Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

ARIS BPA 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

ARIS BPA
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (7th), Business Process Management (BPM) (12th)
Lucidchart
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Mind Mapping Software (2nd), Visual Collaboration Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

ARIS BPA and Lucidchart aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. ARIS BPA is designed for Business Process Design and holds a mindshare of 6.8%, down 8.0% compared to last year.
Lucidchart, on the other hand, focuses on Mind Mapping Software, holds 22.0% mindshare, down 24.2% since last year.
Business Process Design Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ARIS BPA6.8%
Visio9.9%
Bizagi9.4%
Other73.9%
Business Process Design
Mind Mapping Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Lucidchart22.0%
Visio23.4%
draw.io13.6%
Other41.0%
Mind Mapping Software
 

Featured Reviews

BM
Consultant at KAFD DMC
Has improved process modeling and analysis while supporting integration with organizational data
The process design in ARIS BPA does help with our operational efficiency. What we are doing is object library management for various kinds of objects that we are using in ARIS BPA during our process modeling. We are using that to do a lot of analysis on how many times a system is being used in how many processes, who are the major stakeholders, and if we enhance one system, how is it going to impact other processes and integrated processes. This is helping us a lot. Everything related to ARIS BPA is helping us with regards to enhanced processes, strengthened controls, identifying risks, assessing process capabilities, and identifying where the gaps are and what kinds of activities within the processes are automated and manual. We are doing a lot of things with regards to the processes as it is at our heart. Processes are one thing and then we have different kinds of things which are related to it, such as SLAs, guidelines, and policy. We are identifying areas of improvement in other documents as well.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall BPM modeling functionality is very good."
"The simulation engine and SAP integration are technically very robust."
"The most valuable features are business process modeling and reporting."
"The simulation engine and SAP integration are technically very robust when you consider my segments of expertise (health care, financial, and automotive)."
"The solution has come up with a web portal that makes it easy to model and show to clients."
"There is a really powerful reporting API that allows you to create almost any kind of report you want out of your process and document repository."
"It has the ability to scale up, as well as integrate with other systems within the organization to get real-time information from dashboards and reports."
"It has allowed us to promote the awareness of process management across our enterprise."
"The organizational charts for visualizing and understanding team hierarchies and relationships are the reason why we purchased the package that would allow me to do more with it. I tried to find all the cheap ways to do things but the ease of access and the already preset structure that Lucidchart had in place made it easier. Out of all the choices that I saw come across my desk, Lucidchart was the best and easiest choice."
"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."
"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."
"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 architecture and brainstorming features worked exceptionally well for me; no one in the organization had used it for brainstorming, and my implementation really helped with the visuals and capturing people's opinions and divergent thought processes."
"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."
"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."
"There is no alternative to Lucidchart if you want to describe a five-step process with bullet points. I believe every person who ever worked with PowerPoint on any type of documentation and then thought about which tool would actually help to describe what they're trying to do but without the words, would come up with Lucidchart."
 

Cons

"In terms of improvement, the app could use some small details and functionalities."
"The solution's processes are huge and it is not easy to get an overview of how things work. It needs to improve the interface. I would like to see the product include a better overview of processes and improve search."
"Simulation is one area that is a bit complex."
"We should have the ability to download ARIS EPCs to Visio."
"There are reports available in ARIS and you can modify them a bit if you want something more specific, but it's not that easy to adjust them and make modifications. It would be nice to have some kind of tool to do that, something that is more user-friendly for people who are not too technical, so that they could create reports the way they want them."
"The reporting capabilities and the ability to create custom reports need to be simplified and made easy so that people even with a good functional understanding of the tool can leverage it to create their own custom report."
"I had this decentralization mission where I had some friendly fights with the consultants of Software AG. My opinion was the business department should be able to publish their processes and do all their evaluation stuff in ARCM themselves. It has to be a one stop shop. I want a one stop shop to go from ARIS BPM to ARIS ARCM, because having everything go through that would be an improvement due to the inputs that we made with Software AG. They will make it possible that the trigger sent from BPM to ARCM will start their object generation."
"It would be helpful if ARIS BPA could have a simple database to get the extract of various attributes."
"In terms of improvement, there can be more templates. There are good templates but there could still be more."
"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."
"When I download a flowchart as a PDF file, it breaks it up. I would like to see the continuous display of flow charts, even if they are larger than one page."
"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 would like to have more text boxes to write more comments so I can write a small note below a picture. I would like some flexibility."
"The flowcharting feature would be improved if it had some kind of prediction capability that helped to create the diagrams, such as the ability to automatically join components with my database."
"Perhaps it already exists, but if there were software to install the solution on a Mac, that would be helpful. I see that it's not in the App Store, so that's something that could be improved."
"When I was using the free version last summer, I don’t remember there being an option to change the look of the arrow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"ARIS BPA is too costly from a licensing perspective."
"The product is inexpensive."
"From my point of view, no, it is not cheap, but it is not too expensive because you get this big organization behind it, technical support, and all those things. It's not so expensive to use. It's a Rolls Royce in this field, I know that. Even for small organizations, they can get so much effect from using this tool, in a very fast way, so the money will be back in the customer's pocket very fast."
"Usually, our company buys technical support from the Software AG site. We bought the technical support for the first year of usage for ARIS version 6 and 7. So, when we migrated to ARIS version 7, we bought support only for the first year. Then, we didn't use it the next year. Our experience was that we use it only one to three times during the first year. Therefore, there wasn't much value for us to buy this service because we have no problem with using ARIS after the first year."
"It depends on different parameters."
"I would recommend the product to only enterprise companies because of the pricing."
"Negotiate. Price is high so make sure you’re getting the best deal."
"Pricing comes in at about $100 for a year's subscription, which is very reasonable if this is a tool that you will use more than once."
"The pricing is very reasonable, and they have a free trial available that you can play with."
"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."
"The price and licensing are good."
"The licensing is pretty cost-effective but I haven't considered it on an enterprise level."
"Lucidchart's pricing model is not excessive, as compared to similar products. It is pretty much in line with everyone else."
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Business Process Design solutions are best for your needs.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ARIS BPA?
It is a bit expensive regarding ARIS BPA. However, ARIS BPA does save a lot of effort because this is one tool which can be used for multiple purposes and the viewers have the capability to perform...
What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?
We are not using any what-if scenario features in ARIS BPA. Currently, we are not using the performance monitoring and compliance checks features in ARIS BPA. We have plans to use them, but current...
What is your primary use case for ARIS BPA?
ARIS BPA is being used for process modeling, and we are planning to upgrade and enhance it for process mining and other purposes. We are using it for everything. Currently, we are doing HRMS integr...
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?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that we do not have to use the setup because we are using public cloud. We just created an account on Lucidchart and started using it.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

ARIS, ARIS BPM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Tesco, Weifu, Airbus, Siemens, Proximus, Alicorp, Sekerbank, Bancor, Philips,Sky, Emirates NBD, Dubai Municipality, Suva, U.S. Army, Australia Post, Westfalen Weser Energie - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as the market leader for process excellence with more than 30 years of experience in the market, 10 million users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.
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, Bizagi and others in Business Process Design. Updated: February 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.