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Camunda vs IBM Blueworks Live comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 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
2nd
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 July 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of Camunda is 12.3%, up from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 3.5%, up from 3.3% 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

"One valuable feature of the solution is its flexibility."
"I can use any other tools to create services and the UI, and then use them together with the Camunda BPMN engine."
"The product is stable."
"The solution is easily compatible with HTML forms and HTML language programming and that is the most significant part."
"There's this graphic that tells you how many lines or how many tickets are in each step. In that way, you know where you stand. I find this feature very valuable."
"It's user friendly, much better than most tools I have seen."
"Camunda seems to have a lot of traction, maturity, and stability. It also matches the need for agile development."
"Easy to use and easy to integrate into the products and applications we provide for our customers."
"For me, what I find to be the most valuable is its simplicity and the association with Microsoft Office."
"IBM Blueworks Live is cloud-based and provides easy access to all your processes in one place."
"The business process discovery is excellent. The diagram or blueprinting functionality of the solution are very good. It's quite easy. You can link the sub-processes and get a big overview of the whole process then."
"It has a built-in capability to capture process owners and managers against processes along with other process governance roles."
"The solution is stable. All the refreshes run very well."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"Initially, installation was challenging, but recent improvements have made it much easier."
"If there were some industry templates it would have helped significantly, because it is similar to a process map for a domain. That is what we are currently creating, a domain-relevant process map."
"An improvement would be to support Angular 2 instead of AngularJS, which is quite old."
"The solution could use some enhancements like adding connectors, improving forms and having a mobile app, but everything is an enhancement rather than a flaw."
"The initial set up could be simplified, it's complex."
"I would also like a very easy to use form builder."
"The deployment model could be improved for easier implementation."
"The support offered by the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The ability to create a very structured rule. With the capability that we have right now, Blueworks Live is more process focused. We should be able to enhance it to include a lot more of decisions as well."
"The initial setup is neither straightforward nor complex however you do need to know what you are doing."
"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."
"We'd also like to see it be Six Sigma or Lean compatible, a lot of people have asked about that."
"We would like the ability to add additional custom colors. We would like to color additional items to add notes to the blueprint."
"The APIs are great, except the normal business user doesn't know how to create APIs. So it's hard because IBM comes to us as the business users and tell us to create reporting with APIs, except we don't know that, so we have to turn around and flip it to our IT people."
"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."
"The solution is a very basic discovery product so it doesn't have that much modeling capability. This can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In Africa, the cost of deployment is an important factor to consider since it adds to the overall cost. This might be the only drawback to using it."
"It is good for a startup. When we started, its price was fair, but the way we are using it to orchestrate microservices makes it expensive. When you are growing as a company, you would have more microservices, and you would have more users. There is an exponential effect when you are growing in terms of the number of conditions, processes, and users because they bill you per process. So, the price was increasing very quickly for us, and it was very difficult."
"We're using the open-source version for now."
"Its price is decent. Everything is included in the license. The Community version is also good to start with. We are using the Community version."
"I tried to get some information about buying the license for the solution, but I found it kind of hard to understand the business model."
"Generally, the price could be better, as well as the licensing fees."
"The most attractive feature of the product is that it is open source."
"The license is quite expensive, which is why we went with the community version."
"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."
"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."
"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."
"The solution is very, very cost-effective."
"The solution is not very expensive."
"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."
"Making it less expensive would be good."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

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
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

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: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.