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For those without MS Visio or other paid alternatives, Draw.io can pretty much get you covered at zero cost, with the option of doing it client-side, online, et

For those without MS Visio or other paid alternatives, Draw.io can pretty much get you covered at zero cost, with the option of doing it client-side, online, etc. Not sure if the founders have the option, but I would encourage folks to donate a couple of bucks to encourage high quality free software such as this.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
I’ve found the draw.io experience to be so far above Visio that I just can’t imagine going back. I put it up there with VLC and Handbrake as quality apps. Even as a common dirty pirate; I donated to all of those.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  I'm a fan as well. My org ended up dropping our draw.io intergration in Confluence in favour of Lucidchart; I'm still not really sure why as it appears to be worse in functionality as well as slower and more tied to a cloud backend.
  - jacobobryant 7y ago
    Lucid probably spends more on sales ;) (former employee)
  - thayne 7y ago
    In what ways is Lucidchart worse in functionality? (disclaimer: employee of Lucid Software)
    - tverbeure 7y ago
      At some point, I actually paid for LucidChart for a year. Last time I used it, before switching to draw.io, it became slow to the point of being unusable once you had a few pages in a document. And I was making an animation where each page showed the next step in a process, so there were a lot of pages. This was a couple of years ago, so things may have changed since. My diagrams may have a bunch of elements on them, but I don't think I use any advanced features (irrespective of whether it's Visio, LucidChart or draw.io). From that perspective, these isn't much difference between any of these programs, so there's just no reason to use a paid product.
      - thayne 7y ago
        > This was a couple of years ago, so things may have changed since. Yes, Lucidchart's performance has improved in the past couple years. And we now have resources dedicated to improving performance. > From that perspective, these isn't much difference between any of these programs, so there's just no reason to use a paid product. That's fair. I think Lucidchart's main advantage is more advanced functionality. And if you don't need that functionality, why pay for it?
        davidjgraph 7y ago
        You're allowed to describe that advanced functionality, I'm pretty curious, myself.
        10000100001010 7y ago
        Lucidchart is tiring complete :) we have a lot of data and automation features, integrations, text based diagramming, advanced shape libraries, dynamic shaped etc. Discoveravility of all the features can be lacking though because there is so much stuff. I've worked on the product for years and I still learn about new features all the time.
        peternicky 7y ago
        what is the advanced functionality?
    - abainbridge 7y ago
      Dragging the canvas around with the middle mouse button seems much more intuitive in draw.io to me.
      - thayne 7y ago
        That has worked in lucidchart for a while.
        abainbridge 7y ago
        I wasn't trying to claim that middle mouse canvas movement didn't work in Lucidchart. The mechanism is just different, and IMO worse, than the one in draw.io. I think if you ask ten users to try both, you'll find a clear preference for the draw.io mechanism. I think it is important because it is an exceedingly commonly used feature.
    - ska 7y ago
      I used to use Lucid a lot, since the early betas and for about 10 years. Things I liked were that I could have a quick collaborative diagram with a friend for some bs project and not pay for it, and I could have a reasonable SAAS offering for a commercial team that wasn't expensive enough I got pushback. It was always a bit slow, and sometime quirky about connection placements but the diagrams were acceptable quality. Early on it was a lot less polished but you could make it work. And it was never a tool I'd use every day or realistically even every month, so it needed to be fairly low cost but I was happy to pay for when I did need it. Now it is effectively impractical without a subscription so I can't use it for the former case. And the team offering are more enterprise-y and about double the price without adding any functionality I care about, so I tend not to do that either. At some point I moved companies and didn't suggest a new team subscription, where previously I was usually the advocate for it. And the upsell messages and limitations of the free tier led me to find draw.io, which meets my needs for one-offs and little side projects as well as Lucid Chart ever did. I'd say functionally they are mostly on par currently for my usages ... but that's the crux of your problem as a 10/month/head subscription. Oh, and fwiw I use the offline version of draw.io most of the time, it's very responsive and also I like to work sometimes offline.
    - PragmaticPulp 7y ago
      > In what ways is Lucidchart worse in functionality? draw.io is like the In-N-Out of charting software. The menu is short, but you know exactly what you're getting each time and the price is right. It may not be the best at everything, but I'm almost never disappointed. Lucidchart feels like that neighborhood restaurant that has a six page menu that tries to be everything to everyone. It feels like they should have anything I desire, but they're spread so thin across so many options that they can never really perfect any of the individual entrees. I can usually find something in Lucidchart that looks like it would solve my problem, but it always feels half-finished. I waste hours each month learning to work around the quirks and limitations of the different components. I always leave slightly dissatisfied that Lucidchart almost did what I needed, but due to the limitations of the component I would have been better off just drawing a simple chart in draw.io or even in Sketch. For example: The Lucidchart iPad app sounds like a dream come true. I would love to make charts on the go with a great iPad interface that properly utilizes the Apple Pencil. However, every time I use Lucidchart on iPad I spend all my time accidentally moving the page when I wanted to drag the corner of box, failing to select text for editing, switching between fingers and Pencil, and so on. I end up walking back to a computer to finish the chart. I want to believe the Lucidchart iPad app would be great, but I always spend so much time fighting it that I'd be better off sitting down with draw.io and making a basic chart in 10 minutes.
chanux 7y ago
How to donate? Sorry I could not find out myself.

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

I’ve found the draw.io experience to be so far above Visio that I just can’t imagine going back. I put it up there with VLC and Handbrake as quality apps. Even as a common dirty pirate; I donated to all of those.

mikepurvis 7y ago
I'm a fan as well. My org ended up dropping our draw.io intergration in Confluence in favour of Lucidchart; I'm still not really sure why as it appears to be worse in functionality as well as slower and more tied to a cloud backend.
- jacobobryant 7y ago
  Lucid probably spends more on sales ;) (former employee)
- thayne 7y ago
  In what ways is Lucidchart worse in functionality? (disclaimer: employee of Lucid Software)
  - tverbeure 7y ago
    At some point, I actually paid for LucidChart for a year. Last time I used it, before switching to draw.io, it became slow to the point of being unusable once you had a few pages in a document. And I was making an animation where each page showed the next step in a process, so there were a lot of pages. This was a couple of years ago, so things may have changed since. My diagrams may have a bunch of elements on them, but I don't think I use any advanced features (irrespective of whether it's Visio, LucidChart or draw.io). From that perspective, these isn't much difference between any of these programs, so there's just no reason to use a paid product.
    - thayne 7y ago
      > This was a couple of years ago, so things may have changed since. Yes, Lucidchart's performance has improved in the past couple years. And we now have resources dedicated to improving performance. > From that perspective, these isn't much difference between any of these programs, so there's just no reason to use a paid product. That's fair. I think Lucidchart's main advantage is more advanced functionality. And if you don't need that functionality, why pay for it?
      - davidjgraph 7y ago
        You're allowed to describe that advanced functionality, I'm pretty curious, myself.
        10000100001010 7y ago
        Lucidchart is tiring complete :) we have a lot of data and automation features, integrations, text based diagramming, advanced shape libraries, dynamic shaped etc. Discoveravility of all the features can be lacking though because there is so much stuff. I've worked on the product for years and I still learn about new features all the time.
      - peternicky 7y ago
        what is the advanced functionality?
  - abainbridge 7y ago
    Dragging the canvas around with the middle mouse button seems much more intuitive in draw.io to me.
    - thayne 7y ago
      That has worked in lucidchart for a while.
      - abainbridge 7y ago
        I wasn't trying to claim that middle mouse canvas movement didn't work in Lucidchart. The mechanism is just different, and IMO worse, than the one in draw.io. I think if you ask ten users to try both, you'll find a clear preference for the draw.io mechanism. I think it is important because it is an exceedingly commonly used feature.
  - ska 7y ago
    I used to use Lucid a lot, since the early betas and for about 10 years. Things I liked were that I could have a quick collaborative diagram with a friend for some bs project and not pay for it, and I could have a reasonable SAAS offering for a commercial team that wasn't expensive enough I got pushback. It was always a bit slow, and sometime quirky about connection placements but the diagrams were acceptable quality. Early on it was a lot less polished but you could make it work. And it was never a tool I'd use every day or realistically even every month, so it needed to be fairly low cost but I was happy to pay for when I did need it. Now it is effectively impractical without a subscription so I can't use it for the former case. And the team offering are more enterprise-y and about double the price without adding any functionality I care about, so I tend not to do that either. At some point I moved companies and didn't suggest a new team subscription, where previously I was usually the advocate for it. And the upsell messages and limitations of the free tier led me to find draw.io, which meets my needs for one-offs and little side projects as well as Lucid Chart ever did. I'd say functionally they are mostly on par currently for my usages ... but that's the crux of your problem as a 10/month/head subscription. Oh, and fwiw I use the offline version of draw.io most of the time, it's very responsive and also I like to work sometimes offline.
  - PragmaticPulp 7y ago
    > In what ways is Lucidchart worse in functionality? draw.io is like the In-N-Out of charting software. The menu is short, but you know exactly what you're getting each time and the price is right. It may not be the best at everything, but I'm almost never disappointed. Lucidchart feels like that neighborhood restaurant that has a six page menu that tries to be everything to everyone. It feels like they should have anything I desire, but they're spread so thin across so many options that they can never really perfect any of the individual entrees. I can usually find something in Lucidchart that looks like it would solve my problem, but it always feels half-finished. I waste hours each month learning to work around the quirks and limitations of the different components. I always leave slightly dissatisfied that Lucidchart almost did what I needed, but due to the limitations of the component I would have been better off just drawing a simple chart in draw.io or even in Sketch. For example: The Lucidchart iPad app sounds like a dream come true. I would love to make charts on the go with a great iPad interface that properly utilizes the Apple Pencil. However, every time I use Lucidchart on iPad I spend all my time accidentally moving the page when I wanted to drag the corner of box, failing to select text for editing, switching between fingers and Pencil, and so on. I end up walking back to a computer to finish the chart. I want to believe the Lucidchart iPad app would be great, but I always spend so much time fighting it that I'd be better off sitting down with draw.io and making a basic chart in 10 minutes.

chanux 7y ago

How to donate? Sorry I could not find out myself.