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IBM BPM vs Temporal comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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

IBM BPM
Ranking in Process Automation
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (8th), Application Infrastructure (8th)
Temporal
Ranking in Process Automation
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 6.9%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Temporal is 6.4%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Kamran - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient processes and intuitive workflow with many valuable features
You will have access to make any needed changes. Additionally, the review will be published on PeerSpot.com in written or audio format, available to other people. You can stay anonymous if you wish. Notifications and the use of the review are subject to PeerSpot's terms of use, which you can find at PeerSpot.com/TOS. I would give the solution an overall rating of ten out of ten points.
AbhishekDash - PeerSpot reviewer
Orchestrates infrastructure tasks like deployment, deletion, and management
Temporal focus on developers rather than business users. In contrast to older workflow orchestration engines like Camunda, which are more business-oriented and strongly emphasize UI and workflow authoring, Temporal is geared toward developers. It provides extensive capabilities for building complex workflows. A standout feature of Temporal is its handling of long-running workflows, a significant advantage over many other solutions. Temporal excels in managing distributed transactions and application state durability, especially in microservice environments where transactions might fail due to network issues. Temporal simplifies these challenges by managing retries, fail-safes, and circuit breakers. As a result, developers don't need to implement these features manually; Temporal handles them implicitly, though it also allows for tuning based on specific needs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Responsive Portal + Process Federation Server. This set of solutions offers a unified worklist to our customers."
"The most valuable feature of IBM BPM is the low code design, and ease of maintenance. Additionally, the integration is good and easy to do."
"IBM BPM and Automation Anywhere working together automate manual tasks with a reduction in FTEs, creating about a 30% reduction in FTEs by automating processes."
"The integration capabilities of IBM BPM are excellent."
"It continues to keep up with the changing needs of the business. That is the strong value proposition of BPM. It's not a one-time automation."
"We use the solution to develop and deliver products."
"The platform's most valuable features are its process automation capabilities and its ability to provide a comprehensive view of business operations."
"With the Process Center, I can go to one place and view what all the environments are doing."
"We like the fact that the whole process is durable, which is very useful to us."
"What I like best about the tool is that it's easy to install, especially since it uses JavaScript. It's also easy to set up with Docker, and the documentation is easy to understand."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to manage and automate workflows without manual intervention efficiently."
"What I like best about Temporal is its durable execution, which means you don't need to write many boilerplate code for critical pieces, especially for retries. It also has great observability and a nice dashboard to see issues without digging into logs. The interface for viewing activities is excellent, with good tracing that shows how long activities took and what ran, making it almost perfect for debugging."
"When some jobs take a lot of time and fail midway, the solution’s retry feature automatically causes them to retry."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Temporal focus on developers rather than business users."
"Temporal allows retryability for different workflows whenever they fail. It helps ensure idempotence and that things get done."
 

Cons

"One suggestion for IBM BPM is to provide better integration between their products, such as DataCap, which we use for scanning. Although the new CP4BA offers offline capabilities, not everyone is on CP4BA, so enhanced integration for those on older versions would be beneficial."
"There is room for improvement in the stability."
"We would like better performance and more ​visibility on each step of the tool.​"
"Integration with web services, especially in the standard version of the product."
"There is a lot of room for improvement of the dashboards."
"The analysis reports could be much better."
"We still have a couple of issues that we are working on right now with stability. Mostly on the configuration side of the tool, and it has been about a month that we have been working to stabilize the platform.​"
"I suggest establishing a developer forum for better communication and issue resolution. Also, the administration panel could be improved for task management."
"There are areas where Temporal could improve. For instance, calling multiple microservices with Temporal introduces latency due to workflow registration and analytics overhead."
"I don't like the limitations on data flow, particularly the difficulty of passing large amounts of data between different activities."
"Developers often mention the desire for a more intuitive visualization of workflow states."
"Temporal could be improved by making it more user-friendly for beginners and non-technical staff, ensuring easier integration and usability across different use cases."
"Temporal doesn't have built-in data storage to store the state of the ongoing execution."
"Temporal's debugging is a bit complex."
"Temporal images aren’t FIPS compliant, and we have to be FIPS compliant."
"One issue is that we don't have enough resources in the community to get answers when we face problems. We once had a cross-cluster persistence issue, which we solved using different keys. I think Temporal is good right now, but I'm part of the community and will let you know if I think of any improvements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Due to its extensive features and capabilities, the product pricing is more aligned with medium—to large enterprises."
"We have a yearly licensing model. It is not expensive. There are no addition costs to the standard license."
"The price of the solution is fair for an enterprise solution that has both cloud and on-premise deployments and when comparing to competitors. Recently IBM has introduced Cloud Pak which allows for more flexible licensing options for automation and other features."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"I already compared some solutions related to business process management, and I saw that the cost of IBM BPM is more expensive compared with that of Camunda, for example."
"It's expensive. All software is always extremely high. The manufacturing cost that we have compared to the selling cost, it's not like you're building a house or building a car. But putting that aside, considering that it's expensive, it's a lot of money. If you compare it with some of the other alternatives in the market, it's a similar price. For instance, if you compare it with Pegasystems, it's a similar price."
"The pricing is quite high, I would rate it two out of five."
"IBM could improve the price. It is far too expensive."
"The tool is open source under the MIT license, so there are no hidden fees. You can freely use everything on their GitHub and Docker images."
"Temporal is a free, open-source tool."
"It is worth the price."
"The savings weren't as big as we initially expected, but they were pretty great from a developer's perspective."
"Temporal is open-source and free to use, which is great. We didn't have to pay for any premium features."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
18%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Temporal?
Temporal OSS is expensive in infrastructure, but it brings back the reliability that companies need.
What needs improvement with Temporal?
The actual user interface is still in its early stages. It’s very basic. Users don’t really have a complex permission model yet. Users don’t really have ways to automate things like, for example, p...
What is your primary use case for Temporal?
We [my company] use it to run a large workload. We have a set of security scans we want to perform, and we distribute them over a full day, that’s over 24 hours. We use it to orchestrate all the st...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
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Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. Temporal and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.