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IntelliJ IDEA vs. Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    IntelliJ IDEA

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/AIntelliJ IDEA is an IDE that aims to give Java and Kotlin developers everything they need out of the box, including a smart code editor, built-in developer tools, framework support, database support, web development support, and much more.

    $19.90

    per month

    Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect

    Score5.9 out of 10
    N/AEnterprise Architect is the flagship architecture management platform from global, Australian-headquartered company Sparx Systems.

    $229

    per license

    Pricing
    IntelliJ IDEASparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Editions & Modules
    For Individual Use (Monthly billing)
    $19.90
    per month
    For Organizations (Monthly billing)
    $71.90
    per month
    For Individual Use (Yearly billing)
    $199
    per year
    For Organizations (Yearly billing)
    $719
    per year
    Professional
    $229
    per license
    Corporate
    $299
    per license
    Unified
    $499
    per license
    Ultimate
    $699
    per license
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    IntelliJ IDEASparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsAll Products Pack (For Individual Use) – $299 /1st year, $ 239 /2nd year and $ 179 /3d year onwards All Products Pack (For Organizations) – $979 / year—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    IntelliJ IDEASparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Considered Both Products
    JetBrains
    No answer on this topic
    Sparx Systems
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    31 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    27 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    32 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    22 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    30 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    IntelliJ IDEASparx Systems Enterprise Architect
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    Visual Studio
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    PyCharm
    Score9.3 out of 10
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    Enterprises
    WebStorm
    Score9.6 out of 10
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    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    IntelliJ IDEASparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (59 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.8
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.9
    (15 ratings)
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    IntelliJ IDEASparx Systems Enterprise Architect
    Likelihood to Recommend
    JetBrains
    This is a superb tool if your project involves a lot of backend development, especially in Java/Spring Boot and Kotlin. The support for the front end is great as well, but some developers may prefer to use the GitHub copilot add-on. I especially love using the GitHub copilot add-on. It may be less appropriate if your project requires heavy use of HotSwaps for backend debugging, as sometimes the support for that can be limited.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sparx Systems
    Enterprise Architect can be used to capture business requirements, design and management of all successive models, algorithms, process flows/workflows, design of business data objects and other artifacts. The strong point is the ability to link the items in all models with each other, the more time the analysts and designers "invest" into making nice and clearly defined models, the higher the future pay-off by any successive changes to the systems. Enterprise Architect is not a good tool for capturing rather unstructured business requirements, use e.g. Confluence or other solutions instead. EA should comprise the extracted models with very little unstructured information. Management of the changes process should not be done in Enterprise Architect, rather use JIRA/Confluence or similar.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    JetBrains
    • Unit testing: Fully integrated into IntelliJ IDEA. Your unit tests will run smoothly and efficiently, with excellent debugging tools for when things get tricky.
    • Spring integration: Our Spring project using Maven works flawlessly in IntelliJ IDEA. I know firsthand that Apache is also easily and readily supported too. The integration is seamless and very easy to set up using IntelliJ IDEA's set up wizard when importing new projects.
    • Customization: IntelliJ IDEA comes out of the box with a bunch of handy shortcuts, as well as text prediction, syntax error detection, and other tools to help keep your code clean. But even better is that it allows for total customization of shortcuts you can easily create to suit your needs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sparx Systems
    • Open Architecture - A wide and extensive set of options, plug-ins and customization options make Sparx EA more of a tool kit than just a tool. Most tools allow customization but Sparx EA is built from the ground up with this in mind.
    • Wide variety of formats, lexicons, standards and data import export capabilities allow different roles to interact with the information in different ways.
    • Automated report generation allows architects and designers to spend less taking on word processing and more time on performing architecture and design.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    JetBrains
    • Finding if a feature exists or not in IntelliJ IDEA can be challenging.
    • For example, if we know how to format a particular file, the command is Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L, but if we don't, then finding it is difficult.
    • Setting up a project interpreter and directory structure might not be intuitive at first.
    • Git integration can be improved. For example, it isn't easy to rebase using UI in IntelliJ IDEA.
    Incentivized
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    Sparx Systems
    • Needs someone that is very conversant with business modelling terminology
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    JetBrains
    VS Code is maturing and has a Scala plugin now. The overall experience with VS Code - for web development at least - is very snappy/fast. IntelliJ feels a bit sluggish in comparison. If that Scala plugin for VS Code is deemed mature enough - we may not bother renewing and resort to the Community Edition if we need it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Sparx Systems
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    JetBrains
    There is always room for improvement, but I haven't met any IDE that I liked more so far. Even if it did not fit a use case right out of the box, there is always a way to configure how it works to do just that.
    Incentivized
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    Sparx Systems
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    JetBrains
    Customer support is really good in the case of IntelliJ. If you are paying for this product then, the company makes sure that you will get all the services adequately. Regular update patches are provided to improve the IDE. An online bug report makes it easier for the developers to find the solution as fast as possible. The large online community also helps to find the various solutions to the issues.
    Incentivized
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    Sparx Systems
    The support team of Sparx EA, based in Australia, is always willing to help and give direction.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    JetBrains
    This installs just like any other application - its pretty straight forward. Perhaps licensing could be more challenging - but if you use the cloud licensing they offer its as simple as having engineers login to the application and it just works.
    Incentivized
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    Sparx Systems
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    JetBrains
    Eclipse is just so old, like a dinosaur, compared to IntelliJ. There are still formats that Eclipse supports better, especially old and/or propriety ones. Still, most of the modern software development needs can be done on IntelliJ, & in a much better way, some of them are not even supported on Eclipse.
    Incentivized
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    Sparx Systems
    BiZZdesign represents a different new concept to enterprise architecture, its gravity center is not technical modelling, but rather a view on capturing the whole end-user experience or customer journey. It also allows to grasp areas as internal company capabilities, required for adoption/changes and operation of the solution, uses the same Archimate modelling language. This solution is in my opinion a new generation enabling to not only design the solutions, but also manage the whole application portfolio with respect to capabilities and requirement parameters.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    JetBrains
    • Easier to find bugs and debugs, thus reducing man hours and generating immediate dollar impact.
    • Coding time is lessened, which in turn again reduces man hours and generates immediate dollar impact.
    • Refactoring code is more innovative and easy here, resulting in more maintainable code.
    Incentivized
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    Sparx Systems
    • This program speed up the development process. It generates the actual code with my model classes after modeling
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    IntelliJ IDEA Screenshots

    Screenshot of IntelliJ IDEA interface overview: the Project tool window (left) outlines the code structure and the Editor (right) is used to read, write, and explore the source code.Screenshot of IntelliJ IDEA analyzing the context. It then suggests the most applicable and relevant code.Screenshot of the Search Everywhere window, where users can search for files, actions, classes, symbols, settings, UI elements, and anything in Git, all from a single entry point.Screenshot of IntelliJ IDEA's support for frameworks with dedicated assistance for Spring and Spring Boot, Jakarta EE, JPA, Reactor, and other popular frameworks.Screenshot of the AI Assistant that provides features for software development. It can explain code, answer questions about code fragments, provide code suggestions, generate documentation, and commit messages.Screenshot of the interface to run queries, connect to databases, browse and export data, and manage schemas.