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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
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (4th), Business Process Management (BPM) (9th)
Lucidchart
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
54
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 7.8%, down 9.2% compared to last year.
Lucidchart, on the other hand, focuses on Mind Mapping Software, holds 24.3% mindshare, up 18.2% since last year.
Business Process Design
Mind Mapping Software
 

Featured Reviews

Libor Černý - PeerSpot reviewer
I can usually find an answer to my issue on ARIS Community
From the start, there were some difficulties on how to create outputs since there wasn't a repository tool in version 6. However, in version 7, there has been a tool for creating standards for a company, and that tool has been very intuitive. While I have been using this tool for several years, other people just starting to use it find the learning curve steep. This tool is very robust and accommodates many roles, where people can participate from compliance, IT designers, etc. This can create problems for users who have no experience with similar tools. It took me a year before I felt comfortable with this tool, because when I came from university it was the first or second tool that I worked on. It took me a year to run every feature or use it for every possibility since this tool is very robust. We sometimes have to create the link to the server and the repository twice because it is deleted once for some unknown reason. Though, this is not a big problem. There should be a more intuitive tool when creating reports.
MichaelChirinian - PeerSpot reviewer
Intuitive, integrates well, and is a great way to change text into visual ideas
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. Another thing that somewhat irritated me is the fact that there is a paste function in the menu, but when you right-click and select paste, it tells you that you can't use paste. You must press Command-V or Apple-V to paste. They give you a menu option to paste, but every time you use that, they say, "We don't accept it." On top of that, normally, you'd have an option for paste or paste values, but when you use the paste function, you don't have that capability. So, to copy text from one place, I have to use Command-V to paste it, but if I don't like the format, I've got to go back and do copy style and then paste style on top of that. It is a small detail, but when you're doing diagrams, it is annoying that they don't support paste values. It is a small irk. I'm not penalizing it, and I still think it is a five-star product. In terms of other bigger things, I don't really have any comments or criticism so far.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In general, the users really like it and they can get started using it very easily."
"Fully-reportable database over Visio."
"ARIS BPA is customizable as per specific business requirements."
"​It is a well-featured, functional product."
"The solution's basic features are easy to use, overall designed well, and it has good process mining analysis."
"The EPC modeling is very detailed, the semantic check is helpful, and auto-layout simplifies the formatting."
"The most valuable features are business process modeling and reporting."
"One of the many advantages of ARIS is that it is supported by a very strong BPM community, which is critical for us. Although it has been in business for many years, it is still at an early stage of evolution. There are so many instances where your specific use case or requirement for using ARIS hasn't necessarily been matured across the sector. So, you need access to a very active community to help you explore possible solutions and ways in which ARIS can be used to achieve those use cases."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use, and just being able to drag and drop."
"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."
"I love the fact that you can just integrate a drawing into Google Slides. I build a lot of visuals in Lucidchart, and then, rather than sharing them directly from Lucidchart, I just build Google Slides decks for senior management, and I link the Lucidchart on the cloud version to a slide image. That makes it easy. This way, I can build in one tool and show in another."
"The interface is easy for a layperson to use and adapt to."
"In general, this product has improved our organization because it makes accessing up-to-date processes and planning a lot easier."
"Lucidchart's capabilities for understanding workflows is high. I use a couple of different programs, like MindManager, and what I like about using Lucidchart is that it is all web-based. So, I can quickly go into a web browser, drag and drop a bunch of files, pictures, or notes, draw some flow lines, and rapidly be able to create a visual representation of what I am trying to do. As a product manager, I can quickly organize thoughts that way and show people what we are working on."
"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."
 

Cons

"The product is difficult to use for someone without prior knowledge of working with it. It requires a certain level of administration training."
"Some improvements have been done, after Software AG acquired ARIS, but I don't believe it's still integrated with the other tool WebMethods in a perfect way."
"ARIS BPA’s usability could be improved."
"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."
"One of the issues is, when you are defining databases, the way they use entities and relationship diagrams, the way we can define data, like data models, there is still a part they could improve."
"​The usability. Others tools are easier to manage without same complexity that ARIS has.​"
"Sometimes, ARIS BPA breaks down, and its stability can be improved."
"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 communication with sales has been pretty poor. They have been spotty in terms of response. So far, that has been our problem with it. We were in contact with one of their representatives, but he just kind of disappeared one day and we couldn't find him anymore. He has not been responsive to email."
"If it could be a little more visual, in terms of being able to make it stand out a little bit more, then that would be helpful."
"When my colleague initially tried to edit the file that I shared with him, he had some trouble. This is something that should be improved."
"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."
"I wish there were a lot more automations. For instance, if I'm using a project management software to list out all my WBS [work breakdown structure] I wish Lucidchart had the functionality where it would take all the numbering and generate a tree diagram. Something like that would help so much, but right now it's still a manual task..."
"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 really helpful if we could create a process flow based on a Word Document or a PPT file."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You will never get a fixed price for this product because they will go in and ask you what kind of environment would you like to set up? How many people will you work with? How big is your organization? Today, they have a fixed price to say, "Okay, just to start the business area, buy two licenses for modeling and eight people that can look into the product." They have this kind of fixed price. It's 50,000 Danish Krone. If you divided that by about six, then you get the pricing in dollars. Still, when you are going out, negotiate and find the right price. You will never get a fixed price: "It costs this and, if you take ten of these, seven of these and eight of these, and then it costs this." No, you negotiate every time."
"We have a concurrent license system."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"It depends on different parameters."
"This is absolutely not the cheapest solution in the market, but for large companies, the price is fine."
"ARIS enables you to start small and grow the use of the solution over time, although it's quite expensive. So if you want to start small, it's quite an investment for a small company."
"The product is inexpensive."
"The solution has a fair price for the value it delivers."
"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."
"We chose Lucid based on the price comparison between it and draw.io... Lucidchart was about 15 percent cheaper per user... I was surprised to learn that it came with a separate subscription model and was not included in my existing Lucidchart subscription."
"The pricing and licensing are fine, though I wish they didn't require you to buy the licenses in batches of five."
"The licensing is pretty cost-effective but I haven't considered it on an enterprise level."
"There is a nominal charge for the paid version of the product. They have a free version available and from what I could see, there was not much difference between it and the pro version."
"I was using the free version of Lucidchart, which was very helpful."
"I have a subscription as an individual user for one year, and it is not expensive."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ARIS BPA?
The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are its flexibility and reporting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ARIS BPA?
Pricing for ARIS BPA is average, not cheap or expensive. It's cost-effective and worth the money we pay.
What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?
I find it difficult to access the database as I want with direct querying. I must write scripts, which requires specific knowledge. Software AG could improve this by making the database more open. ...
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...
 

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, Sparx Systems and others in Business Process Design. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.