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BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect comparison

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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

BiZZdesign HoriZZon
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
4th
Ranking in Business Process Design
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sparx Systems Enterprise Ar...
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
5th
Ranking in Business Process Design
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of BiZZdesign HoriZZon is 3.9%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is 8.7%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BiZZdesign HoriZZon3.9%
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect8.7%
Other87.4%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2022765 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Consultant BI Z Zdesign Center Of Excellence at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Targeted stakeholder views have improved decision making and reduced architecture costs
BiZZdesign HoriZZon offers various valuable features. The best ones, besides those I have mentioned, include the AI space with the Diagram Describer and the Explorer functionality. I understand that BiZZdesign HoriZZon is also working on the Diagram Importer, which complements the Diagram Describer feature, providing full import and export functionality. Together with the contributor role and targeted stakeholder management, these features are essential. BiZZdesign HoriZZon introduced the Dynamic Solution Intent, enhancing the solution architecture by engaging diverse stakeholders with architectural artifacts. It supports the development of holistic solutions using reusable repository components. The deployment is hybrid cloud-based, specifically using Amazon Web Services as the cloud provider. I have also seen the implementation of return on investment features that contribute significantly to the organization’s overall effectiveness.
Milan Sterba - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Architect at Deepview S.r.o.
Efficient documentation generation through organized model structure with a good price-performance ratio
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not easy for even experienced users to find their way without guidance. This is not the most user-friendly solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"BiZZdesign HoriZZon stands out from other solutions on the market due to its uniqueness in conformance with the standard."
"The tool's most valuable feature is that its collaboration part is very good."
"I have seen measurable improvements and concrete benefits, with time and productivity gains resulting in time savings with a ratio of twenty to thirty percent and an ability to deploy quite quickly, since we found modules that already existed or applications that already existed and in that case, we gained in power."
"The most valuable features are the application, portfolio, data, architectures, and modeling things."
"This is one of the best tools, especially because of its collaborative nature. Anyone using it can access previous projects and related data. It's definitely a strong collaborative tool."
"BiZZdesign HoriZZon has positively impacted our organization by providing a combination of dependency visibility, impact analysis, and stakeholder-friendly visualization, which differentiates it from maintaining architecture information in spreadsheets or static diagrams."
"BiZZdesign HoriZZon has positively impacted my organization and my clients' organizations by providing a common language between architects, solution architects, infrastructure architects, and the entire corporation so that we can change and understand our actions collaboratively."
"In my experience, BiZZdesign HoriZZon is very stable."
"Large diagrams for hardware infrastructure, HA environments, Integrated Solution view, etc all help different teams to understand the scope of projects."
"Scalability is not a problem; you can always increase the footprint of what the thing can do because it is so powerful."
"For the money, breadth of scope, depth of features, add-ons, customizability, and capabilities, it still ranks number one."
"In this way, the quality of the documentation has improved."
"We have exchanged language for picture (diagrams) and the result was awesome."
"From the island of non managed analysis and design information to shared repositories with templates, it has helped us with real MDA and code generation directly into Visual Studio."
"A feature I like most about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is its ease of use."
"It is a very rich tool in terms of the functionality, and the types of diagrams, that you can create in this tool."
 

Cons

"There's room for improvement. When I finished using it over a year ago, I discussed implementing C4 notation with BiZZdesign HoriZZon.They've likely done this now, but I haven't seen it. Setting up interactive views for stakeholders to score services was a bit difficult."
"BiZZdesign HoriZZon can be really quicker than today as we are experiencing some performance issues, so that is the most important thing."
"There is room for improvement in making it more seamless between the modeling and the analysis pieces."
"We tested it, and we had support from BiZZdesign, including patches, but it just didn't do what we wanted."
"This tool is something of a beast - it takes a long time to learn, and it isn't possible for casual users and most architects. Unless a person spends 500 or 1,000 hours on the tool or does very concentrated sessions using all its functionalities, it's very difficult to master."
"It should be more open to integrating with other existing tools. Although there has been progress in the past."
"Since the accuracy is less, there is not much reliability, which means we need to cross-verify multiple times to ensure the data."
"In HoriZZon, there are different matrices. In some of the cases, there is an option to aggregate them, but in other cases, we have not done this, e.g., to see the proper costs. For example, if I have 10 different matrices, then I need to create an aggregate view out of those 10 matrices somewhere. That is where we have been struggling a bit. We have a counterpart from the HoriZZon product team with whom we have bi-weekly discussions. We have suggested to him that this can be improved."
"The user interface could be more intuitive and support for a Mac, iOS or at least a browser version would be very welcomed."
"MS Office integration works only with local .eap repository files, not with our Postgres repository. Half a year ago they promised to fix this bug, but still no improvement."
"When collaborating with other people, it needs to be more user-friendly."
"We would like to see improvements in the documentation generator: templates, styles, and content."
"Using EA involves a steep learning curve if you want to understand its capabilities and functionality."
"The solution's interface could be more straightforward."
"The modeling tool is targeted toward a sophisticated user."
"It took me a while to figure out how to use the report generation features effectively. So, it would be really nice if they had a way to make that a little bit more interactive and a little bit more straightforward."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I haven't found any issues with the scalability and licensing parts that are access-related."
"The price is reasonable."
"First and foremost within the scope of improvement for the solution would be the cost. It's very costly..."
"If one is very cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a seven out of ten."
"In terms of this particular product usage, my clients currently only use per-user licenses."
"The pricing model is slightly on the high side and could be more competitive for long-term partnerships."
"[The] Orbus... pricing model was based on every single functionality having a price. The pricing was comparable but if we wanted to scale, it would have ended up being a lot more expensive. BiZZdesign gave us one price with all of the functionality, and we could scale as much as we needed."
"We were customers and bought licenses from them. We used their remote instance initially but upgraded to the on-device version due to lag. For pricing, we paid about 2200 pounds a year per seat for the client installation at an educational rate. I'm not sure about commercial rates. I managed to get a free copy at BBC since it was for evaluation purposes."
"Pricing and licensing are suitable even for small companies."
"Its price is very good for the value that you get with it."
"I think our license costs roughly $1,000 a year, but I could be wrong."
"It is cheap."
"We paid 1200 euros as a once-off cost. All add ons and integrations come at an additional cost."
"There is a license for this solution. When comparing this solution to others it is priced well."
"The licensing is not as expensive as some of the other data modeling tools such as Erwin."
"This product has a paid license, with a yearly subscription option."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
I noticed that there were times when the cloud version would get stuck or was not able to load. There were issues with the login capability, and that was some time ago, a few months ago. I am not s...
What is your primary use case for BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
There was a merger that the client entered into, and following that merger, we inherited a large technology inventory from the acquired organization. The acquired inventory from the organization ha...
What advice do you have for others considering BiZZdesign HoriZZon?
The real experience I have had and seeing the result of using it in a large team where a large scale enterprise architecture and merger is happening is a very unique experience I have had with BiZZ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
One of the reasons many public sector institutions in the Czech Republic use it is that it provides a very good price-performance ratio. While it might be cumbersome to learn, it still delivers exc...
What needs improvement with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not ...
What is your primary use case for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
We are mostly using the ArchiMate language to describe enterprise or solution architecture, along with a bit of use cases. We are producing quite large models, with over 10,000 elements and relatio...
 

Also Known As

HoriZZon
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Shell, HSBC, Erasmus University, VIVAT Insurance
OmniLink
Find out what your peers are saying about BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.