Looking for an alternative to Archi (ArchiMate Modelling Tool)?
What is the best alternative to the benchmark open-source tool for modernizing your architecture? Discover the benefits of Boldo for companies seeking collaboration and flexibility.
From individual modeling to collective intelligence
Archi (ArchiMate Modelling Tool)
Archi has established itself as the essential open-source reference for ArchiMate language purists, offering free access and strict standard compliance highly valued by individual practitioners. However, as an Eclipse-based desktop application, the tool suffers from an austere technical interface and a structural difficulty in sharing information in real-time, often confining architecture to an isolated expert exercise.
Boldo transforms this approach into a collaborative SaaS experience, designed to move models off individual workstations. With a "Consumer Grade" interface and native web accessibility, the platform allows all stakeholders—technical or not—to be involved, streamlining the dialogue between Business and IT without the overhead of software deployment.
Democratize access to architecture
While Archi's rigor is ideal for learning ArchiMate syntax, its ergonomics inherited from development environments (Eclipse) create a significant barrier to entry for newcomers. The learning curve is steep, limiting usage to certified architects only.
Conversely, Boldo offers an intuitive user experience inspired by the best modern productivity tools. Getting started is immediate, allowing users to visualize and manipulate business concepts without requiring technical mastery of the standard, thereby fostering large-scale adoption.
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Move from local files to real-time collaboration
While Archi allows for some form of sharing through extensions like coArchi (based on Git), the process remains asynchronous and complex for a non-technical team to implement. Version conflict management and local storage of .archimate files reinforce information silos.
Boldo is natively designed for simultaneous online work. Multiple users can enrich the repository at the same time, comment on, and validate models directly in the browser, ensuring a single source of truth accessible to the entire organization instantly.
Adapt the model to your business reality
Archi is intrinsically tied to the ArchiMate standard: it excels in this context, but becomes limiting as soon as you step outside standardized layers. The inability to easily customize the metamodel or attributes makes the tool rigid in the face of the specific needs of certain organizations.
Boldo offers total flexibility through an evolvable metamodel. The platform allows you to create custom object types and relationships to exactly reflect the company's reality while maintaining the necessary rigor, turning architecture into a living and adaptable tool.
Compare Boldo with 10+ other Enterprise Architecture modelling and mapping solutions.
Designed for collaboration across all stakeholders
Architecture should not live in silos. With Boldo, business teams, IT and leadership work on the same views, in a shared and living workspace. Everyone explores, comments and aligns in real time. Architecture becomes a collective alignment tool, directly understood and adopted across the organization.
Built on European data sovereignty
Boldo is a French platform, with data hosted in Europe on Scaleway, a trusted sovereign cloud infrastructure. Your architecture repository stays fully under your control, in an environment designed to meet regulatory requirements. No ambiguity, no hidden dependencies: clear hosting, clear rules, full transparency.
A flexible metamodel that adapts to your reality
Every organization has its own constraints and maturity. Boldo relies on a flexible and evolving metamodel that adapts to your context instead of forcing a rigid framework. Start simple, enrich progressively, and let your architecture evolve at your own pace.
Visual storytelling at the core of the experience
In Boldo, diagramming is not an afterthought, it's the heart of the product. Views are intuitive, visually refined and immediately readable. Clear hierarchies, smooth navigation and embedded diagrams make architecture easy to grasp and easy to share, from executive committees to hands-on workshops.
Fair and transparent pricing
Boldo offers Pro and Team plans in self-service, with public and predictable per-user pricing. No opaque licenses, no hidden bundles, no constant renegotiation. From day one, you know what you pay, what you get, and how it scales.
We are here to drive adoption and value
Customer Success is central to our approach. We work closely with teams to build an architecture governance that is useful, alive and truly adopted. Responsive support, continuous exchanges and a long-term vision ensure architecture becomes a concrete decision-making asset, not a theoretical exercise.
Archi (ArchiMate Modelling Tool) vs Boldo
| Archi | Boldo | |
|---|---|---|
Pricing | ||
| Pricing model | Open-source | User and modelled asset packs |
| Price positioning | Open-source | $$$ |
| Free trial | ||
| Self-service offering | ||
| Enterprise offering | ||
User experience | ||
| Modern interface | ||
| Consistency across views | ||
| Time to implement | ~ 2 to 6 months | ~ 1 to 6 weeks |
| Learning curve for architects | Moderate | Very fast |
| Learning curve for business / C-level users | Steep | Very fast |
Collaboration | ||
| Access rights management | File level | Very fine grained (fields and relationships) |
| Real-time multi-user modelling | (file logic) | |
| Comments linked to objects and views | ||
| Mentions and notifications | ||
| Object-level history and versioning | ||
Modelling | ||
| Custom object type creation | ||
| Object hierarchies | ||
| Custom properties per object type | ||
| Custom relationships | ||
| Process modelling | ? | |
| ArchiMate metamodel support | ||
| Framework-agnostic modelling | ||
Storytelling and visualisation | ||
| Dynamic views (auto-synchronised) | ||
| Nested maps and diagrams | ||
| Data visualisation | ||
| Auto-generated diagrams | ||
| Diagram in ""conception"" mode | ||
| Bi-directional data ↔ visuals synchronisation | ||
| Storytelling mode and scripted views | ||
| Multi-dimensional impact analysis | ||
Data and automation | ||
| Public API | ||
| Batch imports (CSV) | ||
| Native connectors | ||
| Data validation rules | (Q4 2026) | |
| Automatic triggers on changes | (Q4 2026) | |
| SaaS hosting | ||
| Sovereign hosting | ||
| On-premise hosting | ||
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