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ARIS Architect and Designer vs erwin Data Modeler comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 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

ARIS Architect and Designer
Ranking in Business Process Design
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
erwin Data Modeler
Ranking in Business Process Design
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of ARIS Architect and Designer is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 2.0%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Angie Ibrahim Eissa - PeerSpot reviewer
Utilizing advanced features to optimize and improve process modeling capabilities
ARIS Architect and Designer needs to improve its cloud version reliability, as I experienced data corruption that reverted diagrams to earlier versions. This issue, especially with large-scale diagrams, led to significant inconvenience due to the lack of partial data restoration capability. Additionally, an academic license would be beneficial to accommodate educational purposes.
JorgeSanz - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamline data modeling and automate network changes for increased efficiency
The initial setup depends on the tool if you are using the data model environment. Stopping the server could be complex and require strong expertise. If you have everything set up and configured, Erwin is straightforward. You can deploy it in a few hours. In our case, it took a couple of months to address internal conditions, assign machines, and set up everything for the services. I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The user interface is easy to work with."
"One of the standout features for me is its synchronization to a publication server. It makes sharing diagrams and links with non-users easy."
"We use the product for modeling, conducting process checks, doing process flow, running, and analyzing the report."
"It is suitable for banks, insurance companies, public administration, etc. The method is very adaptable and can be applied independently of the business."
"It's really fast. It's much faster compared to Enterprise Architect."
"The support team is very responsive."
"The most important feature is ARIS's ability to turn a process design into data to analyze anything you want. For example, we have some analysis reports in ARIS that can guide us when we want to change a system. It shows us how this change will affect all of the organization's processes."
"Its user interface is highly regarded, especially when compared with Visual Paradigm."
"The solution is excellent in providing a visual representation of a database and can generate DDL for implementing changes. We use DDL for logical purposes to review with business people, ensuring they have the required fields for processing. We also use it as a data dictionary for the physical data model to understand all the purposes of the terms. This helps us map the logical and physical terms with the business definition to understand our data."
"It has centralized storage so that a data model can be shared by different teams."
"The most valuable features are the ability to reverse engineer and do model comparison. With the reverse engineering, I can understand the databases from third-party products. With the model comparison, I can track the differences between two versions of the same database."
"The ability to collaborate between different members across the organization is the most valuable feature. It gives us the ability to work on the same model, regardless of where we are physically."
"I have worked with erwin Data Modeler for quite some time and familiarity is its most valuable feature."
"The visual data models for helping to overcome data source complexity and enabling understanding and collaboration around maintenance and usage are excellent. A picture speaks 1,000 words. Seeing a picture that shows you how the data relates to each other helps you better understand what the data is and how to use it. Pairing that information with a dictionary, which has the definitions of the tables and columns or the entities and attributes, ensures that the users understand what the data is so that they can use it best and most successfully."
"It reduces monthly savings by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Think about a company like Costco and all of the points of sale systems in Costco, all of the systems, the applications, but if all the applications in Costco all had their own data model, trying to integrate those, upgrade them and manage their different versions of the same model throughout the store, is an absolute nightmare. It's phenomenally expensive. This helps reduce that cost significantly. I'm talking on the orders of hundreds of thousands of dollars."
"The generation of DDL saved us having to write the steps by hand. You still had to go in and make some minor modifications to make it deployable to the database system. However, for the data lineage, it is very valuable for tracing our use of data, especially personal confidential data through different systems."
 

Cons

"Sometimes we feel that the designer needs more usability. I understand that the web module or the cloud version is much more user-friendly and easier to work on compared to the client that we download."
"The product is not flexible."
"We face problems when the product's capacity is increased."
"Even with a formal modeling language, users can still draw freely and make a bit of a mess in your repository. It should also improve usability."
"This product could be improved by lowering the licensing cost. More organizations could use ARIS if they slashed the licensing costs even a little bit."
"The customer service of ARIS Architect and Designer was disappointing. It took forty days to conclude that partial data restoration was not possible, and it was suggested that the data might have been accidentally deleted, despite evidence to the contrary."
"The support team takes a long time to respond to our queries."
"The simulation part still has some way to go. It's a good feature, and it's something that other vendors don't have right now, but it can still be improved. Some features are needed in ARIS Architect, so advanced users can do things through drag-and-drop functionality."
"The modeling product itself is far and above anything else that I've seen on the market. There are certain inconsistencies when it comes to keeping up with other platforms' databases in the reverse-engineering process. It should also support more database platforms."
"We are planning to move, in 2021, into their server version, where multiple data modelers can work at the same time and share their models. It has become a pain point to merge the models from individual desktops and get them into a single data model, when multiple data modelers are working on a particular project. It becomes a nightmare for the senior data modeler to bring them together, especially when it comes to recreating them when you want to merge them."
"As someone who has used it for a long time, I have seen stability vary from version to version."
"The solution's model mark could be better because it crashes sometimes."
"I'd really like to see the PDF function become available. It would make my life much easier than what it is at the moment because whenever I need to collaborate with people that do not have erwin, I have to go through the wonkiness of going to Word and then save it from Word into PDF. There's a lot of differences between erwin 4.4 and 2020."
"The solution's reporting side needs to be improved."
"I would like to have more data sources from other, different vendors. In recent years, the vendor has reduced the number of data sources, and I would like to have more data sources for every brand. For example, with Oracle, I would like to have compatibility for many versions, including old ones, not just the most recent."
"The Bulk Editor needs improvement. If you had something that was a local model to your local machine, you could connect to the API, then it would write directly into the repository. However, when you have something that is on the centralized server, that functionality did not work. Then, you had to export out to a CSV and upload up to the repository. It would have been nice to be able to do the direct API without having that whole download and upload thing. Maybe I didn't figure it out, but I'm pretty sure that didn't work when it was a model that sat on a centralized repository."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is a little bit expensive."
"The product is expensive."
"The licenses are very costly. I've seen many people who are hesitant or not able to use ARIS Suite just because of the license cost. Even though they like all the functionalities and understand the value of everything ARIS provides, they aren't able to implement it."
"Many customers find the licensing configuration confusing. There are many different sub-details in the licensing, making it very difficult for us to understand what we are buying and what we are using with what."
"erwin is expensive compared to other solutions. We are paying almost $6,000 per seat a month."
"There are two license options and the pricing is reasonable."
"I don't specifically know what we're paying now. About three years ago, in another organization, I have this memory of 6,000 AUD a seat or something like that, but I am not sure. In the mid-2000s, it was something like 1,200 AUD a seat. I get the impression that there was a price jump when it was spun off from CA as a separate company, which is understandable, but it could sometimes be a barrier in some organizations picking it up. I haven't talked to erwin people yet, but I'm going to suggest to them that they could perhaps think of having an entry-level product that is priced a bit lower, and then, you can buy the extra suite."
"The tool is expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"Though the solution is not cheap, it's worth the money."
"erwin Data Modeler by Quest is an expensive solution."
"An issue right now would be that erwin doesn't have a freely available browser (that I am aware of) for people who are not data modelers or data engineers that a consumer could use to look at the data models and play with it. This would not be to make any changes, but just to visually look at what exists. There are other products out there which do have end user browsers available and allow them to access data models via the data modeling tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with ARIS Architect and Designer?
Sometimes we feel that the designer needs more usability. I understand that the web module or the cloud version is much more user-friendly and easier to work on compared to the client that we downl...
What is your primary use case for ARIS Architect and Designer?
The type of ARIS platform we use is on premise. It is not ARIS Cloud. We use ARIS Architect and Designer for process modeling, EPC, mostly, and we do not use ARIS BPA or Risk and Compliance Manager...
What do you like most about erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
Forward engineering, DDL generation, reverse engineering, and reporting are the most valuable features of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
The product is expensive. I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
As a documenting tool, it's solid, though its reporting could be more robust. The reporting mechanisms could be more intuitive regarding report creation. It can generate reports in CSV files, displ...
 

Also Known As

ARIS Architect & Designer, ARIS Architect, ARIS Designer
erwin DM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tesco, Weifu, Airbus, Siemens, Proximus, Alicorp, Sekerbank, Bancor, Philips,Sky, Emirates NBD, Dubai Municipality, Suva, U.S. Army, Australia Post, Westfalen Weser Energie - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as the market leader for process excellence with more than 30 years of experience in the market, 10 million users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.
 Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples
Find out what your peers are saying about ARIS Architect and Designer vs. erwin Data Modeler and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.