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Bonita vs erwin Data Modeler comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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

Bonita
Ranking in Business Process Design
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (30th), Process Automation (29th)
erwin Data Modeler
Ranking in Business Process Design
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (1st), Data Governance (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of Bonita is 2.9%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 3.0%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
erwin Data Modeler3.0%
Bonita2.9%
Other94.1%
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Paparao Nadipineni - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at Evoke
A simple and lightweight college course automation system with third-party integrations
The initial setup is straightforward and can be completed with the environment within an hour. First, take the latest from the git repository and check the git code to the monitor studio and a bar file, a deployable Bonita archive file. Then, take that process to the Bonita server, running at runtime on another server. Finally, deploy and enable it by selecting the proper organization.
Sushree Panigrahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Snowflake Data Engineer| Senior PLSQL Developer |Data Modeler|Assitant Vice Pre at Jp Morgan Chase & Co.
Data modeling has transformed regulatory reporting and collaboration across cloud environments
In erwin Data Modeler, areas that have room for improvement include performance improvements. I see that large models sometimes cause it to be slow when opening. Impact analysis can lag as well. Version control is another aspect. If we have developed a current version, it is not integrated with Git where we can easily compare different versions. UI modernization is also something we cannot utilize as it is primarily for development. Additionally, cloud-specific optimizations are needed when it comes to Snowflake or Databricks. When it comes to AI aspects, auto-suggestions for normalization or identifying primary, foreign, or surrogate keys are areas that can be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Bonita is user-friendly, and the features are useful."
"The user interface is better than all of the open-source BPMs that I have tried."
"Compared to other products on the market, Bonita presents a pretty acceptable level of robustness."
"Studio provides an opportunity to get early feedback from real users and quickly change the process and forms."
"The solution is stable. Even the older versions are stable."
"The user interface is easy to use."
"Bonita is user-friendly."
"Our lead generation system involves both automated and human tasks. By centralizing the workflow to our internal Bonita BPM system, we have improved the conversion rate (leads to customers) and lowered the number of leads dropped."
"The most valuable features are the ability to reverse engineer and do model comparison. With the reverse engineering, I can understand the databases from third-party products. With the model comparison, I can track the differences between two versions of the same database."
"Given an opportunity to follow the correct path and perform data modeling, we have seen a significant return on investment with decreases in delivery time and decreases in project cost."
"My favorite feature of erwin Data Modeler is that we can export and import tables directly from the databases, and it is easy to map from table to table and column to column."
"What has been useful, I have been able to reverse engineer our existing data models to document explicitly referential integrity relationships, primary/foreign keys in the model, and create ERDs that are subject area-based which our clients can use when working with our databases. The reality is that our databases are not explicitly documented in the DDL with primary/foreign key relationships. You can't look at the DDL and explicitly understand the primary/foreign key relationships that exist between our tables, so the referential integrity is not easily understood. erwin has allowed me to explicitly document that and create ERDs. This has made it easier for our clients to consume our databases for their own purposes."
"The ability to collaborate between different members across the organization is the most valuable feature. It gives us the ability to work on the same model, regardless of where we are physically."
"The process of creating visual representations of data structures using erwin Data Modeler allows you to see everything you are doing, and you have visuals to see what you are going to do and what has been done so far."
"They have a lot of features and the most up-to-date technology integration, which I haven't seen in other products."
"We use the Forward and Reverse Engineering tools to help us speed things up and create things that would have to be done otherwise by hand. E.g., getting a database into a data model format or vice versa."
 

Cons

"That said, creating custom connectors for 3rd party applications and APIs is still a challenging task."
"Scalability of the Bonita BPM Community version is low."
"The menus likely would be more intuitive if read in French. Things seem to be under strange headings at times."
"At times Bonita BPM Studio crashes, intermittently."
"The community edition has limited module functionality. If they could release some of the functionality that's available in the enterprise edition that would be helpful to those learning to use the solution."
"The support is mandatory to access all features (Subscription), maybe they can have a different business model."
"It is missing some important features that other products have."
"The interface is advanced and quite good, but it could improve."
"It does not have a cloud application."
"Complete Compare is set up only to compare properties that are of interest to us, but some of the differences cannot be brought over from one version of the model to another. This is despite the fact that we are clicking to bring objects from one place to another. Therefore, it's hard to tell at times if Complete Compare is working as intended without having to manually go into the details and check everything. If it could be redesigned to a degree where it is easier to use when we bring things over from one site to another and be sure that it's been done correctly, that would be nice to have. We would probably use the tool more often if the Complete Compare were easier to use."
"The only real complaint I have is the time it takes to do a database comparison on a large model. If they could speed that up, that would be the only thing I can think of that needs improvement."
"The Bulk Editor needs improvement."
"erwin is not as robust as a data warehousing project I've been on in the past."
"The modeling product itself is far and above anything else that I've seen on the market. There are certain inconsistencies when it comes to keeping up with other platforms' databases in the reverse-engineering process. It should also support more database platforms."
"Sometimes when I want to open the attribute editor, it stops working and the whole application freezes."
"Erwin Data Modeler is a good product, but I recently experienced a problem where I was not able to open an erwin Data Modeler file because its version had automatically changed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is acceptable. Pricing is yearly."
"I am using the free version of Bonita."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"You pay an annual fee and can have an unlimited number of processes and users."
"Licensing cost for the Enterprise edition comes out to be around 40,000 a year. There is also a Community edition, which is free. Some customers can go for the Community edition, but some of them require the Enterprise edition. Big companies go for the Enterprise edition, which comes with a lot of additional features such as a mobile app."
"We are using the Community Version, which can be used free of charge."
"The Enterprise edition is very expensive."
"Price to service ratio with Bonita BPM is good."
"An issue right now would be that erwin doesn't have a freely available browser (that I am aware of) for people who are not data modelers or data engineers that a consumer could use to look at the data models and play with it. This would not be to make any changes, but just to visually look at what exists. There are other products out there which do have end user browsers available and allow them to access data models via the data modeling tool."
"I wish it wasn't so expensive. I would love to personally buy a copy of my own and have it at home, because the next job that I'm looking at is probably project management and I might not have access to the tool. I would like to keep my ability to use the tool. Therefore, they should probably have a pricing for people like me who want to just use the solution as an independent consultant, trying to get started. $3,000 is a big hit."
"Pricing is very high compared to any other product."
"The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"Likewise, the solution is a little pricey."
"We've continued to use the product for many years and compared it with others on the market. The pricing is reasonable considering what the solution offers and what we pay. There are cheaper tools, but they may not be as robust and easy to use, so it's worth the money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise38
 

Questions from the Community

How does Bonita compare with Camunda Platform?
One of the things we like best about Bonita is that you can create without coding - it is a low-code platform. With Bonita, you can build the entire mechanism using the GUI, it’s that simple. You c...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I have no idea about the setup cost because I did not buy the license.
What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
The UI in erwin Data Modeler can be improved significantly because when any new person opens the tool, all the toolbars are kept open with many tools in view, making it appear chunky. If possible, ...
What is your primary use case for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?
I primarly use erwin Data Modeler for modeling purposes. Once we have the business requirement, we create the models in erwin Data Modeler, and then we perform forward engineering to get the query ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Bonita BPM
erwin DM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

With more than 1000 customers in 75 countries, and its ecosystem of more than 120,000 members, Bonitasoft is the largest provider of open-source Business Process Management, Low-code and Digital Transformation software worldwide.
 Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples
Find out what your peers are saying about Bonita vs. erwin Data Modeler and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.