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Excalidraw vs Lucidchart: What are the differences?
Introduction
This Markdown code provides a comparison between Excalidraw and Lucidchart, highlighting key differences between the two diagramming tools.
Pricing: Excalidraw offers a free-to-use open-source platform, making it an economical choice for individual users and small teams. On the other hand, Lucidchart offers several pricing plans, including a free basic version with limited features and paid plans with advanced functionalities for professional use and larger teams.
Ease of Use: Excalidraw has a simple and intuitive interface, allowing users to quickly sketch diagrams with its wide range of pre-built shapes and elements. Lucidchart also provides a user-friendly interface, but it offers a more extensive library of templates, shapes, and icons to create refined and complex diagrams.
Collaboration: Excalidraw stands out for its real-time collaboration feature, enabling multiple users to work simultaneously on a diagram and see each other's changes in real-time. Lucidchart also supports collaboration, but it requires users to have a paid subscription to access this feature.
Integration: Excalidraw provides integrations with various platforms like Google Drive, Figma, and Slack, allowing users to seamlessly import and export diagrams to different tools. Lucidchart offers extensive integration options, including third-party applications like Microsoft Teams, Atlassian, and G Suite, enhancing its compatibility with existing workflows.
Diagram Customization: Excalidraw allows users to customize elements like shapes, colors, and text styles, providing flexibility in diagram design. In contrast, Lucidchart offers more advanced customization options, such as custom shapes, themes, font libraries, and even CSS customization possibilities, enabling users to create highly tailored and visually appealing diagrams.
Advanced Features: While Excalidraw excels in simplicity and basic diagramming needs, Lucidchart offers a broader set of advanced features like auto-alignment, data linking, and advanced shape libraries, which are beneficial for users requiring more sophisticated and advanced diagramming capabilities.
In Summary, Excalidraw provides a free, user-friendly, and collaborative platform suitable for quick sketching and simpler diagramming needs, while Lucidchart offers a more extensive range of features, integration options, and customization possibilities, making it suitable for professional use and complex diagramming requirements.
When starting my new role at #Stessa, I needed a solution to start diagramming some of my #Architecture so I'd be able to share my views on #SystemArchitecture with the rest of the team.
Visualization is key. Especially when working with complex/distributed systems. You want to make sure everybody's got the same understanding of your approach, so you can better communicate, and start delegating more.In the past, I had worked with #VisualParadigm for #UML, in both desktop and #SaaS version of the product. Also worked with #LucidChart We also looked at potential alternatives such as Microsoft Visio for instance.
Ultimately, my recommendation was & we closed on Lucidchart, as it won on couple of key aspects : #Team #Collaboration, #Integrations with #AWS for instance, and certain specific visualizations we were looking for / others didn't have.
This isn't just for #Engineering. I've seen Lucidchart being used by #Product Teams, #Network #Engineers, #IT Departments, #DevOps, or non-Engineering related teams.
Pros of Excalidraw
- It's really convenient to use as a virtual whiteboard3
- Collaborative work is very simple2
- Free editing1
- Low fidelity tool1
- Open source1
- End-to-end encrypted1
