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Lucidchart vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect comparison

Why PeerSpot?

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 22.9% compared to last year.
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Architecture Management, holds 8.6% mindshare, down 11.5% since last year.
Mind Mapping Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Lucidchart18.1%
Visio18.7%
Xmind14.3%
Other48.900000000000006%
Mind Mapping Software
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect8.6%
SAP PowerDesigner8.6%
erwin Data Modeler8.4%
Other74.4%
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

"Documenting things such as processes, systems, and new teams has been my primary use case. Lucidchart is really, really valuable for its ability to create a process chart from start to end. The web app makes it easy because everything is similar to other tools like Visio but Lucidchart feels a little bit more intuitive. It has been easy to use the web app. I definitely have learned a lot about how to bring in my own graphics or images in place of some of the shapes and I'm able to create and use the arrows within the processes, so it definitely has been useful for me."
"Previously, we used to create something in a PowerPoint or Keynote file, but they were just not as collaborative, dynamic, and adaptable as Lucidchart."
"Its ease of use is most valuable. As compared to draw.io, connecting the lines and doing things like that are much easier in Lucidchart. It has been great for some of the process flow diagrams and data flow diagrams. I can export these diagrams as PDFs and share them with team members."
"Ease of use is especially critical because if I am conducting brainstorming sessions with my team, I have to be able to quickly put things on the monitor so that I don't lose their attention and focus. Ease of use is definitely helpful when I do that... The fact that I don't get lost within the software and am able to quickly generate visuals onscreen, so that it doesn't break the momentum, is a huge win."
"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."
"This is the one tool I want to use; I don't care how much it costs; it's the best tool for the stuff I'm working on, it fulfills my needs, and for this sake, it can cost 10 times more."
"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."
"The best features Lucidchart offers are that it is easy to use, the diagrams created are of good quality, and there are a lot of elements available."
"In terms of product features, I'm very happy with the support for UML 2 diagrams, Archimate, TOGAF and the collaboration capability using a RDBMS back-end."
"Its ease of use and the breadth of the toolkit are most valuable."
"Ability to model and create view under same roof."
"Scalability is not a problem; you can always increase the footprint of what the thing can do because it is so powerful."
"Large variety of profiles and frameworks available out-of-the-box without the need for customization, and not locked into one way of doing architecture."
"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."
"Flexibility Open DB."
"The most valuable feature of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is the value streams."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"It would be helpful if there were different options available for organizing the folders, such as having a high-level display with pictures."
"The main improvement I would like to see is for them to improve the help section on the flow charts or on the formatting."
"My advice to others looking into using Lucidchart is to explore all the options available and not fixate on drawing flowcharts using Lucidchart."
"They should continue to bring in more shapes. Lucidchart could come up with more visualizations."
"It would be nice to have more features that help me visually present information."
"The Business Process Modeling or BPM feature can be improved to make it more interactive and user friendly because it is a tool for technical people. My current use is only for business process modeling notation and putting in the icons etc. You need to take them in as a class, which makes things very complex. Because of this complexity, it is not an easy-to-handle solution. Enterprise Architect is not very good for mockups. We cannot create user screens and other similar kinds of stuff, which is bad. For these things, we prefer to use Axure RP and other similar solutions. They should either remove this feature from this product or provide some kind of connectivity with Axure RP so that people can do better mockups of screens and import them. They need to augment and strengthen the BPM feature, which is the main feature. They need to put in some elements like artificial intelligence and augmented reality. They should look into such features because these things are coming up."
"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."
"Its side effect is the complexity of getting it all together in this one tool."
"In general, we now have a problem with Sparx Enterprise Architect because many analysts think it's too complicated to use in a giant environment."
"Its usability needs to be improved. For non-technical users, it is a little difficult to understand how Enterprise Architect works. Users who are not engineers find it difficult to understand how this tool works. This is something they need to work on. They can develop a BPM model to simulate processes."
"I think the product is good. When I'm trying to do something specific for some part of project documentation, it's hard to get it figured out if you don't use it all the time. It's such a massive tool, it's hard to figure out how to dig in and get to the documentation where you have to be to get some idea of what to do. There are not a lot of examples that I'm aware of to be able to do that."
"There were scalability issues. The HTML generation with very large models, over 4000 diagrams, can be problematic."
"I struggled with most of the features for this tool, as did the rest of our architecture team."
 

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."
"At €167 per user per year, the pricing is slightly higher than Visio, but it's worth it."
"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."
"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."
"Its pricing is very affordable and reasonable for the features that it provides. I am using its basic plan, and for my usage, it is perfectly reasonable. It suits perfectly."
"The licensing is pretty cost-effective but I haven't considered it on an enterprise level."
"The pricing and licensing are fine, though I wish they didn't require you to buy the licenses in batches of five."
"I pay $95 a year for it. It seems like a reasonable price."
"We paid 1200 euros as a once-off cost. All add ons and integrations come at an additional cost."
"We had a yearly license."
"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."
"It is cheaper than other solutions. Its cost is around $686 per year. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Its price is very good for the value that you get with it."
"It is very economical and low cost. You have to pay for a one-time license, and it is active forever."
"The Corporate Edition, or one of the bundles, is the way to go."
"We have an annual license, and it's very affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

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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