Lucidchart and Lucidspark are solutions from Lucid Software designed to work together throughout the visual collaboration workflow. Lucidchart focuses on creating professional diagrams, flowcharts, mind maps, and other visual documents. It excels in organization, precision, and collaboration on these structured visuals. Lucidspark focuses on brainstorming, free-flowing ideas, and planning sessions. It offers a virtual whiteboard with sticky notes, drawing tools, and real-time collaboration for messy but creative exploration.
Lucidchart and Lucidspark stand out in user reviews for their real-time collaboration capabilities and integration with other tools, offering significant productivity and efficiency enhancements.
Lucidchart is the go-to for professional diagramming and documentation, while Lucidspark fosters creative exploration and collaborative brainstorming. Used together, they offer a powerful suite for visual thinking and communication throughout the project lifecycle. The summary above is based on recent user interviews with Lucidchart and Lucidspark users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"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 best part of Lucidchart is its comfortableness when sharing it with my teammates. Lucidchart provides me a folder for my ERD. I can make a dozen lists of my chart, then share them with my teammates easily through the diagrams of Lucidchart. This is their main comfortableness, which is the reason why I choose Lucidchart rather than some other chart program."
"Documenting complicated workflows and technology integrations so that we can go back to it has also been a benefit. And without having to dig into a lot of technical, the codes, the documents, I can simply understand on a high level what's happening."
"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... 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."
"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."
"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... 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."
"The flow chart is most valuable. It is a very user-friendly and simple-to-use product. Quite quickly, I was able to understand how to use it and just get on with my process flow."
"Lucidchart helped us to realize efficiencies in the projects we use it for. I can show people pictures, and I can change things in a meeting and then email it by the end of the meeting. Because most places we go, especially now with everybody in-home office, I'm going to have great internet access, and that just makes it easier to be able to change things quickly while we're in a meeting and go, "Oh, you changed this. Oh, okay.", and then send it to them as a proof and send it as a PDF or send them a link. That works great. That saves time and accelerates a sale."
"The user interface is easy to use. There were other things that I was expected to make work like other people had done and they were expected to make things like I had done. Even though we had a template, there were times when we couldn't access each other's template and it was very easy to just go ahead and make it just like they had it. It's very intuitive. It's very easy to figure out where things are and how to use things."
"It definitely helps when prioritizing things. For a business problem, you can create many different documents and easily compare them, then you can decide which one that you want to go forward with."
"The virtual whiteboard is useful for brainstorming and quickly drawing and getting your thoughts out without having to do a formal, formatted drawing. For example, if I am doing a Zoom call, I can just share my screen and I can draw freehand, and change colors."
"We have used this solution for remote or virtual brainstorming sessions. We're a 100% remote company and therefore having that capability is important."
"The Whiteboard session feature could be the most helpful feature. It can help my organization through brainstorming and design sessions for technical tools, systems, and solutions. It's hard to brainstorm remotely and this tool will help to facilitate that."
"It helps with our brainstorming sessions when we are working from home. It is like having a whiteboard in the office."
"The fact that you can have multiple users working at the same time is a really big plus. The fact that we can all collaborate in real-time is a very useful aspect."
"The online collaboration with the teammates and being able to represent things in a visually attractive way are the most valuable features. It has been a really nice experience to make such beautiful and visually attractive flowcharts by using Lucidspark. The best thing was that I could collaborate online with my teammates. Overall, it was a nice experience."
"Lucid should create some proper documentation and video tutorials to demonstrate the capabilities of the product to new users. It should explain everything that it offers and everything that it can be used for."
"One area for improvement is the fact that I had to create two sheets. I had to create a process flow diagram, and I had to create a timeline. I wasn't able to do that in one sheet. If they could add that kind of feature, where you could input a timeline and different types of templates into one worksheet, that would be really useful. I had to include two and then cut and paste, and that was an extra step for me."
"This might already be a feature, but I remember sometimes when we're just all viewing, if you accidentally click, then there's an arrow that pops up, and you have to go back and delete it. A lot of times there are accidental arrows being drawn when really we're just trying to present to each other."
"It can have more colors or graphics. Currently, it is a little boring. It can have a little bit more fun factor."
"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."
"There is a premium for the use of certain elements in Lucidchart... 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."
"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."
"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."
"One thing I wish it had is, if I draw a square or a rectangle freehand, that it would actually just draw a nice rectangle; or similarly with a circle. Some sort of automatic shape recognition and formatting would be helpful."
"The one other significant recommendation is because I do work with folks outside of my organization quite regularly. The user experience of having them all have to set up a free account to join me in a workspace is a bit cumbersome. I really would love it if there was a Visitor link that would allow contributors who don't have free logins to join and participate."
"Using my iPad, it seems clunky and isn't as responsive as my PC."
"Whatever they can do to help make the visual look a little cleaner would be great because it can get a bit messy, or inconsistent. If there were automations to do things like making sure that elements are of the same size and correct alignment, it would help to make the visual more presentable."
"They have a grid system for snapping too, and they've done a lot to try to line things up so that the lines don't squiggle when you draw a line between one item and another. Everything has to be lined up. Everything has to be 90 degrees exact. But a lot of other people on the team just throw something together really quickly and the lines are not straight. And so it would be nice to have some feature that eliminates that problem."
"Layers would be great. They don't have a layer feature. When you have a lot of items in the same place, it is hard to pick them out."
"One thing that I noticed, when I was creating a document or something else, is a lot of empty space. If I am creating from a particular position, there is a lot of empty space above it. I am not sure why this happens. If there is a solution for this, then it would help."
"I hope that one of the updates will be a zoom-in/zoom-out function that's a little different than what they currently have, just to make it flow better when you're trying to move in and out of the board. I know they're working on it and that would be great, once they get that together."
Earn 20 points
Lucidchart is ranked 3rd in Visual Collaboration Platforms with 54 reviews while Lucidspark is ranked 4th in Visual Collaboration Platforms with 33 reviews. Lucidchart is rated 8.6, while Lucidspark is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Lucidchart writes "Good brainstorming features, facilitates collaboration, and keeps us focused on our work". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Lucidspark writes "Facilitates a lot of the productivity of our working and brainstorming sessions". Lucidchart is most compared with Figma, Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, Visio, Visual Paradigm and erwin Data Modeler by Quest, whereas Lucidspark is most compared with Figma, Miro, MURAL and Jamboard. See our Lucidchart vs. Lucidspark report.
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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 simultaneously and I've found its ease of use is really helpful when working with clients who likely don't have any previous experience.
I use LucidChart for detailed process maps and flow charts (just me, working alone). I used LucidSpark as a virtual whiteboard for dynamic brainstorming (working collaboratively).
I hope this helps!