erwin Data Modeler vs iServer comparison

Quest Software and Orbus Software are both solutions in the Enterprise Architecture Management category. Quest Software is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.4, while Orbus Software is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0. Quest Software holds a 8.3% mindshare in AM, compared to Orbus Software’s 4.3% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Quest Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Orbus Software users who would recommend it.

erwin Data Modeler

Read 46 erwin Data Modeler reviews

5,210 Views
3,543 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

iServer

Read 18 iServer reviews

2,253 Views
1,577 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

erwin Data Modeler

iServer

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

iServer and erwin Data Modeler are competitors in data modeling and enterprise architecture management. iServer leads in pricing and customer service, whereas erwin Data Modeler is favored for its extensive functionality.

Features: iServer supports integration and dashboard capabilities, handling multiple frameworks and facilitating collaboration. erwin Data Modeler offers robust data governance, metadata management, and reverse engineering features, essential for complex data environments.

Room for Improvement: iServer could enhance its data management capabilities and include more advanced modeling features. Improvements in template flexibility and analytics might also benefit iServer. erwin Data Modeler could improve its initial setup to be less technically demanding, include better customer training materials, and enhance integration with more databases.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: iServer is commended for its easy deployment process and reliable customer service. Its intuitive setup and responsive support provide a smoother user experience. erwin Data Modeler, while offering sufficient deployment support, may require more technical skills during initial setup.

Pricing and ROI: iServer offers a competitive pricing model with lower initial costs, making it appealing for budget-conscious organizations. erwin Data Modeler, although perceived as having higher costs, delivers significant ROI through its advanced features and enhanced data management capability.

To learn more, read our detailed erwin Data Modeler vs. iServer Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler vs. iServer

December 2025

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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

erwin Data Modeler

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

2nd

Ranking in Business Process Design

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Governance (15th)

iServer

Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management

8th

Ranking in Business Process Design

16th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of erwin Data Modeler is 8.3%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of iServer is 4.3%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Architecture Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
erwin Data Modeler	8.3%
iServer	4.3%
Other	87.4%

Enterprise Architecture Management

Featured Reviews

Sushree Panigrahi

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.

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Antonios Lazanakis

Senior IT Solution Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Flexible, easy to use, and easy to import data

We use iServer to establish an enterprise architecture function in our organization iServer is a very flexible platform for defining your own enterprise architecture model. It is very easy to import data, and we also have good integration with Visual Drawing Tools and SharePoint. The solution is…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Another feature of erwin is that it can help you enforce your naming standards. It has little modules that you can set up and, as you're building the data model, it's ensuring that they conform to the naming standards that you've developed."

"It has centralized storage so that a data model can be shared by different teams."

"The fitting model is very intuitive."

"The solution's ability to compare and synchronize data sources with data models is fantastic. We use it for that on a regular basis to make sure that changes haven't been made to the database outside of the modeling process. I can take existing databases and reverse engineer them and understand their structure within 15 minutes. If I didn't have Data Modeler it would take hours. It increases our productivity and helps in understanding our legacy application."

"The most valuable feature is the physical or visual representation of the database, showing the tables, the columns, the foreign keys, and the ability to generate DDL, so you can physically implement databases."

"I have worked with erwin Data Modeler for quite some time and familiarity is its most valuable feature."

"They have a lot of features and the most up-to-date technology integration, which I haven't seen in other products."

"Currently in the market, there is no competitor to erwin Data Modeler; everything is very powerful, such as performing reverse engineering from an existing database and deploying that on Databricks or Snowflake."

More erwin Data Modeler pros

"I have to think less with this solution. It's simple."

"This is a flexible tool compared to some other solutions."

"There were lots of different requirements, and collaboration and review is one of the biggest things. There is also Office 360 integration, and there's flexibility to use it as a database as well."

"It has helped having data lineage in the business cluster, which is used as control artifacts."

"iServer is a very flexible platform for defining your own enterprise architecture model."

"We like the governance."

"iServer has valuable features for workflow and document management."

"The most valuable feature is its reporting capability. It offers various packages for different types of reports, such as business and project management reporting packs."

More iServer pros

Cons

"As someone who has used it for a long time, I have seen stability vary from version to version."

"I would like the solution to be less rigid in terms of its theory."

"I would like to see the reporting capabilities be more dynamic and more inclusive of information. The API is very sparsely understood by people across the user community."

"The navigation is a little bit of a challenge. It's painful. For example, if you've got a view open and you want to try to move from side to side, the standard today is being able to drag and drop left and right. You can't really do that in the model. Moving around the model is painful because it doesn't follow the Windows model today."

"The interface must be improved."

"The erwin ETL functionality has room for improvement when it comes to mapping databases with a classic entity-relationship model to a data warehouse model."

"I'd really like to see the PDF function become available. It would make my life much easier than what it is at the moment because whenever I need to collaborate with people that do not have erwin, I have to go through the wonkiness of going to Word and then save it from Word into PDF. There's a lot of differences between erwin 4.4 and 2020."

"Some Source official systems give us DDLs to work with and they have contents not required to be part of the DDL before we reverse engineer in the erwin DM. Therefore, we manually make changes to those scripts and edit them, then reverse-engineer within the tool. So, it does take some time to edit these DDL scripts generated by the source operational systems. What I would suggest: It would be helpful if there were a place within the erwin tool to import the file and automatically eliminate all the unnecessary lines of code, and just have the clean code built-in to generate the table/data model."

More erwin Data Modeler cons

"We could allocate permissions to use only specific components to the users rather than the entire instance."

"Cannot see which activities are control activities."

"There could be features for process mining, process simulation, and analytics."

"The product is more expensive than Spark."

"The performance is slow, which is something that should be improved."

"The migration tool needs to be included in the main package, and not as a separate license."

"More visualization techniques and ways to report the data might be helpful."

"It runs relatively slowly."

More iServer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors."

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

"The pricing of the solution is cheap. I rate the pricing a five out of ten."

"Pricing is very high compared to any other product."

"There is either a one-year or three-year license. It is not a pay-as-you-go license like a SaaS solution. It’s more of a traditional licensing. They are a little bit on the pricier side."

"The tool is expensive."

"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."

More erwin Data Modeler pricing and cost advice

"Aim for the exact number of people who shall define/review approve and view the processes, as it will impact the cost."

"The solution is cheaper than its competitors."

"It's about 13K to set up and 9K for the license for three months. I think it's about 20K a year, but we haven't firmed up on pricing yet because the price depends on how long we commit to the solution."

"The product has a moderate pricing."

"The price of iServer is reasonable compared to other solutions."

"They offer annual subscriptions for developing countries, which are not affordable for small or medium businesses."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

21%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	34

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

Regarding pricing, I am unsure what the exact price is for erwin Data Modeler, but I believe it is not useful for an individual. It is more targeted toward an enterprise level since organizations l...

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What needs improvement with erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

I write code and I write code accessing erwin Data Modeler's API, the Application Programming Interface, so that I can use Excel to update erwin Data Modeler and then get those updates and put them...

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What is your primary use case for erwin Data Modeler by Quest?

I work for CVS with a pretty big database as a data modeler on the PBMs, the Caremark PBM side, which is the Pharmacy Benefits Manager. There's a retail side too for all the stores, but our data wa...

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What needs improvement with iServer?

iServer should invest in enhancing the capabilities of the embedded drawing tool, draw.io. draw.io is a drawing tool used to draw architectural diagrams, flow diagrams, etc. It is an alternative to...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for iServer?

We use iServer to establish an enterprise architecture function in our organization.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering iServer?

I would recommend the solution to other users. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

Visio vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 5% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Data Modeler

Compared 4% of the time

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BiZZdesign HoriZZon vs iServer

Compared 13% of the time

LeanIX vs iServer

Compared 13% of the time

MEGA HOPEX vs iServer

Compared 12% of the time

OrbusInfinity vs iServer

Compared 9% of the time

Visio vs iServer

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler

January 2026

Download erwin Data Modeler product report

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Architecture Management

January 2026

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Also Known As

erwin DM

No data available

Overview

Erwin Data Modeler provides an effective approach to visualizing and managing data models. It assists in creating, reversing, and synchronizing data models with ease, supporting logical and physical transitions while enhancing understanding across teams.

Erwin Data Modeler is a comprehensive tool designed for professional database management. It offers capabilities to organize and enforce standards, automating script generation with robust reverse engineering and DDL output. Users can manage complex data environments, capitalize on integration with data intelligence, and maintain large-scale databases smoothly. Despite its strengths, improvements in multi-language support, database integration, and reporting features are needed. Users benefit from extensive support for conceptual, logical, and physical database modeling, enhancing architectural design and data governance for platforms like SQL Server, Oracle, and Teradata.

What are the key features of Erwin Data Modeler?

Visual Representation: Facilitates clear visualization of data models, aiding comprehension.
Versioning and Editing: Enhance usability with versioning and bulk editing capabilities.
Reverse Engineering: Offers powerful tools for reverse engineering and DDL generation.
Integration: Aligns with data intelligence to streamline database management.
Naming Standards: Enforces consistency with automated script creation.

What benefits should users consider in Erwin Data Modeler reviews?

Collaboration: Promotes team understanding and collaboration through visual tools.
Automation: Reduces manual effort through automated processes and integration.
Scalability: Handles large database management efficiently, crucial for enterprise settings.
Data Governance: Facilitates effective data governance with structured modeling.

Erwin Data Modeler finds application in industries focused on robust data management, implementing it for enterprise data warehouses, business domain models, and operational systems. It supports architectural design and governance, aligning with business applications demanding precise data representation and visualization.

Quest Software

iServer is a unified software platform and enterprise modeling environment that extends and enhances the familiar, market leading Microsoft Visio and Office products. Core capabilities provided by iServer include an enhanced Microsoft Visio diagramming interface, a powerful central repository for all enterprise architecture or business process models and documentation, and a range of tools for visualization, analysis and decision making.

Orbus Software

Sample Customers

Premera, America Honda Motors, Aetna, Kaiser Permanente, Dental Dental Cali, Cigna, Staples

Barclays, Cathay Pacific, Deloitte, British Gas, MasterCard

Buyer's Guide

erwin Data Modeler vs. iServer

December 2025

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