Flowcharts are a very impressive way to demonstrate different plans, procedures, and/or algorithms. Flowcharts are a picture of each step in sequential order to finish a project. It is mainly used in businesses to present the processes such as manufacturing processes, service processes, or project plans.
So, if you are quite understanding the flowcharts and use classic old-style flowcharts in the meetings, then you probably like some of the below-given software to create flowcharts for your business. So, let's check out the best flowchart software you can use to make your business idea a reality, at least take a first step of demonstrating it.
1. LucidChart
LucidChart is a US-based diagramming software to make diagrams and flowcharts with a much of shapes and diagrams to choose from. LucidChart is easy to use and is compatible with most programs. This online flowchart and diagramming software offer different colors and fonts while using it. You'll be given a full canvas, easy-to-use shapes & lines, keyboard shortcuts for quick work, and many more. A very useful feature of LucidChart software is that it offers containers to organize your diagrams so that your team could understand the whole process more precisely.
Once you've built your diagram or flowchart you can simply gather your team and get feedback from others without even closing the software. The collaborative feature of this software also offers comments and mentions features if your team members need an improvement with the diagrams or ping someone on discussing a specific position of the process.
Additionally, you can save and publish your diagrams/flowcharts and create a full document URL to share with other users. Finally, LucidChart offers a "Present Your Diagram" feature to get reviewed and finalize your design by your colleagues.
Templates, Libraries, and File Types
Lucid Chart has a variety of amazing templates. Selecting templates is really hard. Imagine, you are using software with limited templates. You would be definitely bored after using the same templates again and again. But in the case of Lucid Chart, provides templates for Android/iOS mockups, organizational charts, wireframes family trees, and a whole more wide variety of pro-level templates.
The reason Lucid Chart is one of the best diagramming software is that it provides us the templates and libraries that we actually need. Those templates and libraries include all types of shapes and objects including scroll bars, servers, and even plants for the make-over of the floor plans. Comparing it with SmartDraw (far greater software than LucidChart, also listed here), Lucid Chart has lesser templates but is quite efficient to do most of your work done.
Also Read: Best Project Management Software
Lucid Chart supports various image formats including JPEG, PNG, PDF, PNG with transparent background, SVG, SVG with transparent background, etc. The file types it can import into the software are Draw.io, Gliffy, Omnigraffle, and Visio. Users can also import data from Amazon Web Service (AWS) Architecture, UML sequence markup, and other data sources as well as digital sticky notes. The Lucid Chart pro has a very useful and handy tool that converts the diagram//flowchart into a presentation.
Collaboration Tools
Lucid Chart offers the power to collaborate with others at any level while having some limitations, of course. On a team subscription to Lucid Chart, it allows a free account holder to collaborate on a diagram. The free user can only edit the file if it has fewer than 60 objects on it. The most popular flowchart and diagramming tools also offer collaboration abilities like Creately, SmartDraw, and Visio.
This feature is generally included in almost every free and paid diagramming tool because of its usability. Some companies charge extra to provide this feature, and some do not. You can invite other Lucid Chart members, and they have the edit, share, comment, or view-only features. This collaborating feature in these tools is always cloud-based and other users can make changes or view it in real time.
Pricing for LucidChart
- Free Plan: $0.00
- Individual Bundle: $11.93
- Team Bundle: $13.50/user
- Enterprise Bundle: Contact for Quote
2. SmartDraw
As its name describes, SmartDraw is an intelligent diagramming & flowchart software for processing documents, planning strategies, and managing projects. It is professional software used by many companies including PosiGen, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Ascension Health, etc. SmartDraw is a great alternative to Microsoft Visio, and it allows users to make visuals and diagrams on any device including mobiles, Windows, or Mac computers.
It has more than 4,000 in-built templates & 3,000+ symbols to create more than 50 different visuals. SmartDraw is very easy to use and thus users can make extraordinary flowcharts & diagrams by adding, moving, or deleting any shape whenever they want. This online flowchart & diagram software has an annotation layer similar to AutoCAD that automatically resizes to match the changes in the diagram.
It is best suitable for small businesses, medium businesses & enterprises. Users can also download it on their phones and use it online. Finally, SmartDraw can be integrated into Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Google Sheets, Dropbox, Jira, Box, OneDrive, Google Docs, WordPress, Confluence, and Trello.
Interface and Features
After installing SmartDraw on your computer, you need to sign up with your email or you can just create a new account to get started on SmartDraw online. Both applications offer a 7-day free trial. After signing up SmartDraw offers multiple different templates to start with. On the top there will be a menu bar with different menus, on the left sidebar there will be different tools like shapes, templates, lines, texts, etc.
The user interface is quite similar to MS Word but the utility is a lot different. SmartDraw diagramming & flowchart-creating online software has a unique set of amazing capabilities. This software hasn't narrowed down to a particular niche but instead works great for academic, business, and personal uses. The software offers many features to create organizational trees, mind maps, and other different types of charts.
It has many functionalities as architectural design software that it doesn't stand back against popular software like AutoCAD. The software has a huge set of templates including diagram templates for the health sector including family history genograms, personal charting, electrical diagrams, body charts, and nutrition graphics.
Help and Support
The main idea behind using SmartDraw is its help & support team. In case of any trouble with the software, the support team is 24/7 ready to help its users. For getting help from SmartDraw, you can click on the Help button on the download program. Alternatively, you can also call the support team during standard working hours or you also have the option to mail them.
Pricing for SmartDraw
- Individual: $9.95/month
- Team: $5.95/month for 5 users minimum
- Site: $2995/yearly for the entire organization
3. Miro Visual Collaboration for Teams
Miro is an advanced software for creating flowcharts & diagrams with the collaboration of your team. It comes in a free version and some paid versions. It offers an infinite amount of zoomable canvas and an online whiteboard to explain plans and procedures.
It is basically a collaboration software for teams so that teams can discuss new products, future plans, procedures, and many more. It offers multiple in-built templates and frameworks or you have the option to create your own template. One user can create infinite workspaces, add notes, annotations, etc.
Finally, Miro Visual Collaboration Diagramming software can integrate with more than 20+ external applications including Webex, Zoom video meeting, Google Calendar, Figma, Microsoft Teams, Jira Cards, Azure Cards, Slack, Asana Cards, Airtable, Notion, Box, Dropbox, One Drive, Trello Power-Up, Adobe Creative Cloud, and many more.
Templates, UI, Tools & File Types
Templates, tools, and supported file types are the most important things in great diagramming software. If you have such software and it's not providing you a wide variety of templates and tools, you must replace it with another software, most probably with the software listed in this article. Therefore, Miro is certainly the type of software that offers a wide range of over 200 templates including Mind Map template, Kanban Framework template, service blueprint template, flowchart template, daily stand-up meeting template, event planning template, team meeting agenda template, affinity diagram template, Customer Touchpoint Map template, research template, Empathy Map, User Flow, UX Project Canvas, User Persona template, and many many more.
To incorporate such a tremendous number of templates, this software couldn't resist offering the presentation mode so that users can plan more deeply and concisely. If we talk about the user interface, Miro visual collaboration for Teams software has a very minimal user interface with every tool you can ever need while making diagrams or flowcharts.
If you aren't very experienced, you can still create awesome plans and diagrams with this software. Miro offers a customizable toolbar with lots of different shapes, lines, arrows, circles, selecting tools, markers, pens, etc. Finally, Miro diagramming visual collaboration tool supports JPG, CSV, PDF, XLS, XLSX, ODS, DOC, DOCX, ODT, RTF, PPT, PPTX, and ODP formats for presentations, images, tables & spreadsheets, and text files.
Collaboration & Presentation Feature
Miro is known for its collaborative & presentation features. It features real-time collaboration & presentation tools. When you install Miro on your Windows PC, you can easily invite your colleagues to view or edit your diagrams, flowcharts, plans, and procedures to make the perfect presentation for the next big meeting. This is indeed similar to most Google collaboration & presentation apps.
While your colleagues are editing or viewing, you can show or hide the cursor, change the size of the window, or change the size of the buttons so that your colleagues and you can work together better. The collaboration feature also lets you discuss with others in real-time while editing the process.
You can directly video call through Miro as it offers video and audio software while discussing the flowcharts or diagrams with the team. While Miro has a free version, you won't get many features in the free version. The collaboration & presentation feature only exists in pro versions.
Pricing for Miro Visual Collaboration for Teams
- Free Version: $0 for unlimited team members
- Team: $8/member/month
- Business: $16/member/month
- Enterprise: Request Needed for Quote
4. Microsoft Visio
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| Image Source: Microsoft Visio |
Visio is a professional and one of the oldest diagramming and flowchart software in 2023. The software offers tools to create flowcharts, org charts, building plans, floor plans, data flow diagrams, process flow diagrams, business process modeling, swimlane diagrams, 3D maps, and many more.
This business software for flowcharts is best suitable for all businesses including Freelancers, Small businesses, Mid-size businesses, and large enterprises. Microsoft Visio helps the teams to collaborate on diagrams and flowcharts using commenting, annotations, and real-time sharing via web links, attachments, or PDFs. Like other online flowchart software, Visio also offers pre-built templates and you can also connect Visio with real-time data sources and diagrams.
Features and Interface
Microsoft Visio offers excellent, premium templates for creating industry-leading diagrams and flowcharts. You can create multiple amazing flowcharts with the help of this software. The software features a Computer Block diagram, Property Buying Flowchart, Basic Flowchart, Cross-Functional Flowchart, Networking templates like basic home network, office network plan, star network diagram, floor plan templates, SDLC waterfall process templates, login registry active templates, and many other essential templates for your company.
Microsoft Visio allows companies to collaborate and team up with their collaboration tools. One team can easily collaborate with another team and discuss future plans. With the use of Microsoft Visio, you don't need any third-party software or tool to message or call your team members and colleagues.
Microsoft Visio supports both web and desktop apps that are very reflexive and best for beginners too. Although the web version of this flowchart software is the simplest, it doesn't mean the desktop app is behind anything. The interface of the diagramming tool is very similar to other Microsoft apps. It has a menu bar on the top, an empty canvas with lots of templates in the middle, and a toolbar to pick different shapes, lines, arrows, etc.
Software Support
Mircosoft is known for its excellent software/applications and its 24/7 support behind the desk. But Microsoft Visio's support is not the best, with no live chat or phone help. You can email the support team or they have different web pages for any manual help needed in the software. They have provided lots of articles, video tutorials, and how-to guides.
But if you need real-time help with someone you can hear from, it is not possible with Microsoft Visio. Alternatively, Microsoft Visio also offers Visio Community Forum to ask for help from strangers and a contact form is also provided to contact the Microsoft team. Unline other online diagramming & flowchart software like LucidChart or SmartDraw, Microsoft Visio offers limited help with the software in case of urgency.
Pricing for Microsoft Visio
- Subscription Plans: 1. $5/user/month 2. $15/user/month
- One-Time Purchase: Visio Standard: $309.99 for 1 PC; Visio Professional: $579.99 for 1 PC
5. Gliffy for Beginners
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| ImageSource: Gliffy |
Gliffy is an easy-to-use diagramming & flowchart software for beginners. It is mainly used by small to medium businesses to express their ideas and processes. It makes businesses communicate easily with their teams and make easy flowcharts. If you are a beginner and want to have a simple use of flowchart software then you can start with Gliffy.
Starting from this software doesn't require anything to learn. The software is best suitable to make diagrams for businesses, diagrams for software engineering, and diagrams for designing projects.
It also offers drag-and-drop shapes, diagrams, UML diagrams, entity-relationship diagrams, and more features in just a few clicks. Gliffy also supports integration with Jira Software, Confluence, Slack, Trello, HipChat, WordPress, Basecamp, G-Suite, and Teamwork software.
Templates, Features & Interface
As you know Gliffy is one of the best software to create flowcharts and diagrams. It provides many important features that we are going to discuss. It features a process flowchart template, swimlane diagram template, workflow diagram template, impacts maps template, impacts mapping template, context diagram, data flow diagram template, freeform flowchart template, etc.
This beginner diagramming software features drag-and-drop editor, some Atlassian add-ons to integrate with Jira or Confluence, sharing and collaboration tool, basic version control features, and many more. If you have used Microsoft 365 or Google Docs, you will find Gliffy quite similar to them.
The user interface of Gliffy looks familiar to those. You'll get a toolbar with shapes, lines, and arrows. You will get a big responsive canvas to add shapes and lines. It features resizing objects, fairly complex pre-built shapes, and other diagramming tools to help you create wonderful and easy-to-understand flowcharts and diagrams.
Contact & Support
If you get stuck somewhere while using Gliffy, the support team is ready to help you. The timing of the Gliffy support team is from Monday-Friday from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern Time excluding major US holidays. On weekends, you can reach them out via Email or the provided assistance request form.
Gliffy also provides its user's self-help resources like FAQ pages and online user manuals. It also manages an online Gliffy community forum where you can ask anything about the software and you will receive the answer from staff members and other Gliffy users. You can also ask them to add another new feature in the next update in the community forum.
Pricing for Gliffy Diagramming & Flowchart Software
- Professional: $8/user/month and $10/user/month
- Enterprise: Request Needed for Quote
6. EDraw Max
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| ImageSource: Edraw Max |
EDraw Max is an all-in-one online flowchart software for you and your team. It offers more than 280 diagram types to perform any flowcharts or circuit diagrams. EDraw Max also offers a collaboration tool so that you can discuss your ideas, innovations, plans, designs, and processes.
This flowchart software offers more than 1,500 built-in templates, and 26,000+ symbols to continuously update the diagrams. After creating the flowcharts and diagrams, users can share the designs with the URL and on different social media like Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, etc. Importing and exporting is possible with EDraw Max. Users can export to Visio, Powerpoint, Excel, JPG image, PDF format, and Word files.
Features & Interface
EDraw Max is an all-in-one diagramming tool that is capable of making flowcharts, mindmaps, fishbone, network & UML diagrams, office templates, Gantt Charts, business cards, flyers, wireframes, infographics, and presentations. The software offers thousands of templates that are used by professionals. It allows users to import drawings from Visio or export their own drawings to Visio, Word, Powerpoint, HTML, PDF, and image formats like JPEG and PNG.
When you install the software you'll get an amazing workspace with toolbars on the left sidebar and a small preview box on the right. When you select a template from their library, all the shapes and diagram layouts will be available for you in your workspace. The shapes and layouts are customizable which means you can edit or remove anything from the workspace.
EDraw Max also offers copying diagram features so that users don't need to create another diagram from the scratch. The software is based on cloud storage so that you and your team can work together on a project at the same time on any device.
Edraw Max Desk Help & Support
Edraw Max offers a help support menu in the software for various help, features software tutorials, and even FAQs. The help and FAQ are directly linked to the software main page but tutorials include a series of videos. In case the software crashes (which doesn't happen mostly), you can click on the help button to check different solutions for your problem, although there is no special search feature for the help section.
You can also view the software's user manual and then use your browser's find shortcut to search for your problem. If you find any technical issue in the software, there is also given the option to visit Edraw Max's support center and there you can send a message via email.
If you're wondering if is there any way to contact them by phone, the call function is not available for this software. You can only contact them through email and wait for their response.
Pricing for EDraw Max
- Subscription Plan: $99/year
- Lifetime Plan: $245 for All Platforms like Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS
- Lifetime Bundle Plan: $312 One-Time Payment
7. Draw.io
Draw.io is another great alternative to LucidChart flowchart software. It is a UK-based diagramming software that can get used to it in merely an hour. It offers different templates to choose from and like LucidChart, Draw.io is also compatible with other programs and applications used. It is one of the most favorite flowchart & diagramming software and has been a top-rated confluence diagramming solution since 2013.
This software offers its users a back-to-back history view to understand what other team members were doing with the design. The search feature of this online software is quite promising. It offers pre-designed shapes, snapshots, SVG images, easy drag and drops images, import/export diagrams, and a mass import feature to replace all your previous diagrams with Draw.io diagrams.
Finally, we can say if we compare Draw.io with LucidChart, in my opinion, LucidChart is one or more steps ahead. With comparing with LucidChart, Draw.io has fewer features instead of the history snapshot feature but costs a lot. Have a look at its price and tell us what you think in the comments.
Draw.io Features & Supported Files
Draw.io is easy to get started. When you create an account on Draw.io, you are asked to choose your cloud storage service i.e. Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or your local storage that is your device. Using this software, one thing you'll understand is this is really great software with a great user experience.
This diagramming software features complete version control to get the history of your design, file formats are quite flexible and it supports JPEG, PNG, and SVG for flat shapes, as well as Gliffy, Lucidchart, and Visio (VSDX) for diagrams to be imported in here. For exporting the file, it supports HTML, JPEG, PDF, PNG, PNG with transparent background, SVG, SVG with transparent background, and XML.
On other hand, if you are working on two designs at the same time, Draw.io helps you switch between these two diagrams or flowcharts. The diagramming software helps you terminate all the ongoing projects with just imported Draw.io projects in just a few steps. Draw.io diagramming & flowchart software also offers a powerful collaboration tool inside the software which we're going to discuss further.
Collaboration & Integration
Great software to create flowcharts and diagrams that have all the features required for a company. So, if you're going with Draw.io, you'll definitely get everything. This diagramming & flowchart software is best for all including small businesses, medium businesses, big businesses & even startups. Collaborating tool of this software offers collaboration with G Suite Apps like Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides. You can share files with others.
These days, most diagramming tools come with collaboration features, that's why we can see collaborating features in Draw.io too. When you're collaborating with your team, the text you highlight your team can also see your highlights, and the flowchart you edit, your team also see it. This simply means Draw.io features an effective collaborating tool to show what you're doing with the software.
Pricing Plans of Draw.io
- Cloud: $15/month for 20 Users, $450/month for 2,000 Users
- Data Center: $6,000/year for 500 Users, $10,000/year for 2,000 Users
- Offers 30-day trial for Cloud & Data Center plans
8. Cacoo
Cacoo is online business software for creating wonderful diagrams such as flowcharts, wireframes, mind maps, and sitemaps. It mainly focuses on teams of engineers, developers, marketers, designers, and project managers. It offers a huge number of pre-existing diagram templates including AWS, Azure, Fishbone, GCP, SWOT, Network, UML, Venn, and WBS. When creating a diagram or flowchart, users can input data, or import it from a spreadsheet to create dynamic charts. Cacoo also offers presentation mode and supports integration with Google Drive, Google Docs, Atlassian Confluence, AWS architecture diagrams, Adobe Creative Cloud, Dropbox, Box, and Visio.
Features
Cacoo is a cloud-based diagramming software that offers a real-time collaboration option. It offers a big library of pre-built templates including AWS network diagrams and other AWS diagram templates, Azure templates, Matrix Org chart, organization chart templates, BPMN diagrams, monthly calendar templates, flowchart templates, and many more.
There are two options in Cacoo software for creating diagrams, first input the data, and second import data from spreadsheets for creating dynamic charts. Cacoo also offers the users a platform for diagram and flowchart presentation with the ability for other users to leave comments on your diagrams and flowcharts. As per the integration feature, Cacoo offers a wide range of integration options including Google Drive, Google Docs, Atlassian Confluence, AWS architecture diagrams, Adobe Creative Cloud, Dropbox, Box, and Visio.
User Interface
When you install and create an account with the Cacoo flowchart creating tool for businesses, you will first see all the in-built diagrams & flowchart templates Cacoo software offers. You can choose one and start building your first project on this diagramming software. If you have used any other diagramming software before, you will find it quite easy to use.
The main workspace has a toolbar on the left side that offers edit texts, lines, shapes, tables, or charts options. You can also draw with a pencil tool or you can import files from your computer or a cloud platform like Dropbox, Adobe Creative Cloud, or AWS Architecture.
For editing, the software offers various options for changing the element's fill, line style, shadow text style, and stacking order. So that the elements couldn't move accidentally, you have the option to group multiple elements on the workspace. Have you ever used Canva? If yes, you might have also used the group elements feature there. It's the same feature on the Cacoo workspace.
Pricing for Cacoo Diagramming Tools
- Yearly Plan: $5/user/month with 2 months free
- Monthly Plan: $6/user/month
Best Software for Creating Diagrams and FlowCharts
Creating diagrams and flowcharts is easy if you own a great tool that will help you do it. This is why choosing a flowchart or diagramming software that is easy to use, has a great interface, offers fast support, can be integrated into other useful tools, is easily shareable, and offers a lot more features, is very important. So, all the mentioned flowchart software in this article including LucidChart, Visio, Cacoo, Gliffy, and others are the best software you can have. Luckily, we have unfolded every little detail of that online software in front of you. So, carefully read it and you can even comment with us your point of view.
