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Camunda vs IBM BPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.8
Camunda enhances financial companies' efficiency and cost-effectiveness with streamlined processes, reusable code, and reduced operational expenses.
Sentiment score
7.5
Businesses using IBM BPM reported improved efficiency, automation, and cost savings despite high costs and moderate ROI.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Camunda's customer service is praised for engineer support but has mixed reviews on responsiveness, knowledge center, and pricing.
Sentiment score
6.7
IBM BPM customer service is generally positive, with effective support, though response delays and communication issues are noted.
AWS provides the best support, followed by Microsoft, and then Google.
They provide better support for the enterprise edition.
The customer service is outstanding.
We had a contract that provided on-site support, which was very satisfactory.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Camunda provides scalable solutions with technologies like Spring Boot and Kubernetes, though database configuration may present challenges for some users.
Sentiment score
6.9
IBM BPM offers impressive scalability, efficiently managing high user volumes with varied experiences and requiring occasional careful tuning.
Camunda offers a high level of scalability, especially when using its SaaS model, which manages and scales implementations automatically.
It allows for easy scaling, especially with ECS service configurations.
The solution has scalability issues; on a scale, I would rate it at eight out of ten.
I found IBM BPM to be scalable to a certain level but it struggled with large volumes of concurrent transactions.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Camunda is praised for stability and reliability, with minor integration challenges and occasional bugs, rated 7-10 by users.
Sentiment score
7.2
IBM BPM stability varies; recent versions improve reliability, but issues remain with infrastructure, configuration, and developer expertise.
There haven't been any significant outages in my experience with Camunda.
 

Room For Improvement

Camunda's platform faces user dissatisfaction due to poor user-friendliness, documentation, performance, and costly licensing, needing significant improvements.
IBM BPM needs improved customization, integration, and user-friendliness, addressing complexity and high cost with enhanced API and AI features.
More open documentation would be beneficial to understand the deployment process better and facilitate easier setup.
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.
IBM BPM also lacks smaller solutions, so I must purchase multiple solutions to start with workflows and applications.
 

Setup Cost

Camunda provides cost-effective enterprise licenses, though costs can rise with usage, posing concerns for smaller companies.
IBM BPM's high costs suit large enterprises, while flexible Cloud Pak and tiered licensing offer varied pricing options.
For some services, such as hosting databases, Google is really expensive.
There is a licensing cost for using the SaaS model and Enterprise edition of Camunda.
SAP is more expensive, but IBM BPM is very expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Camunda offers flexible, lightweight architecture supporting BPMN, CMMN, and DMN, with user-friendly, non-programmer interfaces and seamless integration.
IBM BPM offers integration, scalability, and low-code development with strong UI, enhancing efficiency and reducing complexities.
ECS also allows for horizontal scalability with thresholds that can be configured for CPU or memory.
The integration capabilities of IBM BPM are excellent.
 

Categories and Ranking

Camunda
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
1st
Ranking in Process Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (2nd)
IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
4th
Ranking in Process Automation
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Camunda is 21.6%, up from 20.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM BPM is 7.4%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Q&A Highlights

 

Featured Reviews

FABIO NAGAO - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
SureshThota1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good automation, stable, and scalable
The initial setup is complex, but once we have a mature framework in place, it has been working well. When deployed properly and as expected, customers are happy to use the solution. However, there is still a lot of configuration and installation taking time. IBM BPM provides a cloud-fast model, where it is possible to integrate automation of the process and where manual interaction is only necessary if automation is not available. We have implemented an ultimate installation that includes both capabilities, but some features were not enabled in the process access station. For example, I could not open KFC documents, they all uploaded, and saved the data, but could not do a profile page without manual interaction. IBM is still working on a permanent solution for this. The deployment time depends on the requirements, which can be critical, low, or medium-high. If the requirements are critical, it will take six to eight months. For medium requirements, it will take five months, and for low requirements, it will take only one month. Eight people were part of the deployment team.
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838,533 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Answers from the Community

LC
Aug 24, 2021
Aug 24, 2021
Hi Leandro, those two BPM's shouldn't be compared on the functional level. They are different type of solutions. Camunda offers the workflow engine and decission engine, where you can create process models according to BPMN and DMM standards. This gives you the flexibility and agility in the process management. It also gives you the tools to monitor, manage and optimize those processes. Camund...
2 out of 3 answers
BA
Feb 13, 2021
PM
Feb 15, 2021
Hi Leandro, those two BPM's shouldn't be compared on the functional level. They are different type of solutions.  Camunda offers the workflow engine and decission engine, where you can create process models according to BPMN and DMM standards. This gives you the flexibility and agility in the process management. It also gives you the tools to monitor, manage and optimize those processes. Camunda provides very limited functionalities, if it comes to end user interfaces. Usually they are built as custom applications or existing application are used. With Camunda projects you always focus on automation, that requires system integration and custom development and usually concerns core business processes. Camunda is an openAPI solution, which makes the integration fast and easy. It is a common situation in financial industry, that you have many systems, that need to be integrated in one process, that is why Camunda is so popular in this sector.Before you decide on the switch, you have to consider the processes you want to use it for. If this is for standard processes like holiday requests, invoice approvals etc. Camunda is not the best option. But if you want to automate sales or after sales processes, client/partner onboarding, claims management, debt collection you should definitely consider Camunda. I found once in Camunda documents an interesting comparison between Camunda and BPM suites: "On a blank canvas, an artist can paint a picture in exactly the way he imagines. Alternatively, there is the principle of “painting by numbers”, where even the artistic layman can create stunning images by coloring in predetermined areas. However, they can only create what was already pre-designed." And finally, Camunda is available as open source solution and there is no vendor lock. I hope it helped ;-) There is always an option to have a talk... Cheers, Piotr
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

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...
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...
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...
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

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

Overview

 

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
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 Camunda vs. IBM BPM and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,533 professionals have used our research since 2012.