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IBM Blueworks Live vs erwin Evolve 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

erwin Evolve
Ranking in Business Process Design
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (14th)
IBM Blueworks Live
Ranking in Business Process Design
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of erwin Evolve is 1.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 3.0%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Blueworks Live3.0%
erwin Evolve1.9%
Other95.1%
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

ScottLawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Director IT Architecture at QAD
Enables us to present data and objects visually, in diagrams, and to make them available via the web. Also enables web-based editing of data.
We tried their collaborative web modeling and we used it with a few people but we tend to not use that piece. We tend to collaborate with the people and then my team of architects draws up the diagram using the modeling tool. We then iterate through those. I would like to use it, but it was a little clunky when they first rolled it out. Overall, it's more about the company having room for improvement. What they need to do is to consolidate more of their products. For example, I was just looking and I couldn't figure out what erwin DT is. It's on the website but it would help if they could put information together and make it more clear as to what products they have and how they work with other things. I hear them talking in the support forums and, when I talk to the representative, they say they're going to do a bunch of stuff but it seems the progress is slow. The changes they need to make are to take their old, legacy product, which we use, and focus a lot on it so they can transform it into a modern cloud tool so that we have fewer little pieces to deal with. They could also fix their security model. It's very confusing to get new people onto the tool and to make sure that your content isn't being exposed to the wrong people.
Nupur Wadhwa - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant 2 at Protiviti
Enables efficient process mapping but requires improvement in maintaining server stability
The pricing of the solution can be quite expensive when compared to competitors, though IBM Blueworks Live stands out from a technical standpoint. IBM Blueworks Live provides clear ROI as it saves both time and money. I have successfully imported Visio flowcharts into both IBM Blueworks Live and ARIS. Both tools handled the imports successfully, though some manual intervention was required because Visio is quite a basic tool. Importing flowcharts into advanced tools such as ARIS and IBM Blueworks Live requires some manual effort. The primary advantage is the ease of use. I have not encountered any features in other tools that I couldn't find in ARIS. This is a major factor because I don't have to switch between tools to find specific features. Using ARIS for the past three years has built confidence and trust in the tool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability..."
"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."
"Evolve is like a tank. You can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it. I think that it's not very aligned with the framework for enterprise architecture. MEGA is focused on these enterprise architectures, but it's only for that. With Evolve, you can do everything you want with professional services."
"Without this tool, we couldn't have made and defined all the new processes."
"Evolve's reverse engineering ability is quite useful."
"Its flexibility and scalability to support all stakeholders in making informed decisions are powerful capabilities."
"Erwin has enabled us to build and manage a portfolio of over 1,000 large data models across more than 60 lines of business, many of which are related and synchronized."
"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."
"IBM Blueworks Live provides clear ROI as it saves both time and money."
"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."
"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."
"I like the two-tiered approach, that is, discover and then drill down to the main steps. You can right click and attach risk, policies, and much more. It is a user-friendly solution."
"The stability is pretty good. It is highly available, which is key. You don't lose your work and can autosave."
"The licenses are transferrable between different users."
"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."
"For me, what I find to be the most valuable is its simplicity and the association with Microsoft Office."
 

Cons

"With the Excel importing, the "up to date" part is the challenge. If we had a real-time integration, we could keep things up to date for whatever kinds of change points we had. With Excel, it is more that you have to export from one system then import it to another, so it's better for data that doesn't change that often."
"Business process modelling could be improved."
"There might be improvement required to better support some of the MPP databases for non-relational data structures and NoSQL databases."
"The way that we are using it for application management, we have several KPIs. We want to follow and monitor them regarding a number of solutions. We cannot calculate this today."
"erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses."
"The solution needs to focus on allowing for more integrations."
"You can integrate it with almost everything, but you have to watch what you are doing because when too much is integrated it's really hard to manage your errors."
"Would like to see canonical modeling supported for web services."
"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."
"The solution is a very basic discovery product so it doesn't have that much modeling capability."
"The solution is stable, but there are some glitches and latency issues."
"We haven't yet been able to dabble in case management with Blueworks Live, as it is not yet offered with the product."
"I would like to see integration with ERP systems. This would help us to simulate the process and see where the problems are. Though IBM Blueworks Live is a good tool for documenting, it is not good for simulating."
"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."
"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."
"The font size is really, really small and it's really not useful to print out process models because you cannot read what's written in different boxes. This makes it necessary for people to have access to the tool. We view licenses to see how the printing or output is. It's not very good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."
"The cost is something like $15,000, per license. But I haven't looked at those numbers in three years. It was over $100,000 to initially set everything up and get it all configured."
"I estimate that we pay between $40,000 and $50,000 a year for the solution, not including the upfront costs to buy things the first time."
"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"The licensing enables you to differentiate between people who edit the content and the people who consume it. We are able to keep the licensing costs down by keeping the "contributor" licenses to a minimum, and we then just roll out the content in a read-only version for the rest of our users."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."
"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
"Making it less expensive would be good."
"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."
"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."
"The solution is not very expensive."
"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Performing Arts
11%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?
I do not have exposure to IBM Blueworks Live pricing since this is managed by other personnel who handle the financial aspects of licenses.
What needs improvement with IBM Blueworks Live?
I do not use Security Identity Governance and Intelligence, as it is not implemented here. I would prefer an on-premises solution for IBM Blueworks Live, and this could be a recommendation. Regardi...
What is your primary use case for IBM Blueworks Live?
IBM Blueworks Live and security management are my primary products within the IBM suite. I particularly work on automation-related items, so most of my automation work lies with IBM, and I oversee ...
 

Also Known As

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture
IBM Lombardi Blueprint
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Duke University, ESPN, Fidelity, GE, JP Morgan Chase, KPMG, McGraw Hill, NASA, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Scotland, Teradata, Union Pacific, Vodafone, Wells Fargo.
Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Blueworks Live vs. erwin Evolve and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.