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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 (3rd), Business Process Management (BPM) (8th)
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 8.0%, down 9.3% compared to last year.
Lucidchart, on the other hand, focuses on Mind Mapping Software, holds 24.2% mindshare, up 18.4% 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

"ARIS BPA provides very good visibility and control of processes because we have a concurrent license system. As a result, every person in our company and group is able to look at the published processes."
"The most valuable feature in the latest versions is the connect portal, where you can do very simple modeling using the web-based portal."
"The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are the centralized repository and the automatic rendering of diagrams."
"ARIS BPA has a good directory option, which helps to keep track of all of your metadata, and that's very useful."
"Features like SAP SolMan sync, Alfabet EA integration (another Software AG product)."
"Process Modeling or Process Mapping/Documentation. This is the most comprehensive tool for capturing the process details. Any organization who wants to embark on a BPM journey, process mapping/documentation, lays the foundation for the BPM led implementation."
"The EPC modeling is very detailed, the semantic check is helpful, and auto-layout simplifies the formatting."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to expose."
"The interface is easy for a layperson to use and adapt to."
"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 collaboration, hands-down, is the top feature. It is valuable because our company doesn't believe in working in silos... While I may be the one leading the efforts, it's very important that my team gets buy-in on decisions being made when we're designing. It's critical, especially in this virtual environment, when we're not in an office to have a team meeting and able to whiteboard something. Lucidchart is an extremely useful tool for our team."
"The interface is very user-friendly and it is not a hassle to use the site at all. They did a really good job in that regard."
"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."
"Using Lucidchart for documenting processes is great. The elements are ready to use and it is quick to do."
"In general, this product has improved our organization because it makes accessing up-to-date processes and planning a lot easier."
"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."
 

Cons

"ARIS BPA’s usability could be improved."
"Making it more customizable and easy to learn would be a benefit."
"While the dashboarding solution for integrating all kinds of process-related information from company sources other than ARIS is getting ever better, my personal wish would be to have a module that is more targeted to an Agile implementation of some modeled processes (model–to-execute)."
"One thing that could be improved is regarding the handling of the content itself. Maybe ARIS could provide a set of best practices, or best processes, so that people do not have to start from scratch."
"I believe the solutions BPM tools are not very good and need improvements."
"One of the biggest challenges is to realistically enable the defined structures of the processes that you have in ARIS documented, and then actually implement them in the business."
"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."
"Improvement should be made as per customer requirements."
"They could provide more documentation or tutorials of ERDs or DDD on the Lucidchart site. That could be better."
"They should make it more user-friendly. The only option is either to use the existing template with already existing colors and gradients. If you want to do custom colors and gradients, then it's too complicated to use and should be simplified."
"One of the major drawbacks is that we have to extract the work in Lucidchart as an image when we want to create a presentation."
"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"
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The solution has a fair price for the value it delivers."
"​It is on the higher side."
"Pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"In terms of pricing, it would be nice if it were more affordable."
"ARIS Express​ is free."
"It is well worth the investment in the enterprise."
"The pricing is very reasonable, and they have a free trial available that you can play with."
"The price and licensing are good."
"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 pricing is very competitive. It is more cost-effective than some competing products, such as Visio."
"I was using the paid version, but at $12 USD per month, I canceled the plan because it was a little bit too expensive for me."
"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."
"At €167 per user per year, the pricing is slightly higher than Visio, but it's worth it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
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...
Can we use a product like Lucidchart for "personal" use?
Absolutely! Lucidchart is a clever tool that is fit for purpose for whatever activity you would like - whether it's your thoughts or processes. There is a well-populated library of well-designed te...
 

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, Software AG and others in Business Process Design. Updated: March 2025.
842,690 professionals have used our research since 2012.