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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 (12th)
IBM Blueworks Live
Ranking in Business Process Design
12th
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 August 2026, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of erwin Evolve is 2.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 2.8%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Blueworks Live2.8%
erwin Evolve2.3%
Other94.9%
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

"This is the first time that we have a central repository in our company where we can see and look at all the legacy applications which are used to serve the world."
"Support for a broad range of data sources from relational to big data to the Cloud."
"I can send images in the PDF form, along with the relationships and the associations that are a very important part of what we do. It can show what is affected and what is impacted by a certain change in one area of the system architecture or enterprise architecture. I can very quickly draw those issues and topics to the fore."
"Forward and reverse engineering were valuable features."
"Its flexibility and scalability to support all stakeholders in making informed decisions are powerful capabilities."
"Evolve is scalable with multi-user ability, so multiple designers and engineers can work on the same data model simultaneously."
"One of the most valuable features is the website that sits on top of the database. There's a database of objects and how they are related, and you can make views and diagrams and visual elements out of that information on the website. The website is the part that is called Evolve and we use the Evolve Designer and publish the website out to our employees. They can click around and navigate and search, etc."
"Evolve's reverse engineering ability is quite useful."
"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."
"The reporting that we can generate from IBM Blueworks Live has been interesting. We found the KPIs, risks, process modeling, format, and colors, to be very good. We use the EY template and it is interesting to generate reporting in this format."
"It raised the process maturity of the organisation from a low level to a reasonable degree of awareness and introduced some process language and conventions to the organisation."
"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."
"It is a stable solution since there has not been any downtime. Everything loads fast."
"The product is business-friendly, it's intuitive, and it connects really well with business teams."
"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."
"You can use if from your mobile device or you can be on the desktop. It doesn't matter. You are always connected. It is cloud-based, so you don't have to install anything."
 

Cons

"Few clients looking are going with Evolve these days because I don't think they even appear on Gartner's Magic Quadrant."
"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."
"There might be improvement required to better support some of the MPP databases for non-relational data structures and NoSQL databases."
"The implementation process is too complicated."
"I would like it to be easier to make changes and then deploy them into production, especially when you have multiple web servers or front-ends. It would be nice to make a change and then have it propagate to the production servers in a more automated fashion."
"For what it says it can do, it does a good job, but using it is too difficult."
"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."
"If it had fewer features to model all kinds of architecture, it would be less complicated."
"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 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."
"IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts."
"We haven't yet been able to dabble in case management with Blueworks Live, as it is not yet offered with the product."
"There are a couple of things which are not there right now: The ability to create a very structured rule."
"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 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."
"We would like to see more robust API access; we want it to be able to interact not just through the front end and have the ability to integrate with other systems more easily."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 solution is very, very cost-effective."
"Making it less expensive would be good."
"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."
"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."
"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."
"The solution is not very expensive."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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 Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

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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: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.