Lucidchart Reviews

The ability to have more than one person editing at the same time is the most valuable feature. You can have one diagram and have multiple users on it at the same time. We haven't been able to do that on other software. So that's the main reason we moved to Lucidchart.

The main benefits of Lucidchart are collaborative working and also being able to just create documents really quickly that are still editable. Even though you've done an initial quick layout, you don't lose the ability to go back and continue with that same chart and turn it into the final version.

The real-time collaboration among users, where we're working on the same version of the document or chart, sped up our project development process. Especially with remote working, you can have two people working and looking at it while discussing it at the same time. It just sped things up and especially eased remote working.

This real-time collaboration has also saved us time. It's just been quicker than it would otherwise have been if we didn't have it.

It's been more efficient than not using it. It's not like we had a regular process and we've changed over to this. It's that we've had a project and this is what we selected. It's been pretty good at visualizing and understanding workflows. We haven't come across anything that limits it.

It might already exist and I haven't used it, but in terms of improvement, I would like a hot-key system for some of the diagrams to auto-generate things a bit quicker to be able to produce charts a lot faster, or have more standard templates that you can just go to if you're trying to generate something quickly.

I have been using Lucidchart for a month and a half. 

I have not had performance issues. 

If you lose internet connection or you're in and out of the internet, then that can be an issue for loading it up, but that's the only issue.

We haven't rolled it out across too many people, but we haven't had any issues so far with adding people. We're not a massive company, so we're only looking at 10 users or so, but on that sort of scale, it's not an issue.

The users are all engineers of varying levels.

We switched from Visio to Lucidchart for some of our documentation. One of the main reasons why we use Lucidchart is to switch from Visio to that.

We haven't migrated any prior documents. We're still keeping them as a legacy on Visio, but anything new going forward is moving to Lucid.

The interface for Visio is obviously common to all of the Microsoft programs, so it's quite easy to pick that up, but despite Lucid not being as well known or having that background of being part of the 365 packages, I think it's pretty good for that integration and how easy it is to use.

We still have Visio for the old documentation that we have to keep information on. So we won't be getting rid of that, but won't be buying any new versions. It's not a subscription-type setup, it's that we own those versions of the software. We'll just keep them for when we need to do legacy-related support.

We won't be getting rid of the old documentation that we have to keep information on but we won't be buying any new versions. It's not a subscription-type setup, it's that we own those versions of the software. We'll just keep them for when we need to do legacy-related support.

The initial setup was really quick. It was already set up within the organization, so I didn't do that, and then somebody just sent me an email invite and that was it.

Lucidchart is really intuitive for a new user. We didn't specifically do any tutorials or anything like that. There's pretty reasonable support when you want. If you just Google how to do something, there's normally a step-by-step guide. I'd definitely encourage you to go with this solution especially if they want to do this concurrent working.

I would rate Lucidchart a nine out of ten. 

We primarily use it for process improvement in a factory setting. What I am primarily using it for is making process flow diagrams—with the rectangles, circles, diamonds, arrows, and whatever else you would build into a process flow. 

We've had discussions about using it to build engineering-type stuff, as well. For example, "Here's the room, here are the dimensions. Here's what it would look like if we moved this piece of equipment, what space it would open up. Here are other constraints or barriers that it might create." We've had discussions on that, but we haven't really delved into that yet. 

I have the web-based for my laptop, and I have the app downloaded on my iPad Air. I've been using it on both of them.

We're primarily using it for process mapping and it's much quicker than trying to do it in Excel. 

Doing things digitally means that if I'm on a Teams or a Zoom meeting, I can get input from people and they can see it as we go. I'm a pretty big user of whiteboards. I have two in my office and those are great. But what I hate sometimes is when it comes to, "All right, let's take this away. Let's run with it," I have to take a picture and send it out. Then, at nine o'clock at night, someone on the team will say, "Oh, I just thought of this step that we completely overlooked..." I can't do anything about it because it's on my whiteboard. But using Lucidchart, I've been able to say, "Okay, I've got my iPad, let me add that in really quickly." I like the convenience and the user interface.

It is so great for understanding process flows or workflows. With the prior training that I had, doing things on whiteboards and in Excel or Word to manually build stuff was clunky. Because it was clunky, it was slow. When it's slow and you have a meeting, you lose people's attention. Because this is fast and not clunky, people are able to say, "Oh, okay. This is the next step and the next step." I get better engagement and I get through mapping the processes quicker. Because it has the different shapes and the explanations of what things mean, I'm able to get more out of it. Visually it is the best application that I've used.

I'm also getting productive engagement and productive challenge from my teams. Someone will say, "Well, that step shouldn't really be represented by a diamond. It's more a case that somebody has to go and get things and that causes a delay, but it's not necessarily a decision because it's built into the process." 

Per week, I probably do two of these exercises, and each one would take three-plus hours to get through when dealing with some of our more complicated processes. Now, we can get them done in about an hour. That's a huge improvement because of the software itself, but it has also helped us to see, "Wow, we have a lot of excess steps and waste in our process." For example, we were working on it with a team over the last two days and we got two new maps up in the span of an hour and a half or two hours. We're getting much quicker at process mapping and understanding what we need to address.

Lucidchart has also helped with training and developing standard operating procedures. Before, we would just use a piece of paper, and maybe it would have a picture of what is going on. And on that piece of paper would be a list of sequential steps. We still have to do that for FDA regulations of having and maintaining SOPs. But having printed out flowcharts benefits us because you can just flip over the piece of paper and see, "All right, here are the four or five little steps I take before I get to a decision, and here are the two branches from that decision." That extra context helps us in building a development tool. And we can post the process flow map for, say, operating a hopper, right on the equipment. That way, people can see things. And if they need more context or deeper instruction, they can bring up the actual SOP with all the words. But a quick little chart that shows the flow: "This is what I do. This is what I do if this fails, et cetera," is something that we're getting a lot of immediate benefit from.

It is important that Lucidchart accommodates both Mac and PC users because if you support Mac, that means you also support the mobile applications on the iPad. Because of the kind of factory setting we're in, all of the office personnel and management have laptops, but they also have iPads. Some of the other employees have access to an iPad, but not all of them do. When we're trying to talk through a process with them on-the-fly, or at the point of occurrence, it's so much nicer if we can both have it up on the iPad. That's why I would say the Mac support is essential.

It's easy to click and drag and automatically insert shapes. And once you have selected an arrow to move to a new location, it auto-associates the shape with it and you can right-click and change. There's no copy, paste, make next steps, start typing. It's all seamlessly integrated.

Integrations with third-party software are pretty important. I do a lot of work out of Tableau for data analysis. One of the things that I find frustrating is that all of our Tableau information is on a server, so when I send that out people can't open it and use it. I then have to go back and do extra work to convert everything into an Excel format that everybody can use. It would be really important to me, if I send something out to somebody who doesn't have a Lucid account, that they can just click and see it, instead of having to log in and create an account. I can understand if they can't edit it; that makes sense, to restrict that behind the paywall. But in terms of actually being able to open up the data, it would help. With Tableau, for our data management systems, it's a big constraint. The user interface across other software is very important to me.

Something that would also be nice—and maybe it's just a feature I haven't explored yet—would be to be able to link the data from other sources, whether Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, or even straight from Excel. That way, if we build processes we could immediately assign data, whether its defective units, operational uptime or operational downtime, changeover time, et cetera. It would help to be able to put it in there so that we can have the data collected and then somehow integrate it to each step of the process. For example, if this step of the process fails, it causes X minutes of operational downtime and Y number of defective units coming out of the machine. I understand that it might be a little advanced, but right now I'm taking the charts and correlating them to existing data from Tableau and from Excel. If there were a way to make it seamless, so I could click on my flow chart and show, "This decision point, this diamond, is potentially responsible for X number of minutes operational downtime, and Y number of defective bottles," that would be the continuous improvement dream.

I have been using Lucidchart for close to a year.

I've only had one or two issues where the performance of it was delayed. I don't know if the cause was the internet connection or if it was because I was trying to fill out the charts on the iPad. But using the Apple Pencil, there were time delays between drawing lines between different process steps and getting things entered in. It was a little awkward on the timing. When you build something on the iPad, its performance might just not be as effective as building it on the computer.

Other than that, every time I build something there's no buffering or issues with it deleting my work or not saving things. It seems to be doing all the things that it needs to be doing. The iPad issue is the only little snafu I've had.

I can't speak too much abou its scalability. We could probably expand it and get multiple supervisors at my plant using it. But in terms of getting the information made and sharing it out, it's pretty quick and pretty easy. If we were to add a company server for it and 18 people working on it at the plant, I don't know if there would be scaling or server issues.

I hope we have plans to increase usage of Lucidchart. Our business is split up into four plants across the country. In the Continuous Improvement department there are four of us. We each have a license. There are plans to bring one more person onto the team. I'm hopeful that we would then be looking at getting it at least for our operations and production managers, which would potentially be an additional two licenses per site.

I have not needed to use the technical support yet. I've not had any major issues.

Before Lucidchart, we were building process diagrams in Excel.

The initial setup of Lucidchart is a pretty straightforward process. There is still stuff I'm learning as I go, when it comes to knowing what to look for with different templates. But if the most basic function you need is to make process maps, and to do it quickly, and then figure out what you've got to improve, it's very effective at that.

While it's not directly saving money, because it is a paid-for service, it saves us money in the sense that we have a better understanding of our processes, what can be changed, and what we need to attack. We then go out and attack it, do it, update the maps, and then we get the return on the investment.

I used Visio here and there when I worked for another company, but I was not the main user of that application. Still, between it and Lucidchart, I prefer Lucidchart. It is a lot simpler and a lot more accessible.

In my current company, we have not evaluated any other solutions. I think our engineers do have CAD for facility layout, but in terms of competitors to this, we have not looked at any directly.

Watch some of the tutorials, check the reviews, and definitely talk to folks who are using it. Figure out what they like, what they don't like, and what they would want changed. There's a lot that I like about it. I find it to be a pretty good service. Get involved and play around with it, especially if you're working on facility layouts. I have printouts for some of the areas where we're implementing 5S and changing processes in. It's nice having something that the engineers have printed out, like a schematic or a blueprint for us.

Also, if you're going to try it out, try to make a simple process that you already know all the steps for; one you've already done it in Excel or in something else. See how much faster you can do it on this. That would be the big selling point. Trying to make some of these process maps in Excel, because it's so clunky and so slow, could take me 35 minutes just to get a 15-step process properly built, connected with the decision points in the lines, and for us to really understand where the pain points are. Taking something as simple as a 15-step process, timing out how long it takes to build it in Excel or PowerPoint, and then comparing it to this may show you, "Wow, with Lucidchart it took, maybe, five minutes."

I've been discussing getting this implemented in other departments at my facility.

In terms of its integrations, we've used it with some of the Microsoft suite for sending things out. I haven't used it for Slack yet, although I do use Slack for a nonprofit that I'm in. That actually might be a good opportunity because then I could just make some process maps for some of the nonprofit stuff that I do. And could then just send it out that way.

As a product manager, I often use these infinite canvases for coming up with ideas and  for brainstorming. I also use it for defining workflows of new products or features that we are brainstorming on.

Now that remote working has become so prominent, these types of tools come in handy when you are collaborating with a lot of folks and you need their input quickly, in a manner that is manageable. That is where I have used Lucidchart.

It's a SaaS-based service, through the browser. Things are automatically saved over the cloud.

We are a very visual organization. We are an Agile team and we practice XP (extreme programming). When we were on the floor in the office, we used to use whiteboards to create and visualize flows. The whiteboard was always stuck in front of the team's table so that we would know where we were up to as a team and the decisions that had been taken on that flow. When we all started working from home, in March 2020, those meetings became extensive and intense. That resulted in a little bit of Zoom fatigue. Being on a call for so long ends up with people tuning out. That is when we started looking at products with infinite canvases, and Lucidchart came in handy. It enabled us, once again, to work as a team. We could sketch out ideas and brainstorm on things collaboratively and comment on things in real time. We could see where and how things are moving in real time. It almost emulates the in-person meetings. Of course, it cannot replace the feeling of being on the same board, writing with felt markers. But it's a good enough replacement. 

The team could not operate without it. We were actually collaborating on Google Slides, which sort of worked. You can obviously edit a Google document in real-time, but it did not give us the same feeling of an infinite canvas, where the team could contribute and people could express their opinions on every step. I wouldn't say it improved the processes that we already had in place, pre-lockdown, but once we started working from home, it certainly aided us in doing something that we used to do. 

The solution also helped us be more efficient because we were using Google Slides. It's efficient in the sense that the information is percolated to everyone better. Everybody is on the same page and that is the most important thing when you are in the development stage of a project. Having everybody rowing in the same direction is very important. With Lucidchart, there is a document that everybody is able to look at and contribute to at the same time. It maintains the document well and in a very lucid manner so that the decisions are very clearly chalked out. That improves efficiency. Every member spends less time figuring out in which document decisions were taken or where that email is where they can get a sense of what the outcome was of a certain meeting. Instead of that, they can just look at Lucidchart and get the answers.

It saves time and money, at the end of the day.

The basic valuable feature is the infinite canvas, because that gives you the space to come up with anything. 

There are a few templates as well, for things like brainstorming or coming up with a mind map, although I haven't explored them much. I usually opt for a free-form canvas where I can build my flows from scratch and the team can collaborate at the same time.

Lucidchart is very visual in nature, and it is something that we do use extensively for stakeholder mapping, for example. If you want to build graphs for things like who the decision-makers are in a particular organization, Lucidchart can be used for that. It's a use case for which you might use a Google Doc or a Google Slide, but if you want to get everything on a single canvas, Lucidchart does come in handy.

We design flows and wireframes and models and we put in where the data would flow.  I have used Lucidchart to create the diagrams and flows of system architecture, and how the data would flow downstream and upstream. One thing that I really appreciate about Lucidchart, a standout feature, is that whenever you attach a Google Sheet link, to signify the data flows in a particular sheet, it actually captures a particular DB or Google Sheet with its link. If you double-tap on it, it redirects you to that particular sheet. I don't know if that feature is available in other products. I really like that in Lucidchart. It comes in handy if you don't want to have to bookmark that sheet separately. You can get it from within Lucidchart itself, which helps you to keep everything neatly in one place.

I've been using Lucidchart for about two months.

I have had no issues with the stability. Everything is saved in real time and whenever I access it, what I have worked on is there. I have no complaints. It almost works with the reliability of Google Sheets and Google Docs. Google is the gold standard for real-time saving of edits. Lucidchart is pretty much the same in that respect.

I haven't really thought of Lucidchart in terms of scalability. From an enterprise perspective, if 1,000 or 2,000 people were collaborating on a particular canvas in Lucidchart, it would probably become a mess. It works well for smaller teams, perhaps a maximum of eight to 10 people. Beyond that, it's not really practically possible. Even in physical settings, we do not do whiteboarding with more than 10 people. If there are 20 or 30 people in a meeting, on a whiteboard, it becomes very messy. A small, nimble team, like an XP team or a scrum team, can use Lucidchart.

Whether we will expand our usage depends on how Lucidchart evolves as a product. If the product gains enough momentum and enough industry adoption, where more and more people end up using it, then everybody ends up using it. So it is dependent on the adoption of the product itself and is not necessarily something related to the product's features. If it provides better value through its pricing, people will start adopting it. That is the same curve that we saw with Google Suite. They provided immense value to organizations and now everybody is using Google Suite. There might be better products than Google Suite, but the adoption of Google Suite has spread. In the three organizations I have worked at during my career, I haven't seen any using Microsoft Outlook.

I haven't used their technical support.

We tried using draw.io as a stop-gap solution, but that didn't work that well. While draw.io looks very similar to Lucidchart in terms of its UI, I don't think it has evolved much.

The initial setup was done by our client's organization, so I wasn't involved. But because it is a cloud-based solution, I don't think there was any kind of deployment needed. I expect it is a plug-and-play solution that they paid for and we started using.

It doesn't really require any day-to-day maintenance because everything is stored in the cloud. It doesn't require any kind of configuration.

We have six or seven folks right who are using it. There are developers, people on the QA team, the product manager, and the engineering manager.

Right after the lockdown started, meetings were really long. That is when we felt the need to select something like Lucidchart. As a result, on average we have saved one and half hours per day in meeting time. That translates to value.

I wasn't involved in the purchase of Lucidchart, but Lucidchart does the same things that other products do, like Miro and MURAL. The way I would make the decision is that if Lucidchart is cheaper than those products I would pick it. Maybe the UI is not the most modern, but it helps you achieve the same goals. If there is a major difference in price, I would definitely go with Lucidchart. Otherwise, I would take Miro or MURAL, because they are more modern looking and have better UIs.

I do really appreciate that Lucidchart is actually on par with draw.io. That is a tool that I have been using for a very long time, and it is a free tool as well. Lucidchart can pretty much do what draw.io can do. It has been structured in a very similar manner. draw.io doesn't give you as many ready-made templates. Lucidchart can pretty much do what you ask of it, in terms of building workflows. draw.io is primarily used for creating architectural diagrams, to show how systems interact in a software program, for example.

But I feel that there is a premium for the use of certain elements in Lucidchart, like a drop-down. These features come at a premium and are only accessible in the premium plan. Most of draw.io's icons and clip art are free. It becomes very annoying, especially if you are a first-time user of Lucidchart and you don't have a premium plan. It feels a little too restrictive, in terms of using very basic shapes and icons. It asks you to sign-up for the premium account, which I think shouldn't be the case. I realize that companies need to make money, but first impressions are important. Without completely communicating the value of the product, people might switch to something else. After a while, my organization did take the premium account, so that problem was solved, at least for me. But this was one of my biggest gripes with Lucidchart in the beginning.

With the unpaid version of Lucidchart, where you can get a feel for the user experience, when you try to drag a premium icon into a chart, a pop-up says that you have to buy the premium account. There is a product called Canva. It's an online platform for designing. Something they do, which is really smart, is that they call out premium elements very clearly in the menus. If something is premium, you already know that you can't use it without a premium account, and that saves you time, instead of ending up with a premium element and seeing a pop-up. In Lucidchart, there's no clear demarcation that something is a premium element, unless you try to bring it into your chart. That is annoying at times.

I have been using a couple of other products, such as Miro, which is also an infinite canvas, as well as MURAL. What I have found is that Miro and MURAL certainly have better UIs compared to Lucidchart. Lucidchart emulates draw.io in terms of its UI. It's a little dated. A user will be able to find their way through Lucidchart and draw.io, but Miro and MURAL have a much more modern look.

Other than the visual aspects, Lucidchart can be used to achieve the same goals as the others when it comes to functionality. You can collaborate on the same canvas in real time and you can see other peoples' cursors.

Collaboration is the key. For teams to move faster, they need to make decisions in real time and keep everybody in the loop. As a scrum team or an XP team, these are the things that we valued even before Lucidchart. But then, we needed something that would aid our discussions in the absence of a whiteboard.

My advice would be to visit product review sites, like IT Central Station, and see how the products in the category compare to each other. You might unearth certain features which are not very evident from a product website itself. Word of mouth is something that
will give you an unbiased opinion. It's actual users who can articulate the value proposition. If your own use case matches that of somebody who has already used it, read the reviews and evaluate it yourself.

Lucidchart is not seen as a tool that can be used for documentation purposes. It is primarily seen as a tool that can come in handy for things like brainstorming and when sketching out new processes. It is basically a replacement for a whiteboard, and the processes that we used to do at the office around that, such as collaboratively sketching. That is what it has replaced. It has not replaced Google Docs or other things that are primarily used for documentation.

We use Lucidchart's Slack integration, so if you share Lucidchart in Slack, it will automatically pop up if you want to share it with somebody who is on Slack. When you want to integrate Lucidchart with Slack, it asks for certain permissions. After that, if you want to share a particular file, it will start showing it to all the people who are on the Slack channel. Once you share that file for collaboration, it pops up on their Slack channel, and they can open it from there. That is a neat feature I would say. But if I had to use some other product that has better features than Lucidchart, but lacked this particular integration, I would be fine with it.

I would rate Lucidchart a seven out of 10. It achieves what it says in the value prop. But there is a lot of scope for improvement in making it easier and more modern in terms of the look and the experience for new users.

I mostly use Lucidchart to describe projects, processes, process descriptions, and project flows. I also use it for mind mapping a little bit. I cannot imagine working on a presentation for my manager without using Lucidchart. It's handy. It enables me to clear my mind in terms of how the process should look, what the necessary steps are, what the flow should be, how the flow should look, and all the beautiful stuff.

Lucidchart definitely helps us to realize efficiencies in the projects we use it for.

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.

I discovered Lucidchart by accident. Someone in my previous company had used it before. I requested access, found it useful, and tried to learn how the tool works. I knew from the beginning, once I learned how to use it, it would be the tool I would want to use forever. It helps every time I need to squeeze a huge amount of information into something short and simple. The flows and diagrams help with exactly that.

Documenting things like processes and systems is pretty simple. I open up the blank diagram and start from scratch. In the beginning, it's more like mind mapping, meaning I just put on the screen what I want to achieve, what I have in mind, and then try to figure out what is missing. I consider what the best way to actually describe what I'm working on is, what the dependencies are so that the person I will be presenting it to later will understand what I'm working on. With words, it's all about the economy and time-saving. Lucidchart is a tool that allows me to squeeze a few slides into one slide.

I've been using Lucidchart for three to two years, at least, and I don't remember when the last time was that I was working on a presentation where there were no slides involved. I remember how difficult it was at the beginning. You have one or two slides reserved for you in a presentation for management, and you're trying to squeeze in as much information as possible. You can then play with the formatting. It's annoying that Google slides or PowerPoint don't simply allow you to do the same thing as Lucidchart does. 

Lucidchart is fully integrated with PowerPoint and other documentation tools I'm working with. I know that if I start with Lucidchart and spend some time there, there will be no problem with adding this to Confluence and to PowerPoint presentations.

The integrations are the most valuable features. 

I use templates as a reference, but even if I start with a template, I provide many notifications where the purpose of the template is different. I like the template because of the colors of those flows. The way the flow was presented was nice. It just looked better than anything I could do on my own.

It's important to us that Lucidchart accommodates both PC and Mac. In most cases, I work on a Mac, and the whole company works on the same devices, but there was a moment in time where I was on a PC and I was really happy with the fact that I didn't have to find another tool for the PC.

I'm not a designer. Most of the diagrams and flows I create are blank, black, and white. And sometimes I hate it but trying to work with different colors costs me too much time to figure out what color I should use and in what gradient I should use the color. That's the painful part. I would like my matches to do better. I'm trying to learn something from the templates in terms of appearance, but a grading tool, a tool that would allow me to choose between different gradients of the same color is currently unavailable. 

For example, on templates, I see a different set of colors being used, and I don't know which colors there are, which is why I use different templates sometimes. They offer better colors and look better. There's an option to ultimately change the color of your shapes using conditional formatting, but it looks very complicated. I would like to know more. I would like to know how to create those rules easily. At the end of the day, in the last step, I need to pick the color myself. I would like this tool to pick the colors for me.

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.

If I would like to use the color green for any reason, the tool currently offers three gradients of green. There should be two fewer. It's the same for every other color.

I actually provided this feedback once directly in a survey to them some time ago. The current audience, I understand, based on the templates in Lucidchart, is tech people. I'm a marketer. I have slightly different needs. I want the stuff to look better and have better clarity. I don't need to know how to use a template for Amazon services and how to set up a server or whatever. The set of icons look impressive but are absolutely useless for a marketer.

It would be nice to have something role-based. They should target more people like me, mid-management, people who we need to present a lot, create a lot of documentation, pitch products to other people, explain what the necessary steps are. And I believe this tool is perfect for that. It could also be much simpler than it is right now.

I have been using Lucidchart for at least two years but I joined my current company two months ago. I discovered Lucidchart before, in my previous company at least two years ago.

It's absolutely stable. I never had any problems with it. I like the fact that sometimes I close the tab or close the whole window and there would be something I didn't save or forgot to save. I reopen the tool, and my stuff is always there, up to date. I love it.

I tried using Visio but my experience was horrible. I also used a free solution from GitHub, a mind mapping tool from GitHub. I remember the appreciation for Lucidchart really increased the moment I realized how different it is to combine two shapes. 

I saved a project but then I couldn't access it for some reason. I lost it and had to start from scratch. The customer support said, "It's a free tool, what do we expect?"

I didn't have any expectations from the tools I was using. I just needed an hour with an online tool for free. But then I didn't know that Lucidchart had a free option, so I didn't turn where I needed to go. I didn't use Lucidchart and it was a mistake.

In my first week, there was a presentation. A manager shared his deck with a Lucidchart diagram in it. I immediately recognized the tool and thought that it was great that my new company uses Lucidchart and I didn't have to request it. I tried to open a new account for myself because it was free, and then I saw the presentation and realized that the company uses a paid version, so my account was upgraded immediately.

The CEO and his team use it. I have no idea who else is using it unless I see a chart in a presentation, and this is also why we're not working on this together. When I see the button "Share" it means to me that I'm sharing this tool with other tools, not a person.

I forgot how much it costs but if the tech team were to ask if we really needed it and they tried to dump the tool, I would definitely refuse, because I really like it.

This is the one tool I want to use. I don't care how much it costs. It's the best tool for the stuff I'm working on. It fulfills my needs, and for this sake, it can cost 10 times more. I don't care.

We have a different tool for collaboration with our colleagues. If I create a business case and I need some feedback from the data team, I present the flow as I imagined it should look, and then I let the data person or the specialist tell me how to improve it, what needs to be different, and what needs to be changed. But I never thought about allowing anyone to have access to Lucidchart, simply because most of the people, especially the marketers, do not know about Lucidchart.

The transition into using it as a collaboration tool will not happen instantly. I remember there was a period of time when I was simply struggling with how to use the tool, and it took a while until I was capable of presenting my thoughts in an efficient way. And it would be hard to imagine that. For the sake of using the tool, I would have to do a workshop with other colleagues to explain how things work.

We do not use Lucidchart to compare versions of documents. We use Spark for that simply by sending the link to the presentation. I can integrate Lucidchart into presentations or another form of documentation, like on Confluence, but we rarely work on Lucidchart itself. It's just a tool for me where I need to accomplish something and then move it forward, copy and paste it somewhere else. It's not very interactive.

We just saw a presentation someone created and it had 30 different slides. I would just say in one sentence that this presentation could say even more with fewer slides if the person would use Lucidchart instead. PowerPoint or Google slides are not perfect tools. They're just carriers. The content you provide to those slides should be created somewhere else in a more professional way, and Lucidchart is the tool everyone should at least consider using because it speeds up the work. 

Sometimes I use Lucidchart just for myself, to mind map everything I have in my mind to see what exactly is there and how to make it simple. With Lucidchart, you just do step one, step two, step three, done.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.

I use Lucidchart for creating journey maps and educating customer success managers on best practices when it comes to managing customers, relationships, and difficult conversations. 

People are visual, so I typically try to visualize what I'm trying to say and Lucidchart makes it easy.

As a Mac user, and with most people in the area using a Mac, it is important to me that Lucidchart accommodates both platforms.

Lucidchart is really useful for mapping out processes, even if you're just trying to think about how to write them out or relay an idea to other people. Being able to draw it out is very helpful.

The organizational charts for visualizing and understanding hierarchies and relationships are very simple to draw out, then share and quickly make edits, according to feedback.

Lucid's capabilities for visualizing and understanding process flows are good, as you can use layering on top of your ideas. There are also so many templates that I can start with, I don't have to start from scratch when trying to visualize the concept. It's very easy and clean to use.

I collaborate with other team members for assessments of clients' customer success teams, playbooks, and education. The ability to do this absolutely makes our process faster, mainly because you can visualize what you're trying to say, so people understand it faster.

I'd say that it cuts the amount of time we spend in half because you don't have to write emails back and forth. You can see what they've changed, even in real-time.

Using this platform has helped me to realize efficiencies because I can visualize what I'm trying to tell the person. Instead of writing it out or taking a long time trying to figure out how to do it in PowerPoint, I can just drag and drop so many different images to convey what I want to say into one page, as opposed to taking multiple pages or wasting time trying to figure out which icon or how to draw something out when they already have templates in there.

The most valuable feature is the ease of use, and just being able to drag and drop. Although it is easy to use, it has so many capabilities that you can make it as complex as you want.

There are many templates that I can start from, which is another valuable feature.

It allows me to look at and compare different versions of my documents, which is something that I do to look at the high-level changes when I'm working with a colleague. When I'm collaborating on work for a client, it's really important to understand what it is that the customer wants to relay to their team. Even if we're on a task like writing a blog, it is important that we're working together to make sure that we're visualizing what we want to convey to the audience.

There is a lot of good training available.

The layering is something that can be improved because sometimes, it is confusing for me when I'm trying to get to the layer that I want to edit.

When using the interface to maneuver about the axis, I struggle sometimes because I want to move only one line, as opposed to the entire sheet that I've just created.

I have been working with Lucidchart for two years.

This is a very stable product and I've never had an issue with it.

It is very good in terms of scaling because you can save folders and content, and you can share it easily. I'm a small consulting firm and there are just three of us. One is an advisor and the other helps build the assessments and playbooks.

If my company grows and I get more clients, then I will expand my usage of Lucidchart.

I have been in contact with technical support and it was fine. I'm paying the lowest tier and I don't expect them to get back to me right away, which is fine.

I have used other similar products but I have given up. I feel this one is just very simple to use. For example, I have used Visio, PowerPoint, and I've dabbled with Bizagi but I really disliked it and it's super expensive. I quickly dropped that one. I've also played around with MURAL. 

Specifically, with Visio, I used it years ago but I hated it. I found it complicated to use and also, they may not have had an Apple version at the time for the Mac. I was very happy when the company that I was working for introduced this to me.

What I really liked about Lucidchart is the ease of use. I went to their conference and I thought that it was well put together. I really liked the content, and it's stuff like that that matters.

The company that I used to work for performed the initial setup for me. Then, once I started my own company, I just kept using it.

I have seen a return on investment with respect to time, although I don't have enough clients yet to be using it as much as I wish I could. My return comes from creating playbooks and assessments and visualizing.

The pricing is very reasonable, and they have a free trial available that you can play with. 

My advice for anybody who is considering this product is to take advantage of the free trial. Use the templates and they have a lot of good training available, so take advantage of it.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using Lucidchart is that there are a lot of templates and ways to be efficient by using a platform.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use it for making flowcharts. We are using the iOS and PC views to make mock-ups and wireframes.

I'm able to create a mock-up and then share that with a person on the other side of the world for his or her review and commentary. We're then able to easily understand how the mock-up or flow should work, based on sharing and using Lucidchart and the commenting back and forth between people.

The real-time collaboration among users, so that everyone is accessing and working on the same version of a document, has made it more efficient for multiple users within our organization to review the same mock-up or wireframes simultaneously, and comment on them to enhance or improve them. The real-time collaboration has saved us hours of time per week.

We also use the solution’s ability to compare versions of documents. It's important to understand who, on the team, is responsible or has version control. In sharing wireframes or mock-ups, referring back to previous versions or iterations has been helpful to understand how things have progressed to the current state. This feature is important to understand how a document or flowchart has continued to improve.

The ability for people to look at a diagram, rather than reading through written documents, has saved time and money, but at this point it's hard to put a dollar figure on it. 

An example of the kind of efficiencies it provides in projects is that it has saved us time in reviewing a mock-up for a mobile app. Being able to share those mock-ups back and forth between our product and development teams ensured that the mock-up was meeting the desired end-state. It probably saved us a day, eight hour's worth of time, over the course of the last two or three months.

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 on a flowchart, to effectively communicate to our development team.

It is also important to us that Lucidchart accommodates both Mac and PC users because we have both within our organization. To efficiently and effectively share charts, wireframes, and mock-ups between users, it's important that Lucid supports both platforms.

I've been using Lucid for the last six months.

The performance has been great. There have been no issues with performance or stability at all.

In our limited use case, we have about 10 to 12 different flowcharts or wireframes or mock-ups that we've done, so the scalability has been fine. I don't think we're a true judge of scalability, given we've only had a few months of Lucid experience.

We have four users using Lucid in our company, from platform development and product management. At this time we don't have plans to increase usage. Maybe as we add additional staff, that is something we will take a look at.

We have not used their technical support.

We have used draw.io as well. We switched to Lucidchart because of a preference for it on the part of the VP of our product team.

Our primary driver was price. We chose Lucid based on the price comparison between it and draw.io. I don't know that feature functionality was strongly considered. Lucidchart was about 15 percent cheaper per user.

I watched a couple of help videos, but I didn't find the setup very complex. It's fairly intuitive and easy to use. The setup took a couple of days. I did it by myself, using online help and whatever I found in the help portion of the application.

It doesn't require any maintenance on our side.

It has saved us time. Although it's hard to quantify how much, it has saved us time being able to share wireframes, the mock-ups, and the flowcharts that we need to effectively communicate to our larger development team.

I would like to learn more about Lucidspark. When that was released, I was surprised to learn that it came with a separate subscription model and was not included in my existing Lucidchart subscription. I do think the mind mapping or brainstorming features within Lucidspark are something that we can take advantage of but we just haven't found the money yet to buy a subscription.

I have used Visio in the past, but we do not have Visio as part of our Microsoft license currently. We never had the intent of using Visio.

Lucidchart is far easier to pick up and use than Visio is. Visio is better suited, if you've had some background or a training course on how to use Visio, whereas Lucid's much easier to just start "playing with" and continuing to understand how it works with continued use.

Compare Lucid to the other providers in the space, whether it be Gliffy, drawio, or Visio and understand how they export and share work with other team members, and which is easiest to use.

I do a lot of strategy stuff with it:

1. Mapping things out that way. 
2. Laying out product plans and roadmaps.
3. Visually showing people some of that information.

I use it for general mapping, more like a canvas. I'm a single user who uses it for our company for a very specific need.

We are using Lucidchart through the web.

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 do more show and tell with it. We don't really collaborate too much. We are mostly just sending, "Here is where we are right now with this." We don't really collaborate on the same document, which I know could be a really powerful function. We just don't use it that way yet. 

I can throw everything into a window, copy and paste images, and then quickly add flow lines. Instead of using a bunch of Word documents or Excel spreadsheets, I often compile a lot of data or images into a single document, then use links in the comments or attach to pictures that help me go to that source. For example, if I am doing a competitor analysis or looking for visual inspirations for new product development, I could say, "Here is where this originally came from. We can research this product or identify what this competitor may be doing," then have a direct link. It is very visual, and that is the best part of it. So, I don't have 20 different Excel sheets on competitor analysis, instead I have one big document showing a bunch of images of a competitor's stuff. 

A feature that I would love to see on Lucidchart is the ability to collapse information and expand it out. If someone's looking for a reference to what I'm talking about, MindManager is an example of how you can collapse data down. The best part of that solution is I can have very large maps, but simplify it visually for people. Then, if we talk about it during a meeting, I can expand it out with a lot more data that can be provided. Whereas, with Lucidchart, I need to have a big canvas. Oftentimes, it gets really large and it's kind of overwhelming. If I'm in a presentation that I'm sharing, such as phased releases of a product line, it can be overwhelming if I have 100 pictures on there. There is too much going on, as far as comprehending it.

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.

If I have a presentation on a new product line to my board. I wouldn't want to use Lucidchart because it still looks like a real rudimentary flow chart. Whereas, if it gave me a bit more control over the visuals, I would be able to throw a bunch of information in it, rough it in, go back and clean it up visually, and then make everything pop out now that the flow has been laid out. That would be really nice to have. That has always been the downfall for me: It still lacks that visual. Usability is really high, but visually, it is still lacking.

I have been using Lucidchart for about a year.

I am the only one driving it right now in the organization, but I certainly think there is more potential for it. I have been kind of testing it out.

The technical support was good, but I haven't used it for a long time.

Lucidchart is better than keeping a bunch of Excel spreadsheets, which I end up losing or haven't named correctly. This way, I can visually see the work that I have done, the competitors, and quickly attach images.

I came across Lucidchart when I was searching for something like a whiteboard-type system, where I could throw a lot of information on there and present.

I am satisfied with the price and features that I am getting out of 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 existing solutions, like Visio and MindManager. Lucidchart is way more versatile than Visio or MindManager; it gives me more freedom to do more with it. Lucidchart is a direct replacement for Visio. Lucidchart is easy to just pull up if I'm at home working on my tablet. I don't have to have a direct license, like I would with Visio, which would need to be downloaded. So, if I were to deploy Lucidchart to the rest of my product development team, we don't need to have it downloaded, like Visio, with a Microsoft license. We can just go online and use this web-based program.

I use Lucidchart daily. We originally intended to have this solution transfer to engineering as well as manufacturing for their purposes, but they are continuing to use Visio because it is already deployed.

I don't quite understand how Lucidspark is differentiating other than it looks simplified. I don't understand why I would want to use their other program. Right now, it looks like it is included, but I don't want to use it because it looks like it limits the features that I can have over the regular Lucidchart.

I love the program as it is so far. Being able to link comments and things to images has been fantastic for me. For me, using it as a solution for whiteboard, canvas-type, thought-thinking, mind mapping has been fantastic.

I would rate this solution as an eight (out of 10). Feature and functionality-wise, it is fantastic. I just wish visually that I had a bit more control to polish it up.

I use it for the WBS tree diagram, the work breakdown structure, and for divisional workflow mapping. I also use it for whiteboarding sessions with my team. And I have used it for an operational requirements matrix. Our company has used it for making a company organizational chart.

It makes collaboration easy. It makes presentation easy. The real-time collaboration is super-helpful.

It has saved me time on the order of 20 percent for project planning. Given that there are three people involved, a project manager and two project coordinators, that is significant because a project takes two to three months to plan.

Also, the ability for people to look at a diagram, rather than reading through written documents, has saved time.

• Ease of use 
• Pre-existing templates

Ease of use is especially critical because if I am conducting brainstorming sessions with my team, I have to be able to quickly put things on the monitor so that I don't lose their attention and focus. Ease of use is definitely helpful when I do that. With COVID-19, we've been doing all our meetings via Zoom, so I share a screen and then I have to add things as everyone else is talking. The fact that I don't get lost within the software and am able to quickly generate visuals onscreen, so that it doesn't break the momentum, is a huge win.

It takes a lot of time for me to draw from scratch. Using a template that's already made for a specific business objective saves me about 50 or 60 percent of the time spent on the task. I search for something that is like what it is that I'm trying to do and then I just fill in the blanks. I then make slight modifications to fit within our needs. The templates are definitely a huge help.

In terms of documenting processes and systems, I would rate Lucidchart an eight out of 10. It's good for visualizing work package hierarchy. I haven't run into limitations. It has a fine balance of showing me how things could be done, yet it's flexible enough that I can make changes so that things work for my needs.

Also, when it comes to creating database schemas or modifying existing data structures, it's good visually. The visuals are there, the ease of use is there. But ultimately, it's the people who input data into those visuals who make things work. The solution doesn't do the thinking work for us. But it makes the thinking and the presentation easy, absolutely.

We're also using the web content feature, where it's a direct, live link from Lucidchart. That integration is super-helpful and super-important. It's a 10 out of 10 in importance because we don't want to keep going back and forth to upload content. We want to have live content. We make the changes in Lucidchart and they are visible in other, integrated software.

In addition, it is important that Lucidchart accommodates both Mac and PC users because we're using it for team collaboration. A lot of developers are using PC, while designers are using Mac. I am using Mac, as a project manager. If developers are a big part of the project, it's important that it's compatible with both platforms.

I wish there were a lot more automations. For instance, if I'm using a project management software to list out all my WBS, 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, both in the project management software I use and in Lucidchart.

I wish the project management software could do that. If it could do that, I honestly don't know if I would still use Lucidchart. But if Lucidchart could do that, it would definitely add a lot of value.

In project management, or any kind of planning, it's one or the other. We either start with the diagram and then they make it into a grid, and then ultimately into a Gantt chart; or we make it into a grid and Gantt chart, then we make the diagram. If both are required for stakeholders and participants to understand things, something has to be automated. Either the project management software could take my grid with all of the WBS numbers and provide functionality to quickly make it into a diagram or matrix. Or Lucidchart could understand those WBS numbers and simply make it into a chart or a matrix.

Whoever does it fastest will win. But ultimately I could see how project management software companies will make this functionality available.

Also, Lucid doesn't do enough knowledge-sharing on how we could use Lucidchart. Other companies send out so many emails saying things like, "Did you know you could do this? Did you know you can do that? Did you know that we can integrate with this software?" Lucid doesn't do enough of that. I think that would be super-helpful.

We have a subscription for certain projects and then we will cancel the subscription and start the subscription again for another project. The reason is that we don't know what Lucidchart can do for us. So we just use it for a project and, when the project closes, we stop the subscription. We've done that many times.

It would help to know what other usages there are and how other companies are using Lucidchart to integrate with things like Salesforce. I didn't know that you could use Salesforce and Lucidchart together. I'm curious to know how people are using it. I want to know how they are using Lucidchart for ERP. How are they using it for CRM? How are they using it for project management software? How are they using it for operational work? How are they using it for Scrum? How are they using it for Waterfall? It would be nice if they could tell their existing customers so that we could become advocates.

I've been using Lucidchart on and off for about 14 months.

There is a lag. I think it's because it's a heavily visual software. When we put in a lot of data, a lot of visual elements, it does tend to freeze up or there's a lag, and it's really visible on the shared screen. If the document has a lot of visual elements, for us to drag one visual element to another area, there could be a few seconds of delay.

Our company has 400 employees. Only about 15 or 20 use Lucidchart. They're in software development, operational work, marketing, and one person is using it for UI/UX.

I have never used their technical support.

While I myself did not switch from Visio to Lucidchart, I know people in our company who have switched. The switch was easy. I don't know in detail what they did, but I don't think they did any conversions or imports. I think they just started from scratch.

I had to work with our design team to draw out charts for. The design team uses Adobe Creative Cloud. When I said that using Lucidchart saves me 20 percent of my time, it's because there's no longer any going back and forth with the design team. I don't need their help anymore. I can just do it myself.

The setup is very straightforward. I search for existing templates for what I'm trying to achieve. I pull two to three templates that could potentially work and make a rough draft and then run it by the team, saying, "Is this the right way to visualize the process?" We then make modifications or we try other templates.

The ROI is in time savings.

I'm happy with the pricing of Lucidchart but I can't say I'm completely happy with it. It could be cheaper for what it offers, about $5 cheaper, or Lucid could charge $5 more and add more features, like automation. Right now, it's $15 per user per month.

If Lucid had more communication with current users about all the features that they have and all the support, it could justify charging a little more.

On the other hand, they have made their billing super-easy for users, such as for people who have to do expense reports. It is probably the easiest platform I'm using when it comes to billing for software as a service.

We evaluated Visio as well as Draw.io and another Adobe product. 

Draw.io is missing the templates. I have to do everything from scratch. Lucidchart provides templates, live linking, and the whiteboarding functionality.

Adobe is expensive. Price-wise, Lucidchart made more sense. Compared to Adobe, price and usability—how easy it is—were the advantages of Lucidchart. 

As far as project planning, execution, project status reporting, and requirements analysis, if planning is a big part of it, Lucidchart is a must-use.