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Lucidchart vs Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect vs TIBCO Business Studio comparison

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

Mind Mapping Software
Enterprise Architecture Management
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Milan Sterba - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Choon Hwa Khoh - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good flexibility to users
Improvements are required in the tool licensing area as it is a bit expensive. The tool's user interface needs improvement. If you don't know the tool as a beginner, it is very hard for you to design the workflow. The interface is actually quite confusing. There are a lot of places we need to configure here and there since there are multiple locations involved. The features or functions available are good enough for me to implement for my business activities. The tool can include topics like AI. I encountered an issue with the tool during the deployment into production. The server itself experienced a slowness-related issue caused by the configuration, where the resources were not enough for TIBCO, not because of the physical server. I raised a ticket with the support team and got some advice from them. I then went to study the server configuration, and finally, I found out that there will be a need to increase the threats in order for the server to process the multiple parallel incoming requests.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The interface is easy for a layperson to use and adapt to."
"For documenting processes and systems, I would rate the solution a nine out of 10. I'm not aware of any other software that is as usable as this, because of the templates. They make documenting these things really easy."
"The wireframe and mock-up features have been the most useful so far. It's easy to create the mock-ups and then communicate to our development team what they need to look like. Lucidchart's capabilities for visualizing and understanding process flows or workflows is very good as well. I'm able to easily use any style of box that I need to create on a flowchart, to effectively communicate to our development team."
"Using Lucidchart for documenting processes is great. The elements are ready to use and it is quick to do."
"I love the simplicity and how clean all the different boxes, arrows, and charts can be. Especially with something complicated like our sales flow, it could be really easy to be all cluttered and everything like that, but my favorite feature is how clean it is, how straightforward it makes our flow look, and how easy it is to understand. Lucidchart accommodates both Mac and PC users which is important to us because at my company right now, our sales floor and then every other computer we have as a company is a Mac, but a lot of our employees actually have PCs and Android as well. So it's really beneficial because if we're ever on the go or we need to make a change, it's versatile and is open for both Mac and PC."
"Creating flowcharts and documentation is easy to do and the results are very nice."
"The interface is very good and easy to use. We don't need documentation on how to use it. It is self-explanatory, which is very convenient for a new user."
"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."
"Its ease of use and the breadth of the toolkit are most valuable. It has an incredible repository of artifacts to work with, and they're all cross-referenced. It works with a whole bunch of different standards. It works with BPMN, which is Business Process Modeling Notation, and it also works with something called TOGAF, which is the Open Group Architecture Foundation. There are different layers when you're dealing with architecture. There is the user interface, application, data, data servers, and all that kind of stuff. You have the infrastructure, hardware, and software layers, and then you have the application and business capability layers. You can model a business process and decompose it into all of the applications, data, and hardware to support it."
"For the most part, we find that it is remarkable how inexpensive it is."
"It is a very flexible product. It can do a lot. It is also a reliable product."
"The installation was very easy."
"I like that there is support for software patterns."
"It is simple to build the first model for the solution."
"Customizable and tailored to the environment. Several template frameworks are provided."
"The features I find most valuable is the ability to create a document and then put it into a OneCare artifact."
"The setup cost is definitely reasonable."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"The setup cost is definitely reasonable."
 

Cons

"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."
"The main improvement I would like to see is for them to improve the help section on the flow charts or on the formatting."
"They should continue to bring in more shapes. For example, I saw something cool the other day that was a timeline and in between each step, there was a circle. I thought that that was very clean and that's something that I could see myself using. Lucidchart could come up with more visualizations. I'm not a designer so I would like to have more visuals. That would make my job easier because it would make my job much more professional looking but without having to be a designer myself."
"There were some things I wish were a little bit more user-friendly. For instance, when you're putting all the stuff onto a document or PDF, there's a set limit of width and height. It would have been very nice in certain situations to be able to drag people on the far edges and move them back up so that everything fits nicely onto the page."
"I am not quite sure what different functionalities it provides as well as the difficulties other people are facing. When I have a better understanding of the solution, I will increase my rating of it. No solution is perfect, so I am sure that I will be facing some problems in the future."
"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"
"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."
"It would be helpful if there were different options available for organizing the folders, such as having a high-level display with pictures."
"The documentation needs a bit of improvement. What I find is that when I'm trying to do something specific for some part of a project, in terms of documentation, it's kind of hard to get at figuring out if you don't use it all the time."
"I struggled with most of the features for this tool, as did the rest of our architecture team."
"Insufficient control of metadata and standards."
"The user interface is not so good. It's not easy for someone to use it at first. The product takes some getting used to."
"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."
"It really did not work for logical modeling. The look is very old-fashioned. You can't make the diagrams easy on the eye, so we ended up drawing them again in Visio anyhow."
"More challenging than other tools to maintain documents and document versions for an architecture board review."
"This solution is quite complex to use. It would be nice if the learning curve wasn't so steep."
"An artificial intelligence feature that evaluates the quality of the code developed with one click would definitely be good."
"The interface is actually quite confusing."
"An artificial intelligence feature that evaluates the quality of the code developed with one click would definitely be good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The pricing is very reasonable, and they have a free trial available that you can play with."
"The licensing is pretty cost-effective but I haven't considered it on an enterprise level."
"At €167 per user per year, the pricing is slightly higher than Visio, but it's worth it."
"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."
"The pricing and licensing are fine, though I wish they didn't require you to buy the licenses in batches of five."
"The pricing for ultimate version is steeply high."
"We had a yearly license."
"Its price is very good for the value that you get with it."
"Licenses are pretty low cost compared to, for example, ARIS."
"The Corporate Edition, or one of the bundles, is the way to go."
"Pricing and licensing are suitable even for small companies."
"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."
"The licensing is not as expensive as some of the other data modeling tools such as Erwin."
"For my company, the tool costs about 2,0,000 Euros for three years...If one is bad and ten is good, I rate the price as one out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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. ...
Do you recommend Lucidchart?
I definitely recommend Lucidchart. I feel it is one of the top visual collaboration platforms that’s available on the...
What do you like most about Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect?
The stability has been good and satisfactory. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten.
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...
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 stra...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Business Studio?
The setup cost is definitely reasonable. It is now reasonable since they changed it recently with the new TIBCO platf...
What needs improvement with TIBCO Business Studio?
An artificial intelligence feature that evaluates the quality of the code developed with one click would definitely b...
What is your primary use case for TIBCO Business Studio?
I am only using the licenses. We are a consulting company, so we use the solution to configure solutions for other cu...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Business Studio
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Whirlpool, Uber, Wal Mart, Pearson, Twitch, Riot Games, Western Union, Trimble, Starbucks
OmniLink
Airbus Helicopters, Bank of Montreal, BroadReach Healthcare, Caesars Entertainment, CargoSmart, Children's Hospital, Citibank Brazil, Citihub, Colonial Life, Con-way, Consorsbank, Deutsche Bahn, EDF Energy, FrieslandCampina, Hellmann Logistics, Ignite, Istrabenz Plini, Sage Human Capital, Siemens Healthcare