IBM Blueworks Live vs Lucidchart comparison

The compared IBM and Lucid Software solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #12 in BPD , with an average rating of 7.3, and holds a 3.5% mindshare in the category. Lucid Software is ranked #2 in MMS , with an average rating of 10.0, and holds a 23.7% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Lucid Software users who would recommend it.

IBM Blueworks Live

Read 20 IBM Blueworks Live reviews

2,419 Views
2,080 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Lucidchart

Read 54 Lucidchart reviews

6,015 Views
782 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

IBM Blueworks Live

Lucidchart

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Blueworks Live and Lucidchart based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Camunda, SAP and others in Business Process Design.

To learn more, read our detailed Business Process Design Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Business Process Design

June 2025

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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

IBM Blueworks Live

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Process Design (12th)

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

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 3.5%, up 3.3% compared to last year.
Lucidchart, on the other hand, focuses on Mind Mapping Software, holds 23.7% mindshare, up 20.3% since last year.

Business Process Design

Mind Mapping Software

Featured Reviews

AjarMathur

Global Innovation Director at Ernst & Young

An easily scalable and affordable solution that enables users to document and digitize processes with ease

IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts. There is only one kind of BPMN 2.0 diagram. It is a process diagram. It doesn't have the concept of separate tools, which other products offer. If I had to do a hardcore BPMN 2.0 modeling, the product would have its own reservations. There were features we could not explore from a BPMN 2.0 perspective. Most of the time, people who are shifting from Microsoft Office tools to a digitized way of working still want the reporting capabilities to be strong. Some tools, like ARIS or Signavio, offer customized solutions from the reporting perspective. If I have documented my whole finance process and want to fetch out a complete SOP report in a very customized manner, IBM Blueworks cannot provide it. We have to rely on some other services. So that's one area in which we always struggled, how to really customize the reporting aspects. I understand that we need to keep the tool a little more asset-light. It's very difficult to keep adding many options, but at least a few BPMN 2.0 options were needed. We have been suggesting to IBM that we should have some way of customizing the reporting. At least we should get a custom way of reporting it into different formats like Excel or putting up a logo for one of the clients so that their SAP can be printed that way.

Read full review

MichaelChirinian

Data Engineer at Mindmap

Intuitive, integrates well, and is a great way to change text into visual ideas

I'm not a super user, and there might be a way of doing it that I haven't explored, but I was looking for some specific icons that are just standard icons, and I found the icon library to be very focused on architecture icons. It didn't have as many standard or generic icons. Another thing that somewhat irritated me is the fact that there is a paste function in the menu, but when you right-click and select paste, it tells you that you can't use paste. You must press Command-V or Apple-V to paste. They give you a menu option to paste, but every time you use that, they say, "We don't accept it." On top of that, normally, you'd have an option for paste or paste values, but when you use the paste function, you don't have that capability. So, to copy text from one place, I have to use Command-V to paste it, but if I don't like the format, I've got to go back and do copy style and then paste style on top of that. It is a small detail, but when you're doing diagrams, it is annoying that they don't support paste values. It is a small irk. I'm not penalizing it, and I still think it is a five-star product. In terms of other bigger things, I don't really have any comments or criticism so far.

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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

"The solution is stable. All the refreshes run very well."

"Collaboration is most valuable. You can collaborate online with many people. People can comment, and you can comment back. It is just like a social network, and that, for me, is very good."

"The reporting that we can generate from IBM Blueworks Live has been interesting. We found the KPIs, risks, process modeling, format, and colors, to be very good. We use the EY template and it is interesting to generate reporting in this format."

"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."

"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."

"IBM Blueworks Live is cloud-based and provides easy access to all your processes in one place."

"The licenses are transferrable between different users."

"This solution is good at utilizing standards rules for connectivity."

More IBM Blueworks Live pros

"It is important to me that the solution accommodates both Mac and PC users because the developers in our company use Mac, then the business people use Windows. The technical people create the technical architecture using Lucidchart. So, it is important that it is compatible with both the systems."

"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."

"It's very easy to use. I didn't go through any tutorials or any documentation. It was very easy for me to start. It is intuitive. Right after logging in, I was able to quickly just drag and drop and do the things I wanted to do, without any prior knowledge of the solution."

"Easy to work on."

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of use, and just being able to drag and drop."

More Lucidchart pros

Cons

"Some of the import functionality was a bit restrictive, in terms of loading data in from other data sources. Something as simple as Excel, loading data tables from Excel, wasn't great. And vice-versa. Some of the export and import functionality with something like Visio - which, I know it's a slightly different tool - but being able to work seamlessly with those other tool sets would've been quite useful. I know it was something that was in the pipeline to be looked at. So that would be useful."

"Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively."

"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 would like the ability to add additional custom colors. We would like to color additional items to add notes to the blueprint."

"The font size is really, really small and it's really not useful to print out process models because you cannot read what's written in different boxes. This makes it necessary for people to have access to the tool. We view licenses to see how the printing or output is. It's not very good."

"The solution is a very basic discovery product so it doesn't have that much modeling capability. This can be improved."

"The ability to create a very structured rule. With the capability that we have right now, Blueworks Live is more process focused. We should be able to enhance it to include a lot more of decisions as well."

"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."

More IBM Blueworks Live cons

"I would really like to be able to set default appearance settings for new documents because I have a set of appearance settings that I always use. I end up setting that manually every time. There may be a way to do that, and maybe I am not able to find it. This is my only major point of feedback for improvement. There are other little nitpicky things, such as being able to lock layers without them looking like a big red line around them would be nice, but every graphic design software does that, so I understand why they have that. All my concerns are nitpicks. They're not big."

"I wish there were a lot more automations. For instance, if I'm using a project management software to list out all my WBS [work breakdown structure] I wish Lucidchart had the functionality where it would take all the numbering and generate a tree diagram. Something like that would help so much, but right now it's still a manual task..."

"I would like an on-premises version of the software that I can just download and use. I think that it's easier that way."

"I'm not sure if this feature is already there, but it would be good if we can import a cloud database in the web version."

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

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

"When you log in the first time, they ask you a lot of questions, such as what are you going to use it for. Half of the things weren't applicable to me. I couldn't see the skip button, so I picked random things because none of the given options was applicable to me. It is a tech startup, and I am in a consultant role. I use it for a variety of things, but the questions were tailored for HR professionals who are creating org structures or IT professionals who are doing data flow diagrams. What if I do both of them depending on the project I'm working on? I just felt that I am wasting time with those questions and just wanted them to stop asking me these questions and get into charting."

"One of the things that I find frustrating is that all of our Tableau information is on a server, so when I send that out people can't open it and use it. I then have to go back and do extra work to convert everything into an Excel format that everybody can use. It would be really important to me, if I send something out to somebody who doesn't have a Lucid account, that they can just click and see it, instead of having to log in and create an account."

More Lucidchart cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."

"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."

"Making it less expensive would be good."

"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."

"The solution is very, very cost-effective."

"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."

"The solution is not very expensive."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We chose Lucid based on the price comparison between it and draw.io... Lucidchart was about 15 percent cheaper per user... I was surprised to learn that it came with a separate subscription model and was not included in my existing Lucidchart subscription."

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

"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."

"The price and licensing are good."

"I have a subscription as an individual user for one year, and it is not expensive."

More Lucidchart pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?

The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Visio vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 31% of the time

SAP Signavio Process Manager vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 23% of the time

ARIS Cloud vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 12% of the time

ARIS BPA vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 7% of the time

Camunda vs IBM Blueworks Live

Compared 7% of the time

More IBM Blueworks Live Competitors

Figma vs Lucidchart

Compared 16% of the time

Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs Lucidchart

Compared 10% of the time

Visio vs Lucidchart

Compared 9% of the time

Visual Paradigm vs Lucidchart

Compared 8% of the time

ARIS BPA vs Lucidchart

Compared 3% of the time

More Lucidchart Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Blueworks Live

July 2025

Download IBM Blueworks Live product report

Buyer's Guide

Lucidchart

July 2025

Download Lucidchart product report

Also Known As

IBM Lombardi Blueprint

No data available

Overview

IBM Blueworks Live is a cloud-based business process modeling tool that helps you discover, map and document your processes. It is easy to use, allowing you to learn and perform business process modeling in minutes.

With Blueworks Live you can:

Simplify business process modeling
Quickly build business processes in a straightforward, cloud-based interface designed for both IT and business users.

Improve process efficiency and accuracy
A central process repository eliminates version control and consistency issues by providing users real-time access to process workflows.

Enhance cross-team collaboration
A shared team workspace engages all business process owners, encouraging cross-team participation and continuous process improvement.

IBM

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

Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council

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

Buyer's Guide

Business Process Design

June 2025

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