Camunda vs IBM Blueworks Live comparison

Camunda and IBM are both solutions in the Business Process Design category. Camunda is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3, while IBM is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.6. Camunda holds a 12.5% mindshare in BPD, compared to IBM’s 3.6% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Camunda users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Camunda

Read 77 Camunda reviews

7,546 Views
5,125 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

IBM Blueworks Live

Read 20 IBM Blueworks Live reviews

2,383 Views
1,542 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Camunda

IBM Blueworks Live

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

IBM Blueworks Live and Camunda are leading solutions in business process management, each offering unique advantages. IBM Blueworks Live might have the upper hand due to its seamless integration with other IBM products, making it ideal for existing IBM users.

Features: IBM Blueworks Live provides real-time modeling, easy process documentation, and collaborative features. Its integration with IBM solutions makes it particularly advantageous for companies using IBM products. Camunda is appreciated for its lightweight architecture and extensive BPMN, CMMN, and DMN standards coverage. Its open-source availability offers flexibility and customization, along with easy integration with Java and REST APIs for advanced workflow solutions.

Room for Improvement: IBM Blueworks Live could enhance its simulation capabilities and customizable reporting features. Improved API access and ERP system integration would also benefit users. Camunda could improve its intuitive UI for business users and enterprise-level support. Enhancements in handling user forms, better migration support, and process administration would strengthen its offerings.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Blueworks Live is primarily cloud-deployed, offering easy access and efficient deployment, complemented by responsive customer service. Camunda provides flexible deployment including on-premises, hybrid, and cloud options. Its customer service is generally positive, but some users find community support less robust than traditional services.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Blueworks Live offers strategic pricing attractive to businesses entering digital process management, with a subscription model that adds value despite additional costs for private cloud deployment. Its ROI is notable for time efficiency. Camunda’s open-source model presents cost advantages, particularly for technical customization, though enterprise licensing can become expensive with increased microservices orchestration. Both solutions significantly enhance productivity and reduce operational costs, delivering substantial ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Camunda vs. IBM Blueworks Live Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Camunda vs. IBM Blueworks Live

April 2025

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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

Camunda

Ranking in Business Process Design

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Management (BPM) (1st), Process Automation (1st)

IBM Blueworks Live

Ranking in Business Process Design

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of Camunda is 12.5%, up from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 3.6%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Business Process Design

Featured Reviews

FABIO NAGAO

Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA

Reduces costs with hardware abstraction and simplifies scaling

There is an issue where, in some situations, I need to scale up by observing both CPU and memory usage of containers, yet under the current options available at Amazon, this is not possible. I have to choose between monitoring CPU or memory to scale my solution. Not every software is built for deployment as a container service, although the current architecture trend is changing this.

Read full review

AjarMathur

Global Innovation Director at Ernst & Young

An easily scalable and affordable solution that enables users to document and digitize processes with ease

IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts. There is only one kind of BPMN 2.0 diagram. It is a process diagram. It doesn't have the concept of separate tools, which other products offer. If I had to do a hardcore BPMN 2.0 modeling, the product would have its own reservations. There were features we could not explore from a BPMN 2.0 perspective. Most of the time, people who are shifting from Microsoft Office tools to a digitized way of working still want the reporting capabilities to be strong. Some tools, like ARIS or Signavio, offer customized solutions from the reporting perspective. If I have documented my whole finance process and want to fetch out a complete SOP report in a very customized manner, IBM Blueworks cannot provide it. We have to rely on some other services. So that's one area in which we always struggled, how to really customize the reporting aspects. I understand that we need to keep the tool a little more asset-light. It's very difficult to keep adding many options, but at least a few BPMN 2.0 options were needed. We have been suggesting to IBM that we should have some way of customizing the reporting. At least we should get a custom way of reporting it into different formats like Excel or putting up a logo for one of the clients so that their SAP can be printed that way.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Camunda's process diagram creation and deployment is very easy."

"The most valuable features are the management of internal processes, the ability to execute from design and the model for internal processes, the ability to make processes visible, and the ability to have information about the current state of each instance."

"It has an open BPM"

"The solution is easily compatible with HTML forms and HTML language programming and that is the most significant part."

"There's this graphic that tells you how many lines or how many tickets are in each step. In that way, you know where you stand. I find this feature very valuable."

"The most valuable features are the workflow, the task list, and the modeler where we use VPN."

"Camunda's most valuable feature is its ability to integrate with different products."

"The most valuable feature of Camunda Platform is its Microservices architecture, which is easily integrable with APIs."

More Camunda pros

"The licenses are transferrable between different users."

"For me the most valuable feature is that it's one depository for our bank. So it's not like everybody has their critical processes on SharePoint or on their desktops. Everything is centrally located. It's very intuitive, easy to use. The support that I get from IBM is always great."

"The solution is stable. All the refreshes run very well."

"It's very easy, very quick to create a process map. It has templates. The look and feel is very nice. What we want to achieve out of the process map, we can achieve it using Blueworks."

"The business process discovery is excellent. The diagram or blueprinting functionality of the solution are very good. It's quite easy. You can link the sub-processes and get a big overview of the whole process then."

"The reporting that we can generate from IBM Blueworks Live has been interesting. We found the KPIs, risks, process modeling, format, and colors, to be very good. We use the EY template and it is interesting to generate reporting in this format."

"The ease of documenting and digitizing the processes was valuable to us."

"Valuable features include real-time modeling and design work, the ability to perform workshops with clients in real-time with the tool, and getting instant output."

More IBM Blueworks Live pros

Cons

"I would say that Camunda should actually focus on small cases as well. There's a lot of space out there, for small businesses. If they can, they should cater to them."

"Like all BPM tools, they're very bad with proprietary UIs. In general, anyone who uses BPM tools should not expect to use their proprietary UI."

"The latency of API could be decreased."

"The support definitely can be improved. Apart from that, the language should be extendable to other platforms. If I want to write, I'll run a different platform, like Python code on top of it, or COBOL code on top of it, and it should support those languages."

"If Camunda could develop something that creates user forms that would be a great feature to have. They also need to improve the UI."

"The migration strategy needs to be improved."

"It has a Postgres database at the backend, and it is very difficult to scale if you increase the number of processes running. We did hit some barriers. We were able to overcome them, but it was a problem. Camunda has another product called Camunda Cloud, which supposedly doesn't have the same scalability problems, but we are not using Camunda Cloud because the set of features is smaller than Camunda On-Premises. So, its scalability can be improved. Because it has a single database, it is more difficult to scale if you have a huge success."

"I would like to have a feature for audit logging, audit logs and audit log management. And some history of use for the audit logs."

More Camunda cons

"IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts."

"Some of the import functionality was a bit restrictive, in terms of loading data in from other data sources. Something as simple as Excel, loading data tables from Excel, wasn't great. And vice-versa. Some of the export and import functionality with something like Visio - which, I know it's a slightly different tool - but being able to work seamlessly with those other tool sets would've been quite useful. I know it was something that was in the pipeline to be looked at. So that would be useful."

"I would like to see integration with ERP systems. This would help us to simulate the process and see where the problems are. Though IBM Blueworks Live is a good tool for documenting, it is not good for simulating."

"The font size is really, really small and it's really not useful to print out process models because you cannot read what's written in different boxes. This makes it necessary for people to have access to the tool. We view licenses to see how the printing or output is. It's not very good."

"The APIs are great, except the normal business user doesn't know how to create APIs. So it's hard because IBM comes to us as the business users and tell us to create reporting with APIs, except we don't know that, so we have to turn around and flip it to our IT people."

"I wish Blueworks Live had simulations built in, but it doesn't. It also lacks a feature of reporting; ad hoc, drag and drop reporting. A lot of senior people are always asking for reports, and there's no reporting feature within IBM Blueworks."

"I can't insert any images. For example, within the process map, if I want to put it in the box or rectangle, or circle. If I have to use one image or icon, that's not possible."

"The user interface is quite easy at first but process analysts soon run into roadblocks of limited functionality, which is disappointing."

More IBM Blueworks Live cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing costs are anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000 USD per year."

"It is good for a startup. When we started, its price was fair, but the way we are using it to orchestrate microservices makes it expensive. When you are growing as a company, you would have more microservices, and you would have more users. There is an exponential effect when you are growing in terms of the number of conditions, processes, and users because they bill you per process. So, the price was increasing very quickly for us, and it was very difficult."

"When compared with the proprietary products, the pricing costs are much less, even though it is an enterprise edition."

"In Africa, the cost of deployment is an important factor to consider since it adds to the overall cost. This might be the only drawback to using it."

"I think Camunda BPM can improve their licensing costs. It isn't easy to find clients with Camunda BPM licenses mainly because it's quite expensive."

"It is less cost-prohibitive than other solutions on the market. This solution was in our price range."

"The cost of this solution is better than some competing products."

"We are using the paid edition because there is no separate support and service license yet. We are yet to find a suitable licensing model for Camunda because we only use the engine, and we have implemented our solution around Camunda Cloud. So, we are mainly interested in the support and service, and that's what we mainly use in the paid edition."

More Camunda pricing and cost advice

"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."

"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."

"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."

"Based on the licenses purchased, from a footprint perspective, you can have as many people as you want. You have multiple different categories of licenses to keep the cost low."

"The solution is not very expensive."

"The solution is very, very cost-effective."

"Making it less expensive would be good."

"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

Which do you prefer - Appian or Camunda Platform?

Appian is fast when building simple to medium solutions. This solution offers simple drag-and-drop functionality with easy plug-and-play options. The initial setup was seamless and very easy to imp...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Camunda Platform or Apache Airflow?

Camunda Platform allows for visual demonstration and presentation of business process flows. The flexible Java-based option was a big win for us and allows for the integration of microservices very...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Blueworks Live?

The solution is easy to operate. Also, there is an automatic mode to make the business flow. You don't have to put any lines or arrows in a decision point in IBM Blueworks Live; it's very automatic.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?

The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Blueworks Live?

Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

IBM BPM vs Camunda

Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 32% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

Lucidchart vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 15% of the time

ARIS Cloud vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 11% of the time

ARIS BPA vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Camunda

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM Blueworks Live

April 2025

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Also Known As

Camunda BPM

IBM Lombardi Blueprint

Overview

Camunda enables organizations to orchestrate processes across people, systems, and devices to continuously overcome complexity and increase efficiency. A common visual language enables seamless collaboration between business and IT teams to design, automate, and improve end-to-end processes with the required speed, scale, and resilience to remain competitive. Hundreds of enterprises such as Atlassian, ING, and Vodafone orchestrate business-critical processes with Camunda to accelerate digital transformation. To learn more visit camunda.com.

Camunda

IBM Blueworks Live is a cloud-based business process modeling tool that helps you discover, map and document your processes. It is easy to use, allowing you to learn and perform business process modeling in minutes.

With Blueworks Live you can:

Simplify business process modeling
Quickly build business processes in a straightforward, cloud-based interface designed for both IT and business users.

Improve process efficiency and accuracy
A central process repository eliminates version control and consistency issues by providing users real-time access to process workflows.

Enhance cross-team collaboration
A shared team workspace engages all business process owners, encouraging cross-team participation and continuous process improvement.

IBM

Sample Customers

24 Hour Fitness, Accruent, AT&T Inc., Atlassian, CSS Insurance, Deutsche Telekom, Generali, Provinzial NordWest Insurance Services, Swisscom AG, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VHV Group, Zalando

Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council

Buyer's Guide

Camunda vs. IBM Blueworks Live

April 2025

Free Report: Camunda vs. IBM Blueworks Live

Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda vs. IBM Blueworks Live and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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