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Avolution ABACUS vs Planview Portfolios 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
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Planview Portfolios
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.3%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Planview Portfolios is 2.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Planview Portfolios2.4%
Avolution ABACUS3.3%
Other94.3%
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…
Monabi Kingsley - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at 3M
Centralized planning has improved resource visibility and supports data‑driven financial decisions
The best features Planview Portfolios offers are visibility enhancement, robust system performance, and comprehensive resource management. This enhanced visibility in Planview Portfolios ensures that all users can easily track progress, identify bottlenecks, and make informed decisions to optimize workflow efficiency. When discussing robust system performance, the system's robust performance in meeting our various work requirements effectively and efficiently stands out. It is very stable and reliable, contributing to a seamless user experience, which enables users to focus on their tasks without disruptions. I also love the financial breakdown, planning and prioritization, and attribute collection on projects in Planview Portfolios. Planview Portfolios has positively impacted my organization since I started using it. It has enabled me to gain insights into the full scope of work consuming resources. I am able to know where the resources are being consumed more, especially which resources are consuming the most. I have been able to leverage resources management and resource time reporting, which enabled the generation of $90 million in annual revenue through labor billing to customers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating with other tools like BI, Power BI, or Grafana requires setting up pipelines between them."
"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."
"It is a very stable solution...The initial setup of Avolution ABACUS is very easy."
"Scalable and stable tool for roadmapping and modeling, with a good dashboard, end-to-end impact analysis, and portfolio management."
"Avolution ABACUS allows for flexible enterprise architecture analysis."
"It's more than just an enterprise architecture tool as it has a lot of nice features, e.g. messaging, simulation, etc."
"There are plenty of features available such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard."
"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."
"The sheer amount of information available in one single interface is valuable. Everything is there. It is also a lot of work to maintain all the information, but generally, you can find everything you need within this one tool."
"I love Planview Portfolios because it has better integration with reporting and other systems compared to the alternatives I had before."
"The biggest impact for using Planview currently would be to understand the true costs of projects. We are trying to get to a point where not only do we take into account technical costs, but what the business cost is. Trying to integrate our business right now into Planview is helping us identify the true cost of the investments that we make so we can try and understand their value."
"The look and feel of it is pretty clean."
"The data is the most valuable because the reporting that we provide out of Planview is priceless when compared to any other tool. The reporting has a variety of reports. It has the capabilities of Power BI. It gives us all these dashboards that we can show to our executive leadership, and they have been very well-received."
"Our transparency is increasing a lot. It is helping us to get people together. There are no dark rooms anymore. In some areas or concepts, we want to add more light to every single concept. That's the big impact that the tool is having. It allows conversations between people."
"The most valuable feature for me is the ease and customizability of reporting."
"The most valuable features are the resource management, the time sheet entry and usage, and the financial planning. With our projects, we primarily focus on resource assignments, as far as determining the actual forecast and actuals of our projects. A lot of it is based off of the resources utilized on those projects. The time based helps us capture the actuals. The amount of time people are spending on working on their project tasks. Because they've built this into the schedule, so we can build the forecast. With financial planning, we're able to look back on what our variance is and if there is anything between the scheduled forecasted hours, dollars against the actual hours, and the costs that they utilize."
 

Cons

"If they want to expand in the European market then they are going to have to improve their technical support."
"Avolution ABACUS has the drawback of needing data filtering at the development level, unlike some tools that offer filtering at deployment. Two areas where Avolution ABACUS could be improved are regional support and flexibility in model selection. Sometimes, it's challenging to access support or updates in certain regions, which can slow down progress. Additionally, it would be beneficial if the tool allowed more flexibility in selecting multiple models within a single unit."
"The company needs to update the UML version they are using for the product as it is quite old."
"They should take more initiative to implement things that competing products have already come out with."
"While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product."
"The most valuable features are the catalog and the diagram."
"It doesn't have the simulation capability, which would be helpful in doing some business process analysis and improvements."
"The usability of the tool is an area with shortcomings that need improvement."
"I think some of the administrative aspects of it could be a little easier, especially when it comes to designing reports. The reporting coming out of it could be a little bit better."
"Our version is definitely set up a bit more waterfall world. It would be better if some of the agile features were more in the standard product."
"The scheduling's kind of clunky in terms of its ability for us to see what stage work is at. They could have done better with that. It can be difficult to use."
"We have required more time from our resource managers to spend time in the tool. The adoption has been slower than we would have hoped. So, I would think from a rollout perspective, if Planview could help us with material which gets non-Planview users or previously light Planview users to become more heavy users of the system, then this would help us with the rollout."
"It is not an end-user-friendly product, and that's really the biggest thing. The hardest or the biggest hurdle I've ever had to face was adoption. I did the installation of the HP product in 2011. The company used it from 2011 to 2015, and the adoption was very high. When I was given the Planview product, adoption was very low. It wasn't as extensively used. We actually had people who wanted to go back to HP PPM because the interface of Planview was so broken, and it still is to some degree. So, it is not user-friendly. It doesn't flow the way a project manager thinks. What we did with HP PPM was a lot more manual programming. It wasn't as nice in terms of the interface, and it wasn't as pretty, but you could design it and build it so that everything flows with the way you worked, but Planview doesn't quite do that. There are a lot of screens. You have to jump back and forth. There are so many different places you have to go to just to do some basic tasks. That's the biggest thing that has really hindered adoption."
"Additional improvements are needed for Planview Portfolios."
"The technical people are very competent, but there is so much turnover in the people that we talk to, and that's frustrating. They will say, "We can make this work." Suddenly, that guy has left, and we have no one. Then, we have to start all over."
"There are some issues with how long it takes to load the data to Planview, It just depends on what your setup is. If there was a way Planview could maybe make the loading faster, in case you do have a lot of things going on with your setup."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Avolution ABACUS is reasonable, given the features they offer in comparison to other tools."
"The solution's pricing is not an issue."
"It is expensive."
"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."
"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"
"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."
"The pricing is quite good compared to the competition and it is part of the reason we chose the product."
"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."
"In the time that I've used it, we've doubled up the amount of dollars on our intended projects."
"The cost of other pieces and integrating them in needs improvement."
"Our licensing costs are about a quarter of a million dollars per year."
"We overbought our licenses. We looked at our needs three to four years down the road and tried based our contract on that. However, we were over aggressive. We use about a third of the licenses that we have. We're looking to adjust the makeup so we can start utilizing the amount of money that we are spending. Right now, we're overspending, and my organization is not seeing the value in Planview because we are paying so much for licenses that we're not using."
"Planview is a little pricey. From a licensing perspective, for just a simple timesheet user who does nothing in the system but reports time, the licensing is a little pricey, but you have to look at it from what it is that you get. We have 6,000 users, and I don't manage the system at all. I just have to do add them to the system. The servers, maintenance, OS levels, security patching for the OS, and all other things are not something that we maintain. So, you have to look at it from an operational perspective. It is not just the product itself. A holistic view has to be taken when you look at the product and how you're going to support it. I would have to hire an entire operation staff to bring it in-house, and at the end of the day, that might cost me more."
"When we went through that process, I believe it is competitive with others on the market. However, there are less expensive options available. It's a more premium offering at a higher price."
"Our licensing costs are probably $150,000 to $180,000 a year with 270 licenses total."
"I don't think we have necessarily purchased everything that I would have liked to have seen."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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 Business2
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise66
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Avolution ABACUS?
The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating wit...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avolution ABACUS?
It's pricey compared to Essential, Deltek, or Essential Cloud. However, its diagramming capabilities and metamodel design make it worth it. But it's not for large user bases. It has modules for app...
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 experience regarding pricing and costs for Planview Portfolios?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that Planview Portfolios is one of the best and a very cost-effective tool.
What needs improvement with Planview Portfolios?
Planview Portfolios can be improved as the user interface defaults to the last opened portfolio, which can waste a lot of time loading a large portfolio if that is not what I need at that moment. J...
What is your primary use case for Planview Portfolios?
My main use case for Planview Portfolios is to ensure governance and decision auditability by incorporating embedded workflows, approval management, and key document retention supporting a single c...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Planview Enterprise One, Troux
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays
UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO
Find out what your peers are saying about Avolution ABACUS vs. Planview Portfolios and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.