EdrawMax Review 2023: The Good, Bad, and Alternative

Quick Summary: Wondershare EdrawMax can really make your ideas more impressive, yourself more professional, and your company more efficient. It is overall good and has no apparent flaws. I would recommend it to anyone who needs to draw a large variety of diagrams as it is super versatile and probably has the best value for money compared with other similar diagramming tools.

In this EdrawMax review, you’ll learn:

• FAQs about Wondershare EdrawMax
• Detailed Wondershare EdrawMax Review
• Pros & Cons of Wondershare EdrawMax
• What Others Say About EdrawMax
• EdrawMax Alternatives

FAQs about Wondershare EdrawMax

Below are some quick questions you may be interested in before we dive into the detailed EdrawMax review.

1. What is EdrawMax?

EdrawMax is an all-in-one diagramming tool, which can handle a wide variety of diagrams for different purposes. Be it a flowchart, mind map, org chart, network diagram, floor plan, swimlane, genogram, roadmap, timeline, Gantt chart, UML modeling, etc., whatever charts and graphs you want, you can find a plethora of templates within the application for your direct use or modification. It is excellent for personal as well as corporate use and has grown to be a competitive rival to Visio, SmartDraw, and Lucidchart.

2. Is EdrawMax good?

Though EdrawMax is not as widely renowned as Microsoft Visio, it is truly a good application. And in my opinion, it has swept past Vision over these years after constantly improving and updating the overall product quality. Many Visio users have now turned to EdrawMax and reported that it is way better than Visio in terms of both features and prices.

3. Is EdrawMax free?

Although you can free download EdrawMax for Mac, Windows, Linux, or even gain free access to EdrawMax Online, it is not entirely free to use. So in order to enjoy its full features, you have to pay for a subscription/lifetime plan, which starts from $8.24 per month.

As you may have noticed, unlike other similar programs, EdrawMax now offers a one-off purchase option that will be canceled soon after. If you think it is well worth the investment (which I do), now is your best opportunity to pay Edraw once and use it for free for the rest of your lifetime. And before you make the purchase, you can check on this page to see if there is a coupon code available so you can get it at a cheaper price.

4. Is EdrawMax safe?

As far as I know, EdrawMax utilizes high-end 256-bit SSL encryption and adheres to GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws to keep user data private, safe, and secure at all times, so you don’t need to worry about others accessing your data without your permission. Besides that, EdrawMax supports file recovery in case you mistakenly delete your drawings.

Detailed Wondershare EdrawMax Review: Features & Prices

Now that you know what EdrawMax is, it is time to figure out how it works, what use cases it supports and how much it costs. And I will share what I like and dislike about it based on my experience of using similar software.

How Does EdrawMax Work

It takes no time for me to get familiar with EdrawMax due to its intuitive and Microsoft-inspired interface/use flow. And to make this clear to you, I summarized a 3-step guide to use EdrawMax.

Step 1. Choose A Diagram Template.

After launching the software, you’ll see an interface with a wide variety of diagram templates from where you can choose/search for a specific type or just open a blank drawing. The only difference is the default shapes within each template. But don’t worry too much about that because after all, you can search for all the shapes using the search function within the workspace.

Step 2. Draw A Diagram.

Then you will come to the workspace which looks and works very similar to MS software. Now you can drag and drop shapes and icons in the left pane to begin drawing a diagram and change how the shapes look like in the right pane.

You can open multiple files at the same time and they will be named as Drawing 1, 2, 3, …under the top bar. There are 6 tabs (Home, Insert, Design, View, Symbols, Advanced) in the top bar which are much easier than MS software to understand and use. If you want to go back to the home page, click File at the top left corner. After that, you can click the left arrow icon to return to the workspace.

What I like about EdrawMax is there will appear a tutorial video at the right bottom corner whenever you are using a new template, which makes the learning process so much more painless. But what I dislike is it is not 100% compatible with other mainstream platforms, which may bring on a little inconvenience.

Step 3. Save/Share/Export your Drawings.

Once finished, you can choose to save your work to computer / personal cloud / personal templates, publish it to the template gallery, share it with non-user of EdrawMax, or export it to other standard file formats.

Features of EdrawMax

EdrawMax is a versatile diagramming tool that can be used for different purposes, including basic diagramming & flowcharting, general graphics, floor plan design, electrical engineering, software & system planning, meeting & brainstorming, P & ID drawing, strategy & project planning, etc. In short, it is capable of business use, technical use, design use, and other use.

Many diagramming tools can also cover the above usage scenarios but what really makes EdrawMax impressive and outstanding are the following features:

Comprehensive Templates: EdrawMax features a huge library with 5000+ diagram templates and 26000+ symbols, making it possible to draw and modify any diagrams without hassle.

Collaboration and Sharing: In the past, you had to download the software but now it offers an online version so that you can share your EdrawMax file through links or QR codes and co-work with your colleagues in real-time.

Extensive Compatibility: Import Visio, SVG, and CAD files and export your work to many other document formats, HTML, image formats, and more, including PDF, Word, Excel, PPT, SVG, Html, Visio, PS/EPS, PNG, JPG, and etc.

EdrawMax Price

As you can see from the picture, EdrawMax has flexible and affordable pricing plans: Subscription Plan, Lifetime Plan, and Lifetime Bundle Plan.

The semi-annual subscription plan starts from $11.5 per month and annual subscription plan $8.25 per month. While lifetime plan costs only $198 currently, double the price of the annual subscription plan. And if you have enough budget, you can spend extra $47 to get lifetime access to EdrawMind and EdrawProj, which are respectively a professional mind mapping & collaborative brainstorming tool and a Gannt Chart generator.

But note that each individual licence can only be used on 2 devices. If you want use it on multiple devices, you have to buy the Team & Business plan in which you can customize the number of users.

It is apparent that lifetime plan is more cost-effective and apart from that, it provides 10 times free cloud storage than the subscription plan, which is important for real-time collaboration and team management.

Additionally, if you think the price is too much for you, I would recommend you go for a more specified products within the Edraw tool suite or check the coupon code on EdrawMax’s purchase page to get it at a cheaper price.

Pros & Cons of EdrawMax

To make this part unbiased and helpful, I referred to about 200 real user reviews of EdrawMax on different platforms. These points listed below are the most mentioned, so I assume they will apply to most people.

Besides, one truth about EdrawMax is although it provides a huge library of templates, you may still feel inconvenienced using it in more elaborate projects. Its functionality for a specific domain may not be as refined as those specialized in that domain. In other words, EdrawMax features breadth but not depth in functionality.

But one thing we cannot ignore is EdrawMax is still constantly updating its template library as well as improving the overall product quality, so it is still impressive and worth expectations.

What Others Say About EdrawMax

In order to check if my opinions about EdrawMax are fair, I referred to other reviews from some reputable websites, which further confirmed my opinions because we almost have achieved similar conclusions.

Edraw Max is a powerful, fully-featured drawing app that will suit experienced users and organizations with varied drawing requirements. However, it may overwhelm inexperienced users and be overkill for smaller organizations.

TechRadar

EdrawMax is certainly an interesting application. Instead of specializing in one or two uses of a concept, it goes the opposite direction, trying to solve a lot of problems. The full suite of Edraw products offers other graphical specializations, to be sure, but EdrawMax is worth a look for your flowchart and graphic design needs.

TEC

EdrawMax Alternatives

There are a host of tools in the field of diagramming and Visio, Lucidchart, and SmartDraw are the most discussed alternatives to EdrawMax.

EdrawMax vs Visio

EdrawMax has long been regarded as the Mac alternative to Microsoft Visio but now it seems like it has surpassed Visio across the board. According to users who have recently turned from Visio to EdrawMax, the reasons why they think EdrawMax is better than Visio could be summarized as follows:

1. Visio doesn’t have a huge library like EdrawMax.
2. You cannot use Visio on other platforms except Microsoft, whereas EdrawMax can be used on all Mac/Windows/Linux platforms.
3. Limited support of various file formats: you have to buy Microsoft first if you want to convert Visio files into more formats.
4. EdrawMax looks and feels better than Visio.
5. EdrawMax is much cheaper than Visio.

EdrawMax vs Lucidchart

Lucidchart is almost an identical product to EdrawMax. There are only minor differences between them in terms of template library, customization, ease of use, and compatibility.

EdrawMax has more options for diagrams and shapes and is more flexible when customizing diagrams. However, Lucidchart is compatible with more platforms and is more user-friendly due to its auto connector and auto-formatting features. Besides, Lucidchart has more free features.

As for price, Lucidchart is a little cheaper than EdrawMax but EdrawMix still wins by providing the lifetime purchase option.

In my opinion, EdrawMax is more suitable for personal use, and Lucidchart is more suitable for enterprise-wide use.

EdrawMax vs SmartDraw

Edraw and SmartDraw have very similar workspaces for drawing diagrams but SmartDraw impresses me more with its easy-to-navigate interface and smoother interactive experience.

Besides, SmartDraw supports Visio and Lucidchart importing which is considerate for users who transformed to SmartDraw from those platforms.

However, just when I started to have a positive bias towards SmartDraw, I discovered a fatal flaw in SmartDraw, that is its outdated diagram templates, which seem less professional and attractive than those of EdrawMax.

In addition, EdrawMax actually performs better in terms of ease of use, template customization, and format conversion. So overall speaking, I would recommend EdrawMax over SmartDraw.

Final Verdict

Whenever you feel words confuse, conceal, or just too much to express your ideas, EdrawMax can help you visualize your ideas effortlessly. It is truly a secret weapon for every progressive employee. Go ahead download EdrawMax and give it a try. If you have any other questions about EdrawMax or our EdrawMax review, drop us a comment and let us know.