where he explains the technical architecture. He talks about how to do performance benchmarking.

Another good piece of advice is to leverage the Camunda community and forum. Their team is very active on the public forum and they respond to your questions within a day, most of the time. They give very to-the-point answers. That is a really helpful resource. They also have a good set of tutorials on BPMN in what they call the Camunda Academy. It's worth taking a look at that when you are adopting the Zeebe workflow engine, which is their primary workflow engine.

One of the important things that we want to deliver is enabling business, developers, and operations. It's important that our non-technical stakeholders don't have to get into the nitty-gritty details of technical implementations. They can have a bird's-eye view of what's happening in a process, and they can suggest or even extend a process by themselves and then hand it over to us as a requirements document. That's the direction we really want to take. So far, the product team has been very enthusiastic about it. They like it. Camunda uses a language for modeling called BPMN and it doesn't require you to be a coder or an engineer. It's a simple drag-and-drop tool. It's really cool and it helps our stakeholders to be involved in working with workflows.

There is a bit of a learning curve with BPMN. It's an industry standard, not something proprietary to Camunda, but Camunda hosts an online academy where they have tutorials about it. They have videos and free courses on how to use BPMN. That helps out in the onboarding of users.

We have been using it for a little less than a year, so our entire organization is not using it. We are really into building our experience with Camunda by applying it to a few use cases. As we see more use cases in other parts of the organization, what we have built over this past year as templates—as reusable software—can be leveraged so that they don't have to set up everything from scratch on their own.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
arjones - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at ank Platform
Real User
Aug 23, 2022
Highly valuable for orchestrating complex business processes, solving many problems, and making the business side understand what we are talking about
Pros and Cons
  • "The BPMN diagram is valuable. For our use case of transferring money from one account to another, the connections have to be done in the traditional financial ways. There are a lot of unexpected errors and a lot of instability with this kind of system, and we are using Camunda in order to have clear flows. With BPMN, I can show a flow to my business partner, and the business team can easily understand what's going on. The technical team can understand what the implementation is, and we can model different errors and the process for recovering from these errors."
  • "By using Camunda, we could have the application process design, and we could quickly deploy the system to production and have the product early on the market."
  • "It has a Postgres database at the backend, and it is very difficult to scale if you increase the number of processes running. We did hit some barriers. We were able to overcome them, but it was a problem. Camunda has another product called Camunda Cloud, which supposedly doesn't have the same scalability problems, but we are not using Camunda Cloud because the set of features is smaller than Camunda On-Premises. So, its scalability can be improved. Because it has a single database, it is more difficult to scale if you have a huge success."
  • "When you have a lot of processes running, it becomes very expensive very quickly."

What is our primary use case?

We are a fintech company located in Argentina, and most of our use cases are related to transferring money from one account to another and doing the orchestration with financial institutions. 

It is also used for the orchestration of all the documents for onboarding. We have electronic onboarding where you give some information about yourself, and then you take a selfie and provide photos of the front and back of your document. We have to orchestrate all this information in order to validate it with a third-party bureau of data. When we receive an okay from the bureau, we know that you are an active customer, and we can give you an account.

In terms of deployment, it is a public cloud. We have Amazon Web Services running inside a Kubernetes cluster. 

How has it helped my organization?

We are a startup with less than 200 people. We first started doing orchestration using code, but after two sprints or about a month and a half, it became very clear that we are just generating spaghetti code. No one could understand the code after one month because it had difficult logic based on what an engineer thought would be a good idea, such as creating a new branch of decision, and if it wasn't very well documented, you wouldn't understand what was going on. Another drawback of having such a code was that we couldn't make the business understand what was going on there. So, it was very difficult to do things faster. That's why we decided to look for an orchestration tool, and we decided on Camunda as a solution. The way we could orchestrate everything was transformative. We went from having to code to drawing our processes. As of today, Camunda is used for every process here.

It is very good as a universal process orchestrator for complex business processes. We are using it for microservices, not for a human process. We had thousands of processes happening per hour, and the tool was able to capture the data for this throughput. The thing that wasn't aligned was the pricing structure. Camunda On-Premises is more designed for a human process where you have to have some kind of manual processing. We had a lot of back and forth with the commercial team because of the price of the licensing due to the volume that we had to process. That's because every time we wanted to send $1, we had to start a new process or several processes. This was a drawback, but in terms of the project, the product was very good and robust. Process heatmaps show the process steps that are hanging or taking significantly longer. You can go there and see the values and debug those. So, it was very useful for not only orchestrating what we have but also in understanding where we have made a mistake with a production process.

When it comes to integration, because we are a startup, we don't have any legacy systems, but we use it to connect with the legacy systems of the general payment system in Argentina. It was very instrumental for this use case. We had our own logic for how to connect and how to do the interface inside our microservices, and we used Camunda to verify the correct logic and sequence of calling different microservices, getting the response, and handling the response.

The dashboards are helpful in making the business understand what we are talking about and what can we do in certain situations, such as, if the money doesn't arrive at its destination. We had the drawings, and we used them to ask, "For the arrow here, what should we do?" We were able to have the conversation in a clear way. If we had just the code, it would have been very difficult. To have the conversation with the business, we would have had to create a drawing on a whiteboard and hope that this drawing is exactly what is happening in the code.

It freed up the time of our technical leaders working on this part of the system. By using Camunda, we could have the application process design, and we could quickly deploy the system to production and have the product early on the market. That was our biggest gain. We didn't have engineers struggling to orchestrate microservices.

What is most valuable?

The BPMN diagram is valuable. For our use case of transferring money from one account to another, the connections have to be done in the traditional financial ways. There are a lot of unexpected errors and a lot of instability with this kind of system, and we are using Camunda in order to have clear flows. With BPMN, I can show a flow to my business partner, and the business team can easily understand what's going on. The technical team can understand what the implementation is, and we can model different errors and the process for recovering from these errors. For example, it is very common that you make a transaction, but you don't have a response from a bank. You sent the money, but the bank didn't confirm this. Such errors have to be handled because it may mean that you have to do a reverse transaction. We are able to solve a lot of orchestration problems by using Camunda. Most of them are related to payments or sending and receiving money.

The feature where you can have dynamic tables with values and actions inside the BPMN is very good when you don't have all the possible responses. We may think that the payment system is very robust, but it is not. Sometimes, we receive an error code that we weren't expecting, and this kind of solution helped a lot with that.

What needs improvement?

Camunda has licensing per process. There should be a different kind of licensing so that a company with thousands of microservices doesn't have to pay per process. It would be very useful for us. Their current licensing is very difficult for us to maintain. When you have a lot of processes running, it becomes very expensive very quickly.

It has a Postgres database at the backend, and it is very difficult to scale if you increase the number of processes running. We did hit some barriers. We were able to overcome them, but it was a problem. Camunda has another product called Camunda Cloud, which supposedly doesn't have the same scalability problems, but we are not using Camunda Cloud because the set of features is smaller than Camunda On-Premises. So, its scalability can be improved. Because it has a single database, it is more difficult to scale if you have a huge success.

We use our deployment pipeline to deploy the BPMN process. We have a continuous deployment system where when you finish your development, you are able to deploy the BPMN file as well. Sometimes, when the engineers are deploying several BPMN processes in parallel, we receive an error for Camunda, and we are unable to do the deployment. It is a very specific issue, but we have found that automatic BPMN process deployments sometimes fail in Camunda. When we try to deploy several at once, the system isn't strong or robust enough. So, there is room for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution since October of 2020.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In general, its stability is very good. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is something that we have been worried about because everything that runs in Camunda is run using Postgres. It is very difficult to scale when the number of processes increases. Because Camunda uses Postgres, we had scalability challenges. We had to do a lot of fine-tuning in the Postgres database to support increased processes.

The main problem with scalability is related to the database. That's why they created Camunda Cloud, which is Zeebe. They know they have this dependency on Postgres, which is hurting its ability to scale up.

How are customer service and support?

Their tech support is very good, but it also depends on which support team you get. You can get someone who doesn't understand the whole thing. 

They have been very supportive from the beginning. I believe that they didn't have our type of use case before where a fintech company is using Camunda for its microservices. We could see the same people who were committing the code in the open-source version providing the support to us. It couldn't get better than that. 

I would rate them a nine out of ten. Sometimes, we had a junior engineer, and it took a lot of back and forth communication to have the answers, but in general, we have had a very good support experience. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We started with Camunda.

How was the initial setup?

It is kind of straightforward. We have everything configured as infrastructure as a code. So, we got the best practices from Camunda, and we wrote our deployment instructions for Camunda's deployment as code by using Terraform. We did that on our side, but it would be very good if we can get it from them, but I understand that each client probably wanted to have their own method of deployment.

Camunda's deployment was easy, but fine-tuning the Postgres that we had as the backend database wasn't easy. 

After the deployment, it took us two to three months to wrap our minds around how to use it correctly. After that, it was a matter of creating templates that our team would be able to leverage and start using more and more. It isn't a very difficult product to understand. It has its quirks, and that's the part that you have to learn and has a steep learning curve, but when we did our due diligence, Camunda seemed to be more mature and straightforward than its competitors. I value it very highly.

What about the implementation team?

Everything was done in-house. I built a very knowledgeable technical team. We had DevOps, and we had frontend and backend engineers. We had a complete team dedicated to making the startup grow. There were two to three people doing the work for a few weeks, and we have been able to make everything work.

It is easy to maintain, with the exception of the database. For the Camunda instance, for example, it is very easy to maintain the licenses. It is easy to attach a license to the container, and we are good to go, but we also have to take care of the database. We have grown so fast, and in order to not have a huge Postgres database, we have to delete some of the instances, such as instances from a day earlier. We are deleting the processing history because the database couldn't handle all the data that was passing through it. Maintenance-wise, that's what I remember the team complaining about.

What was our ROI?

We have definitely seen an ROI. We are using it for all critical processes in the company. The dashboard and the BPMN part have been instrumental to our success.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is good for a startup. When we started, its price was fair, but the way we are using it to orchestrate microservices makes it expensive. When you are growing as a company, you would have more microservices, and you would have more users. There is an exponential effect when you are growing in terms of the number of conditions, processes, and users because they bill you per process. So, the price was increasing very quickly for us, and it was very difficult.

The commercial team has been trying to find a way to have different licensing, and it seems that we have found a way. We're starting a conversation with them, but so far, our experience is that when you grow as a company, the cost increases very fast. It has been difficult for us. However, our use case was related to microservices, but that might not be the case with other use cases.

We purchased a license directly from Camunda. It was the first time that we were working with a process orchestration system, and the features or aspects of the paid license that appealed to us included support and dashboards. Having a dashboard helped us to understand which processes are failing and where they are failing. They have heat maps that show the paths that are more used in our process. It has been very useful to understand how things work in general, and then you can go and do a deep dive and select a specific process and debug it. You understand why it was failing. It has been very valuable for the engineers in understanding what's going on and how to fix a bug.

If you want to debug a process and also understand what's going on in different instances that are failing, the features in the paid version are very valuable.

The paid license features are instrumental for us. Because of the price increase, we are looking at alternatives. We are looking at just an open-source solution, but we really don't want to do that because we're going to lose a lot of features. The dashboard, heat maps, and visual administrative interface are not available in the open-source solution.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did a little bit of research. We looked at Zeebe, which is their own. We also did research on jBPM, but it didn't have all the features. 

We were trying to solve a problem in our startup, and we just started to look for solutions. We didn't have a broad benchmark. We were looking for something that could work, and Camunda was fit for our needs. We couldn’t find anything that had the stability or robustness that we were looking for. So, we went ahead with Camunda.

What other advice do I have?

I would advise comparing it with Camunda Cloud or Zeebe. If your use case allows you, go with Camunda Cloud because, this way, you can leverage this new system that has fewer scalability problems. It is not a straightforward recommendation because at least until last year, the set of features in Camunda Cloud wasn't the same as Camunda On-Premises. That's why we didn't use Camunda Cloud.

We didn't use any third-party connectors. We used Camunda and then we used just the HTTP connector to orchestrate our microservices. We didn't do a direct connection from Camunda to any outside or third-party system. With Camunda, we only wanted to orchestrate our microservices, which can then connect to third-party or other systems. We wanted to keep our architecture clean, and this piece of software was used to orchestrate microservices, which was great.

Camunda provides an interface where business users can create, update, and execute complex workflows, but we didn't use this feature. No one from the business side used it for creating their own processes or modifying anything. I used it only for microservices. Being able to have a diagram and being able to have a business discussion by using the diagram as a reference was good. It was very interesting because we could have all the teams and all the specialists on the same page, but I didn't have anyone from the business side or operation side directly using or connecting with Camunda.

It hasn't reduced the cost to design and implement critical processes. That's because we weren't using any other tool previously. So, I don't have a comparison. It also didn't have any effect on our TCO. We are a cloud company. We have a very modern infrastructure where everything is on Amazon. The team is very used to getting docker systems and running complex systems inside of Kubernetes. We haven't had any trouble running it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Alexey Nakonechnyy - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-owner/ Deputy CEO at Integrity
Reseller
Jan 4, 2024
Robust choice for businesses across various sectors offering flexibility, efficient workflow automation and excellent scalability
Pros and Cons
  • "Its flexibility stands out as the most valuable feature."
  • "When addressing a complex and extensive process, the domain it belongs to, be it banking, healthcare, or HR, requires widespread access."

What is our primary use case?

We use it in the banking sector for a specific project. The platform aids in optimizing and automating business processes, enhancing operational efficiency, and ensuring seamless workflow management

What is most valuable?

Its flexibility stands out as the most valuable feature. I am content with its courses and the support team.

What needs improvement?

When addressing a complex and extensive process, the domain it belongs to, be it banking, healthcare, or HR, requires widespread access.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been working with it for more than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate its stability capabilities ten out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It offers excellent scalability. I would rate it ten out of ten. Our clientele comprises enterprises, medium-sized businesses, and small organizations.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support from Comodo is accessible exclusively with the enterprise version, and it is highly commendable. They offer two support options, including the provision of an individual technical support manager. Our customers benefit from having personal vendors in support, capable of communicating in their native languages. For instance, if operating in Ukraine, clients can expect excellent service with a personal manager fluent in Ukrainian. I would rate it ten out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. I would rate it ten out of ten.

What about the implementation team?

When it came to deployment, there were readily available options, along with clear instructions tailored for an open environment. We have it deployed on cloud as well as on-premise. The deployment timeframe varies, measured in hours or days, contingent upon specific customer requirements. Frequently, we initiate development, reproduction, and production environments. However, delays may arise as these environments can differ slightly, necessitating additional setup time.

What was our ROI?

ROI is influenced by the quality and usage. While the pricing structure is crucial, making an error in the planning can lead to substantial expenses. However, based on the feedback from our customers, they express satisfaction with Camunda. They assert that it provides extensive coverage and is more cost-effective compared to other business process systems.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

While the license isn't budget-friendly, careful consideration and calculated planning for a significant number of licenses can make it more cost-effective. The pricing structure hinges on three crucial parameters: process instances, how frequently processes are initiated, and the number of users. These latter two factors exert a considerable influence on the overall cost. However, for those looking to explore it, trying the cloud version is a viable option. The cloud variant starts at $200 per month. I would rate it six out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate it ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
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Updated: May 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Camunda Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.