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 3.4% mindshare in the category. Lucid Software is ranked #2 in MMS , with an average rating of 8.1, and holds a 22.7% 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

1,520 Views
1,064 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Lucidchart

Read 62 Lucidchart reviews

4,970 Views
746 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).

Buyer's Guide

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 3.4%, up 2.9% compared to last year.
Lucidchart, on the other hand, focuses on Mind Mapping Software, holds 22.7% mindshare, up 22.5% since last year.

Enterprise Architecture Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
erwin Evolve	3.4%
LeanIX	10.1%
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect	9.3%
Other	77.2%

Enterprise Architecture Management

Mind Mapping Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Lucidchart	22.7%
Visio	26.7%
draw.io	14.0%
Other	36.6%

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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Forward and reverse engineering were valuable features."

"You can use different kinds of diagrams to represent the architecture setting."

"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."

"I can send images in the PDF form, along with the relationships and the associations that are a very important part of what we do. It can show what is affected and what is impacted by a certain change in one area of the system architecture or enterprise architecture. I can very quickly draw those issues and topics to the fore."

"Evolve's reverse engineering ability is quite useful."

"Evolve is like a tank. You can do whatever you want with the solution, but you need to customize it. I think that it's not very aligned with the framework for enterprise architecture. MEGA is focused on these enterprise architectures, but it's only for that. With Evolve, you can do everything you want with professional services."

"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."

"Workgroup Repository collection of data models allows research across models without worry about platform incompatibilities and provides easy KPIs about corporate data assets."

More erwin Evolve pros

"Documenting things such as processes, systems, and new teams has been my primary use case. Lucidchart is really, really valuable for its ability to create a process chart from start to end. The web app makes it easy because everything is similar to other tools like Visio but Lucidchart feels a little bit more intuitive. It has been easy to use the web app. I definitely have learned a lot about how to bring in my own graphics or images in place of some of the shapes and I'm able to create and use the arrows within the processes, so it definitely has been useful for me."

"I've been using Lucidchart for quite simple things, but it's definitely much easier making process maps using Lucidchart than it is using Google Docs for basically everything. It's much simpler in terms of how easy it is to use Lucidchart. The way that you can get the arrows on the flow charts, based on the process mapping, you can drag the arrows from one box to another and it automatically shows you where you can put it. It makes decisions for you in terms of if you have a decision diamond, then the line is automatically a yes or no. This just makes it so much easier."

"Lucidchart enables me to put down on paper what I was visualizing in my head. It makes it more shareable than only using words."

"One of the features that I really like is the collaboration aspect of it. During the pandemic, it's very important that we're able to collaborate virtually."

"I love the simplicity and how clean all the different boxes, arrows, and charts can be. Especially with something complicated like our sales flow, it could be really easy to be all cluttered and everything like that, but my favorite feature is how clean it is, how straightforward it makes our flow look, and how easy it is to understand. Lucidchart accommodates both Mac and PC users which is important to us because at my company right now, our sales floor and then every other computer we have as a company is a Mac, but a lot of our employees actually have PCs and Android as well. So it's really beneficial because if we're ever on the go or we need to make a change, it's versatile and is open for both Mac and PC."

"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."

"I like how all the contacts in my chart are linked to LinkedIn. That's what makes it really easy for outreach and for making sure we have all the contacts right there in front of us when we need to."

"Documenting complicated workflows and technology integrations so that we can go back to it has also been a benefit. And without having to dig into a lot of technical, the codes, the documents, I can simply understand on a high level what's happening."

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."

"It could have had a more streamlined navigation. It seemed that when you went to the explorer panel, there were just so many different ways of doing the work that I could not remember, "How did I do this? How did I get to that point in that model to get back to it?" If I wanted to build a new one, where do I start? It just seemed like there was such a smorgasbord of ways of doing it that it was just overwhelming."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"erwin Evolve by Quest could have additional features to manage the architecture of enterprises and businesses."

More erwin Evolve cons

"The flowcharting feature would be improved if it had some kind of prediction capability that helped to create the diagrams, such as the ability to automatically join components with my database."

"The communication with sales has been pretty poor. They have been spotty in terms of response. So far, that has been our problem with it. We were in contact with one of their representatives, but he just kind of disappeared one day and we couldn't find him anymore. He has not been responsive to email."

"Although it comes with a lot of pre-existing tools, it would help if it had some more design templates. By now, they must know what kinds of things people are trying out, and that should help them create more templates. I would also like to see a little more automation."

"It would be nice to have more features that help me visually present information. Since I use it as a canvas, my use case for it is probably very specific. I use it as a way to present information to people visually on a large mind map. So, it would be nice to be able to have more graphical things to clean it up, like a header, banners, or something to help draw attention to certain areas. I would also like more infographic-like features, because I am kind of limited to float chart shapes. This makes the solution a little cumbersome."

"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."

"In terms of improvement, there can be more templates. There are good templates but there could still be more."

"It would be really helpful if we could create a process flow based on a Word Document or a PPT file."

"If you're trying to expand a comments box that is sitting on top of the chart, it automatically defaults to assuming you're trying to connect it to the next step in the process, when all you're trying to do is make the box bigger. It automatically goes to the arrow, but I just want to resize the box. That gets a little cumbersome because it does it every single time. It's not just a bug."

More Lucidchart cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"Yearly, our cost is €100,000."

"The price of this product is a little bit high. It is probably 20% higher than what I expected to pay for such a solution."

"We signed up for the month-to-month and it charged us all at once for the whole year. I believe we signed up for the $7.99 one. I think that was the price."

"I was using the paid version, but at $12 USD per month, I canceled the plan because it was a little bit too expensive for me."

"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."

"One of the reasons we were able to get approval within two hours from our management was that it was cheap enough. We have a 3% or 10% collaboration package, which comes out to be 70 bucks a year. It was very cheap, and we had no issues actually getting the full version. It was very affordable for a business."

"The pricing and licensing are fine. It has a lot of features that I prefer over some of the other programs, which is good. Being that it is web-based, I feel that it is acceptable that it's on a monthly pay basis. However, I think I pay on an annual basis, which is fine with me."

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

"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

20%

Performing Arts

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

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 ...

See all answers

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 needs improvement with Lucidchart?

I wish Lucidchart would add dark mode to improve the user experience.

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Comparisons

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs erwin Evolve

Compared 14% of the time

SAP PowerDesigner vs erwin Evolve

Compared 8% of the time

IDERA ER/Studio vs erwin Evolve

Compared 8% of the time

erwin Data Modeler vs erwin Evolve

Compared 7% of the time

Avolution ABACUS vs erwin Evolve

Compared 6% of the time

More erwin Evolve Competitors

Figma vs Lucidchart

Compared 16% of the time

Visio vs Lucidchart

Compared 15% 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 7% of the time

More Lucidchart Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

erwin Evolve

January 2026

Download erwin Evolve product report

Buyer's Guide

Lucidchart

December 2025

Download Lucidchart product report

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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