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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)
30th
Ranking in Process Automation
27th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (18th)
IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
5th
Ranking in Process Automation
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Bonita is 1.8%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM BPM is 4.1%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM BPM4.1%
Bonita1.8%
Other94.1%
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

"I find process management and user interface designing the most valuable features."
"Of the three BPM vendors I evaluated, Bonita was the best in creating forms, ease of customization of forms, and versatility of supported platforms, and it is the only BPM platform that I've seen so far that allows for versioning of artifacts."
"It is a great product that is powerful in developing applications."
"The solution is stable. Even the older versions are stable."
"It is more than helpful, it is worth the effort of learning to better our company."
"Our lead generation system involves both automated and human tasks. By centralizing the workflow to our internal Bonita BPM system, we have improved the conversion rate (leads to customers) and lowered the number of leads dropped."
"I really enjoy using the workflow management tool."
"This product is very easy-to-use and user-friendly."
"Responsive Portal + Process Federation Server. This set of solutions offers a unified worklist to our customers."
"It excels at analytics. It provides visibility across all activities of a company's processes and performance."
"Agility is the key. It gives our customers a faster way to be able to implement processes, get ownership of task, visibility into a process."
"Good user interface and good add option."
"Provides the power to understand and automate processes."
"We will be hitting over a million transactions a day by the end of the year, so it is pretty successful."
"The integration and design are valuable features."
"We are receiving good assistance from the technical support."
 

Cons

"There could be an improvement in IoT connectivity."
"That said, creating custom connectors for 3rd party applications and APIs is still a challenging task."
"The price is good, but I do not like the process instance annual quantity pricing base used today."
"It would be nice to have a wizard to help walk through the development process and create a backbone."
"The menus likely would be more intuitive if read in French. Things seem to be under strange headings at times."
"There is a considerable learning curve."
"At times Bonita BPM Studio crashes, intermittently."
"There could be an improvement in IoT connectivity."
"I would like to see a lot more case studies."
"I believe that if the license were cheaper, it would have a greater impact."
"All our clients are changing to microservice and cloud service. However, BPM does not have a solution for microservice and cloud service."
"IBM BPM uses JavaScript as a programming language for the server-side. I don’t know why it’s not Java, as it’s more powerful and the JavaScript part is translated into Java anyway."
"Its installation is complex, especially in the new version for business automation, and it could be improved."
"The initial setup was complex."
"Every time we tried to meet to do some upgrade of a version of the solution, it was a lot of work; even minor upgrades always required a significant amount of work in intensities and trials."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am using the free version of Bonita."
"We are using the Community Version, which can be used free of charge."
"Licensing cost for the Enterprise edition comes out to be around 40,000 a year. There is also a Community edition, which is free. Some customers can go for the Community edition, but some of them require the Enterprise edition. Big companies go for the Enterprise edition, which comes with a lot of additional features such as a mobile app."
"I believe this is a very good financial choice."
"The product is not cheaper, not costlier; it is reasonable. Bonita’s license is very flexible, with options to meet the needs of different customers and clients. Previously, it was less flexible, but now, many different licensing options are available."
"The Enterprise edition is very expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The Community Edition comes free of charge."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"Price wise, IBM BPM is cheaper than other similar solutions and has excellent pricing."
"Due to its extensive features and capabilities, the product pricing is more aligned with medium—to large enterprises."
"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."
"​We have definitely seen ROI. When we first kicked it off, we said it had to pay for itself within three years, and it did."
"When considering the features of the solution the price is expensive compared to competitors."
"The product is expensive considering the hardware and software costs."
"The cloud and license of the subscription model for IBM BPM can be complex. There are a lot of alternatives to choose from."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

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.
What needs improvement with IBM BPM?
There are negative aspects, such as IBM BPM being quite heavy and not lightweight, and the licensing cost is higher, which has caused some companies to shift away. IBM BPM is complicated to install...
 

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: April 2026.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.