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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 think Bizagi is a powerful software or tool for organization, but Bonita is user-friendly and easy-to-use — easier to use for development."
"We use the tool to validate and give access to the users. It is for access management."
"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."
"Its user-friendliness, along with the availability of comprehensive and clear documentation on the website is the most valuable."
"Customer Service: Very good, also the commercial team !Technical Support: Perfect ! and the community is a great help also"
"The most valuable features of Bonita are the connectors, detailed documentation, and web applications."
"IBM BPM's most valuable features are its speed in implementing and providing any changes."
"It's a solid product. It covers most of the pain points for clients."
"Our organization has improved by using IBM BPM because our development time has reduced and connectivity improved."
"It is an on-premises solution that helped us automate business processes like onboarding customers, loan management, loan approval, and leave approval."
"With the tester coach wherein you can interact with the interface while you're designing the process."
"This is one of the best tools to support the business and the way we work, and the numerous processes we need to implement."
"It provides a very robust environment to build an integration framework or workflow patterns that we have. A lot of changes or modifications have been made to this solution over the past few years. The features that they have added this time have helped developers like us to work on the developmental environment and leverage all the capabilities of the tool. This is what I like about this solution."
"The Process Portal provides access to most heritage capabilities and introduces many new features, such as a mobile-ready user interface, the ability to edit and share saved searches, and support for federated environments."
 

Cons

"The price is good, but I do not like the process instance annual quantity pricing base used today."
"Automation in vacation of a human resources replacement would be a good improvement in the product."
"The documentation and examples definitely could be enhanced."
"There is a need for more components in the library and additional customization options for these components."
"At times Bonita BPM Studio crashes, intermittently."
"Installation could be made easier."
"The menus likely would be more intuitive if read in French. Things seem to be under strange headings at times."
"Installation could be made easier. I would like to see more automated processes."
"Our developers are complaining that it's too complex to maintain."
"IBM BPM is stable, but sometimes there are issues with the server."
"Yes, unfortunately the event manager component of Lombardi didn’t scale well, so that became our bottleneck."
"Process Server is no more available than new products out there, but in general IBM has a high cost and complex setup."
"It's a bit technical, related to the instance of migrations. It's a tough thing to handle, in every new release, in every upgrade, that we have to do things in the applications or in the product."
"The engine itself tends to accumulate a lot of data that needs to be cleaned up, and that's the kind of thing that keeps it from, in some scenarios, scaling as much as it needs to. And then, when you're building solutions, if you're not careful to keep the screens from being associated with too much data, if you're going to just do things the way that a lot of people would just assume that they can do, without having experience of having made those mistakes before, it will accumulate a lot of data, and that will cause it to perform very badly."
"We have been experiencing bad performance and instability."
"This is technology, and there's always room for improvement. It would be better to have a single solution. Trying to have an overview in terms of this solution brings together the concepts of BPM processes, customer journeys, and an automation part for KPIs. All of this working together and coming up with a single solution with privacy is more commercial than anything else."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is acceptable. Pricing is yearly."
"The price is fair for what we are using the solution for."
"I believe this is a very good financial choice."
"The Enterprise edition is very expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The Community Edition comes free of charge."
"Price to service ratio with Bonita BPM is good."
"have installed the image of Bonita BPM on Amazon AWS and there is just one option to use and pay for."
"I think it's a reasonably priced tool, but it's important to consider which customers should buy this solution. It's designed for enterprise customers, not small ones."
"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"I already compared some solutions related to business process management, and I saw that the cost of IBM BPM is more expensive compared with that of Camunda, for example."
"Due to its extensive features and capabilities, the product pricing is more aligned with medium—to large enterprises."
"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."
"The cloud and license of the subscription model for IBM BPM can be complex. There are a lot of alternatives to choose from."
"The solution is expensive since it is an enterprise application."
"The pricing is quite high, I would rate it two out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
23%
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.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.