Lucidchart vs erwin Evolve comparison

The compared Quest Software and Lucid Software solutions aren't in the same category. Quest Software is ranked #14 in AM , and holds a 3.3% mindshare in the category. Lucid Software is ranked #2 in MMS , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 22.3% mindshare. Additionally, 81% of Quest Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Lucid Software users who would recommend it.

erwin Evolve

Read 19 erwin Evolve reviews

1,706 Views
1,194 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Lucidchart

Read 62 Lucidchart reviews

4,963 Views
794 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

erwin Evolve

Lucidchart

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Lucidchart and erwin Evolve based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about SAP LeanIX, Quest Software, MEGA International and others in Enterprise Architecture Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Enterprise Architecture Management Report (Updated: January 2026).

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Enterprise Architecture Management

January 2026

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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

erwin Evolve

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Architecture Management (14th), Business Process Design (21st)

Lucidchart

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Mind Mapping Software (2nd), Visual Collaboration Platforms (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

erwin Evolve and Lucidchart aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. erwin Evolve is designed for Enterprise Architecture Management and holds a mindshare of 3.3%, up 2.9% compared to last year.
Lucidchart, on the other hand, focuses on Mind Mapping Software, holds 22.3% mindshare, down 22.6% since last year.

Enterprise Architecture Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
erwin Evolve	3.3%
LeanIX	9.5%
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect	8.6%
Other	78.6%

Enterprise Architecture Management

Mind Mapping Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Lucidchart	22.3%
Visio	24.8%
draw.io	13.6%
Other	39.3%

Mind Mapping Software

Featured Reviews

Asish Sahu

SPM at Infosys

The reverse engineering capabilities are quite useful.

Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product.

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Faizuddin Shaik

Principal Application Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Visual planning has improved migration mapping but now needs broader cloud icon support

In my opinion, the best features Lucidchart offers include the toolkits they provide, such as the icons for AWS. These features allow us to use proper service icons rather than simple plain boxes for everything, helping us effectively map out the actual services instead of getting confused. The AWS icons and toolkits make my diagramming process easier and more effective because it is easy to explain and show to my customers which service is being used for a particular component. For instance, when using Amazon S3 for object storage or Amazon RDS for SQL, I can clearly indicate those services. If I need to show containers, I can pick those specific icons to demonstrate that, making it easier than reading it within a box. Lucidchart also offers other specific UML diagrams that I could use, including class diagrams, before I get into the code-level details.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the most valuable features is the website that sits on top of the database. There's a database of objects and how they are related, and you can make views and diagrams and visual elements out of that information on the website. The website is the part that is called Evolve and we use the Evolve Designer and publish the website out to our employees. They can click around and navigate and search, etc."

"The feature that stands out for me is the ease of configuring objects and the screens to show them. It's really easy to add a new type of object in this reference. Creating a new type of object, using it, and evolving it a little bit in terms of what we can document about it are the main features that made us decide to use this provider."

"Support for a broad range of data sources from relational to big data to the Cloud."

"The ability to share and collaborate on the solution is its most valuable feature."

"The most valuable features for us are impact analysis, where I can easily visualize the impact of change."

"There is a model behind it. It's really nice that the Evolve front-end, as it builds a website, keeps those relationships in mind. You can even go to a procedure and see all the applications that are related to it. Then you can go into that application and see all the standard operating procedures that that application is a part of. It's just very connected."

"The initial setup was really straightforward and the deployment was done within one day."

"I really liked that it mapped out processes and was able to attach the data model to the appropriate process. You could map out the process, then when you got down to a specific couple of data elements, you could attach the table in the database that supported that process. You could connect it with erwin Data Modeler for that."

More erwin Evolve pros

"The ability for Lucidchart to create database schemas or modify existing data structures is strong. That's what I initially introduced it for in our organization. The script that Lucidchart provides works with other systems like Oracle, SQL Server, and Postgres that I can copy-paste, and get a quick dump of metadata and import into has saved me a ton of steps that I didn't have to manually create these tables. I had a lot of things where I still had to put in the linkages between tables, but I didn't have to type in every field name, every data type, and everything else that came in. That saved me tons of time."

"It is important that Lucidchart accommodates both Mac and PC users because if you support Mac, that means you also support the mobile applications on the iPad... Some of the other employees have access to an iPad, but not all of them do. When we're trying to talk through a process with them on-the-fly, or at the point of occurrence, it's so much nicer if we can both have it up on the iPad. That's why I would say the Mac support is essential."

"The sticky notes are among the most valuable features. Also, the fact that it has templates so that I don't have to do things myself, starting from scratch, is very helpful. In addition, it's really easy to use. You can add stuff by clicking, without having to go to the options. You just click on something and the options you can use appear."

"Lucidchart's capabilities for visualizing and understanding process flows or workflows is excellent. The way that you put together the parts of charts and edit the chart are all very intuitive and easy to use."

"Lucidchart's ability to create a visualization that people prefer to look at, over reading written documents, has definitely saved me a lot of time. Moreover, it has helped to make my code bug-free because I no longer have broken endpoints."

"Lucidchart's capabilities for understanding workflows is high. I use a couple of different programs, like MindManager, and what I like about using Lucidchart is that it is all web-based. So, I can quickly go into a web browser, drag and drop a bunch of files, pictures, or notes, draw some flow lines, and rapidly be able to create a visual representation of what I am trying to do. As a product manager, I can quickly organize thoughts that way and show people what we are working on."

"The flow chart is most valuable. It is a very user-friendly and simple-to-use product. Quite quickly, I was able to understand how to use it and just get on with my process flow."

"It gives information about the roles and responsibilities of any architecture system and the exact system flow, business flow, or process flow. It also gives information about how the development team should take it forward. It shows the gap analysis in the flow charts and makes it easy to define the actor and his roles and responsibilities in the organization."

More Lucidchart pros

Cons

"With the Excel importing, the "up to date" part is the challenge. If we had a real-time integration, we could keep things up to date for whatever kinds of change points we had. With Excel, it is more that you have to export from one system then import it to another, so it's better for data that doesn't change that often."

"The way that we are using it for application management, we have several KPIs. We want to follow and monitor them regarding a number of solutions. We cannot calculate this today. We would like real-time calculations along with the KPIs in order to improve the user experience. We would like the tool to be able to display this, not only as signals, but as charts."

"The solution needs to focus on allowing for more integrations."

"What they need to do is to consolidate more of their products. For example, I was just looking and I couldn't figure out what erwin DT is. It's on the website but it would help if they could put information together and make it more clear as to what products they have and how they work with other things."

"They need to develop Evolve's user experience. For example, MEGA has a useful client view that helps with impact analysis. MEGA provides information about the processes, services, infrastructure, and portfolio of applications in one central view. It lets you see the periphery and relationships among components. This view is impressive, and Evolve doesn't have it."

"Evolve is primarily focused on the entity's licenses diagrams, but it would be nice if erwin could integrate case development, so that it shows the ER diagram plus certain inputs on the use cases and how the data is used. That deviates somewhat from the overall scope, so maybe they could call it a different product."

"There might be improvement required to better support some of the MPP databases for non-relational data structures and NoSQL databases."

"I would like it to be easier to make changes and then deploy them into production, especially when you have multiple web servers or front-ends. It would be nice to make a change and then have it propagate to the production servers in a more automated fashion."

More erwin Evolve cons

"When you want to add text to a connector arrow, I have not figured out how to position the text vertically. It always wants the text to stay horizontal."

"Sometimes, I have created charts with a lot of layers, which locks down parts of the chart and hides parts of the chart to edit it. If they have a better way to deal with specific layers when it gets complex, then that would be helpful. I would like to see something like an illustrator program, where they have a pallet of these layers that I want and don't want as well as being able to see each layer individually. That is the one thing that could be helpful."

"It would be helpful if there were different options available for organizing the folders, such as having a high-level display with pictures."

"I've had an issue is when you create, let's say, a rectangle box. You can write some text in it and give it a name, and, depending on how you shape the size of the box, the text will rearrange itself to fit. That is, except if your box is very, very narrow, but very long, like a long, narrow rectangle in a vertical position. In this case, the text will always go out of the rectangle."

"What I do find extremely frustrating is that when I've sent the sheet to non-license holders, you have to create an account. You create a username and password. The path taken to create that account is so confusing that everyone thinks that they have to give their credit card number, and then they're reluctant. They don't want to go through the sheet."

"There were some things I wish were a little bit more user-friendly. For instance, when you're putting all the stuff onto a document or PDF, there's a set limit of width and height. It would have been very nice in certain situations to be able to drag people on the far edges and move them back up so that everything fits nicely onto the page."

"I don't know if I will be able to add some animations if I want to. I believe the problem may be the program's process flows but if I want to transfer it into a PPP or any other document, I can only do image transfer."

"They should continue to bring in more shapes. For example, I saw something cool the other day that was a timeline and in between each step, there was a circle. I thought that that was very clean and that's something that I could see myself using. Lucidchart could come up with more visualizations. I'm not a designer so I would like to have more visuals. That would make my job easier because it would make my job much more professional looking but without having to be a designer myself."

More Lucidchart cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a yearly basis, our licensing costs are 50,000 euro. There are no additional costs because we are on a SaaS model."

"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."

"The licensing enables you to differentiate between people who edit the content and the people who consume it. We are able to keep the licensing costs down by keeping the "contributor" licenses to a minimum, and we then just roll out the content in a read-only version for the rest of our users."

"Unless you are a one person shop – always go with the Workgroup edition and Concurrent licensing."

"The cost is something like $15,000, per license. But I haven't looked at those numbers in three years. It was over $100,000 to initially set everything up and get it all configured."

"I think erwin is quite expensive. I have difficulty selling the portal, in fact."

"I estimate that we pay between $40,000 and $50,000 a year for the solution, not including the upfront costs to buy things the first time."

"I pay $95 a year for it. It seems like a reasonable price."

"Lucidchart's pricing model is not excessive, as compared to similar products. It is pretty much in line with everyone else."

"Pricing-wise, it is pretty fair. I don't really know what group pricing looks like, but right now, I pay $10 a month for my Lucid subscription. One thing I would say is that I do worry about my bosses being okay with paying $10 a month for every single employee because we would have around 20 people. It makes me a little nervous about whether they are going to pay $200 a month for people to be able to use this software. At the same time, from where I'm sitting, it's totally worth it. We save a thousand dollars from using this software. It's still a no-brainer."

"I have only used the trial version and have not yet paid for it, or explored the pricing options."

"The price was low enough to make me think that it was fine, I'll go for it. I think it's $80 or so. It's not too expensive."

"The pricing is very reasonable, and they have a free trial available that you can play with."

"Its pricing is very affordable and reasonable for the features that it provides. I am using its basic plan, and for my usage, it is perfectly reasonable. It suits perfectly."

"The licensing is pretty cost-effective but I haven't considered it on an enterprise level."

More Lucidchart pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Performing Arts

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	25

Questions from the Community

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LucidChart vs LucidSpark for brainstorming sessions over Zoom

Hi @Krista Thompson - Yes, LucidSpark is a much more nimble and, in some ways, user-friendly tool than LucidChart. LucidSpark is designed to do a better job managing multiple users participating ...

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Do you recommend Lucidchart?

I definitely recommend Lucidchart. I feel it is one of the top visual collaboration platforms that’s available on the market. Out of all the solutions I have tried, it is by far the best for diagra...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lucidchart?

In terms of pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I feel that Lucidchart has provided us with good plans, as we have purchased it through AWS Marketplace. We got team plans that run around nine to te...

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Comparisons

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Evolve

Compared 12% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Evolve

Compared 8% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Evolve

Compared 7% of the time

erwin Data Modeler vs erwin Evolve

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs erwin Evolve

Compared 6% of the time

More erwin Evolve Competitors

Figma vs Lucidchart

Compared 16% of the time

Visio vs Lucidchart

Compared 14% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs Lucidchart

Compared 10% of the time

Bizagi vs Lucidchart

Compared 7% of the time

Visual Paradigm vs Lucidchart

Compared 6% of the time

More Lucidchart Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Evolve

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Lucidchart

January 2026

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Also Known As

erwin EA, erwin Business Process, erwin Enterprise Architecture

No data available

Overview

erwin Evolve provides comprehensive graphical support for handling large data models. It offers features such as metadata access, version control, and model comparison, enhancing operational reports and system analytics through its collaborative web-driven design.

erwin Evolve facilitates reverse engineering and database integration, fostering collaboration and process exploration through its web interface. Customizable and easy to configure, it supports workflow configuration and architectural modeling. Users can utilize its capabilities for developing industry models, managing transformation programs, and presenting standard operating procedures. Despite its strengths, there are demands for improved integration, enhanced UML support, and a more modern user experience. Users also express challenges with legacy system updates and call for better connectors and collaborative features.

What are the key features of erwin Evolve?

Graphical Support for Large Data Models: Provides visualization capabilities for complex data structures.
Metadata Access via API: Allows integration and management of metadata across platforms.
Version Control and Model Comparison: Enhances tracking and analysis of model changes.
Collaborative Web Interface: Facilitates teamwork and process exploration remotely.
Architectural Modeling: Supports the design and configuration of enterprise architecture.

What are the benefits and ROI of using erwin Evolve?

Customization and Ease of Configuration: Reduces setup time and adapts to specific organizational workflows.
Enhanced Accessibility and Mobile Usability: Offers access to critical information on the go.
Operational Reports Creation: Generates insights and facilitates informed decision-making.
System Analytics Handling: Provides robust tools for analyzing system performance and integration.

Data-driven organizations in sectors like finance and healthcare implement erwin Evolve for data warehousing, enterprise architecture, and business process modeling. They leverage its capabilities for cataloging architectural elements, linking to CMDBs, analyzing system interfaces, and describing business processes. Utilization extends to IT solution registration, business capability planning, and strategic modeling, with frequent deployments on cloud platforms to support transformation initiatives.

Quest Software

Our online diagram application makes it easy to sketch and share professional flowchart diagrams. From brainstorming to project management, we support all of your communication needs. That’s why millions of users choose Lucidchart.

Lucid Software

Sample Customers

AT&T, Bank of America, Chevron, Duke University, ESPN, Fidelity, GE, JP Morgan Chase, KPMG, McGraw Hill, NASA, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Scotland, Teradata, Union Pacific, Vodafone, Wells Fargo.

Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Whirlpool, Uber, Wal Mart, Pearson, Twitch, Riot Games, Western Union, Trimble, Starbucks

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Architecture Management

January 2026

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