Oh, Camunda! Let’s fork! (ENG)

Camunda, known for providing an open-source business process management (BPM) platform, has announced that support for Camunda Platform 7 Community Edition will end in October 2025. From that point, the Enterprise Edition will enter maintenance mode, receiving only bug and security fixes. As a result, companies using Camunda 7 in production environments will need to consider moving to a commercial license (even if they stay on the no-longer-developed version 7), migrating to a newer version (now only available under a commercial license), or finding another solution—such as a fork.

Oh! Camunda, I am but a fool Darling, I love you, though you treat me cruel

Budget Constraints

Camunda’s shift to a licensing model with version 8.6 introduces new financial and organizational challenges for customers. Previously, using the open-source BPMN platform was free, but now companies planning to use Camunda in production must include license costs in their budgets. Camunda offers various pricing plans tailored to customer needs. The Starter plan, intended for low-scale automation, starts at €99 per month and covers up to 10 users and one developer cluster. For larger enterprises with high automation demands, there is the Enterprise plan (starting at around €50,000 per year), priced individually and including advanced features and 24/7 technical support.

For many organizations, especially those with limited budgets, the need to pay additional license fees can be a significant financial burden. These companies must now carefully analyze their business process automation needs and decide whether investing in a commercial Camunda license is worthwhile. Camunda has not published public data on the percentage of companies that have chosen to switch to the Enterprise license, making it difficult to determine what proportion of users have made this decision. Companies considering migration must individually assess the benefits of advanced features and technical support offered under the Enterprise license against the licensing costs.

Popular Choice—Widespread Problem

You hurt me and you make me cry

Camunda is a BPM platform used across sectors such as finance, insurance, telecommunications, and logistics. It enables process automation, integration with various systems, and orchestration of microservices. In finance, for example, Camunda is used for processing mortgage applications, automating report generation, or handling deposits. In insurance, it serves claim processing, policy management, and risk assessment. In telecommunications, it helps with network management, invoice processing, and customer onboarding, while in logistics, it supports delivery tracking and warehouse process optimization.

There are no specific market share data for Camunda in the BPM space, but its flexibility, scalability, and compliance with BPMN 2.0, DMN 1.1, and CMMN 1.1 standards make it a popular choice among companies seeking effective business process automation.

Fork Deployments

But if you leave me, I will – fork you.

With Camunda’s new licensing model, companies seeking alternatives to the Enterprise license have several options to consider. One is migrating to other open-source BPM platforms. There are various solutions on the market that can replace Camunda, offering features tailored to specific business needs. Alternatives often mentioned include Appian, Pega, or ProcessMaker, each offering different approaches to business process automation.

Another solution is using Camunda forks, created in response to the licensing changes. Forking involves creating an independent version of the software based on the original source code. This approach allows organizations to retain key functionalities from Camunda 7 while ensuring continued development and support in the open-source community. For clients, this means they can continue using the technology without incurring licensing costs. Moreover, companies do not have to search for such solutions on their own—IT service providers and Camunda partners often offer ready-made support and fork deployments, making the transition much easier.

Fork by Finture

In response to the licensing changes in Camunda 8.6, we decided to develop an alternative—Flowee BPMS. This is a lightweight, efficient BPM engine based on the JVM, compliant with BPMN 2.0, CMMN, and DMN standards. Flowee BPMS enables modeling and automation of complex business processes, and its architecture allows seamless integration with business applications, including running as a library within Spring Boot. 

Thanks to compatibility with Camunda 7 models, process migration can be significantly simplified. Flowee supports the External Task Pattern, making it a natural choice for microservices-based architectures. Extensive integration options with LDAP, Keycloak, and other identity sources facilitate access and role management. The system offers a cockpit for real-time process monitoring and debugging, as well as flexible options for extending process logic using Groovy, JavaScript, and the Java SDK.

Versioning of definitions, persistent data storage, and full execution history logging support auditability and change control. Flowee can also operate in a cluster, offering scalability and high availability—making it a viable and cost-effective alternative to Camunda in production environments.

If Camunda’s licensing changes also impact your organization, let’s talk. Together we can assess whether migrating to Camunda 8 or choosing a fork— Flowee BPMS—is the better solution for you.