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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 (4th), Business Process Design (7th)
 

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 19.5%, down 23.8% compared to last year.
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Architecture Management, holds 8.9% mindshare, down 13.4% since last year.
Mind Mapping Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Lucidchart19.5%
Visio19.4%
Xmind13.7%
Other47.400000000000006%
Mind Mapping Software
Enterprise Architecture Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect8.9%
LeanIX7.6%
SAP PowerDesigner7.5%
Other76.0%
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

"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."
"The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Lucidchart is that it's a great tool for putting your ideas into something visual and brainstorming with your team."
"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."
"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."
"Previously, we used to create something in a PowerPoint or Keynote file, but they were just not as collaborative, dynamic, and adaptable as Lucidchart."
"In general, the usability is great. You have a ton of customization options with different colors, different borders, different thicknesses of lines, different types of arrows, et cetera. There's so much variety. You can really make a chart with all sorts of color-coding, and color charts in different colors, link them together, for example, or use different types of arrows for different types of links between the chart elements. That variety, while not a specific feature, is really useful. If you want to make a chart, you can basically do anything."
"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."
"I've been using Lucidchart for quite simple things, but it's definitely much easier making process maps using Lucidchart than it is using Google Docs for basically everything. It's much simpler in terms of how easy it is to use Lucidchart. The way that you can get the arrows on the flow charts, based on the process mapping, you can drag the arrows from one box to another and it automatically shows you where you can put it. It makes decisions for you in terms of if you have a decision diamond, then the line is automatically a yes or no. This just makes it so much easier."
"Using Sparx Enterprise Architect allowed my customer to detail and make the company's IT strategy visible and accessible to all. The system provided clear roadmaps for IT development and helped to keep up-to-date documentation of systems and processes."
"It is customizable, which allows it to be tailored to our environment."
"I like Sparx's BPM features and the way it lets you create the diagram."
"The solution saved a lot of time, about 30%."
"I have found the Meta Model tuning feature useful as it provides me with an overview of all my work needs."
"I used Visio; there is no comparison, SPARX is much better."
"Artifact templates are most valuable."
"Its traversability is most valuable. I can use ArchiMate, and I can create a UML model. ArchiMate is for logical enterprise architecture, UML is for software engineering, and BPMN is for business processes. I can build it to have multiple models, and they are also traversable, which is not something that every tool allows. If there is a huge organization, you can segment it and have separate models for business technology or internal resource management system. You don't need to keep them in one model, and you can decide to segregate them."
 

Cons

"It would be really helpful if we could create a process flow based on a Word Document or a PPT file."
"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."
"It would be nice to have more features that help me visually present information. Since I use it as a canvas, my use case for it is probably very specific. I use it as a way to present information to people visually on a large mind map. So, it would be nice to be able to have more graphical things to clean it up, like a header, banners, or something to help draw attention to certain areas. I would also like more infographic-like features, because I am kind of limited to float chart shapes. This makes the solution a little cumbersome."
"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."
"Overall, I would rate this product somewhere in the middle. Not bad, but not good."
"In terms of improvement, they should make it very clear, whether it's a single A4 page or two A4 pages, it should be mapped out. Either I don't know how to use it, or it's not there, but having to stick to margins so I can see what's going to be on different pages when I print it or move it to a PDF has been my only challenge so far."
"A couple of times when I tried to move a line, connecting two shapes on an organizational chart, occasionally the line doesn't move as intuitively as I think it should. I have to fiddle around with it a few times to get it to do what I want it to do."
"Wireframing can be improved. For mock-ups and wireframing, only 10% of what is required is there. If they can develop this feature, it would be much better because it will then provide everything. Currently, we can design network diagrams, processes, etc., but we should also be able to do wireframing."
"Using EA involves a steep learning curve if you want to understand its capabilities and functionality."
"The UI is a little bit outdated. It should be more fresh and clean."
"I think the UI could be improved and made a little bit more presentable."
"Documentation generation needs significant improvement."
"It can be improved in the area of shared documentation. The idea is that the architecture tool can call back to an enterprise asset, pull that information, and link that as a sub-artifact."
"When many users are accessing the system at the same time, Sparx slows down. It can't easily support a large team."
"When collaborating with other people, it needs to be more user-friendly."
"In a database-server deployment there are performance/locking issues when multiple users make changes simultaneously."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The price and licensing are good."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I have only used the trial version and have not yet paid for it, or explored the pricing options."
"At €167 per user per year, the pricing is slightly higher than Visio, but it's worth it."
"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."
"We have an annual license, and it's very affordable."
"The Corporate Edition, or one of the bundles, is the way to go."
"The pricing for ultimate version is steeply high."
"In terms of cost, Sparx EA is probably one of the cheapest tools I have ever used."
"I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"It is cheap."
"Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect is priced well. The price we pay is approximately $20 per month. Other solutions I have found to be much more expensive."
"It's reasonably priced for large organizations."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software 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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