Lucid sells Lucidchart and Lucidspark plans at four levels, and the way a seat is counted changes at each one. Free, Individual and Team accounts are self-service, while Enterprise adds the Lucid Suite, limited-access users, organizational groups and admin controls. This article explains how licences are assigned, counted and grown, because those mechanics, rather than the price list, decide what an organization owes at renewal. The contract terms are in the Terms of Service article, and the overview is in Lucid licensing.
Plan levels
Lucid’s plan article lists Free, Individual, Team, Enterprise and FedRAMP plans. Free offers limited access to basic features in Lucidchart or Lucidspark. Individual offers premium features for one person and Team offers them for a team. Enterprise provides “the full power” of the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite, which combines Lucidchart and Lucidspark.[1] Lucid describes the plans’ differences in a feature matrix; the ones relevant to licensing are listed below.
| Area | Free | Individual | Team | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lucidchart documents | 3 editable documents, 75 shapes each[2] | Unlimited editable documents[2] | Adds revision history, integrations and the developer platform[2] | Adds Team hubs, SAML, universal canvas and Lucidspark[2] |
| Lucidspark boards | 3 editable boards[3] | Unlimited editable boards[3] | Adds Guest Collaborators, voting, timer and facilitator tools[3] | Adds breakout boards and enforceable guest restrictions[3] |
| Billing basis | None | Per account, monthly or annual[2] | Per user, per month billed annually[2] | Contact sales[4] |
| Document storage | 25 MB | 1 GB | 1 GB per user | 5 GB per user[1] |
The plan matrix lists licence management, including view-only and comment-only users, among the admin controls.[1] Review the current matrix before relying on any feature in a business case, because Lucid states that its plans and their details may change over time without being materially degraded in a term.[5]
How a licence is assigned
On a Team or Enterprise account, an account owner or admin adds users from the Users page of the admin panel, one at a time or in bulk by email, manual entry or CSV upload. Accounts can also use the Google Workspace integration, or SAML with just-in-time provisioning, to create users when they first sign in.[6]
What happens next depends on the plan.
- Team. All Team account users require a licence, so newly added users are automatically licensed.[6]
- Enterprise. Account-wide licence settings decide. If automatic grant is disabled, the new user is added with limited access and an admin must grant a full licence manually.[6]
The admin panel License settings page offers three behaviours for a new user who joins or requests a licence when auto-upgrade is off. Instant access grants a licence from pre-purchased inventory while any remains. Manual approval unless a licence is available approves from inventory and queues requests when inventory runs out. Manual approval after a threshold approves automatically until 5 percent of the inventory remains. Lucid states that none of these settings triggers an automatic purchase or additional billing when auto-upgrade is off.[7] With auto-upgrade on, the same options add licences and charge the account when no seats are available.[7]
Licence requests are generated when a user clicks a request button, tries to create a document, clicks a request link in a Lucid email, shares an editable document and requests a licence for the collaborator, or edits a shared document. Requests can be managed in the admin panel or redirected to an external service desk, in which case the pending request in Lucid disappears when the licence is granted from the service desk.[7]
Licensed users and limited-access users
Enterprise accounts have a second class of user. A limited-access user is not factored into the licence count and can view documents others have created on the account, but cannot create or edit them. Licensed users are factored into the count and have full document creation and editing.[8] The help centre’s comparison table adds that limited-access users cannot import files, create new documents and folders, edit Lucidchart documents or publish documents by URL or embed code, while they can download, comment, share with permission, take part in Visual Activities and edit Lucidspark boards up to five times a year.[8]
Any user who joins or is added when no licences are available becomes a limited-access user. A limited-access user can request an edit licence, which is granted only according to the account’s licence request settings.[8] Delicensing converts an existing Enterprise user to limited access and requires their documents to be transferred or deleted; it is available only on Enterprise accounts.[7] Limited-access users are a premium feature unavailable to Team accounts, so a Team account cannot share with unlicensed users in a limited capacity.[9]
For a licence review this has an important consequence. A headcount of people who can open Lucid documents on an Enterprise account is larger than the licence total, because limited-access users are not counted, and the licence total in the admin panel is the number that is billed against the Order.[8][10]
Two products, two licences
A Team account can have users licensed for Lucidchart, for Lucidspark or for both. Lucid’s example is a Team plan with 15 licensed users, five with Lucidchart only, five with Lucidspark only and five with both. A Lucidchart-only user cannot edit or create Lucidspark boards, and a Lucidspark-only user cannot edit or create Lucidchart documents; editing both requires both licences.[9] A Lucidchart-licensed user may view Lucidspark boards made by Lucidspark-licensed team users.[9] To join a Team account a user has to be granted a licence by the owner or admin, and an unlicensed user who wants to work on an account-owned document can request a licence and use a one-time seven-day trial or leave the account.[9]
Enterprise accounts instead hold Lucid Suite licences, which provide access to both products jointly.[10]
Growing and shrinking the account
Manual purchase. The account owner and billing admin can add Lucidchart, Lucidspark or Lucid Suite licences from the admin panel Overview tab by setting a new licence total and confirming an order summary. Licences can be bought in batches.[10]
Auto-upgrade. Team and Enterprise accounts can tick a setting that upgrades the team to a larger size. When the account exceeds its allocated licences, a Lucidchart Team 3 account becomes Team 5 when a fourth user is added, a Team 5 account becomes Team 10 when a sixth user is added, and each later upgrade adds 10 licences. Changes can take up to 30 minutes to appear. Only account owners, or admins who hold both the billing admin and account admin roles, can turn the feature on or off. If a SCIM connection assigns licences and auto-upgrade is on, licences are added to the account automatically.[11] With auto-upgrade off, new members cannot use Lucidchart and Lucidspark until they are granted a licence.[11]
Reduction. The Terms of Service provide that quantities cannot be decreased during a term, so a reduction is a renewal action, requested at least 30 days before the end of the term on a Multi-User Plan.[5] The help centre says an owner or billing admin may downgrade a Team or Enterprise account by switching to a Team or Individual subscription or reducing the licence count, with the Lucid Account Manager or Billing Support available for difficulties.[12]
Upgrade path. Free users can move to Individual or Team on the pricing pages. Individual users can move to Team. Moving to a Lucid Suite Enterprise plan, or buying Enterprise add-ons, requires contacting sales.[4] Users on a Team or Enterprise account who are not the account owner or a billing admin cannot upgrade the account.[4]
Guest Collaborators
Lucidspark’s Guest Collaborators feature allows people without a Lucid account to join a board and contribute. Team and Enterprise users can enable it per document through a shareable link with edit, comment or view access, and Enterprise admins can prevent the creation of Guest Collaborator links.[13] Guest Collaborators are not associated with a Lucid account, there is no limit on how many can be on a board at once, and they cannot create new boards, share or export. Lucid notes that more than 100 total collaborators on a board can affect performance.[13] Because guests are not licensed users, they do not appear in the licence count, which makes the link-sharing setting a governance control rather than a licensing control.[13]
Admin roles that touch licences
An account can have one account owner and any number of other admins. Account admins can make account-wide changes including licences, billing admins manage invoices and can increase the licence count, and organizational group admins manage user settings and licences for their assigned group. Organizational group admins, template admins and document admins are Enterprise features, and Shield admins require the Enterprise Shield add-on.[14] Enterprise accounts can use organizational groups to apply different licence settings to different groups.[7]
Cancellation and fall-back
Individual and Team plans can be cancelled in Account settings under Plans & Billing, while Enterprise customers go through their Lucid Account Manager or Billing Support. After a paid subscription is cancelled, the plan downgrades to a limited free plan at the end of the paid period, documents remain viewable and re-subscribing restores editing.[12] Lucid advises that both monthly and annual licences renew automatically unless cancelled or payment collection fails.[15]
Resale
Lucid’s Channel Partner Program lets resellers sell Lucidchart Team, Lucidspark Team and Lucid Suite Enterprise in quantities of 5. Because Lucid sells only SaaS, no licence keys are issued; the client receives a welcome email and the partner receives an invoice as confirmation, and POs are typically approved within one to two business days.[16]