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.

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

"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."

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

"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."

"I have not seen capabilities for web-sharing and interaction with the architecture from any other supplier. It's a great capability..."

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

"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."

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

"We can efficiently deploy business models into the databases and generate SQL scripts."

More erwin Evolve pros

"Creating flowcharts and documentation is easy to do and the results are very nice."

"We are using Lucidchart a lot for documenting things, such as processes, systems, new teams, etc. Its ability to document processes is great. Some of the major pluses are the sheer number of templates and the flexibility in the types of things that you can document. This is a benefit because we are able to structure it in whatever format we want. So, we can take a template that maybe was designed for something different and not have to create it from scratch. We just modify it for our purposes."

"I like the panel on the left of the screen that has all of the shapes that are available to use in the charts. It's easy to use because you can just drag and drop."

"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."

"The ease of creating some of the maps and diagrams is most valuable. Lucidchart is just simpler and works more intuitively than other solutions that I have used in the past, such as Microsoft Visio. I am not in a creative role, but I know how to use Adobe Illustrator and other solutions like that. If I need to map out something that I've never mapped out before, and it is going to need a totally custom graphic, eight times out of 10, I'm going to go to Lucidchart rather than trying to build it in Illustrator. Its intuition and flexibility are really big features for me."

"Lucidchart helped us to realize efficiencies in the projects we use it for. I can show people pictures, and I can change things in a meeting and then email it by the end of the meeting. Because most places we go, especially now with everybody in-home office, I'm going to have great internet access, and that just makes it easier to be able to change things quickly while we're in a meeting and go, "Oh, you changed this. Oh, okay.", and then send it to them as a proof and send it as a PDF or send them a link. That works great. That saves time and accelerates a sale."

"The collaboration, hands-down, is the top feature. It is valuable because our company doesn't believe in working in silos... While I may be the one leading the efforts, it's very important that my team gets buy-in on decisions being made when we're designing. It's critical, especially in this virtual environment, when we're not in an office to have a team meeting and able to whiteboard something. Lucidchart is an extremely useful tool for our team."

"The wireframe and mock-up features have been the most useful so far. It's easy to create the mock-ups and then communicate to our development team what they need to look like. Lucidchart's capabilities for visualizing and understanding process flows or workflows is very good as well. I'm able to easily use any style of box that I need to create on a flowchart, to effectively communicate to our development team."

More Lucidchart pros

Cons

"They have improved the search engine a little bit but it can always be improved more. The more data you put inside it, the more you want to use it."

"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."

"I would like to see an improvement in the output of the solution."

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

"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."

"Business process modelling could be improved."

"Add some ability to do conditional Visualization on the models and in reports (some ideas) – maybe as a specialized Theme or Diagram or Display."

More erwin Evolve cons

"The main improvement I would like to see is for them to improve the help section on the flow charts or on the formatting."

"I would like to have more text boxes to write more comments so I can write a small note below a picture. I would like some flexibility."

"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."

"Perhaps it already exists, but if there were software to install the solution on a Mac, that would be helpful. I see that it's not in the App Store, so that's something that could be improved."

"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."

"I would like to have access to more colorful and more vibrant icons."

"There is a basic function that I struggle with, in the interface, which is having to switch between the editing and navigation modes. A lot of clicks are required when switching between edit and navigation modes and I think that many could potentially be avoided by handling the tasks at the same time."

"There is a premium for the use of certain elements in Lucidchart... It becomes very annoying, especially if you are a first-time user of Lucidchart and you don't have a premium plan. It feels a little too restrictive, in terms of using very basic shapes and icons. It asks you to sign-up for the premium account, which I think shouldn't be the case."

More Lucidchart cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"I had a quick glimpse of it. It was about 100 Canadian Dollars a year for just me. I don't know if there are any additional costs."

"There is a nominal charge for the paid version of the product. They have a free version available and from what I could see, there was not much difference between it and the pro version."

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

"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 was using the free version of Lucidchart, which was very helpful."

More Lucidchart pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

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 5% 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 11% 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

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

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January 2026

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