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Avolution ABACUS vs Planview Portfolios 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

Avolution ABACUS
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Planview Portfolios
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Project Portfolio Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.2%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Planview Portfolios is 2.6%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Planview Portfolios2.6%
Avolution ABACUS3.2%
Other94.2%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

JoseCamacho - PeerSpot reviewer
Freelancer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Supports evaluating architecture through corporate objectives
I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommendations I conduct evaluations to identify potential improvements and make recommendations, forming a…
Monabi Kingsley - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at 3M
Centralized planning has improved resource visibility and supports data‑driven financial decisions
The best features Planview Portfolios offers are visibility enhancement, robust system performance, and comprehensive resource management. This enhanced visibility in Planview Portfolios ensures that all users can easily track progress, identify bottlenecks, and make informed decisions to optimize workflow efficiency. When discussing robust system performance, the system's robust performance in meeting our various work requirements effectively and efficiently stands out. It is very stable and reliable, contributing to a seamless user experience, which enables users to focus on their tasks without disruptions. I also love the financial breakdown, planning and prioritization, and attribute collection on projects in Planview Portfolios. Planview Portfolios has positively impacted my organization since I started using it. It has enabled me to gain insights into the full scope of work consuming resources. I am able to know where the resources are being consumed more, especially which resources are consuming the most. I have been able to leverage resources management and resource time reporting, which enabled the generation of $90 million in annual revenue through labor billing to customers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's implementation is straightforward as everything is readily available. For instance, setting up a portal is seamless, allowing easy publishing and access to data. However, integrating with other tools like BI, Power BI, or Grafana requires setting up pipelines between them."
"The most valuable feature is that it has a customizable meta-model, which is key."
"It's a good product with a complete set of templates, frameworks, and notations."
"If you want a data model of flexibility and catalog scalability I would recommend it from that perspective."
"Scalable and stable tool for roadmapping and modeling, with a good dashboard, end-to-end impact analysis, and portfolio management."
"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the traceability, you can trace any object to the other."
"This product is very strong in terms of the meta-model because you can customize a lot according to the business plan."
"I have used other PPM tools before, but I found Planview Enterprise to really be the best-in-class for project and portfolio management practices."
"Troux has an easily extensible meta model and UI which other tools don't have."
"We can view a project both at the top level and dig into the particularities. It's given us greater visibility into the work itself."
"When it comes to managing project plans, Enterprise One is awesome at enabling us to see what stage work is at."
"With the lifecycles, it helps us step through our processes easier. We'll take a process and create it in Visio, then we'll go and implemented in Planview. Anytime that we have to do a new process, this is what we use. We just step it through the lifecycles and the configure screens are very easy to use. The fields that you need are easy to use."
"We've brought our portfolio altogether. We have had multiple ways of reporting out what our portfolio is, whether it's in Excel, Word, or in different places. We brought all of our projects together in one place. That has worked out well for us. We've been able to manage the work on Gantt charts and our resources better. The big thing for us on research and development is around managing people's time, on which projects they are working on, and how much effort does it take to launch our projects."
"The tool does have the potential to impact our organizational delivery."
"Enterprise One provides end-to-end work management for the full spectrum of types of work in one tool. It affects our project management because our project management uses Planview to monitor their daily work. Every night it loads our SAP system and then they monitor the daily work. They use Planview as a full planning and monitoring tool."
 

Cons

"There are probably some things that Avolution could add to the product to enhance it and keep up with what some other products are introducing."
"Based on my experience, this is not a product that I recommend at the moment."
"While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product."
"They should take more initiative to implement things that competing products have already come out with."
"In the future, there could be improvements in integration and enhancements."
"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."
"It needs more flexible analysis parameters and more capability as a BPM tool and doing BPM simulation, compared with Bonita BPM or Bizagi."
"Avolution ABACUS has the drawback of needing data filtering at the development level, unlike some tools that offer filtering at deployment. Two areas where Avolution ABACUS could be improved are regional support and flexibility in model selection. Sometimes, it's challenging to access support or updates in certain regions, which can slow down progress. Additionally, it would be beneficial if the tool allowed more flexibility in selecting multiple models within a single unit."
"The solution needs to be better at accepting new ideas for upcoming releases."
"The solution needs to be better at accepting new ideas for upcoming releases."
"Improvement in integration should be prioritized, and flexibility with out-of-the-box reporting should also be enhanced."
"We have almost like a third-party group who has to do a lot of our configurations. It's a bit painful for us anytime we want to make a change. The other issue is that we have different groups all in the same instance. So, if one group wants to make a change, it impacts everyone. Then, we all have to come together, to say, "Yes, we approve this change, or no, we do not." Thus, it has not been as flexible for us."
"We have had some difficulties with trying to get the financial component of it to work the way that we want it to."
"Our version is definitely set up a bit more waterfall world. It would be better if some of the agile features were more in the standard product."
"The outcome management and work resource management in terms of teams needs improvement. Team handling, how team requirements are generated, and how the resource managers can work with teams needs to be improved."
"The only area that I can see currently needing improvement is just the modernization of the look and feel of it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm paying on a yearly basis. I don't know whether it's a highly expensive tool or not. I'm getting a single version of it, and I don't have the enterprise part on it because I don't need the server component, and I don't need a web browser component. My estimate would be that it's a very reasonably priced tool given that you don't need to have licenses with everyone in order to get the information and the decision support capabilities out of the tool. You use the enterprise edition on top of the studio, which is the heart of the tool. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"The solution's pricing is not an issue."
"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."
"My company makes annual payments toward the licensing costs of the solution. Considering the product's capabilities, its prices are very reasonable."
"It is expensive."
"To get a fairly extensive license for Enterprise Architects from Spark is approximately US $400.00, maybe less, but with Avolution Abacus it was approximately US $2000.00 per year, and that includes maintenance with the Abacus tool."
"The cost of Avolution ABACUS is reasonable, given the features they offer in comparison to other tools."
"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"
"Our licensing fees are approximately $50,000 USD annually."
"Planview is a little pricey. From a licensing perspective, for just a simple timesheet user who does nothing in the system but reports time, the licensing is a little pricey, but you have to look at it from what it is that you get. We have 6,000 users, and I don't manage the system at all. I just have to do add them to the system. The servers, maintenance, OS levels, security patching for the OS, and all other things are not something that we maintain. So, you have to look at it from an operational perspective. It is not just the product itself. A holistic view has to be taken when you look at the product and how you're going to support it. I would have to hire an entire operation staff to bring it in-house, and at the end of the day, that might cost me more."
"With the costs, they were very understanding. Knowing that we were an existing customer, they were very much willing to work with us to make sure that we were able to transition to Enterprise One from PPM Pro."
"I think all in we are at $33,000 a year and that includes Projectplace and Planview. We used to have the integration to JIRA, but we don't pay for that anymore."
"We have unlimited licenses for all of our functionalities. Since we went global, we went with that model."
"The licensing part is a bit costly in comparison with the other available PPM tools."
"I don't think we have necessarily purchased everything that I would have liked to have seen."
"We have portfolio managers, resource managers, project managers, and time reporting licenses. These are the licenses that we have."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
7%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise66
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avolution ABACUS?
It's pricey compared to Essential, Deltek, or Essential Cloud. However, its diagramming capabilities and metamodel design make it worth it. But it's not for large user bases. It has modules for app...
What needs improvement with Avolution ABACUS?
While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product. It would be beneficial to have seminars or other met...
What is your primary use case for Avolution ABACUS?
I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommend...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Planview Portfolios?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that Planview Portfolios is one of the best and a very cost-effective tool.
What needs improvement with Planview Portfolios?
Planview Portfolios can be improved as the user interface defaults to the last opened portfolio, which can waste a lot of time loading a large portfolio if that is not what I need at that moment. J...
What is your primary use case for Planview Portfolios?
My main use case for Planview Portfolios is to ensure governance and decision auditability by incorporating embedded workflows, approval management, and key document retention supporting a single c...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Planview Enterprise One, Troux
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays
UPS, NatWest, Ingram Micro, Canadian Tire, Viessmann, Volvo, NASCO, UNESCO
Find out what your peers are saying about Avolution ABACUS vs. Planview Portfolios and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.