ARIS BPA vs erwin Evolve comparison

Software AG and Quest Software are both solutions in the Business Process Design category. Software AG is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.7, while Quest Software is ranked #21. Software AG holds a 7.0% mindshare in BPD, compared to Quest Software’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Software AG users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

ARIS BPA

Read 69 ARIS BPA reviews

5,581 Views
3,683 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

erwin Evolve

Read 19 erwin Evolve reviews

1,706 Views
853 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

ARIS BPA

erwin Evolve

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

ARIS BPA and erwin Evolve compete in the business process management (BPM) software market. ARIS BPA appears to have the upper hand in comprehensive BPM features and integration flexibility, while erwin Evolve excels with a user-friendly web-based interface and robust enterprise middleware connections.

Features: ARIS BPA is designed for business users and management, focusing on grasping business processes, strategy determination, and process analysis. It provides robust database modeling, process simulation, and integration features. erwin Evolve stands out with its web-based interface, advanced modeling capabilities, and user-friendly navigation. It offers strong process visualization and integration, particularly suited for enterprise middleware connections.

Room for Improvement: ARIS BPA struggles with tool integration, lacks a genuine workflow engine, has complex pricing and setup, scripting difficulties, and API limitations. erwin Evolve needs better NoSQL database support, security consolidation, integration improvements, and more intuitive navigation to access its functionalities efficiently.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ARIS BPA is available in Hybrid, Public, Private, and On-premises environments but has mixed reviews on customer support, with long resolution times and inconsistent communication. erwin Evolve is deployed in Public and On-premises systems, with customer service improving over time and a generally better reputation for support and setup.

Pricing and ROI: ARIS BPA is expensive, targeting larger enterprises with substantial resources, requiring significant investment and training for ROI. erwin Evolve is also costly, but its concurrent licensing model allows flexibility, with ROI heavily reliant on organizational usage and configuration.

To learn more, read our detailed ARIS BPA vs. erwin Evolve Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

ARIS BPA vs. erwin Evolve

February 2026

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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 BPA

Ranking in Business Process Design

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Management (BPM) (11th)

erwin Evolve

Ranking in Business Process Design

21st

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Architecture Management (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of ARIS BPA is 7.0%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Evolve is 1.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Business Process Design Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ARIS BPA	7.0%
erwin Evolve	1.8%
Other	91.2%

Business Process Design

Featured Reviews

BeenishMustafa

Consultant at KAFD DMC

Has improved process modeling and analysis while supporting integration with organizational data

The process design in ARIS BPA does help with our operational efficiency. What we are doing is object library management for various kinds of objects that we are using in ARIS BPA during our process modeling. We are using that to do a lot of analysis on how many times a system is being used in how many processes, who are the major stakeholders, and if we enhance one system, how is it going to impact other processes and integrated processes. This is helping us a lot. Everything related to ARIS BPA is helping us with regards to enhanced processes, strengthened controls, identifying risks, assessing process capabilities, and identifying where the gaps are and what kinds of activities within the processes are automated and manual. We are doing a lot of things with regards to the processes as it is at our heart. Processes are one thing and then we have different kinds of things which are related to it, such as SLAs, guidelines, and policy. We are identifying areas of improvement in other documents as well.

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Asish Sahu

SPM at Infosys

The reverse engineering capabilities are quite useful.

Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ARIS BPA provides very good visibility and control of processes because we have a concurrent license system. As a result, every person in our company and group is able to look at the published processes."

"It has the ability to scale up, as well as integrate with other systems within the organization to get real-time information from dashboards and reports."

"It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"I reviewed ARIS BPA, and I noticed it was recommended by Gartner in 2024."

"The ability to sort via multiple criteria to identify the relationships you need for a specific object."

"We chose ARIS because of its good reputation and familiarity with Software AG Tools."

"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of the solution to fully customize the methodology according to the company's needs, and to enforce that methodology with features like filters, semantic checks, and reports."

"ARIS BPA has a good directory option, which helps to keep track of all of your metadata, and that's very useful."

More ARIS BPA pros

"I can send images in the PDF form, along with the relationships and the associations that are a very important part of what we do. It can show what is affected and what is impacted by a certain change in one area of the system architecture or enterprise architecture. I can very quickly draw those issues and topics to the fore."

"Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets."

"You can use different kinds of diagrams to represent the architecture setting."

"Evolve is like a tank. You can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it. I think that it's not very aligned with the framework for enterprise architecture. MEGA is focused on these enterprise architectures, but it's only for that. With Evolve, you can do everything you want with professional services."

"We can efficiently deploy business models into the databases and generate SQL scripts."

"By placing the data and the metadata into a model, which is what the tool does, you gain the abilities for linkages between different objects in the model, linkages that you cannot get on paper or with Visio or PowerPoint. That is a huge discriminator."

"I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability..."

"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."

More erwin Evolve pros

Cons

"With ARIS BPM, the script creation is quite cumbersome. With version ten, we needed our developers to do scripting."

"I could use more icons and other graphical elements."

"We do experience a lot of glitches with ARIS BPA."

"An area where it lacks and can be considered for improvement in the future is if we can somehow automate or learn how we can automate different processes."

"I had this decentralization mission where I had some friendly fights with the consultants of Software AG. My opinion was the business department should be able to publish their processes and do all their evaluation stuff in ARCM themselves. It has to be a one stop shop. I want a one stop shop to go from ARIS BPM to ARIS ARCM, because having everything go through that would be an improvement due to the inputs that we made with Software AG. They will make it possible that the trigger sent from BPM to ARCM will start their object generation."

"I find it difficult to access the database as I want with direct querying."

"ARIS BPA needs to be more accurate when generating documents."

"Create simple data uploader."

More ARIS BPA cons

"The solution needs to focus on allowing for more integrations."

"What they need to do is to consolidate more of their products. For example, I was just looking and I couldn't figure out what erwin DT is. It's on the website but it would help if they could put information together and make it more clear as to what products they have and how they work with other things."

"Add some ability to do conditional Visualization on the models and in reports (some ideas) – maybe as a specialized Theme or Diagram or Display."

"If it had fewer features to model all kinds of architecture, it would be less complicated."

"They need to develop Evolve's user experience. For example, MEGA has a useful client view that helps with impact analysis. MEGA provides information about the processes, services, infrastructure, and portfolio of applications in one central view. It lets you see the periphery and relationships among components. This view is impressive, and Evolve doesn't have it."

"With the Excel importing, the "up to date" part is the challenge. If we had a real-time integration, we could keep things up to date for whatever kinds of change points we had. With Excel, it is more that you have to export from one system then import it to another, so it's better for data that doesn't change that often."

"erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses."

"Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product."

More erwin Evolve cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you can afford it, it's the best so far."

"I would recommend the product to only enterprise companies because of the pricing."

"The price could be better."

"Negotiate. Price is high so make sure you’re getting the best deal."

"The product is a bit pricey."

"You will never get a fixed price for this product because they will go in and ask you what kind of environment would you like to set up? How many people will you work with? How big is your organization? Today, they have a fixed price to say, "Okay, just to start the business area, buy two licenses for modeling and eight people that can look into the product." They have this kind of fixed price. It's 50,000 Danish Krone. If you divided that by about six, then you get the pricing in dollars. Still, when you are going out, negotiate and find the right price. You will never get a fixed price: "It costs this and, if you take ten of these, seven of these and eight of these, and then it costs this." No, you negotiate every time."

"It depends on different parameters."

"The product is expensive."

More ARIS BPA pricing and cost advice

"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."

"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."

"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."

"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."

"The cost is something like $15,000, per license. But I haven't looked at those numbers in three years. It was over $100,000 to initially set everything up and get it all configured."

"The licensing enables you to differentiate between people who edit the content and the people who consume it. We are able to keep the licensing costs down by keeping the "contributor" licenses to a minimum, and we then just roll out the content in a read-only version for the rest of our users."

"I estimate that we pay between $40,000 and $50,000 a year for the solution, not including the upfront costs to buy things the first time."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

19%

Performing Arts

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	47

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ARIS BPA?

The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are its flexibility and reporting.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ARIS BPA?

It is a bit expensive regarding ARIS BPA. However, ARIS BPA does save a lot of effort because this is one tool which can be used for multiple purposes and the viewers have the capability to perform...

See all answers

What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?

We are not using any what-if scenario features in ARIS BPA. Currently, we are not using the performance monitoring and compliance checks features in ARIS BPA. We have plans to use them, but current...

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

MEGA HOPEX vs ARIS BPA

Compared 5% of the time

Bizagi vs ARIS BPA

Compared 5% of the time

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Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Evolve

Compared 11% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Evolve

Compared 8% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Evolve

Compared 7% of the time

erwin Data Modeler vs erwin Evolve

Compared 6% of the time

Bonita vs erwin Evolve

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ARIS BPA

February 2026

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Buyer's Guide

erwin Evolve

February 2026

Download erwin Evolve product report

Also Known As

ARIS, ARIS BPM

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture

Overview

ARIS is the market-leading solution for professional business process management and modeling. Whether you want to document the "as-is" state of your operations for quality or certification reasons or design the "to-be" in terms of continuous improvement in your transformation program, ARIS is the best choice for establishing a single source of truth regarding all process excellence topics in your organization. It is for any organization looking to digitally transform their business, increase operational excellence and customer experience and ensure compliance in execution. ARIS helps you to make the most out of your processes with Process Mining, Risk & Compliance Management, RPA and much more.

What makes the difference?

The most comprehensive platform for process excellence in the market
Easy to use
Covers business & IT architecture from all angles
Full flexibility and >100 diagram types
Customer-driven development based on best practices
Strong partner ecosystem

ARIS is the market-leading solution for any organization and ideally suited to digitally transform the organization, increase operational excellence and customer experience and ensure compliance in execution.

Software AG

erwin Evolve provides comprehensive graphical support for handling large data models. It offers features such as metadata access, version control, and model comparison, enhancing operational reports and system analytics through its collaborative web-driven design.

erwin Evolve facilitates reverse engineering and database integration, fostering collaboration and process exploration through its web interface. Customizable and easy to configure, it supports workflow configuration and architectural modeling. Users can utilize its capabilities for developing industry models, managing transformation programs, and presenting standard operating procedures. Despite its strengths, there are demands for improved integration, enhanced UML support, and a more modern user experience. Users also express challenges with legacy system updates and call for better connectors and collaborative features.

What are the key features of erwin Evolve?

Graphical Support for Large Data Models: Provides visualization capabilities for complex data structures.
Metadata Access via API: Allows integration and management of metadata across platforms.
Version Control and Model Comparison: Enhances tracking and analysis of model changes.
Collaborative Web Interface: Facilitates teamwork and process exploration remotely.
Architectural Modeling: Supports the design and configuration of enterprise architecture.

What are the benefits and ROI of using erwin Evolve?

Customization and Ease of Configuration: Reduces setup time and adapts to specific organizational workflows.
Enhanced Accessibility and Mobile Usability: Offers access to critical information on the go.
Operational Reports Creation: Generates insights and facilitates informed decision-making.
System Analytics Handling: Provides robust tools for analyzing system performance and integration.

Data-driven organizations in sectors like finance and healthcare implement erwin Evolve for data warehousing, enterprise architecture, and business process modeling. They leverage its capabilities for cataloging architectural elements, linking to CMDBs, analyzing system interfaces, and describing business processes. Utilization extends to IT solution registration, business capability planning, and strategic modeling, with frequent deployments on cloud platforms to support transformation initiatives.

Quest Software

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.

AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Duke University, ESPN, Fidelity, GE, JP Morgan Chase, KPMG, McGraw Hill, NASA, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Scotland, Teradata, Union Pacific, Vodafone, Wells Fargo.

Buyer's Guide

ARIS BPA vs. erwin Evolve

February 2026

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