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Avolution ABACUS vs IDERA ER/Studio comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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

Avolution ABACUS
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IDERA ER/Studio
Ranking in Enterprise Architecture Management
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Enterprise Architecture Management category, the mindshare of Avolution ABACUS is 3.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IDERA ER/Studio is 2.9%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IDERA ER/Studio2.9%
Avolution ABACUS3.0%
Other94.1%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

JoseCamacho - PeerSpot reviewer
Freelancer at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Supports evaluating architecture through corporate objectives
I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommendations I conduct evaluations to identify potential improvements and make recommendations, forming a…
reviewer2796111 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Improved data modeling has reduced system footprint and strengthened finance workflows
I assess the benefits of IDERA ER_Studio's metadata management for my organization as not as good as Erwin's. Erwin's metadata management is better in how it handles data. There is a lot more user involvement in managing the metadata, primarily because in IDERA ER_Studio, the logical and physical models are separately defined in the same file, so you have to map them every single time. In Erwin, it has a unified structure, so if you make a change in the logical model, it automatically shows up in the physical model. You have to go through a couple of steps in the IDERA model to make sure everything has moved over. While that is not that inconvenient when you are actually doing development, as far as metadata management, that is prone to things getting dropped and missed. The collaboration tools in IDERA ER_Studio are adequate, but I think with Erwin, there is more of an opportunity for things to crash. Changes can be merged in IDERA more fluidly; however, the locking and sharing are a little bit more defined in Erwin. I think the learning curve for Erwin might be easier than IDERA ER_Studio, especially with connecting to different models and systems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ease of modeling and the ease of showing interconnectivity and relationships is the most valuable. It is fairly simple and out of the box. It is customizable in many ways. It is a pretty good tool."
"It's a good product with a complete set of templates, frameworks, and notations."
"The product is easy to use and well-structured for the integrations we need it to make."
"If you face new challenges or issues then you can dynamically customize according to the business needs."
"The technical support is very good. They are responsive and the answers they provide are detailed."
"There are a lot of different features, but the business/decision-maker feature, visibility, and dashboards are most valuable."
"The portfolio management is really good, and the dashboard and the reports for the end-to-end impact analysis are really good."
"It is a very powerful tool that does what an enterprise architect needs it to do and it supports the business in knowing more about the business so that they can do better."
"Using this product has improved the way we maintain our models because they have a place where we can keep all of them, and they can be viewed using the web interface."
"Straightforward setup."
"The most valuable feature is data modeling, primarily, because it's something that has been lacking in our systems development for 20 years."
"Our primary use case of this solution is to design our database."
"The tool is simple to use."
"My overall rating for the solution is ten out of ten."
"It has a wealth of time-savers and features that are extremely useful."
"IDERA keeps up with the versions of Oracle and SQL Server that I'm using. I mostly use SQL Server and when there are new features, a new type of index, for example, IDERA also includes them in upgrades of the data modeling tool."
 

Cons

"The usability of the tool is an area with shortcomings that need improvement."
"For some of the functionality, it might be a little complicated for people getting started."
"It needs more flexible analysis parameters and more capability as a BPM tool and doing BPM simulation, compared with Bonita BPM or Bizagi."
"If they want to expand in the European market then they are going to have to improve their technical support."
"The reporting could be easier to configure."
"The tool doesn't have any intelligence built in. We have to design the dashboards ourselves, which is a challenge because we have to depend on the vendor for customizations."
"It is vastly scalable but you can't run it on a Mac or Linux so it has limitations."
"There are probably some things that Avolution could add to the product to enhance it and keep up with what some other products are introducing."
"I'd like the ability to debug the errors ourselves instead of having to call them. There are certain types of errors that, I wouldn't say they come up regularly, but when you have an error it is very often the same type of error. Knowing that it's a Type III or Type I, it would be nice to have some kind of debugging facility for us to use to find out where the problem that threw that error occurs. That would be a really cool feature."
"We did have a big issue when we upgraded to the 2016 version. The Team Server portion never did quite install correctly, and/or the database was corrupted, and we never figured it out."
"The model diagram because very clumsy when you save it on the team server and the models are very big."
"The solution is not so strong at creating modeling views and database views."
"The print facility is a little lacking."
"Product registration always seemed difficult and time consuming."
"I assess the benefits of IDERA ER_Studio's metadata management for my organization as not as good as Erwin's."
"They allow functionalities to be released before the full tests for catching and correcting errors are completed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm paying on a yearly basis. I don't know whether it's a highly expensive tool or not. I'm getting a single version of it, and I don't have the enterprise part on it because I don't need the server component, and I don't need a web browser component. My estimate would be that it's a very reasonably priced tool given that you don't need to have licenses with everyone in order to get the information and the decision support capabilities out of the tool. You use the enterprise edition on top of the studio, which is the heart of the tool. I am not aware of any additional costs."
"There is a subscription for this solution. We are on an annual subscription because you sometimes receive special offers the longer you subscribe."
"It is competitive. It is not chump change. I am just using the studio version. I am not using the full enterprise version, which would probably cost me three times more for single-use, but it gives a lot more capability and analysis. It is server-based as well, and it is reasonably priced compared to a lot of the other tools. There are other tools that have other sorts of capabilities, but in order to use them, you'd really have to have like 50 users for the price to become justifiable."
"My company makes annual payments toward the licensing costs of the solution. Considering the product's capabilities, its prices are very reasonable."
"The cost of Avolution ABACUS is reasonable, given the features they offer in comparison to other tools."
"This solution is expensive for some people's budgets and they need to offer a Lite version at a cheaper price"
"The pricing is quite good compared to the competition and it is part of the reason we chose the product."
"To get a fairly extensive license for Enterprise Architects from Spark is approximately US $400.00, maybe less, but with Avolution Abacus it was approximately US $2000.00 per year, and that includes maintenance with the Abacus tool."
"I feel the product's pricing is a good value."
"Pricing is on point, but do your due diligence - not every developer needs the tool."
"The setup cost may have been around $1500 to $2000."
"I use the product's trial version."
"At my previous company using ER/Studio, a database compare took four hours before using the product and 15 minutes after using the product."
"As an individual user, the renewal is a little costly."
"The product is pricey."
"It is priced fairly. It's around the same as erwin and other competitors' costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Avolution ABACUS?
While Avolution ABACUS is flexible, it can be complex to work with as it requires knowledge of specific configurations to customize the product. It would be beneficial to have seminars or other met...
What is your primary use case for Avolution ABACUS?
I conducted an evaluation of enterprise architecture at the European Court in Luxembourg, reviewing and analyzing existing implementations to identify potential improvements and providing recommend...
What advice do you have for others considering Avolution ABACUS?
I rate Avolution ABACUS eight out of ten. The focus should be on implementing and understanding enterprise architecture concepts rather than the specific tool.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IDERA ER Studio?
In terms of pricing, ER/Studio is slightly more expensive compared to Erwin, by about five to ten percent.
What is your primary use case for IDERA ER Studio?
I work in the finance industry, and the use cases for this product are very similar to what I mentioned previously when I discussed being in industrial management. It is simply a different product.
What advice do you have for others considering IDERA ER Studio?
I have not used IDERA ER_Studio's impact analysis tools, so I really could not judge that regarding mitigating database risks for security. I am not on the end as far as the pricing, as this is wha...
 

Also Known As

No data available
IDERA ER Studio, ER/Studio, ER/Studio Enterprise Team Edition
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays
Newmont Mining, Entrust, Accolade, TalkTalk, Catalina, Protective Life, NTT Data, dir systèmes, Microsoft; American Express, Astellas Pharma, AstraZeneca, Coriant, Fedex, GlaxoSmithKline, PepsiCo, Prudential, Wells Fargo
Find out what your peers are saying about Avolution ABACUS vs. IDERA ER/Studio and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.