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Endevor vs Gen comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Endevor
Ranking in Mainframe Application Development
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (3rd)
Gen
Ranking in Mainframe Application Development
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Mainframe Application Development category, the mindshare of Endevor is 11.8%, down from 32.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Gen is 15.5%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mainframe Application Development Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Gen15.5%
Endevor11.8%
Other72.7%
Mainframe Application Development
 

Featured Reviews

RobertMartin3 - PeerSpot reviewer
Production Supervisor Technical at Ontario Power Generation
Asset dashboards have created slow, rigid workflows and have limited effective life cycle tracking
The single dashboards do not help my team or the company as a whole. I feel the dashboards are not helpful because the search features are not customizable. The software is web-based and the server is extremely slow. To improve Endevor, its cloud or web-based server capabilities should be increased so that the software is faster. The ability to customize reports should be increased.
IR
Consultant
Full packets enable software implementation on the mainframe and client sides
I rate it eight out of 10. It's just very powerful tool, very powerful product to use. Nowadays, there are a couple of mainframe companies, using mainframe products, so to be honest, I'm not recommending it. Of course, if you have mainframe and you have do something in the mainframe that’s different.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, I think that Endeavor is a good product and I recommend it."
"It performs pretty well."
"It makes production changes much easier to implement, and to recover if there are problems."
"I do not think our organization could go without it."
"They've got plug-ins now to run it through Eclipse, they've got a lot of APIs, they handle UNIX files. I can't really think of any serious lack that they haven't addressed."
"It is completely different than other tools I have used, as it is easy to use and very intuitive, allowing you to keep growing without having to learn something new because the environment does not change even as it scales from one to 21,000 elements."
"We have used it for years and never had any real issues with it."
"We have been able to replicate entire SDLCs for new clients and have them loaded and ready to use Endevor in as little as one week. This was possible with the use of Endevor variables within the processors, so that a single processor was able to function for multiple systems across the entire SDLC."
"Full packets, enable you to develop software and systems using these packets, and implement software on the mainframe side and the client side. You can use the same packets, so it's very powerful."
"You can easily manage the code, and you can easily find other changes, other group changes, other models, other components."
"Advantage Gen greatly enhanced productivity as well as development of solutions in mainframes, Client, and server applications."
"If you’re writing a simple barebones COBOL program, it may take 20-30 hours, but with a solution like this it can be done in around four hours."
"It has lived long beyond what people thought was its life expectancy as a product, largely because it is such a quality tool that people can't replace."
"Coding on CA Gen is easy."
"CA Gen has provided us web development capability."
"If you want to be the first in market and you have a short time to generate, or to develop your application, and if you're looking for a platform that supports multiple frameworks, multiple platforms such as mainframe, Java, and .Net, or the others, you need a modelling tool, rather than a language or technology."
 

Cons

"The customer service and support team are not helpful and they're slow to respond."
"This software is made to keep the components' and change history. There is no concept of application and version management of these applications."
"If they deploy it correctly, then it provides a tremendous benefit, but if you lay it out wrong, it can be a nightmare to work with."
"They need to ditch the Eclipse plugin and just make the development environment for Z the standard Eclipse interface.​"
"I would like to see it used for Hadoop, which is really huge now."
"I would like to have better integration with other products."
"The initial setup can be less complex and has room for improvement."
"One feature of Endevor is its Backout feature. If there is a problem, it can back out the executables. The only problem with that is that it will not back out the source in Endevor. For example, you can do a back out and it will back out the executable to the previous version, but it doesn't back out the source version in Endevor. It would make it much better if when you did a back out of Endevor, it would back out both the source and the executable and keep them in sync."
"Personally, I think the tool has taken a turn for the worse."
"The product needs to be well marketed, then adopted. I am not seeing many customers using the product."
"If I look into the native COBOL language it can be more efficient, and CA Gen adds what seems to be some unnecessary lines of code; it’s not an apples to apples comparison."
"The world is changing, the technologies are changing - COOL:Gen needs to change as well."
"The weak side is, I cannot use the DB2 specifications, DB2 comments, easily."
"Nowadays, there are a couple of mainframe companies, using mainframe products, so to be honest, I'm not recommending it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is very expensive."
"The product is expensive."
"It's competitively priced and, as far as I know, it's just an enterprise license. We have found it is worth the money."
"Just make sure if you are going to license, ensure you license the right features.​"
"Licensing is fairly simple, you don't need multiple licenses."
"It's worth the value. The pricing is fairly good, justifiable for the return on investment."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Insurance Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise40
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Endevor?
The single dashboards do not help my team or the company as a whole. I feel the dashboards are not helpful because the search features are not customizable. The software is web-based and the server...
What is your primary use case for Endevor?
My main use case for Endevor is asset management. For asset management, we use Engage software for life cycle management, eHealth, and eStrategy.
What advice do you have for others considering Endevor?
My advice to others looking into using Endevor is that if you are a nuclear electrical utility, the software is likely well-suited, but if you are any other utility, the software is poorly suited f...
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Also Known As

CA Endevor Software Change Manager, Endevor Software Change Manager, CA Software Change Manager for Mainframe, CA Endevor SCM
CA Gen
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Hill Data Services Inc.
Global bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Endevor vs. Gen and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.