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Visio vs erwin Evolve comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 19, 2025

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

erwin Evolve
Ranking in Business Process Design
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (11th)
Visio
Ranking in Business Process Design
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Mind Mapping Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of erwin Evolve is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Visio is 12.5%, up from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Visio12.5%
erwin Evolve1.2%
Other86.3%
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Asish Sahu - PeerSpot reviewer
The reverse engineering capabilities are quite useful.
Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product.
Osama Nabih - PeerSpot reviewer
Has helped me communicate business processes clearly and improve documentation efficiency
The customer service experience rates a seven. It's very difficult to find the right person. When you have an issue and open a ticket, sometimes the wrong persons answer and don't know the solution. They shift you from one person to another and sometimes it takes weeks to find a solution for a problem. It happened with me more than one time. Sometimes the answer is misleading. For example, we had an issue in Enterprise Group in KSA, and we raised a ticket with Microsoft. They sent us a document of 170 pages with possible root causes and solutions. The cost to deploy this 170-page solution was too high and the needed time was months. It was almost not an answer. If they don't give me a specific reason, they haven't replied to my question. We neglected the document from Microsoft and started deep diving and finally found the solution ourselves.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets."
"I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability..."
"Evolve is like a tank. You can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it. I think that it's not very aligned with the framework for enterprise architecture. MEGA is focused on these enterprise architectures, but it's only for that. With Evolve, you can do everything you want with professional services."
"There is a model behind it. It's really nice that the Evolve front-end, as it builds a website, keeps those relationships in mind. You can even go to a procedure and see all the applications that are related to it. Then you can go into that application and see all the standard operating procedures that that application is a part of. It's just very connected."
"We use erwin Evolve to publish to the website. This allows us to enable publishing our website using parameterisation features. In a very fast, quick way, we can publish a table or chart onto a website."
"Evolve's reverse engineering ability is quite useful."
"I can send images in the PDF form, along with the relationships and the associations that are a very important part of what we do. It can show what is affected and what is impacted by a certain change in one area of the system architecture or enterprise architecture. I can very quickly draw those issues and topics to the fore."
"Forward and reverse engineering were valuable features."
"It is a scalable solution."
"I like that once you create what you need, you can group that, at least within that drawing, and you have access to that new stencil object or that custom object throughout that drawing."
"Installing Visio is straightforward."
"The interface is the most valuable aspect of this solution."
"We are all familiar with it, and it is easy to use. There is a lot of flexibility, and you can add shapes if you want."
"They provide continual enhancements which are always very useful."
"Visio makes it easier than with other tools to do such tasks as changing things or coming up with one's own visual style for presentation purposes."
"The most valuable aspect of Visio is enabling comprehensive coverage of architectural elements."
 

Cons

"erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses."
"It could have had a more streamlined navigation. It seemed that when you went to the explorer panel, there were just so many different ways of doing the work that I could not remember, "How did I do this? How did I get to that point in that model to get back to it?" If I wanted to build a new one, where do I start? It just seemed like there was such a smorgasbord of ways of doing it that it was just overwhelming."
"I would like to see an improvement in the output of the solution."
"Business process modelling could be improved."
"They need to develop Evolve's user experience. For example, MEGA has a useful client view that helps with impact analysis. MEGA provides information about the processes, services, infrastructure, and portfolio of applications in one central view. It lets you see the periphery and relationships among components. This view is impressive, and Evolve doesn't have it."
"What they need to do is to consolidate more of their products. For example, I was just looking and I couldn't figure out what erwin DT is. It's on the website but it would help if they could put information together and make it more clear as to what products they have and how they work with other things."
"I feel that the UML drawing capability needs to be improved."
"Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product."
"I would like to see included in the next release is the implementation of web publishing."
"Visio requires a lot of memory, and it is not good for a small design."
"Lacks the ability to analyze the different relations between activities, positions and roles."
"The price could be better."
"Integration with other software would be an area of improvement, so that it's not just used to document but also as a center plane for information sharing."
"The simulation is an area that requires improvement."
"One thing that I always felt was missing was the ability to integrate with other Microsoft products, particularly with things like SharePoint or other Excel Office tools. It may be available, but it is not as good as it could be."
"Searching for specific templates within the program can be difficult. For example, if I need a template for an electrical diagram with certain symbols, it can be challenging to find it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."
"The licensing enables you to differentiate between people who edit the content and the people who consume it. We are able to keep the licensing costs down by keeping the "contributor" licenses to a minimum, and we then just roll out the content in a read-only version for the rest of our users."
"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."
"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."
"The cost is something like $15,000, per license. But I haven't looked at those numbers in three years. It was over $100,000 to initially set everything up and get it all configured."
"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."
"I estimate that we pay between $40,000 and $50,000 a year for the solution, not including the upfront costs to buy things the first time."
"The product is expensive, but it is cheaper if you buy it as a part of a bundle or an enterprise-level agreement."
"The cost of the software is reasonably priced."
"I believe Visio to be priced pretty reasonably."
"If I want to buy Visio for myself, I think it will be around 80 to 120 USD, though it is important to consider that I am unsure of its actual costs."
"The yearly cost is approximately $400 CAD ($300 USD)."
"Visio is included with our Microsoft enterprise license."
"There are some cheaper as well as free solutions."
"We have an enterprise license. I'm not sure what the cost is."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Performing Arts
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
How easy is it to migrate process flow charts (modeled using tools like Visio) into Bizagi?
I have been using Bizagi with a major project for a state government agency for about four years now. It is pretty straightforward to load in files that are BPMN 2.0 compliant. The option to load V...
What do you like most about Visio?
The diagrams Visio creates are quite impressive in the sense that we can cooperate with more colleagues in one task and see the flow of the process.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Visio?
One of the main problems with Visio is its licensing options and associated issues, which lead to discussions about the price with a Microsoft representative. If asked to rate the price, I would gi...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture
Microsoft Visio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Duke University, ESPN, Fidelity, GE, JP Morgan Chase, KPMG, McGraw Hill, NASA, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Scotland, Teradata, Union Pacific, Vodafone, Wells Fargo.
Thomas College, Hamburg Port Authority, Portigon AG, Conseil G_n_ral du d_partement des Hautes-Alpes, AAA Auto a. s., Commonwealth Financial Network, ICA, Abu Dhabi National Energy Company
Find out what your peers are saying about Visio vs. erwin Evolve and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.