Choosing the right (BPM) business process management tools is vitally important to your business. In today’s digitalization race, organizations are always looking for technology tools to help them drive their business operations efficiently. In this guide, I ranked and reviewed the 7 best business process management tools, along with my top 4 choices, so that you can pick the best one for your organization.
The 7 top business process management tools are Camunda, BonitaSoft, Kissflow, ProcessMaker, Appian, Webcon, and Nintex.
Business process management tools are used to help organizations automate repetitive tasks and optimize their business processes. BPM tools are important because they allow organizations to streamline their operations, enable transparency, reduce costs, enhance decision making quality, and improve efficiency.
These BPM tools can be used to automate repetitive tasks, manage resources, and track the progress of projects. They are also good for analyzing data and providing insights that can help improve processes.
Business process management tools come in many forms such as software applications or services provided by third-party providers. There is no one type of business process management system that is better than another because they all have different features that make them unique. It all depends on what your company needs from its business process management tool and how much it wants to pay for it.
Business process management (BPM) tools can help with:
- Visually design the process flow
- Define different business rules and routing conditions
- Visually design responsive forms that can be used on mobiles, tablets, and laptops.
- Monitor and track process execution
- Speed up business process execution
- And much more
Let’s get started.
Comparison of Best Business Process Management tools
| Best BPM tool | Best For | Free Trial | Price | Deployment |
| Camunda | Small to large businesses | Available | Starting 990$/month for 10 users | Cloud and on-premise |
| BonitaSoft | Small to large businesses | Available for unlimited users | Free community edition Enterprise Licensing: Get a quote | Cloud and on-premise |
| Kissflow | Small to large businesses | Available | Basic: 200$/20 users Advanced: 495$/50 users Fully Loaded: 1900$/100 users Enterprise: Get a quote | Cloud |
| ProcessMaker | Small to large businesses | Available | Platform fixed amount billed annually. Plus per-user pricing | Cloud and on-premise |
| Appian | Small to large businesses | Available for unlimited users | $90/user/month. Application Licensing: Get a quote | Cloud |
| Webcon | Small to large businesses | Available | 700$/25 users Enterprise: Get a quote | Cloud and on-premise |
| Nintex | Small to large businesses | Available | Standard: 910$/unlimited users/10 workflows Enterprise: 1400$/unlimited users/10 workflows | Cloud and on-premise |
What are the best business process management tools?
Here are my picks for the best business process management tools to help you kickstart your process management this year.
Each of these business process management solutions has advantages and disadvantages. Choosing the best one necessitates thorough planning and in-person testing inside your organization.
1- Camunda
This (BPM) business process management tool was founded in 2008 with the goal of helping organizations build automation solutions faster that can scale as your business needs.
Camunda enables business users to collaborate with developers to model and automate processes using BPMN-powered flowcharts that execute with the speed, scale, and resiliency required to compete in today’s digital-first environment.
Hundreds of businesses, like Allianz, Deloitte, and Airbus, use this technology to design, automate, and enhance mission-critical business processes in order to accelerate digital transformation.
Camunda provides one of the best developer communities to help your team design, build, and automate any complicated business process, with over 100.000 developers. Having such a large network is critical for your team to have a technical reference whenever needed.
On-premises and in the cloud deployment options are available with Camunda.
Pros:
- Editor navigation is simple, and the user interface is fluid
- Extensive out of the box connectors to help integrate with other systems within organizations
- Good integration with JAVA
- Powerful REST API
- High availability and scalability
Cons:
- A consistent learning curve is required
- Documentation needs improvement
- The free version is less reliable than the commercial version
- Database and state persistence are complicated and occasionally sluggish.
Best for small to large businesses
Pricing:
They offer 2 pricing plans: Self-Managed and SaaS.
Self Managed:
Saas:
2- BonitaSoft
Founded in 2009, BonitaSoft is a French open-source business process management software that provides all the components needed to help drive digitalization within organizations.
BonitaSoft enables professional and citizen developers to collaborate to deliver automation projects and applications quickly utilizing best-of-breed DevOps processes and tools.
Hundreds of businesses, like Vodafone, Cisco, and the French Department of Defense, use this technology to design, automate, and enhance mission-critical business processes in order to accelerate digital transformation.
BonitaSoft requires several experiences with different programming or scripting languages including JavaScript, Java, Groovy Script, AngularJS, and BPMN.
On-premises and in the cloud deployment options are available with BonitaSoft.
Pros:
- Easy to use development environment
- Applications can be developed per business needs
- Powerful REST API
- Powerful UI designer with the ability to easily design responsive forms for mobiles, tablets, and laptops
- Supports multiple database engines
- Good Reporting & Analytics options
- High availability and scalability
Cons:
- A consistent learning curve is required
- Small out of the box connectors list (you can always create your own custom connector)
- Documentation needs improvement
- Complex to debug processes
- Small active community
- Handling exceptions is complex
- Slow start of their studio
Best for small to large businesses
Pricing:
They offer 2 versions: Community and Enterprise.
The community version is completely free to use. However, you don’t get any support from the company unless you upgrade to the enterprise edition.
In case you choose the enterprise edition, you have to contact the company for pricing.
3- Kissflow
KissFlow is a (BPM) business process management tool that helps companies in streamlining their workflow. KissFlow provides the necessary tools for companies to manage their business processes and get rid of the need for manual tasks.
This BPM software is used by over 10.000 customers, like PepsiCo, Domino’s, and Uber, to improve their digital experience and aggressively position themselves in competitive marketplaces.
It is a cloud-based software that offers businesses with a range of tools to help them improve their operations. The software includes features such as task management, document management, and project management. In addition, it integrates smoothly with Google products such as Gmail, Google Calendar, and so on.
Key Features:
- Forms Management
- Customizable Dashboard
- Collaboration Tools
- Process Change Tracking
- Process Modeling & Designing
- Business rules engine
- Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Powerful Form builder
- Ease of Access
- Excellent support
- Easy to customize
- Easy to generate apps and reports
- Excellent document collaboration tools
- Office 365 Support
Cons:
- A steep learning curve is required
- Process modeler has limitations
- Complex to debug processes
- Doesn’t use any standard modeling notation
- Difficult to set up advanced behaviors
Best for small to large businesses
Pricing:
They offer 4 plans detailed below
4- ProcessMaker
Founded in 2000, This business process management tool is on the mission to simplify the way custom business processes are built and run.
This BPM software offers a low-code workflow automation platform that enables business users to quickly create and deploy complicated workflows. It enables users to easily automate processes and integrate with other third-party systems with low coding skills.
ProcessMaker is a flexible and intuitive software suite that allows you to create, manage, and deploy complex workflows using visual design, and an integrated UI for management, simulation, and testing.
It requires several experiences with different programming or scripting languages including JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL.
On-premises and in the cloud deployment options are available with Processmaker.
Key Features:
- Process modeling & designing
- Reporting/Analytics
- Rules-Based Workflow
- Third-Party Integrations
- Workflow Management
- Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Good administration features
- Reliable architecture
- Excellent support
- Highly flexible form designer
- Rich documentation
- Great support
- Powerful API integration
Cons:
- UI/UX could be improved
- Code debugging features need improvement
- Limited escalation functionalities
- Expensive license price
- In large environments, user management and user assignment become more complicated.
- Poor document management capabilities
Best for medium-sized enterprises
Pricing:
They offer 4 plans detailed below
5- Appian
Appian was founded in 1999 and is considered one of our key Business Process Management tools. It is a platform that is open, enterprise-grade, and trusted by industry leaders.
This business process management tool provides a complete suite of features. It is used by companies to improve the efficiency of their business processes and make them more agile.
Appian is used by companies to automate their routine tasks, integrate with other enterprise tools, and create custom workflows. It offers a wide range of features such as mobile app development, chatbots, AI assistants, etc.
It features a free version that can be downloaded and used to test the platform in real-world circumstances. This should give you an idea of how easy it will be to automate procedures.
Appian is only available on the cloud.
Key Features:
- Process Modeling & Designing
- Drag-and-drop Interfaces
- Platform user management
- Third-Party Integrations
- Highly scalable
- Workflow Management
- Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
Pros:
- Easy to develop processes
- Intelligent case management
- Extensive integration with third-party systems
- Quick application delivery
- Highly flexible form designer
- Great support
- Intuitive user interface
Cons:
- Needs additional database options
- Documentation needs improvement
- Limited user interface customization
- More accurate error handling
- Lack of source control
- Needs more improved debug capabilities
Best for medium to large enterprise
Pricing:
They offer 4 plans detailed below
6- Webcon
Webcon is simple to set up and use. it provides powerful functionalities to give users the ability to design workflows, forms, and business processes with minimal coding needed.
Because of its smooth interface with SharePoint, this BPM software has become the go-to business process management tool for enterprises that use SP as their document management system.
Getting started with this BPM tool is quite simple and takes very little effort. After a few days of training, you will be ready to begin your process automation adventure. It is most effective when documents must be circulated amongst team members or departments.
Even though it is not widely recognized, I recommend giving it a shot.
They provide a free trial version with no time limit if you use the on-premise version and 30 days trial from their cloud server.
Most of their customers are medium-sized enterprises. On-premises and in the cloud deployment options are available with Webcon.
Key Features:
- Process designer
- Form builder
- Business rules engine
- Content management capabilities
Pros:
- Advanced OCR engine
- Multilingual system interface
- Graphical forms, workflows & business rules engine
- Out of the box integrations including SharePoint Server, SharePoint Online (O365)
- Process development has a low entrance barrier
- Short learning curve
Cons:
- Missing process simulation
- Support for process modeling languages
Pricing:
Their pricing module differentiates between the tool as Saas, cloud-hosted virtual machines, or on-premise.
7- Nintex
This business process management tool enhances your productivity by providing simple tools for visually managing, quickly automating, and continually optimizing business processes and workflows.
Nintex makes creating forms and workflows easy. No programming experience is needed. They provide an extensive list of document management capabilities including eSignatures.
Any business process that requires approvals, particularly if those approvals change, is well suited to manage using the Nintex Platform. Nintex also includes a robotic process automation tool that enables the intelligent automation of manual operations utilizing any software that is available from a user’s workstation.
I personally haven’t tried it but from the online reviews, I can summarize that this tool is powerful but could be expensive.
The good thing about it is that they provide training and certifications for employees that will be using this business process management tool to digitize processes.
On-premises and in the cloud deployment options are available with Nintex.
Pros:
- Simple workflows can be created very fast
- The training materials and classes are fantastic
- No-code to low-code
- Integration with SharePoint’s user interface
- Document management capabilities
- eSignatures
Cons:
- Expensive
- Web-version is certainly in need of some enhancements
- Error logs should be enhanced
Pricing:
Nintex workflow standard starts at 910$ per month for 10 workflows
All these prices are for annual billing. Nintex offers a free trial for the product.
What is BPM business process management and its tools?
Business process management (BPM) is a methodology that assists in the design, implementation, and monitoring of business processes. It is an umbrella term for a wide range of software applications and practices.
Tools used for BPM can be classified into four categories:
– Process modeling tools: These are the tools that help to create process models. They are used to design business processes before they are implemented in the organization.
– Process execution tools: These are the tools that help to execute or run processes which have already been designed.
– Process improvement tools: These are the tools that help to improve existing processes within an organization by analyzing them and providing recommendations on how they could be improved.
– Process compliance tools: These are the tools that facilitate compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley (SOX), HIPAA, EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), etc., by automating regulatory checks and audits at various points in a process lifecycle.
What are types of BPM tools?
BPM (business process management) tools come in a variety of forms, such as process modeling tools, workflow automation tools, and process mining tools. Without the need for extensive technical knowledge, these tools assist companies in visually designing and automating internal business processes.
FAQ
What are BPM tools used for?
BPM tools are one of the most important tools that organizations use to streamline processes and increase productivity. They are generally used by companies that have a lot of steps in their process.
