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Camunda vs IBM Blueworks Live comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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

Camunda
Ranking in Business Process Design
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (1st), Process Automation (1st)
IBM Blueworks Live
Ranking in Business Process Design
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of Camunda is 12.5%, up from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 3.6%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

FABIO NAGAO - PeerSpot reviewer
Reduces costs with hardware abstraction and simplifies scaling
There is an issue where, in some situations, I need to scale up by observing both CPU and memory usage of containers, yet under the current options available at Amazon, this is not possible. I have to choose between monitoring CPU or memory to scale my solution. Not every software is built for deployment as a container service, although the current architecture trend is changing this.
AjarMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
An easily scalable and affordable solution that enables users to document and digitize processes with ease
IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts. There is only one kind of BPMN 2.0 diagram. It is a process diagram. It doesn't have the concept of separate tools, which other products offer. If I had to do a hardcore BPMN 2.0 modeling, the product would have its own reservations. There were features we could not explore from a BPMN 2.0 perspective. Most of the time, people who are shifting from Microsoft Office tools to a digitized way of working still want the reporting capabilities to be strong. Some tools, like ARIS or Signavio, offer customized solutions from the reporting perspective. If I have documented my whole finance process and want to fetch out a complete SOP report in a very customized manner, IBM Blueworks cannot provide it. We have to rely on some other services. So that's one area in which we always struggled, how to really customize the reporting aspects. I understand that we need to keep the tool a little more asset-light. It's very difficult to keep adding many options, but at least a few BPMN 2.0 options were needed. We have been suggesting to IBM that we should have some way of customizing the reporting. At least we should get a custom way of reporting it into different formats like Excel or putting up a logo for one of the clients so that their SAP can be printed that way.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The UI is very user-friendly compared to other products. The native, vanilla UI is very interesting and intuitive to use. It's user-friendly when it comes to modernizing a business process."
"We are using the BPMN engine of Camunda; we are not using the user interface. We are using just the engine, the back end of this. For us, it is working quite well."
"EC2 makes scaling horizontally incredibly easy, especially when working under the ECS service."
"Camunda Platform is better than IBM BPM, and Azure. It is more elaborate."
"Having knowledge of the BPM and monitoring process has proven to be very beneficial, as I am currently engaged in documenting processes for Clientele."
"The most valuable feature of Camunda Platform is its Microservices architecture, which is easily integrable with APIs."
"The flexibility is great."
"Overall, the solution has been very solid."
"It's very easy, very quick to create a process map. It has templates. The look and feel is very nice. What we want to achieve out of the process map, we can achieve it using Blueworks."
"IBM Blueworks Live is cloud-based and provides easy access to all your processes in one place."
"The stability is pretty good. It is highly available, which is key. You don't lose your work and can autosave."
"The solution is stable. All the refreshes run very well."
"Collaboration is most valuable. You can collaborate online with many people. People can comment, and you can comment back. It is just like a social network, and that, for me, is very good."
"Business users understand it really well, which means we can then help them automate their business processes."
"We are you using the product as a process mapping tool and as part of a larger process improvement project. We use it with IBM BPM and IBM ODM. We get an automated workflow solution for our customers, an improved workflow automation."
"Valuable features include real-time modeling and design work, the ability to perform workshops with clients in real-time with the tool, and getting instant output."
 

Cons

"An improvement would be to support Angular 2 instead of AngularJS, which is quite old."
"Camunda could be improved by making it easier to modify a process. You can program it to follow a process, but it is difficult to modify the process when the application is in use. It could also be improved by making it easier to use the visual platform without needing to be informed on that. Sometimes, we programmers haven't used it in the past, and it's a bit difficult to learn it."
"Initially, installation was challenging, but recent improvements have made it much easier."
"If Camunda could develop something that creates user forms that would be a great feature to have. They also need to improve the UI."
"I would like to have a feature for audit logging, audit logs and audit log management. And some history of use for the audit logs."
"The support offered by the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"It would be helpful to have more readily available use cases on the internet. Camunda's documentation feels less comprehensive."
"It is not difficult to change existing processes. The difficulty was in integration, for example, to call an external web API, and in the security capabilities, to use a vault for secrets. That was difficult."
"Some of the import functionality was a bit restrictive, in terms of loading data in from other data sources. Something as simple as Excel, loading data tables from Excel, wasn't great. And vice-versa. Some of the export and import functionality with something like Visio - which, I know it's a slightly different tool - but being able to work seamlessly with those other tool sets would've been quite useful. I know it was something that was in the pipeline to be looked at. So that would be useful."
"Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively."
"In the Blue Works Live software boxes and lines are automatically placed by the programme and can't be easily manipulated."
"We would like the ability to add additional custom colors. We would like to color additional items to add notes to the blueprint."
"In the solution Signavio, they have a customer journey mapping feature that should be added to IBM Blueworks Live. It's valuable to map or document the customer journey to identify the pains and opportunities in this process."
"I wish Blueworks Live had simulations built in, but it doesn't. It also lacks a feature of reporting; ad hoc, drag and drop reporting. A lot of senior people are always asking for reports, and there's no reporting feature within IBM Blueworks."
"It is BPMN-compliant but the tool needs to be more involved to get into a completely 2.0 oriented tool. It has a few things but it's not the complete BPMN model."
"There should be an option to import from and export to Microsoft Visio. Being able to move files back and forth between Blueworks Live and Visio would be good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license is quite expensive, which is why we went with the community version."
"We use Camunda's community edition, which is free."
"There is a bit of scope for improvement in how the licensing and pricing are done. They are based on the number of processing instances you execute on the cluster... but on the self-hosted mode, the pricing model should be customized."
"There is an open-source version available, that in its core features (workflow and decision engine, modeler) is exactly the same as in the enterprise version."
"The product's price depends on the number of processes that need to be automated or where the orchestration part needs to be used. The product is affordable for medium and large enterprises."
"We use the free version."
"While the license isn't budget-friendly, careful consideration and calculated planning for a significant number of licenses can make it more cost-effective."
"I think Camunda BPM can improve their licensing costs. It isn't easy to find clients with Camunda BPM licenses mainly because it's quite expensive."
"The solution is not very expensive."
"Making it less expensive would be good."
"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."
"Based on the licenses purchased, from a footprint perspective, you can have as many people as you want. You have multiple different categories of licenses to keep the cost low."
"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."
"The solution is very, very cost-effective."
"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."
"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
Which do you prefer - Appian or Camunda Platform?
Appian is fast when building simple to medium solutions. This solution offers simple drag-and-drop functionality with easy plug-and-play options. The initial setup was seamless and very easy to imp...
Which would you choose - Camunda Platform or Apache Airflow?
Camunda Platform allows for visual demonstration and presentation of business process flows. The flexible Java-based option was a big win for us and allows for the integration of microservices very...
What do you like most about IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution is easy to operate. Also, there is an automatic mode to make the business flow. You don't have to put any lines or arrows in a decision point in IBM Blueworks Live; it's very automatic.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.
What needs improvement with IBM Blueworks Live?
Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Camunda BPM
IBM Lombardi Blueprint
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

24 Hour Fitness, Accruent, AT&T Inc., Atlassian, CSS Insurance, Deutsche Telekom, Generali, Provinzial NordWest Insurance Services, Swisscom AG, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VHV Group, Zalando
Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda vs. IBM Blueworks Live and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.