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ARIS Architect and Designer vs Visio comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 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

ARIS Architect and Designer
Ranking in Business Process Design
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Visio
Ranking in Business Process Design
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Mind Mapping Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of ARIS Architect and Designer is 0.9%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Visio is 12.5%, up from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Visio12.5%
ARIS Architect and Designer0.9%
Other86.6%
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Angie Ibrahim Eissa - PeerSpot reviewer
Utilizing advanced features to optimize and improve process modeling capabilities
ARIS Architect and Designer needs to improve its cloud version reliability, as I experienced data corruption that reverted diagrams to earlier versions. This issue, especially with large-scale diagrams, led to significant inconvenience due to the lack of partial data restoration capability. Additionally, an academic license would be beneficial to accommodate educational purposes.
Osama Nabih - PeerSpot reviewer
Has helped me communicate business processes clearly and improve documentation efficiency
The customer service experience rates a seven. It's very difficult to find the right person. When you have an issue and open a ticket, sometimes the wrong persons answer and don't know the solution. They shift you from one person to another and sometimes it takes weeks to find a solution for a problem. It happened with me more than one time. Sometimes the answer is misleading. For example, we had an issue in Enterprise Group in KSA, and we raised a ticket with Microsoft. They sent us a document of 170 pages with possible root causes and solutions. The cost to deploy this 170-page solution was too high and the needed time was months. It was almost not an answer. If they don't give me a specific reason, they haven't replied to my question. We neglected the document from Microsoft and started deep diving and finally found the solution ourselves.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the product for modeling, conducting process checks, doing process flow, running, and analyzing the report."
"One of the most valuable features is how user-friendly ARIS is, compared to other BPM tools. This tool has very diverse types of assets available. ARIS also has a lot of customizable options, different model types, object types, a number of attributes, and a lot of customization is possible. In comparison, Signavio is very limited in terms of model types and object types. So these customizations ARIS offers are really valuable to any client who wants to create a BPM repository."
"I would rate the solution overall a ten out of ten."
"The user interface is easy to work with."
"The support team is very responsive."
"One of the standout features for me is its synchronization to a publication server. It makes sharing diagrams and links with non-users easy."
"It's really fast. It's much faster compared to Enterprise Architect."
"Its user interface is highly regarded, especially when compared with Visual Paradigm."
"If you are a knowledgeable individual, the initial setup isn't too difficult."
"The fact that you could program in VBA is most valuable."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of Visio is diagram creation. If you have a presentation, you can create your data model using Visio."
"Visio has improved our organization through an essential collaboration with the other Microsoft applications like SharePoint and Excel. So basically in the earlier days, what used to happen, a majority of the organization captured all the as-is process, the time and motion data in the form of Excel and then they used to create process diagrams using other freeware applications. Collaboration allows easy and convenient sharing with other stakeholders, that is really helpful with Visio."
"It is very easy for people to start using this tool, and we can import Visio templates that are already published by vendors such as Azure without any issue."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature is the set of diagramming tools."
 

Cons

"Sometimes we feel that the designer needs more usability. I understand that the web module or the cloud version is much more user-friendly and easier to work on compared to the client that we download."
"Even with a formal modeling language, users can still draw freely and make a bit of a mess in your repository. It should also improve usability."
"This product could be improved by lowering the licensing cost. More organizations could use ARIS if they slashed the licensing costs even a little bit."
"You can have a collaboration feature, but it's necessary to have ARIS Connect which is a separate, costly product."
"The simulation part still has some way to go. It's a good feature, and it's something that other vendors don't have right now, but it can still be improved. Some features are needed in ARIS Architect, so advanced users can do things through drag-and-drop functionality."
"The support team takes a long time to respond to our queries."
"The product is not flexible."
"The customer service of ARIS Architect and Designer was disappointing. It took forty days to conclude that partial data restoration was not possible, and it was suggested that the data might have been accidentally deleted, despite evidence to the contrary."
"I cannot say anything that needs improvement in Visio; it was quite user-friendly, but I think the organization may have found it costly."
"There could be better integration between Visio and Word, especially when it comes to importing graphics from the one to the other."
"An area for improvement in Visio is pricing. It's a costly tool for my company because it only uses Visio occasionally."
"It's not the easiest software to use. It's not user-friendly out-of-the-box."
"The solution should have better integration capabilities with MacOS and Linux."
"I would like to be able to present diagrams in multiple ways, such as a Swimlane diagram."
"Its support team could be well-equipped with the required information."
"It is not flexible in terms of functions and modeling deliverables. When you speak of processes, the program has to describe the activities and the deliverables. You have to tell your robots how to deal with and input something, and you should have something more flexible from this point of view."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is a little bit expensive."
"The product is expensive."
"The licenses are very costly. I've seen many people who are hesitant or not able to use ARIS Suite just because of the license cost. Even though they like all the functionalities and understand the value of everything ARIS provides, they aren't able to implement it."
"Many customers find the licensing configuration confusing. There are many different sub-details in the licensing, making it very difficult for us to understand what we are buying and what we are using with what."
"It's not the cheapest product, but it's extremely valuable."
"It has a lower price point than the competition."
"We pay annually for the Visio license and it is expensive."
"The product is expensive, but it is cheaper if you buy it as a part of a bundle or an enterprise-level agreement."
"There is a licensing fee, but it is fairly priced."
"We're in a Visio plan that is like $15 a month per user. At the moment, it is just the standard licensing fees that I'm aware of."
"We probably have an M-365 E3 license."
"While I don't recall the exact price I do recall that it was quite high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Insurance Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with ARIS Architect and Designer?
Sometimes we feel that the designer needs more usability. I understand that the web module or the cloud version is much more user-friendly and easier to work on compared to the client that we downl...
What is your primary use case for ARIS Architect and Designer?
The type of ARIS platform we use is on premise. It is not ARIS Cloud. We use ARIS Architect and Designer for process modeling, EPC, mostly, and we do not use ARIS BPA or Risk and Compliance Manager...
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 do you like most about Visio?
The diagrams Visio creates are quite impressive in the sense that we can cooperate with more colleagues in one task and see the flow of the process.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Visio?
One of the main problems with Visio is its licensing options and associated issues, which lead to discussions about the price with a Microsoft representative. If asked to rate the price, I would gi...
 

Also Known As

ARIS Architect & Designer, ARIS Architect, ARIS Designer
Microsoft Visio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tesco, Weifu, Airbus, Siemens, Proximus, Alicorp, Sekerbank, Bancor, Philips,Sky, Emirates NBD, Dubai Municipality, Suva, U.S. Army, Australia Post, Westfalen Weser Energie - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as the market leader for process excellence with more than 30 years of experience in the market, 10 million users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.
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 ARIS Architect and Designer vs. Visio and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,408 professionals have used our research since 2012.