Director Data Science at a media company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Top 5
2023-07-11T19:24:00Z
Jul 11, 2023
There is either a one-year or three-year license. It is not a pay-as-you-go license like a SaaS solution. It’s more of a traditional licensing. They are a little bit on the pricier side. However, there are tools that are less pricey, and some of them are open source and free as well. From a pricing perspective, it is not very competitive in the current market.
Learn what your peers think about erwin Data Modeler by Quest. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
VP Enterprise Data Architecture at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
2023-02-21T17:07:00Z
Feb 21, 2023
We've continued to use the product for many years and compared it with others on the market. The pricing is reasonable considering what the solution offers and what we pay. There are cheaper tools, but they may not be as robust and easy to use, so it's worth the money.
Software Engineer Staff at Lockheed Martin Corporation
Real User
2021-12-31T20:33:42Z
Dec 31, 2021
We didn't go for a subscription. It was a one-time fee. I don't understand who does subscriptions on such solutions. PowerDesigner comes with yearly subscriptions, and I can't understand how that is possible. Who in the world keeps on changing the database engine? Once you have such an application, you cannot just upgrade it like your phone. So, I cannot understand how they're pushing this. erwin has this option where you pay a one-time fee and you have the license for six years, which makes sense because I don't upgrade my database engine every other year. I have an application that depends on it. This is something weird about PowerDesigner. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee.
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
2021-08-17T15:33:00Z
Aug 17, 2021
It has increased in price a fair amount over the years. It has always been expensive because it is a comprehensive product, and presumably, they have to do a tremendous amount of testing to make sure that everything works. It has always been dear because usually, a very specific target audience of data architects has the need for modelers, and not everyone in the organization would need to get a copy of it. Only people who are actually working in the database space need it. So, it has always been a very specialized piece of software, and it has been priced accordingly. I don't specifically know what we're paying now. About three years ago, in another organization, I have this memory of 6,000 AUD a seat or something like that, but I am not sure. In the mid-2000s, it was something like 1,200 AUD a seat. I get the impression that there was a price jump when it was spun off from CA as a separate company, which is understandable, but it could sometimes be a barrier in some organizations picking it up. I haven't talked to erwin people yet, but I'm going to suggest to them that they could perhaps think of having an entry-level product that is priced a bit lower, and then, you can buy the extra suite. That's what Microsoft does. They package a few things so that you have something, but if you want this extra stuff that has enterprise features, such as they talk to each other and have great bits and pieces, you have to pay more. I don't think there are any additional costs. It is per product, and there are different license levels.
Independent Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1-10 employees
Real User
2020-10-19T09:50:00Z
Oct 19, 2020
We always had a problem keeping track of all the licenses. All of a sudden you might get a message that your license expired and you didn't know, and it happens at different times. At GM Finance, they engaged Sandhill to help us manage it. I was less involved because of the use of Sandhill, who was very helpful when we had trouble with our license. I remember you had to put in these long string of characters and be very careful that you didn't cut and paste it in an email, but that you generated it. It was so sensitive and really difficult until the upgrades. if there was a serious problem, then it was usually around the licensing, where there was some glitch in the licensing. Then, we would call Sandhill who would help us out with it. That's something where we had to invoke a third-party for any technical difficulties. I wish it wasn't so expensive. I would love to personally buy a copy of my own and have it at home, because the next job that I'm looking at is probably project management and I might not have access to the tool. I would like to keep my ability to use the tool. Therefore, they should probably have a pricing for people like me who want to just use the solution as an independent consultant, trying to get started. $3,000 is a big hit. I think you buy a block of users because I know the company always wanted to manage the number of licenses.
Data Modeler at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-10-14T06:37:00Z
Oct 14, 2020
I don't think that the pricing for my office is horrible. However, from my home, there's absolutely no way I could afford erwin on my own as far as doing my own work. There have been discussions between my office and the actual company that I work for and trying to decide on who would actually pay the bill. I'm the person stuck in the middle saying that I can't do my work here and luckily, I've been able to get one or two extensions on my free trial license from erwin. However, I'm afraid that I won't be able to get my company to pay for it and fairly soon the trial license will end up expiring on me. I decided to build physical only but later on that kind of bit me and so I will start building logical first and then the physical. It would be nice to be able to build out my own set of tables and maybe a Model Mart type of situation but I don't see me being able to afford a copy at home for myself. I won't be able to continue keeping a trial copy forever and until COVID is over.
President at Global Retail Technology Advisors, LLC
Real User
Top 10
2020-07-26T08:19:00Z
Jul 26, 2020
They gave us a copy because of supporting a standards data model, so pricing and all that is really not something I can compare. I think it's a bit expensive, but it supports and does what we want.
I don't deal with pricing or licensing here. I know that you can get a per-seat license. You can get concurrent licenses. To me, if you're a full-time modeler, you need a per-seat license. If you're a developer or a data steward, you use it a couple of times a day, maybe a couple of times a week, you can have concurrent licenses so that a group of five people will share one license. If someone's using it you can't, but if it's free then you can go ahead and use it, or you can lock it, or whatever. There are different ways of licensing it.
Architecture Sr. Manager, Data Design & Metadata Mgmt at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-06-30T08:17:00Z
Jun 30, 2020
I think that the pricing is reasonable. It has called Concurrent licensing, where you can have a number of people share an erwin license. I think that that pricing is a little bit high, but that is a personal opinion.
Sr. Data Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-06-25T10:53:00Z
Jun 25, 2020
An issue right now would be that erwin doesn't have a freely available browser (that I am aware of) for people who are not data modelers or data engineers that a consumer could use to look at the data models and play with it. This would not be to make any changes, but just to visually look at what exists. There are other products out there which do have end user browsers available and allow them to access data models via the data modeling tool.
Enterprise Data Architect at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2020-02-13T07:51:00Z
Feb 13, 2020
We pay maintenance on a yearly basis, and it's a low cost. There are no additional costs or transactional fees. The accuracy and speed of the solution in transforming complex designs into well-aligned data sources make the cost of the tool worth it.
EDW Architect/ Data Modeler at Royal Bank of Canada
Real User
2020-02-02T10:42:00Z
Feb 2, 2020
This company had bought the license for three years, and it's not an individual license. While you can buy a license for each individual, that would be very expensive. There is something called concurrent licenses where you can purchase licenses in bulk and 15 to 20 people can access the license and model. Concurrent licenses are scalable to the number of users and are proportional to the cost.
Sr. Manager, Data Governance at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2020-01-27T06:40:00Z
Jan 27, 2020
We came up with a two-part concept with our licensing. Our data architects have named licenses that only they can use. We have four named licenses today. But we also bought three concurrent licenses, two that are just for developers and the DBAs, and one that's a "read-only" that anybody can use. It's a little bit difficult for me to tell you how many people use those, but probably no less than 10 and possibly upwards of 25. We pay for maintenance on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs for the Workgroup Edition, which has the server component. That is the edition where you can save your models back to a database, which we installed on SQL Server, but I think you can install it on any of several different platforms.
erwin pioneered data modeling, and erwin Data Modeler (erwin DM) remains trusted, award-winning software for data modeling and database design, automating complex and time-consuming tasks. Use it to discover and document any data from anywhere for consistency, clarity and artifact reuse across large-scale data integration, master data management, metadata management, Big Data, business intelligence and analytics initiatives – all while supporting data governance and intelligence efforts.
The product is expensive. I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.
erwin Data Modeler by Quest is an expensive solution.
The solution is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten. The price is not fixed. The product does not have a clear pricing model.
There is either a one-year or three-year license. It is not a pay-as-you-go license like a SaaS solution. It’s more of a traditional licensing. They are a little bit on the pricier side. However, there are tools that are less pricey, and some of them are open source and free as well. From a pricing perspective, it is not very competitive in the current market.
It is not a very expensive solution. Only the licensing and maintenance fee needs to be paid.
The pricing of the solution is cheap. I rate the pricing a five out of ten.
We've continued to use the product for many years and compared it with others on the market. The pricing is reasonable considering what the solution offers and what we pay. There are cheaper tools, but they may not be as robust and easy to use, so it's worth the money.
There are two license options and the pricing is reasonable.
Pricing is very high compared to any other product.
We didn't go for a subscription. It was a one-time fee. I don't understand who does subscriptions on such solutions. PowerDesigner comes with yearly subscriptions, and I can't understand how that is possible. Who in the world keeps on changing the database engine? Once you have such an application, you cannot just upgrade it like your phone. So, I cannot understand how they're pushing this. erwin has this option where you pay a one-time fee and you have the license for six years, which makes sense because I don't upgrade my database engine every other year. I have an application that depends on it. This is something weird about PowerDesigner. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee.
erwin is expensive compared to other solutions. We are paying almost $6,000 per seat a month.
It has increased in price a fair amount over the years. It has always been expensive because it is a comprehensive product, and presumably, they have to do a tremendous amount of testing to make sure that everything works. It has always been dear because usually, a very specific target audience of data architects has the need for modelers, and not everyone in the organization would need to get a copy of it. Only people who are actually working in the database space need it. So, it has always been a very specialized piece of software, and it has been priced accordingly. I don't specifically know what we're paying now. About three years ago, in another organization, I have this memory of 6,000 AUD a seat or something like that, but I am not sure. In the mid-2000s, it was something like 1,200 AUD a seat. I get the impression that there was a price jump when it was spun off from CA as a separate company, which is understandable, but it could sometimes be a barrier in some organizations picking it up. I haven't talked to erwin people yet, but I'm going to suggest to them that they could perhaps think of having an entry-level product that is priced a bit lower, and then, you can buy the extra suite. That's what Microsoft does. They package a few things so that you have something, but if you want this extra stuff that has enterprise features, such as they talk to each other and have great bits and pieces, you have to pay more. I don't think there are any additional costs. It is per product, and there are different license levels.
There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.
We always had a problem keeping track of all the licenses. All of a sudden you might get a message that your license expired and you didn't know, and it happens at different times. At GM Finance, they engaged Sandhill to help us manage it. I was less involved because of the use of Sandhill, who was very helpful when we had trouble with our license. I remember you had to put in these long string of characters and be very careful that you didn't cut and paste it in an email, but that you generated it. It was so sensitive and really difficult until the upgrades. if there was a serious problem, then it was usually around the licensing, where there was some glitch in the licensing. Then, we would call Sandhill who would help us out with it. That's something where we had to invoke a third-party for any technical difficulties. I wish it wasn't so expensive. I would love to personally buy a copy of my own and have it at home, because the next job that I'm looking at is probably project management and I might not have access to the tool. I would like to keep my ability to use the tool. Therefore, they should probably have a pricing for people like me who want to just use the solution as an independent consultant, trying to get started. $3,000 is a big hit. I think you buy a block of users because I know the company always wanted to manage the number of licenses.
The price should be lower in order to be on the same level as its competitors.
I don't think that the pricing for my office is horrible. However, from my home, there's absolutely no way I could afford erwin on my own as far as doing my own work. There have been discussions between my office and the actual company that I work for and trying to decide on who would actually pay the bill. I'm the person stuck in the middle saying that I can't do my work here and luckily, I've been able to get one or two extensions on my free trial license from erwin. However, I'm afraid that I won't be able to get my company to pay for it and fairly soon the trial license will end up expiring on me. I decided to build physical only but later on that kind of bit me and so I will start building logical first and then the physical. It would be nice to be able to build out my own set of tables and maybe a Model Mart type of situation but I don't see me being able to afford a copy at home for myself. I won't be able to continue keeping a trial copy forever and until COVID is over.
They gave us a copy because of supporting a standards data model, so pricing and all that is really not something I can compare. I think it's a bit expensive, but it supports and does what we want.
I don't deal with pricing or licensing here. I know that you can get a per-seat license. You can get concurrent licenses. To me, if you're a full-time modeler, you need a per-seat license. If you're a developer or a data steward, you use it a couple of times a day, maybe a couple of times a week, you can have concurrent licenses so that a group of five people will share one license. If someone's using it you can't, but if it's free then you can go ahead and use it, or you can lock it, or whatever. There are different ways of licensing it.
I think that the pricing is reasonable. It has called Concurrent licensing, where you can have a number of people share an erwin license. I think that that pricing is a little bit high, but that is a personal opinion.
I like the concurrent licensing. That's phenomenal. I think that was a big win for us.
An issue right now would be that erwin doesn't have a freely available browser (that I am aware of) for people who are not data modelers or data engineers that a consumer could use to look at the data models and play with it. This would not be to make any changes, but just to visually look at what exists. There are other products out there which do have end user browsers available and allow them to access data models via the data modeling tool.
We pay on a one-year subscription basis.
We pay maintenance on a yearly basis, and it's a low cost. There are no additional costs or transactional fees. The accuracy and speed of the solution in transforming complex designs into well-aligned data sources make the cost of the tool worth it.
This company had bought the license for three years, and it's not an individual license. While you can buy a license for each individual, that would be very expensive. There is something called concurrent licenses where you can purchase licenses in bulk and 15 to 20 people can access the license and model. Concurrent licenses are scalable to the number of users and are proportional to the cost.
We came up with a two-part concept with our licensing. Our data architects have named licenses that only they can use. We have four named licenses today. But we also bought three concurrent licenses, two that are just for developers and the DBAs, and one that's a "read-only" that anybody can use. It's a little bit difficult for me to tell you how many people use those, but probably no less than 10 and possibly upwards of 25. We pay for maintenance on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs for the Workgroup Edition, which has the server component. That is the edition where you can save your models back to a database, which we installed on SQL Server, but I think you can install it on any of several different platforms.