ARIS Cloud vs erwin Evolve comparison

Software AG and Quest Software are both solutions in the Business Process Design category. Software AG is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.2, while Quest Software is ranked #19 with an average rating of 9.0. Software AG holds a 2.2% mindshare in BPD, compared to Quest Software’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Software AG users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of Quest Software users who would recommend it.

ARIS Cloud

Read 14 ARIS Cloud reviews

1,567 Views
1,050 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

erwin Evolve

Read 19 erwin Evolve reviews

1,108 Views
543 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

ARIS Cloud

erwin Evolve

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 2025

erwin Evolve and ARIS Cloud compete in enterprise architecture and business process management. ARIS Cloud has an edge with its comprehensive features, whereas erwin Evolve is advantageous in pricing and support.

Features: erwin Evolve includes robust modeling capabilities, integration with other tools, and a comprehensive suite for framework detailing. ARIS Cloud offers extensive process mapping, analysis tools, and scalability for large-scale operations, making it ideal for businesses requiring advanced analytical features.

Room for Improvement: erwin Evolve could enhance its intuitive design for users unfamiliar with the platform, improve cloud integration, and expand its collaborative features. ARIS Cloud may benefit from optimizing initial configurations, reducing dependency on professional services, and streamlining its user interface for non-technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: erwin Evolve facilitates a straightforward deployment with responsive support, ensuring a swift transition for users. ARIS Cloud offers flexible, scalable solutions but might necessitate additional user guidance during initial setup.

Pricing and ROI: erwin Evolve provides cost-effective pricing, appealing to budget-conscious companies with a quicker ROI due to streamlined operations. Despite a higher upfront cost, ARIS Cloud is considered a valuable investment due to its advanced capabilities, affecting ROI positively over time.

To learn more, read our detailed ARIS Cloud vs. erwin Evolve Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ARIS Cloud vs. erwin Evolve

July 2025

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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 Cloud

Ranking in Business Process Design

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Management (BPM) (22nd)

erwin Evolve

Ranking in Business Process Design

19th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Architecture Management (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of ARIS Cloud is 2.2%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Evolve is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Business Process Design

Featured Reviews

BPMexp67

BPM Expert at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

The dynamic and flexible approach, akin to outsourcing, is beneficial for both small and large enterprises

Security is a consideration when migrating to the cloud. It's crucial to address potential risks and include security measures in the contract with the cloud provider. While there haven't been issues so far, acknowledging the risks is essential, especially when dealing with applications like ARIS. With the increasing capabilities and advancements in technology, many current challenges are likely to be resolved in the future. Despite security concerns, utilizing opportunities in the cloud and the internet offers significant advantages. Regarding areas for improvement, security remains a key consideration, especially when deploying ARIS in the cloud. However, this is not solely a product-specific concern but also pertains to the cloud environment. Beyond security, the strength of ARIS lies in its ability to serve as a unified repository for enterprise architecture. Having all information in one place facilitates alignment with the company's vision, strategy, and business objectives. Reducing redundancies across departments is crucial for maintaining service quality and minimizing costs. It ensures that everyone is on the same page, fostering collaboration and preventing discrepancies in information and services. While I currently use Guardis for this purpose, the concept of enterprise architecture is applicable, and ARIS stands as a valuable tool to support business processes and technology alignment within the company.

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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

"In terms of using the cloud version, if you're somebody who, like myself, has got a lot of experience and understands measures and notations and things, basically it's unrestricted. You can do so many things. You can do your Archimaze, you can do BPMN. There's lots of stuff you can do in there and if you're a good field person and you cause yourself re-using things or whatever, then it's very nice, it's very easy to use."

"Aris Connect opens collaboration opportunities between team members within the organization where they can actually submit change requests, navigate processes, and offer comments. It opens up the potential for BPM within the organization. I didn't see such an angle of a BPM portal with any other products. So I would say that's the best selling feature."

"It's very easy to collaborate with. It's very user-friendly"

"ARIS Cloud offers easy query writing for retrieving information and includes a user-friendly Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) part that aids risk managers effectively."

"It has proved that it also works in complex circumstances."

"Signavio is more intuitive, allowing users with no prior knowledge to navigate and understand its functionality more readily."

"This solution has improved the way our organization does training."

"The most valuable feature is GUI; it is very intuitive and easy to use."

More ARIS Cloud pros

"There is a model behind it. It's really nice that the Evolve front-end, as it builds a website, keeps those relationships in mind. You can even go to a procedure and see all the applications that are related to it. Then you can go into that application and see all the standard operating procedures that that application is a part of. It's just very connected."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The initial setup was really straightforward and the deployment was done within one day."

"The feature that stands out for me is the ease of configuring objects and the screens to show them. It's really easy to add a new type of object in this reference. Creating a new type of object, using it, and evolving it a little bit in terms of what we can document about it are the main features that made us decide to use this provider."

"Evolve's reverse engineering ability is quite useful."

More erwin Evolve pros

Cons

"If you have multiple tiers of approvals into that update of the policy, or the process design itself, it takes ages to prepare those internal flows within the system."

"It seems that there could be innovations in fostering spontaneous cooperation between departments and individuals. This extends to case management and finding new paradigms for enhancing such cooperation. While some approaches, like basic case management tools, have been tried in the past, they may not have met expectations entirely. However, ongoing efforts in administrative science are focused on these areas. Companies with innovative ideas can contribute to progress, possibly involving concepts related to trust, even within the context of web 3. There are intriguing developments in how economic and business organizations can be formed. When it comes to learning about these concepts, starting with simple examples and gradually moving to more complex ones is advisable. Begin with the basics, excluding unnecessary details that might hinder understanding. Over time, you can delve into more intricate aspects, such as Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, to gain a deeper understanding of these technologies."

"The stability was poor, with frequent outages."

"On an enterprise level, the ability to onboard somebody quickly is cumbersome because it just has too many things in it. It's got something like a hundred or more techniques and things in it."

"The price is quite high. This is one weak point of the solution."

"It would be very helpful if this solution were more open and could integrate with other solutions like ServiceNow."

"The price of ARIS Cloud is relatively high and not every firm can afford it, especially if the company is not mature enough to require such extensive process modeling and optimization."

"ARIS' flexibility and power add a certain complexity. And if ARIS could be more streamlined, I think customers would have a better handle on what to do with it in the end. So if you're not a tech geek, you might struggle to understand what you should do with it as a customer because it's that powerful."

More ARIS Cloud cons

"I would like it to be easier to make changes and then deploy them into production, especially when you have multiple web servers or front-ends. It would be nice to make a change and then have it propagate to the production servers in a more automated fashion."

"The solution's integration capabilities with other tools in our system has not been all that well done. We have people who use ARIS, who use System Architect and, of course, Visio. erwin has very limited ways to import and export from those kinds of tools. It's not a very easy thing to do."

"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."

"There might be improvement required to better support some of the MPP databases for non-relational data structures and NoSQL databases."

"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."

"Business process modelling could be improved."

"I would like to see an improvement in the output of the solution."

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

More erwin Evolve cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a student version of this solution that can be used for free."

"The cloud deployment is not more expensive. In the cloud, you pay for what you use, and there's no need for maintaining infrastructure or additional personnel, making it cost-effective. On-premises deployment, on the other hand, involves infrastructure costs and maintenance expenses."

"The licensing model of ARIS Cloud is leaner and more beneficial to the customer. The new license model is great. With the on-premise, you needed to subscribe to many more types of licenses. Now there are licensed bundles available on the cloud."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."

"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

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Government

10%

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ARIS Cloud?

The solution's most valuable feature stems from its being very easy to use, making it a very user-friendly tool.

See all answers

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

The price of ARIS Cloud is relatively high and not every firm can afford it, especially if the company is not mature enough to require such extensive process modeling and optimization.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ARIS Cloud?

It would be beneficial for ARIS Cloud to add more customization options, such as having a landing page. Improving the importation script from Microsoft Visio ( /products/visio-reviews ) would also ...

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What advice do you have for others considering erwin Evolve?

I rate erwin Evolve by Quest a nine out of ten.

See all answers

What do you like most about erwin Evolve by Quest?

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

See all answers

What needs improvement with erwin Evolve by Quest?

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

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM Blueworks Live vs ARIS Cloud

Compared 19% of the time

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs ARIS Cloud

Compared 17% of the time

ARIS Architect and Designer vs ARIS Cloud

Compared 12% of the time

Salesforce Platform vs ARIS Cloud

Compared 9% of the time

Visio vs ARIS Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

More ARIS Cloud Competitors

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Evolve

Compared 16% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Evolve

Compared 12% of the time

Bonita vs erwin Evolve

Compared 11% of the time

LeanIX vs erwin Evolve

Compared 11% of the time

ARIS BPA vs erwin Evolve

Compared 9% of the time

More erwin Evolve Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ARIS Cloud

August 2025

Download ARIS Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

erwin Evolve

August 2025

Download erwin Evolve product report

Also Known As

Process Live, ARIS Simulation, ARIS Aware, ARIS Connect

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 and 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 Cloud vs. erwin Evolve

July 2025

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