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IBM Blueworks Live vs Lucidchart comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

IBM Blueworks Live
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (15th)
Lucidchart
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Mind Mapping Software (2nd), Visual Collaboration Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

IBM Blueworks Live and Lucidchart aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. IBM Blueworks Live is designed for Business Process Design and holds a mindshare of 3.4%, up 3.3% compared to last year.
Lucidchart, on the other hand, focuses on Mind Mapping Software, holds 22.9% mindshare, up 20.8% since last year.
Business Process Design Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Blueworks Live3.4%
Visio11.7%
Camunda11.6%
Other73.3%
Business Process Design
Mind Mapping Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Lucidchart22.9%
Visio27.6%
draw.io17.7%
Other31.799999999999997%
Mind Mapping Software
 

Featured Reviews

Nupur Wadhwa - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables efficient process mapping but requires improvement in maintaining server stability
The pricing of the solution can be quite expensive when compared to competitors, though IBM Blueworks Live stands out from a technical standpoint. IBM Blueworks Live provides clear ROI as it saves both time and money. I have successfully imported Visio flowcharts into both IBM Blueworks Live and ARIS. Both tools handled the imports successfully, though some manual intervention was required because Visio is quite a basic tool. Importing flowcharts into advanced tools such as ARIS and IBM Blueworks Live requires some manual effort. The primary advantage is the ease of use. I have not encountered any features in other tools that I couldn't find in ARIS. This is a major factor because I don't have to switch between tools to find specific features. Using ARIS for the past three years has built confidence and trust in the tool.
Michael Verruto - PeerSpot reviewer
Visual approach facilitates clarity and process efficiency in complex real estate tasks
I haven't done much with Lucidchart's integration with other popular apps such as Teams, though one of my colleagues mentioned it can be added. This has sparked my interest to look into integration with Excel and Word, though we haven't implemented these features yet in our less than a year of operation. I access Lucidchart from multiple devices, including iPhone, iPad, and PC desktop. Our PCs are all laptops, so we can work remotely. I've collaborated with people from home on my iPad while they were on their laptop, though this isn't our routine behavior. I would recommend Lucidchart to others, but I'd also recommend exploring other options. It depends on what your fit and feel is for what you're trying to accomplish. For heavy users or technical users, Lucidchart might be very appealing. It has more capabilities than I'm currently using. The Highway Bridge Maintenance group, who are familiar with Agile processes, speak positively about it. For average users, they might find similar functionality in Miro or other less expensive alternatives. Overall Rating: 9 out of 10

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Blueworks Live provides clear ROI as it saves both time and money."
"This solution is good at utilizing standards rules for connectivity."
"The business process discovery is excellent. The diagram or blueprinting functionality of the solution are very good. It's quite easy. You can link the sub-processes and get a big overview of the whole process then."
"In terms of the collaboration features, from the point of discovery, it was useful to go to load up the policies and the rule sets that the client had. And in terms of exploring options and being able to model a variety of different processes, that was incredibly useful as well."
"We are you using the product as a process mapping tool and as part of a larger process improvement project. We use it with IBM BPM and IBM ODM. We get an automated workflow solution for our customers, an improved workflow automation."
"For me the most valuable feature is that it's one depository for our bank. So it's not like everybody has their critical processes on SharePoint or on their desktops. Everything is centrally located. It's very intuitive, easy to use. The support that I get from IBM is always great."
"It's very easy, very quick to create a process map. It has templates. The look and feel is very nice. What we want to achieve out of the process map, we can achieve it using Blueworks."
"IBM Blueworks Live is cloud-based and provides easy access to all your processes in one place."
"I really like the drag and drop feature because it makes the work easier. It is very easy to use. All the pieces are very good. All the icons and all the fields are available in the left panel. So, I just click, drag, and then edit a piece. When I showed it to my managing director, he was very inspired, and he also got a premium account for himself."
"In general, this product has improved our organization because it makes accessing up-to-date processes and planning a lot easier."
"Lucidchart is very visual in nature, and it is something that we do use extensively for stakeholder mapping, for example. If you want to build graphs for things like who the decision-makers are in a particular organization, Lucidchart can be used for that."
"Lucidchart enables me to put down on paper what I was visualizing in my head. It makes it more shareable than only using words."
"The best part of Lucidchart is its comfortableness when sharing it with my teammates. Lucidchart provides me a folder for my ERD. I can make a dozen lists of my chart, then share them with my teammates easily through the diagrams of Lucidchart. This is their main comfortableness, which is the reason why I choose Lucidchart rather than some other chart program."
"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."
"Creating flowcharts and documentation is easy to do and the results are very nice."
"I love the fact that you can just integrate a drawing into Google Slides. I build a lot of visuals in Lucidchart, and then, rather than sharing them directly from Lucidchart, I just build Google Slides decks for senior management, and I link the Lucidchart on the cloud version to a slide image. That makes it easy. This way, I can build in one tool and show in another."
 

Cons

"I can't insert any images. For example, within the process map, if I want to put it in the box or rectangle, or circle. If I have to use one image or icon, that's not possible."
"The solution is a very basic discovery product so it doesn't have that much modeling capability. This can be improved."
"We would like the ability to add additional custom colors. We would like to color additional items to add notes to the blueprint."
"In the solution Signavio, they have a customer journey mapping feature that should be added to IBM Blueworks Live. It's valuable to map or document the customer journey to identify the pains and opportunities in this process."
"I wish Blueworks Live had simulations built in, but it doesn't. It also lacks a feature of reporting; ad hoc, drag and drop reporting. A lot of senior people are always asking for reports, and there's no reporting feature within IBM Blueworks."
"We'd also like to see it be Six Sigma or Lean compatible, a lot of people have asked about that."
"I would like to see integration with ERP systems. This would help us to simulate the process and see where the problems are. Though IBM Blueworks Live is a good tool for documenting, it is not good for simulating."
"Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively."
"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."
"This might already be a feature, but I remember sometimes when we're just all viewing, if you accidentally click, then there's an arrow that pops up, and you have to go back and delete it. A lot of times there are accidental arrows being drawn when really we're just trying to present to each other."
"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."
"One of the issues has been that, as far as I understand, even to view it, the other person needs a Lucidchart account unless you send them a PDF. That's been a bit of an issue because some people in our organization don't have Lucidchart accounts, only certain people have logins. If we just want to collect comments from people, that's been a bit complicated."
"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."
"The main improvement I would like to see is for them to improve the help section on the flow charts or on the formatting."
"It would be nice to be able to import not just contacts from Salesforce but also leads. In the beginning, when I was still learning the ropes and my way around it, I couldn't find such an option. There might be an option, but I just don't know about it."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not very expensive."
"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."
"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."
"Making it less expensive would be good."
"The solution is very, very cost-effective."
"Based on the licenses purchased, from a footprint perspective, you can have as many people as you want. You have multiple different categories of licenses to keep the cost low."
"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."
"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."
"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."
"I'm happy with the pricing of Lucidchart but I can't say I'm completely happy with it. It could be cheaper for what it offers, about $5 cheaper, or Lucid could charge $5 more and add more features, like automation. Right now, it's $15 per user per month... On the other hand, they have made their billing super-easy for users, such as for people who have to do expense reports. It is probably the easiest platform I'm using when it comes to billing for software as a service."
"The price and licensing are good."
"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."
"The pricing is very reasonable, and they have a free trial available that you can play with."
"I was using the free version of Lucidchart, which was very helpful."
"I have a subscription as an individual user for one year, and it is not expensive."
"The pricing and licensing are fine, though I wish they didn't require you to buy the licenses in batches of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution is easy to operate. Also, there is an automatic mode to make the business flow. You don't have to put any lines or arrows in a decision point in IBM Blueworks Live; it's very automatic.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.
What needs improvement with IBM Blueworks Live?
Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively.
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 ...
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...
What needs improvement with Lucidchart?
The system is a bit clumsy when it comes to stylizing to match corporate imaging styles. In real estate, we need everything to have the same look and feel as our materials. Beyond dropping a logo i...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

IBM Lombardi Blueprint
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council
Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Whirlpool, Uber, Wal Mart, Pearson, Twitch, Riot Games, Western Union, Trimble, Starbucks
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Microsoft, SAP and others in Business Process Design. Updated: August 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.