We compared Camunda Platform and IBM BPM based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Camunda Platform seems to be the superior solution. Because users are divided over how easy IBM BPM is to deploy and because of its high price, users feel Camunda Platform is a better investment.
"I've found the active community most valuable but it also provides you with a lot of other features."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to share the logic within the rules engine with the business, so you can put it up for everybody to read."
"The architecture is good because it's a headless workflow. I can create my own frontend, and it's fully API-based."
"I love that Camunda is a very developer-friendly platform, and my customers have evaluated the pricing as reasonable."
"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."
"Ease of use and ability to streamline a process model."
"Its flexibility stands out as the most valuable feature."
"We have a lot of users, almost 1,800, and we needed something affordable, stable and something that could be used by a large financial company. This solution truly fit the bill."
"It is being able to see the process, and understanding what the process is versus having to bury it in code somewhere."
"I liked its robustness the most. It was a very robust platform in my experience. It seemed like a very stable and powerful tool for handling lots of concurrent users and hammering at the system."
"There is information during the process that the analyst will look at, their procedures. We created a part of the application such that the business can change those procedures as needed, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. As the reps go through the process, they don't necessarily know it's changing, they just know they have to refer to some documentation, and the business can keep that up to date."
"Automating the whole workflow process to give our data steward the ability to take actions rapidly, and making sure we have all the data synced within the different platforms that we are using."
"I think the best way it can be it improved, is to make it easier to install. It's a very complicated piece of software, and there are a lot of things you have to do to get it set up. It's not just running an installer. You install WebSphere. You install the BPM product, and there's a large host of other steps you have to do: run queries against the database, you have to manually configure a bunch of properties files for your environment. I think if they could streamline all that, so it wasn't a considerable effort to install, that would be very useful. Because from an engineering point of view, you want to spend as little time as possible actually installing a product."
"This product does the job in terms of executing the workflow."
"The solution is stable."
"The designer feature, compared to other solutions is easy to use."
"The business model could be easier to understand."
"We're trying to put the people from the business to do it. We are using APIs, and we have open APIs to define our APIs and the request-response that each call requires and sends. So, to base the mapping on that, there was nothing to help. I know that with some tools, such as Oracle tools, you can see the input and expected output. With drag and drop, you can take one property from the left and drag it to the right, and it does all the mapping itself, but that's not the case with Camunda. So, for me, this is something that can be improved."
"If Camunda could develop something that creates user forms that would be a great feature to have. They also need to improve the UI."
"Camunda Platform's customer support could be improved because their response is quite slow."
"When addressing a complex and extensive process, the domain it belongs to, be it banking, healthcare, or HR, requires widespread access."
"The support offered by the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Camunda could be improved by making it easier to modify a process. You can program it to follow a process, but it is difficult to modify the process when the application is in use. It could also be improved by making it easier to use the visual platform without needing to be informed on that. Sometimes, we programmers haven't used it in the past, and it's a bit difficult to learn it."
"The GUI needs to be improved, with more configuration options."
"The debugging needs improvement. There is some confusion surrounding the debugging."
"The business would like to use the product with a lot less IT and equipment involvement."
"The constant switch between Eclipse and its web versions can be annoying and confusing."
"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 still have a couple of issues that we are working on right now with stability. Mostly on the configuration side of the tool, and it has been about a month that we have been working to stabilize the platform."
"The user experience, while it has improved, should continue to improve."
"I would say the scalability is very good but it's not perfect. It is much more scalable than it has been in the past but... it does require some work to keep it stable. So that is an area that should be improved."
"The solution can improve integration with SAP, CRM, and Salesforce, which is not capital-intensive."
Camunda is ranked 1st in Business Process Management (BPM) with 69 reviews while IBM BPM is ranked 5th in Business Process Management (BPM) with 105 reviews. Camunda is rated 8.2, while IBM BPM is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Camunda writes "Open-source, easy to define new processes, and easy to transition to new business process definitions". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM BPM writes "Offers good case management and its integration with process design but there's a learning curve". Camunda is most compared with Apache Airflow, Bizagi, Pega BPM, Appian and Bonita, whereas IBM BPM is most compared with Pega BPM, Appian, IBM Business Automation Workflow, Apache Airflow and AWS Step Functions. See our Camunda vs. IBM BPM report.
See our list of best Business Process Management (BPM) vendors and best Process Automation vendors.
We monitor all Business Process Management (BPM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
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
You could have a look also on jBPM / jBPM based solutions (as an alternative to Camunda).
Camunda has limited capabilities in the community version. In the case of jBPM, the same capability set is provided in both the community and enterprise versions (the only difference is that with the enterprise version you pay for support).
If you are looking for the jBPM engine combined with content services in one unified platform/user experience, you could have a look at SEAL (https://star-storage.ro/product/seal-online/).