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Avolution ABACUS vs IDERA ER/Studio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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

Avolution ABACUS
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IDERA ER/Studio
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.1%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA ER/Studio is 3.0%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IDERA ER/Studio3.0%
Avolution ABACUS3.1%
Other93.9%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

JoseCamacho - PeerSpot reviewer
Freelancer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Supports evaluating architecture through corporate objectives
I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommendations I conduct evaluations to identify potential improvements and make recommendations, forming a…
reviewer2796111 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Improved data modeling has reduced system footprint and strengthened finance workflows
I assess the benefits of IDERA ER_Studio's metadata management for my organization as not as good as Erwin's. Erwin's metadata management is better in how it handles data. There is a lot more user involvement in managing the metadata, primarily because in IDERA ER_Studio, the logical and physical models are separately defined in the same file, so you have to map them every single time. In Erwin, it has a unified structure, so if you make a change in the logical model, it automatically shows up in the physical model. You have to go through a couple of steps in the IDERA model to make sure everything has moved over. While that is not that inconvenient when you are actually doing development, as far as metadata management, that is prone to things getting dropped and missed. The collaboration tools in IDERA ER_Studio are adequate, but I think with Erwin, there is more of an opportunity for things to crash. Changes can be merged in IDERA more fluidly; however, the locking and sharing are a little bit more defined in Erwin. I think the learning curve for Erwin might be easier than IDERA ER_Studio, especially with connecting to different models and systems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."
"For what it does it is very good and a reasonable price."
"ABACUS is a really forward thinking product with a lot of nice features in it; it's not just all talk, it actually works."
"I would recommend it very strongly."
"This product is very strong in terms of the meta-model because you can customize a lot according to the business plan."
"The most valuable feature is the traceability, you can trace any object to the other."
"It's a good product with a complete set of templates, frameworks, and notations."
"Scalable and stable tool for roadmapping and modeling, with a good dashboard, end-to-end impact analysis, and portfolio management."
"It is a very robust, industrial strength data modeling product, intended ideally for very large development projects where a good ROI can be obtained."
"Before this tool, just managing the changes and publishing the models to the users became very cumbersome, and this tool has simplified our day-to-day tasks a lot."
"I am able to create (and publish) logical data models, apply naming standards using macro, generate the physical models and DDL."
"You will save time, switching from whatever product you're using."
"It does the job."
"Data lineage tracking: It allows us to identify upstream and downstream systems using data."
"Ease of use It looks good enough Ability to create HTML reports Ability to compare the model against the database"
"The interface is really simple to use and it allows me to pick and choose which tables I want to reverse engineer."
 

Cons

"For some of the functionality, it might be a little complicated for people getting started."
"There are probably some things that Avolution could add to the product to enhance it and keep up with what some other products are introducing."
"Based on my experience, this is not a product that I recommend at the moment."
"Having more control over page size is lacking in this product. Print utilization also needs to be improved."
"The reporting could be easier to configure."
"It doesn't have the simulation capability, which would be helpful in doing some business process analysis and improvements."
"The company needs to update the UML version they are using for the product as it is quite old."
"This solution needs to improve resource usage because it has a heavy browser. It is easy to use, but it takes time to load and to run other programs."
"When building the relationships there should be a little more flexibility."
"I would like to see better documentation/help for the Data Architect tool. Creation of tutorials would be nice, as there are some features which are not as clearly defined as they should be."
"We did have a big issue when we upgraded to the 2016 version. The Team Server portion never did quite install correctly, and/or the database was corrupted, and we never figured it out."
"The visual presentation is a little too colorful and seems that it is dumbed down."
"We would always like to see Repository performance improve, checking in and checking out."
"It would be helpful if they could create a generic JSON database type, as a target database, rather than a specific one like Mongo."
"Whenever there is a new version, there are a lot of release notes on the technical side of it, but I would like to be told why are we doing the upgrade... What I would like to really see is how this benefits us from the business point of view. What are the real benefits that the user gets? I want some kind of way white paper. The release notes describe the technical enhancements but, from the layman's point of view, if someone asks me what are the business benefits of this upgrade, I don't have any documentation to explain it to the business."
"Tech support hasn't been as good lately as it was in the past. It is down to average."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."
"The pricing is quite good compared to the competition and it is part of the reason we chose the product."
"To get a fairly extensive license for Enterprise Architects from Spark is approximately US $400.00, maybe less, but with Avolution Abacus it was approximately US $2000.00 per year, and that includes maintenance with the Abacus tool."
"I'm paying on a yearly basis. I don't know whether it's a highly expensive tool or not. I'm getting a single version of it, and I don't have the enterprise part on it because I don't need the server component, and I don't need a web browser component. My estimate would be that it's a very reasonably priced tool given that you don't need to have licenses with everyone in order to get the information and the decision support capabilities out of the tool. You use the enterprise edition on top of the studio, which is the heart of the tool. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"It is competitive. It is not chump change. I am just using the studio version. I am not using the full enterprise version, which would probably cost me three times more for single-use, but it gives a lot more capability and analysis. It is server-based as well, and it is reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other tools. There are other tools that have other sorts of capabilities, but in order to use them, you'd really have to have like 50 users for the price to become justifiable."
"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"
"The cost of Avolution ABACUS is reasonable, given the features they offer in comparison to other tools."
"It is expensive."
"As an individual user, the renewal is a little costly."
"I'm a firm believer that all software is overpriced these days but, comparatively speaking, I think ER/Studio is worth the money."
"I use the product's trial version."
"It is priced fairly. It's around the same as erwin and other competitors' costs."
"The product is pricey."
"I feel the product's pricing is a good value."
"Pricing is on point, but do your due diligence - not every developer needs the tool."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is bad and ten is good, I would rate the licensing cost as a seven or eight. It's not too expensive for us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Avolution ABACUS?
While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product. It would be beneficial to have seminars or other met...
What is your primary use case for Avolution ABACUS?
I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommend...
What advice do you have for others considering Avolution ABACUS?
I rate Avolution ABACUS eight out of ten. The focus should be on implementing and understanding enterprise architecture concepts rather than the specific tool.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IDERA ER Studio?
In terms of pricing, ER/Studio is slightly more expensive compared to Erwin, by about five to ten percent.
What is your primary use case for IDERA ER Studio?
I work in the finance industry, and the use cases for this product are very similar to what I mentioned previously when I discussed being in industrial management. It is simply a different product.
What advice do you have for others considering IDERA ER Studio?
I have not used IDERA ER_Studio's impact analysis tools, so I really could not judge that regarding mitigating database risks for security. I am not on the end as far as the pricing, as this is wha...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IDERA ER Studio, ER/Studio, ER/Studio Enterprise Team Edition
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays
Newmont Mining, Entrust, Accolade, TalkTalk, Catalina, Protective Life, NTT Data, dir systèmes, Microsoft; American Express, Astellas Pharma, AstraZeneca, Coriant, Fedex, GlaxoSmithKline, PepsiCo, Prudential, Wells Fargo
Find out what your peers are saying about Avolution ABACUS vs. IDERA ER/Studio and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.