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IBM BPM vs WorkflowGen 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 Business Process Management (BPM)
5th
Ranking in Process Automation
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (7th)
WorkflowGen
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
39th
Ranking in Process Automation
41st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (27th), Rapid Application Development Software (32nd), Low-Code Development Platforms (36th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 4.0%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WorkflowGen is 1.0%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM BPM4.0%
WorkflowGen1.0%
Other95.0%
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Ateeq Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
Unit Head System Implementor at Allied Bank Limited
Automation platforms streamline processes and offer flexibility, but AI integration and version upgrades pose challenges
In the technology world, there is always room for improvement. Technologies evolve day by day, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence and generative AI models. Although IBM BPM is a substantial product, adopting and integrating new technologies quickly is not easy due to the migration and upgrade paths involved. Every time new versions are released, we face business and production challenges that make rapid adoption challenging. The main concern bothering me today regarding IBM BPM is the integration of AI components.
CO
SAP Solution Lead at Johnson & Johnson
Good for automatically triggering workflows, but needs to be more customizable
We use this product for many different reasons related to our business We use it a lot for creating workflows to transfer materials between plants, which is a signature part of what we do. The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically trigger the workflow. This solution needs to be…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would absolutely recommend this solution to others."
"BPM is one of the leading tools, if not the best BPM solution out there."
"It is efficient in reducing costs."
"Technical support is good. They are very responsive. It is usually me who takes more time to get back to them than they take to get back to me, which is good."
"Its dashboard is easy to use and very good. It allows us to customize."
"I think the best way it can be it improved, is to make it easier to install. It's a very complicated piece of software, and there are a lot of things you have to do to get it set up. It's not just running an installer. You install WebSphere. You install the BPM product, and there's a large host of other steps you have to do: run queries against the database, you have to manually configure a bunch of properties files for your environment. I think if they could streamline all that, so it wasn't a considerable effort to install, that would be very useful. Because from an engineering point of view, you want to spend as little time as possible actually installing a product."
"So far, the tool is fantastic."
"This solution is very stable."
"We use it a lot for creating workflows to transfer materials between plants, which is a signature part of what we do."
"Took few hours to build workflows with ready-to-use templates, so we had improved productivity."
"It’s easier, more controlled and automatized checks of the budget through this system."
 

Cons

"The engine itself tends to accumulate a lot of data that needs to be cleaned up, and that's the kind of thing that keeps it from, in some scenarios, scaling as much as it needs to. And then, when you're building solutions, if you're not careful to keep the screens from being associated with too much data, if you're going to just do things the way that a lot of people would just assume that they can do, without having experience of having made those mistakes before, it will accumulate a lot of data, and that will cause it to perform very badly."
"Yes, unfortunately the event manager component of Lombardi didn’t scale well, so that became our bottleneck."
"The options for customization could be improved. More customization using your own code would be beneficial."
"The engine itself tends to accumulate a lot of data that needs to be cleaned up, and that's the kind of thing that keeps it from, in some scenarios, scaling as much as it needs to."
"The constant switch between Eclipse and its web versions can be annoying and confusing."
"It might not be suitable for entry level clients because it comes with a huge number of modules for processing that at times might not be necessary for upcoming clients."
"More features for user management and dynamic role change."
"It is not user-friendly and requires a knowledgeable and skilled user to work with it."
"This solution needs to be more customizable."
"Yes, for email notification but it could also be with company network."
"The reports for users. The reports with more details; we have to generate them by the database."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 should provide more flexibility to connect with external systems, and there should be in-built services that can be used to integrate with other systems quickly."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"The cloud and license of the subscription model for IBM BPM can be complex. There are a lot of alternatives to choose from."
"I wish it was less expensive. I don't know why their pricing model is so high for a piece of software that could benefit so many. It just seems to me that they could have a lower cost, maybe with fewer features or whatever, but it should be possible to do a lower cost workflow software that uses the same interface and underlying engine but does not cost so much that you have to be a Fortune 50 company to buy it. It is annoying to me. There are a lot of solutions that IBM has that are really powerful but nobody can afford them. They know their business, but I still feel that there are a lot of customers who would benefit from this sort of thing. I don't know what this elitism is all about. I am sure they have people doing the money numbers, but it seems like you can make a lot more money by selling it to way more people for a little bit less."
"It gives us a good return on investment."
"We chose to purchase IBM BPM because it was bundled with the actual RPA program/solution that we decided to purchase. We decided to use Automation Anywhere tool (RPA), and it is was bundled with IBM BPM."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise72
No data available
 

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 needs improvement with IBM BPM?
There are negative aspects, such as IBM BPM being quite heavy and not lightweight, and the licensing cost is higher, which has caused some companies to shift away. IBM BPM is complicated to install...
Ask a question
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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
Comcast, Deloitte, Mitsui & Co Ltd, Sanofi Pasteur, Textron, XL Group. WorkflowGen accelerates business process adaptability in 70 countries for 500+ organizations and 1,000,000 users.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. WorkflowGen and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.