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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
28th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (17th)
IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
5th
Ranking in Process Automation
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Bonita is 1.9%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM BPM is 4.1%, 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 BPM4.1%
Bonita1.9%
Other94.0%
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

"Process automation with Bonita BPM is really easy."
"We use the tool to validate and give access to the users. It is for access management."
"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."
"I find process management and user interface designing the most valuable features."
"Customer Service: Very good, also the commercial team !Technical Support: Perfect ! and the community is a great help also"
"This product is very easy-to-use and user-friendly."
"With Bonita BPM, you can run the process (as it will in the final stage) immediately after the design stage, giving you 100% control over the quality of your processes and flows."
"It is more than helpful, it is worth the effort of learning to better our company."
"Responsive Portal + Process Federation Server. This set of solutions offers a unified worklist to our customers."
"IBM BPM's best features include document sharing, management document creation, widget and barcode creation, and integration."
"Its workflow and integration with SAP are the most valuable features."
"The process creation."
"It is being able to see the process, and understanding what the process is versus having to bury it in code somewhere."
"It has reduced a lot of manual errors and processes."
"It has an elaborated way to explore the IBM BPM processes."
"IBM BPM is stable."
 

Cons

"Installation could be made easier. I would like to see more automated processes."
"I should be able to park the tasks that are within a process in a kind of container, and dynamically, a super admin should be able to connect these processes."
"Scalability of the Bonita BPM Community version is low."
"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."
"The solution is stable. However, we have experienced a few bugs."
"BPMN 2.0 notations are not all supported, would love to see them all coming in (e.g. complex gateway)."
"That said, creating custom connectors for 3rd party applications and APIs is still a challenging task."
"Bonita can improve by offering more flexibility. The developer does not receive the code of the application to modify it. Most of the other solutions I have used allow the developers to change or improve the code that is generated."
"We have had to use Mule as an alternative integration tool because it is more flexible than IBM BPM."
"The tool's workflow function is very strong."
"Import/export of attachments Transfer of attachments to/from JIRA"
"The debugging needs improvement. There is some confusion surrounding the debugging."
"The coaches and the user interface are the areas that can be improved a lot. It is good in terms of data processing, but the UI, scripting, and coaches are not very user-friendly and developer-friendly. Performance is always an issue. The scripting and the pattern that it uses are very tedious for new developers to understand, and it takes time to master it in depth. When comparing IBM BPM with IBM APN, a lot of things are provided out of the box in IBM APN. We don't have to write code or a Java connector to make a functionality work. It would be very helpful and time-saving for developers if IBM BPM is improved in this area to provide many functionalities or drag-and-drop options so that the developers don't have to write the code."
"We had a weird problem that whenever the database would go down, even for a few seconds, it broke the connection. It would not come back up as it was supposed to. However, working with IBM, we were able to figure out a fix, then it came back up, even after an interruption of the database."
"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."
"Where it can be improved is Integration. I think that the direction that IBM is taking now, to have something that is much more integrated, that can be seen as one single solution, is clearly the right way."
 

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 price of the solution is reasonable."
"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."
"We are using the Community Version, which can be used free of charge."
"I am using the free version of Bonita."
"The product's pricing is acceptable. Pricing is yearly."
"I believe this is a very good financial choice."
"Price to service ratio with Bonita BPM is good."
"Our customers do see ROI. They'll identify some particularly painful or uncoordinated processes to start with, then build out from there, picking off low hanging fruit."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten."
"The price is good but could be a little lower."
"We have a yearly licensing model. It is not expensive. There are no addition costs to the standard license."
"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."
"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."
"I wish it was less expensive. I don't know why their pricing model is so high for a piece of software that could benefit so many. It just seems to me that they could have a lower cost, maybe with fewer features or whatever, but it should be possible to do a lower cost workflow software that uses the same interface and underlying engine but does not cost so much that you have to be a Fortune 50 company to buy it. It is annoying to me. There are a lot of solutions that IBM has that are really powerful but nobody can afford them. They know their business, but I still feel that there are a lot of customers who would benefit from this sort of thing. I don't know what this elitism is all about. I am sure they have people doing the money numbers, but it seems like you can make a lot more money by selling it to way more people for a little bit less."
"It may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Construction 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.
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.
887,041 professionals have used our research since 2012.