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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 product is easy to use and well-structured for the integrations we need it to make."
"This product is very strong in terms of the meta-model because you can customize a lot according to the business plan."
"Avolution ABACUS allows for flexible enterprise architecture analysis."
"The portfolio management is really good, and the dashboard and the reports for the end-to-end impact analysis are really good."
"It's more than just an enterprise architecture tool as it has a lot of nice features, e.g. messaging, simulation, etc."
"For what it does it is very good and a reasonable price."
"It is a great tool for helping you understand what you really want to develop in an immature EA practice, providing a lot of flexibility in meeting a client stage and serving as an excellent early development tool."
"There are plenty of features available such as the ability to test applications for issues and a user-friendly dashboard."
"The most valuable features are the resource management, the time sheet entry and usage, and the financial planning. With our projects, we primarily focus on resource assignments, as far as determining the actual forecast and actuals of our projects. A lot of it is based off of the resources utilized on those projects. The time based helps us capture the actuals. The amount of time people are spending on working on their project tasks. Because they've built this into the schedule, so we can build the forecast. With financial planning, we're able to look back on what our variance is and if there is anything between the scheduled forecasted hours, dollars against the actual hours, and the costs that they utilize."
"We really like the tool and a lot of the possibilities that are there."
"It has helped improve governance, mostly. People want to know where their money's going. Projects sponsors need to know what we're spending money on and what our burn rate is. Planview can give that to you straightaway."
"The solution view into resource capacity and availability helps us to manage work."
"The biggest impact has been getting all these global groups into one space so we can even have intelligent conversations about what are we trying to accomplish. Before, it was just different regions doing whatever. Now, we're all talking the same language, and that's good."
"Now, we have a full view of projects, allocations, and effort to deliver our portfolio projects."
"Planview has helped connect funding and strategic outcomes with work execution. That is the key use that we have for it. We use it to validate the work that we're doing and the funding that we need. The difference between the previous version and current version for us would be the ICPM and the way it gives us different scenarios. We can go in and build that out."
"I like that it's an enterprise environment. I can look across everything that's going on and have a sense of what is going on within the organization."
 

Cons

"In the future, there could be improvements in integration and enhancements."
"Having more control over page size is lacking in this product. Print utilization also needs to be improved."
"This solution needs to improve resource usage because it has a heavy browser. It is easy to use, but it takes time to load and to run other programs."
"Based on my experience, this is not a product that I recommend at the moment."
"The tool doesn't have any intelligence built in. We have to design the dashboards ourselves, which is a challenge because we have to depend on the vendor for customizations."
"The company needs to update the UML version they are using for the product as it is quite old."
"For some of the functionality, it might be a little complicated for people getting started."
"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."
"It is a bit of a rigid system."
"Its ability to create summary reports across multiple projects is very limited. In terms of the out-of-the-box reporting for summary reports, the reporting that we typically leverage is around forecasting for resources, timesheets, and actuals, and just looking at what is the capacity. There is no real summary of what work is being done and how work is being accomplished. So, what we typically do is that we get a copy of the data files from Enterprise One daily, and then we have a team that manages the data mod outside of Enterprise One. They use data from Enterprise One as well as other additional sources to provide the reporting that we share with the management. So, we leverage a lot of Enterprise One data for reporting, but we don't use the reporting capabilities within Enterprise One. So, reporting can be improved, and they could help us make more customized reporting. I know it is very configurable out of the box, but we have to leverage an outside data mod that pulls in a lot of data from Enterprise One. So, the reporting function, and being able to customize reports, is the area that could be very beneficial."
"We are not very happy with the customer service. This is one of our main pain points. It doesn't cover the entirety of customer service, as there are reps who are really great and we've had good experiences. Many times, we've had people give us attitude, there was a delay in the response, or just a lack of interest. This got to the point where if there was a problem, we would rather try to solve it ourselves then call customer support."
"We have some data exports. They're not even live app integrations. They're just data exports that run with our SAP instance. They either fail, hang up, or aren't configured correctly to operate."
"I think some of the administrative aspects of it could be a little easier, especially when it comes to designing reports. The reporting coming out of it could be a little bit better."
"Sometimes within the application, when you pull a report, it takes awhile performance-wise for the reports to pull up."
"The scheduling's kind of clunky in terms of its ability for us to see what stage work is at. They could have done better with that."
"Some of the out-of-the-box reporting is not immediately useful and although it can be configured or customized, there are still improvements that can be made."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is competitive. It is not chump change. I am just using the studio version. I am not using the full enterprise version, which would probably cost me three times more for single-use, but it gives a lot more capability and analysis. It is server-based as well, and it is reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other tools. There are other tools that have other sorts of capabilities, but in order to use them, you'd really have to have like 50 users for the price to become justifiable."
"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."
"The solution's pricing is not an issue."
"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"
"The cost of Avolution ABACUS is reasonable, given the features they offer in comparison to other tools."
"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."
"Our licensing costs are probably $150,000 to $180,000 a year with 270 licenses total."
"I don't think we have necessarily purchased everything that I would have liked to have seen."
"We overbought our licenses. We looked at our needs three to four years down the road and tried based our contract on that. However, we were over aggressive. We use about a third of the licenses that we have. We're looking to adjust the makeup so we can start utilizing the amount of money that we are spending. Right now, we're overspending, and my organization is not seeing the value in Planview because we are paying so much for licenses that we're not using."
"The cost of other pieces and integrating them in needs improvement."
"In the time that I've used it, we've doubled up the amount of dollars on our intended projects."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $50,000 USD annually."
"The licensing part is a bit costly in comparison with the other available PPM tools."
"Our licensing costs are about a quarter of a million dollars per year."
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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.
890,124 professionals have used our research since 2012.