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.
"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 like the panel on the left of the screen that has all of the shapes that are available to use in the charts. It's easy to use because you can just drag and drop."
"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."
"Easy to work on."
"The ability for Lucidchart to create database schemas or modify existing data structures is strong. That's what I initially introduced it for in our organization. The script that Lucidchart provides works with other systems like Oracle, SQL Server, and Postgres that I can copy-paste, and get a quick dump of metadata and import into has saved me a ton of steps that I didn't have to manually create these tables. I had a lot of things where I still had to put in the linkages between tables, but I didn't have to type in every field name, every data type, and everything else that came in. That saved me tons of time."
"The sticky notes are among the most valuable features. Also, the fact that it has templates so that I don't have to do things myself, starting from scratch, is very helpful. In addition, it's really easy to use. You can add stuff by clicking, without having to go to the options. You just click on something and the options you can use appear."
"In general, this product has improved our organization because it makes accessing up-to-date processes and planning a lot easier."
"We are using Lucidchart a lot for documenting things, such as processes, systems, new teams, etc. Its ability to document processes is great. Some of the major pluses are the sheer number of templates and the flexibility in the types of things that you can document. This is a benefit because we are able to structure it in whatever format we want. So, we can take a template that maybe was designed for something different and not have to create it from scratch. We just modify it for our purposes."
"I like the templates that it comes with. I also like how easy it is to change colors and icons and just flip back and forth. It is really easy to maneuver and use."
"It helps with our brainstorming sessions when we are working from home. It is like having a whiteboard in the office."
"The virtual whiteboard board is amazing. That is something that we've all needed, and I wish I knew about this back when I was focusing on my master's in university. That would have made things so easy. I struggled with MindManager and all these other free programs that you can use to make your mind maps and share your process with your supervisors and your classmates. Lucidspark would have been a lot easier to use and would've been a really good thing to have back then."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the live, interactive whiteboarding. For brainstorming high-level ideas and concepts it's like Visio but much better, because it's online. Collaboration for process is much easier."
"I really liked the sticky notes. They made it easy to change the colors, just click and add ideas, move those ideas around, and then connect them. I felt like they were very intuitive and easy to use."
"The virtual whiteboard for brainstorming high-level ideas and concepts is great. It's ideal for things like moving around sticky notes and having an infinite whiteboard."
"The time is no longer spent trying to get everybody to be in one document or sending documents back and forth so that everybody is on the same page. Those things add up, especially as a team gets larger. Also, there are errors that come with that, e.g., sending the wrong version of a document. If the document is held somewhere, then it is easy to determine who made the last correction. Everybody is a part of the team so I can remove people as an administrator who need to be removed or add them to a specific thing. It is very straightforward and worth it in that manner."
"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've had an issue is when you create, let's say, a rectangle box. You can write some text in it and give it a name, and, depending on how you shape the size of the box, the text will rearrange itself to fit. That is, except if your box is very, very narrow, but very long, like a long, narrow rectangle in a vertical position. In this case, the text will always go out of the rectangle."
"I wish there were a lot more automations. For instance, if I'm using a project management software to list out all my WBS [work breakdown structure] I wish Lucidchart had the functionality where it would take all the numbering and generate a tree diagram. Something like that would help so much, but right now it's still a manual task..."
"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."
"The main improvement I would like to see is for them to improve the help section on the flow charts or on the formatting."
"A couple of times when I tried to move a line, connecting two shapes on an organizational chart, occasionally the line doesn't move as intuitively as I think it should. I have to fiddle around with it a few times to get it to do what I want it to do."
"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."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the user interface. It almost feels "uncooked." It sometimes feels like a prototype rather than the real thing."
"It would be really helpful if more features and templates would be added to the product."
"There should be a feature for changing the color of the background, borders, etc. Such a feature will make the flowcharts more attractive."
"When two people are editing, there should be a way to lock the other person's changes to avoid having a person overwrite someone else's changes. When multiple users access the same document, there should be some way of locking others out, possibly by changing user permissions."
"Depending on how much Lucidspark wants to emulate a true whiteboard experience, there could be other ways to do things. For instance, we have to create the container when we do it. In a typical sort of whiteboard situation, it could be helpful if there were templated containers, like a parking lot, where someone could just click, then it would show up. Most people with a whiteboard process have something like this, but we do it ourselves."
"There are still some things that are a little confusing or too advanced, which is why it's not easy to use and hop on. There could be some other features that could be added, like other templates."
"The user interface is not intuitive because I have used other applications previously, and it took a little bit more time. Once I figured that out how to save shapes, that was super helpful, but it did take probably one or two times to get there. Once I understood it, it made a lot of sense."
"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."
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!