We performed a comparison between Lucidchart and Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Lucid Software, diagrams.net and others in Mind Mapping Software."The templates are quite valuable, as is the fact that you can export to PDF, to a Visio document, or as a picture. These are valuable features for me because they give me the ability to make changes in any other product that I'm using. I'm not bound by one platform."
"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."
"When it comes to documenting things like processes, systems, and new teams, I'd give it an eight or nine out of ten. It's very high because it's fairly intuitive, there's a low learning curve, and it's easy to get immediate output. You can get results very quickly without a lot of direct effort. You don't usually take a week-long series of training. You don't need to go through a lot of hoops to make it work."
"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."
"Lucidchart is a lovely tool for creating visual representations of any process or organization."
"For documenting processes and systems, I would rate the solution a nine out of 10. I'm not aware of any other software that is as usable as this, because of the templates. They make documenting these things really easy."
"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."
"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."
"The features I find most valuable is the ability to create a document and then put it into a OneCare artifact."
"The installation was very easy."
"We could capture the process models around 24 countries with all their local variations."
"Ability to maintain cross-references for all models in all levels - great tractability."
"It is an EA tool that is approved by Open Group. It is in the tool register of Open Group."
"Features good reporting facilities coupled with a concrete database."
"Ability to keep inventory of reusable blocks, and use in different diagrams with views of various templates."
"It is a useful tool for modeling and testing automated processes."
"There were some things I wish were a little bit more user-friendly. For instance, when you're putting all the stuff onto a document or PDF, there's a set limit of width and height. It would have been very nice in certain situations to be able to drag people on the far edges and move them back up so that everything fits nicely onto the page."
"One downside is that you can only modify things online, but when you download work, you download it as an image. It would be useful to have an option to modify it locally."
"Lucidchart subset their older components or something like that had happened. I don't entirely know the totality of it, but we were forced to upgrade to a different integration with Lucid than what we had. I've had a lot of frustrations with that because I've lost a lot of diagrams. I can't get them back and I'm getting pop-ups that are showing me that our data will be loading and I can't run four or five years of my engineering diagrams"
"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."
"In terms of improvement, there can be more templates. There are good templates but there could still be more."
"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."
"It would be helpful if there were different options available for organizing the folders, such as having a high-level display with pictures."
"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."
"The stability and performance of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect could still be improved. Setup for it is also slightly complicated and could be improved."
"The documentation could be better. Where I work, we speak French and we don't speak English, so we don't have anything in French. It's perfect in English, but we need something in French."
"The initial setup of the Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect It's very complicated. It's very difficult to start with the right templates because there are many possibilities. The deployment took approximately two days."
"It would be nice to have it supported on the Linux operating system."
"It could be more user-friendly. The tools could be more simple to use. It's a very complex solution. Because I am a business analyst, I use these tools to manage requirements, and I make models in UML, BPMN, and ArchiMate, and it's complex. In the next release, I would like to see more integrations."
"There should be a MATLAB-specific toolbox added to the solution with better compatibility. The connections currently are good but in the future, it needs a huge improvement."
"Sparx can be a bit slow. If you are trying to design software architecture, sometimes we run into issues and need to refresh."
"What should be improved are the integration capabilities of the solution with Bizagi."
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Lucidchart is ranked 2nd in Mind Mapping Software with 54 reviews while Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is ranked 2nd in Enterprise Architecture Management with 97 reviews. Lucidchart is rated 8.6, while Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Lucidchart writes "Good brainstorming features, facilitates collaboration, and keeps us focused on our work". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect writes "Easy to set up and had no issues with stability, but it's not a very friendly tool, and its database modeling and entity-relationship modeling functions need improvement". Lucidchart is most compared with Lucidspark, Figma, Visio, Visual Paradigm and erwin Data Modeler by Quest, whereas Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is most compared with Visual Paradigm, Visio, No Magic MagicDraw, LeanIX and ARIS BPA.
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