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Lucidchart vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect comparison

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

Lucidchart
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Mind Mapping Software (2nd), Visual Collaboration Platforms (3rd)
Sparx Systems Enterprise Ar...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Architecture Management (5th), Business Process Design (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Lucidchart and Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Lucidchart is designed for Mind Mapping Software and holds a mindshare of 18.1%, down 23.2% compared to last year.
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Architecture Management, holds 8.7% mindshare, down 12.7% since last year.
Mind Mapping Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Lucidchart18.1%
Visio19.6%
Xmind13.8%
Other48.5%
Mind Mapping Software
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect8.7%
SAP PowerDesigner8.3%
erwin Data Modeler8.0%
Other75.0%
Enterprise Architecture Management
 

Featured Reviews

AlexMartin1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Nestlé
Visual collaboration has improved remote workflows and supports faster shared decisions
The best features Lucidchart offers are that it diagrams processes very well. It allows for project management to help with client timelines. It is also easy to use and create diagrams, especially mermaid diagrams. Collaborating is easy. Out of all those features, collaboration stands out to me the most because it is easy to share with team members to do joint design work. Lucidchart has positively impacted my organization by improving productivity and collaboration. In terms of specifics, collaboration helps us come to conclusions. I notice better throughput as it is easy to use. Improved productivity allows us to express ourselves more quickly.
Milan Sterba - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Architect at Deepview S.r.o.
Efficient documentation generation through organized model structure with a good price-performance ratio
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not easy for even experienced users to find their way without guidance. This is not the most user-friendly solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This ability to collaborate efficiently and in parallel has saved us time because it makes the job easier for our colleagues and teammates."
"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."
"Visually it is the best application that I've used."
"I have observed several advantages overall while using Lucidchart, as it has improved time to decision by at least fifteen percent, created more visibility over the process and decision-making across our business, and enabled collaboration across the team to improve by at least thirteen percent."
"Easy to work on."
"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."
"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."
"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 Sparx's BPM features and the way it lets you create the diagram."
"Automated document generation is a real time saver, no more cut and paste, no more keeping track of which diagrams are in which reports, no more last minute update panics. Just click a mouse and you've got an up to date report."
"Amazing solution for its price, but has its flaws."
"The product overall is quite good."
"Simplified our task at maintaining architecture information and traceability with requirements."
"The features I find most valuable is the ability to create a document and then put it into a OneCare artifact, which allows me to share the visual I bring about with other communities that are not system analysts because not everyone can afford to have a copy of Enterprise Architect, and additionally the solution operates well as a whole and has very comprehensive capabilities."
"However, it works."
"It is now based on business drivers, goals and requirements, and linked to business and IT functions, resulting in traceability and alignment with business objectives."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"Anytime I need to print, I have to re-download/export."
"The UML diagram that it gave me initially was a huge flow with a bunch of UML tables, and I wasn't going to need that many. If it was a more simple linkage between the tables then it would be easier to finish projects, instead of having to select unnecessary tables and delete them."
"One area for improvement is the fact that I had to create two sheets. I had to create a process flow diagram, and I had to create a timeline. I wasn't able to do that in one sheet. If they could add that kind of feature, where you could input a timeline and different types of templates into one worksheet, that would be really useful. I had to include two and then cut and paste, and that was an extra step for me."
"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 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."
"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."
"It is very difficult to implement it in our project. It is a good product, but it is difficult to implement in a non-software company."
"Stability is sometimes an issue when it comes up with synchronization errors and does not give any specific message as to the reason behind it."
"Its best features are not intuitive or easy to learn. Most companies I have worked with, when I see what they are doing with it , are not using more than 5% of what they could and should be doing with it."
"We feel that compatibility with other MDA modelling products, particularly open source such as Visual Paradigm, Modelio or Capella is an area of improvement, as well as better integration with Integrated Development Environments."
"The integration could be improved."
"It took me a while to figure out how to use the report generation features effectively. So, it would be really nice if they had a way to make that a little bit more interactive and a little bit more straightforward."
"The tool is, to some extent, clumsy and in some areas slow (especially on mid or low-performance workstations)."
"The UI is a little bit outdated. It should be more fresh and clean."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I was using the free version of Lucidchart, which was very helpful."
"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."
"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 price and licensing are good."
"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 of this product is a little bit high. It is probably 20% higher than what I expected to pay for such a solution."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"They have the price on their site for the enterprise version, and we do receive a small discount."
"The license I use is on-premise. We haven't gone to the cloud where we have to pay monthly or something like that. Sparx is cheaper than most similar tools."
"The Corporate Edition, or one of the bundles, is the way to go."
"We had a yearly license."
"Its price is very good for the value that you get with it."
"There is no license required for this solution."
"We paid 1200 euros as a once-off cost. All add ons and integrations come at an additional cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lucidchart?
It is cloud-based, so no setup is required. Currently, we are using a free plan.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
One of the reasons many public sector institutions in the Czech Republic use it is that it provides a very good price-performance ratio. While it might be cumbersome to learn, it still delivers exc...
What needs improvement with Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
Whenever I begin a new project with Sparx, I have to spend time training people on how to use it since it is not straightforward. Although it's a powerful product with plenty of features, it's not ...
What is your primary use case for Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
We are mostly using the ArchiMate language to describe enterprise or solution architecture, along with a bit of use cases. We are producing quite large models, with over 10,000 elements and relatio...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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