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Visio vs erwin Evolve comparison

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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
20th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (12th)
Visio
Ranking in Business Process Design
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Mind Mapping Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of erwin Evolve is 2.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Visio is 6.2%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Visio6.2%
erwin Evolve2.4%
Other91.4%
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.
NitinSharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Specialist at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Created detailed rack and network diagrams that streamline documentation and collaboration
For creating diagrams, I definitely use Visio for HLD, LLD, and traffic flow diagrams. Apart from Visio, I use Jira only if the customer specifically requests it; otherwise, I do not use an in-house version of Jira in my organization. One of the good features of using the Microsoft umbrella product is that if I create a big diagram and then work on the HLD or LLD in Word, I can select everything from Visio and paste it as an image without needing to resize it, which streamlines the process of creating documentation for customers. The main benefits Visio provides me include simplifying processes, saving time on manual work with diagram creation, and delivering a clean architecture, whether it is network architecture or application flow. I have created diagrams for AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premises data centers, including rack elevation diagrams and organization charts. Modifications can be made easily and reflected immediately, and I can create PNG images to share with the executive team.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."
"The ERwin tool helped to reduce the rate of design and deployment errors and increased the ease of validation."
"Evolve is like a tank; you can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it."
"By placing the data and the metadata into a model, which is what the tool does, you gain the abilities for linkages between different objects in the model, linkages that you cannot get on paper or with Visio or PowerPoint. That is a huge discriminator."
"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."
"Customer Service: Outstanding Technical Support: Outstanding"
"Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets."
"Enterprise Architecture improved our organization by giving clarity over the data that is available."
"For anything other than project planning, Visio seems to be absolutely fine and I recommend it."
"Visio is a very powerful and useful tool that really provides value by making it very easy to draw shapes, connect them, and customize and group activities for a lot of flexibility."
"Very interactive with an intuitive interface."
"I don't have to hand-sketch my engineering concepts, and the work that I hand off to other departments is clear and easy to read."
"Visio has improved my workflow by making it easy to create charts, diagrams, and basic illustrations that I can use in my client reports and proposals. It has saved me a lot of time I would otherwise spend creating visuals for clients by hand."
"Visio is the cheapest solution because it has the basics."
"The tools tab within Visio has been amazingly useful, and it is updated quite frequently. Along with how Visio handles components and everything else, I would call it an easy-to-use tool."
"By utilizing Visio, we have been able to put on paper our network design, server room setup, and network connections, making it a lot easier to troubleshoot and figure out where the issues, errors, or disconnects may be happening."
 

Cons

"They need to develop Evolve's user experience. For example, MEGA has a useful client view that helps with impact analysis. MEGA provides information about the processes, services, infrastructure, and portfolio of applications in one central view. It lets you see the periphery and relationships among components. This view is impressive, and Evolve doesn't have it."
"I feel that the UML drawing capability needs to be improved."
"With the Excel importing, the "up to date" part is the challenge."
"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."
"The solution's integration capabilities with other tools in our system has not been all that well done."
"It could have had a more streamlined navigation. It seemed that when you went to the explorer panel, there were just so many different ways of doing the work that I could not remember, "How did I do this? How did I get to that point in that model to get back to it?" If I wanted to build a new one, where do I start? It just seemed like there was such a smorgasbord of ways of doing it that it was just overwhelming."
"The implementation process is too complicated."
"erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses."
"Occasionally, the automation feature that helps you easily add the "next step" goes crazy and it will move a bunch of stuff on me."
"There should be more items available from a variety of other products that can be integrated."
"The inventory feature could be improved. On projects, there are sometimes inventory tasks that are lacking."
"The visual icons and shapes for different vendors like Cisco network could be improved. Often, I have to contact vendors to get specific icons to use in Visio diagrams, which makes the process cumbersome."
"The big downside to Visio is that it's very difficult to push the design through to Power Automate, to become a workflow that you can use."
"Its integration with other vendors can be better and support for other formats. For example, when we import a JPEG, we cannot customize it. Similarly, we can't utilize the BPML kind of diagrams."
"I would like to see the project planning element improved, although it won't happen because Microsoft deliberately made it worse."
"The product's installation phase can be a difficult process if you don't have the deployment script with you since it is very important to know what you are doing when you are dealing with the setup process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."
"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."
"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."
"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."
"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
"I haven't looked at the prices lately. We have an older copy, and it was a couple of hundred dollars for this software. That's a huge expense."
"The pricing of Visio is much better. It has a free version of the cheapest functionality which is enough for us."
"The solution could be less expensive."
"It is a free solution for us. It is integrated with our pack. We are trying to use the solutions that we already have."
"The price is reasonable for individual use but for an organization, the costs is high."
"The popularity of a product is an indicator of its price. Because of the popularity of Visio, its price is on the higher side. We need better pricing for it."
"Our license for Visio is including with the Office 365 subscription."
"I don't have any issue with the pricing. It has a subscription-based model, and the subscription is done on a yearly basis. Of course, we need internal approvals in place."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
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 Business36
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
How easy is it to migrate process flow charts (modeled using tools like Visio) into Bizagi?
I have been using Bizagi with a major project for a state government agency for about four years now. It is pretty straightforward to load in files that are BPMN 2.0 compliant. The option to load V...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Visio?
The pricing is reasonable now. Whereas before, I had used it when it was paid for by my work, but then as I moved to different projects, I wasn't paying $2,000 to have it. Visio is supplied by the ...
What needs improvement with Visio?
I would have said the pricing, but the pricing is fine now, so it's a good tool and a powerful one. When you know how to use it, it's very intuitive. People who don't know how to use it might want ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture
Microsoft Visio
 

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.
Thomas College, Hamburg Port Authority, Portigon AG, Conseil G_n_ral du d_partement des Hautes-Alpes, AAA Auto a. s., Commonwealth Financial Network, ICA, Abu Dhabi National Energy Company
Find out what your peers are saying about Visio vs. erwin Evolve and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.