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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
12th
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
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Mind Mapping Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of ARIS Architect and Designer is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Visio is 11.7%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Visio11.7%
ARIS Architect and Designer0.9%
Other87.4%
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

"I would rate the solution overall a ten out of ten."
"The most important feature is ARIS's ability to turn a process design into data to analyze anything you want. For example, we have some analysis reports in ARIS that can guide us when we want to change a system. It shows us how this change will affect all of the organization's processes."
"The support team is very responsive."
"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."
"One of the standout features for me is its synchronization to a publication server. It makes sharing diagrams and links with non-users easy."
"Its user interface is highly regarded, especially when compared with Visual Paradigm."
"The user interface is easy to work with."
"It is suitable for banks, insurance companies, public administration, etc. The method is very adaptable and can be applied independently of the business."
"It is a useful tool to map data flows, network objects, and computer science technology and show to clients. It does what I need it to do. It's a tool I've used the longest, so I know it the best, and that's probably the claim to fame."
"Process modeling is a good feature."
"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."
"It's a very meat and potatoes type of product and isn't overly designed. It's very easy to find your way through the solution, as it's not too complicated."
"It's very agile and user friendly with a lot of templates."
"The thing I like most about Visio is the stencils. As the product has matured over time, it comes with more stencils and objects that you can just pick out of the menu and go with."
"Visio makes it easy to communicate your ideas from several areas of your imagination across several domains."
"On the scalability front, the aspect of increasing the number of endpoints is relatively easy to handle."
 

Cons

"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."
"Sometimes, it's not easy to convince customers to use this methodology because it's a bit rigid."
"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."
"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."
"The product is not flexible."
"The support team takes a long time to respond to our queries."
"We face problems when the product's capacity is increased."
"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."
"Something that needs to improve, is the interface interaction with other tools."
"It is a visualization tool, so database visualization is pretty static in it. They haven't moved the ERDs very well. They haven't adopted any real visualization like what you have in Hackolade for JSON or other data patterns. It has none of that. If you go onto broader patterns, you can actually label and integrate with a data set, if you want, for Visio, but it's very clunky and very difficult for me to assign that to another user. I can't assign it to a junior or a documenter. They really haven't cleaned up and made their tools simpler to use when linking to data, which is primarily what you're trying to do."
"The solution should have better integration capabilities with MacOS and Linux."
"Visio's scalability could be improved. I had a license through my school and it would have been great to be able to collaborate with more people."
"It's not the easiest software to use. It's not user-friendly out-of-the-box."
"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."
"The product only functions well professionally, with adding additional software for configuration."
"The tools panel at the top, et cetera, seems really complicated."
 

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."
"We have about 10 to 15 people with Visio licenses in my company, but I wasn't involved in the direct negotiation of the prices since this was taken care of by my administrative office."
"You can purchase a corporate license for more users to use the solution. We have purchased a stand-alone license and which could be cheaper."
"We have an enterprise license. I'm not sure what the cost is."
"It's not the cheapest product, but it's extremely valuable."
"The solution is expensive. The solution does come bundled in other packages."
"The product is inexpensive if you already have Microsoft products in your environment. The license encompasses all the required services."
"Our license for Visio is including with the Office 365 subscription."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
10%
Insurance Company
7%
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.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.