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Bonita vs IBM BPM 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

Bonita
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
31st
Ranking in Process Automation
31st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (16th)
IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
6th
Ranking in Process Automation
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Bonita is 2.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM BPM is 4.3%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM BPM4.3%
Bonita2.0%
Other93.7%
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Paparao Nadipineni - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at Evoke
A simple and lightweight college course automation system with third-party integrations
The initial setup is straightforward and can be completed with the environment within an hour. First, take the latest from the git repository and check the git code to the monitor studio and a bar file, a deployable Bonita archive file. Then, take that process to the Bonita server, running at runtime on another server. Finally, deploy and enable it by selecting the proper organization.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Flexible and drag-and-drop type of UI is very valuable. The integrations are also very good. You can build workflows very quickly, which is my favorite activity. By using the GUI, you can build the entire mechanism, notifications, and all this kind of stuff."
"This product is very easy-to-use and user-friendly."
"Compared to other products on the market, Bonita presents a pretty acceptable level of robustness."
"It is a great product that is powerful in developing applications."
"Bonita is simple and lightweight and is flexible to integrate with third-party systems. The UI is now flexible, whereas it was previously rigid. Any technology can be used as a frontend, including ReactJS, Angular, and others."
"The most valuable features of Bonita are the connectors, detailed documentation, and web applications. The documentation was useful because it is how I learned how to use it."
"Bonita is user-friendly."
"Its user-friendliness, along with the availability of comprehensive and clear documentation on the website is the most valuable."
"Its most valuable features are usability and integration with other IBM products."
"The system integration layer is valuable because this enables an organization to create a single point where all the key organizational master data is held in different IT applications across different functions, that can be accessed and updated."
"I rate the technical support a ten out of ten...The product's installation was easy."
"The most valuable feature of IBM BPM is the low code design, and ease of maintenance. Additionally, the integration is good and easy to do."
"Some of the features that I like the most are team management and process performance. They are both very useful and very powerful with regard to the workflow."
"Everything is coupled together and comes as one solution."
"The most valuable features are the integration capabilities - BPM can connect with almost any legacy or advanced system."
"Automation is the most valuable feature of IBM BPM."
 

Cons

"It would be nice to have a wizard to help walk through the development process and create a backbone."
"The dashboard has limited features."
"The community edition has limited module functionality. If they could release some of the functionality that's available in the enterprise edition that would be helpful to those learning to use the solution."
"There is a need for more components in the library and additional customization options for these components."
"The interface is advanced and quite good, but it could improve."
"The main issue with Bonita is that the workspace crashes sometimes."
"I would like to improve the product's load balancing."
"It is missing some important features that other products have."
"The product is extremely complex to use and administrate."
"It is a really powerful tool, but its entry price is so high, which makes it a very exclusive club for who gets to use it. The thing that seemed to be the most intolerable was that you could put lots and lots of users on it, and it worked fine, but if you put lots and lots of developers on it, it sure seemed to have challenges. The biggest challenge was the development because of the Eclipse tool. It just seemed like irrespective of the development team that you put together, whether it had 10 or 50 people, you would end up having to reboot the development server throughout the day when you concurrently had lots of people hammering on the system. The development server just got sluggish. This was true for every project I was on. Once you got more than about five people working on the system at the same time, it would just get slower and slower during development work, and the only way to fix it was to reboot the server. It became just like a routine. Sometimes, we would reboot at lunch or dinner time, which is silly. After the cloud instances started rolling out, I never saw that again. That was probably the one big advantage of the cloud version. Instead of using an independent Eclipse-based process development tool, we moved to web-based process and design. The web-based tool definitely had greater performance than the Eclipse-based tool. I never got onto another project after that with 50 people, so I don't know how the performance is when you get a large team on it, but it definitely seems that the cloud design tool was a massive improvement."
"Process versioning was tricky, not straightforward."
"IBM BPM is stable, but sometimes there are issues with the server."
"The major issue is the pricing, which is very high."
"One downside is that changing intermediate steps after you've finalized your flow can be challenging. Also, the integration with identity management could be easier. It would be helpful to have role-based access functions, allowing for specific custom models associated with certain streamlines in the IBM dashboard. Also, a simpler way to integrate some notation with other middleware platforms would be beneficial."
"Integration with web services, especially in the standard version of the product."
"The front end is not customised for a good user experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"have installed the image of Bonita BPM on Amazon AWS and there is just one option to use and pay for."
"The product's pricing is acceptable. Pricing is yearly."
"The Enterprise edition is very expensive."
"Price to service ratio with Bonita BPM is good."
"The Community Edition comes free of charge."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"I believe this is a very good financial choice."
"We are using the Community Version, which can be used free of charge."
"The price of the solution is fair for an enterprise solution that has both cloud and on-premise deployments and when comparing to competitors. Recently IBM has introduced Cloud Pak which allows for more flexible licensing options for automation and other features."
"It is pricey."
"IBM BPM cannot be considered a cheaply priced product. IBM BPM is a really expensive product compared to other companies. One needs to opt for the perpetual licensing model offered by IBM."
"The solution is expensive since it is an enterprise application."
"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."
"Licensing is managed by the client, but we know it is yearly. Camunda is relatively cheaper. There is not much difference in pricing of IBM and PEGA. For large licensing, there are discounts as well."
"It's expensive. All software is always extremely high. The manufacturing cost that we have compared to the selling cost, it's not like you're building a house or building a car. But putting that aside, considering that it's expensive, it's a lot of money. If you compare it with some of the other alternatives in the market, it's a similar price. For instance, if you compare it with Pegasystems, it's a similar price."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise72
 

Questions from the Community

How does Bonita compare with Camunda Platform?
One of the things we like best about Bonita is that you can create without coding - it is a low-code platform. With Bonita, you can build the entire mechanism using the GUI, it’s that simple. You c...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Bonita BPM
WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

With more than 1000 customers in 75 countries, and its ecosystem of more than 120,000 members, Bonitasoft is the largest provider of open-source Business Process Management, Low-code and Digital Transformation software worldwide.
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Bonita vs. IBM BPM and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.