I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been using Lucidchart for all my flow charting, mapping, or diagram-related needs for quite some time now. It’s a simple, straightforward tool that has all the polish you’d expect, and it makes collaboration easy enough. But lately, I haven’t really needed the collaborative features, and with my move towards shifting all my most used productivity services to my server, I wanted something that would run on my own hardware. That’s what started my search for an alternative and led me to draw.io.
The popular tool is now called diagrams.net, but if you’re in self-hosted circles, you probably call it draw.io as well. Nomenclature aside, this powerful diagramming tool runs entirely on your own infrastructure and guarantees full data privacy while giving you all the standard tools that you’d want and expect. Yes, there are some things that it does differently, and you might observe a bit of a learning curve. But as someone who cares about keeping my work private, self-hosted and under my own control, the switchover has been worth it. Here’s why.
Most of the features, all of the flexibility
Once you’re past the initial setup and start using draw.io, what stands out is how feature-complete it feels. This isn’t a stripped-down, less than capable alternative to Lucidchart. What you’ll find here is a tool that covers almost every diagramming need that you might have while keeping it approachable.
At its core, draw.io is a browser-based editor, but it works more like a desktop app in its implementation. Everything runs within your browser session. Similar to apps like Photopea. Dragging shapes, connectors, resizing elements, and reorganizing entire sections of a diagram work seamlessly, and there is no sense of waiting for the tool to catch up or sync due to the effortlessly lightweight nature of the tool.
For those who are looking to switch over from Lucidchart, you’ll find that the shape libraries are broad enough to cover most scenarios without feeling cluttered. Be it when I’m sketching out a simple flowchart, mapping out my home network’s architecture, or a rough diagram, Draw.io offers you all the building blocks you need. Honestly, I’m still scratching the surface of what all that is available here. But so far, I’ve come across everything from flowchart symbols to UML elements and even icons for cloud services, containers, as well as the usual arrows and annotations. All easily accessible and understandable.
Nor are you forced into a specific design style either. There’s enough flexibility here to create clean, minimal diagrams or go off the deep end with highly technical diagrams. It’s entirely your choice. Once done, getting your diagrams off the app is just as easy, with plenty of export options available. You can opt between standard image formats, PDFs, and vector formats depending on your needs. This makes it easy to move the diagrams from the tool to other apps where you might be writing an article, making a presentation, documentation, or perhaps be making internal notes.
How draw.io fits into my daily workflow
Diagrams are more than just a documentation tool
Some of you might be wondering just how often I need a tool like where I’m drawing out diagrams. Here’s the deal. I’m not just using draw.io to make diagrams for presentations; I also use it as a tool to think. Because draw.io is self-hosted and right there on my computer. If I’m trying to brainstorm through a problem, I often end up using draw.io to work through the issue at hand. On occasion, I’ll also use it during meetings as part of my note-taking process.
It’s also been a useful tool as I go through the process of rebuilding my home network from scratch. I’ve been using it to sketch out how my services talk to each other, the hardware and port numbers, and where bottlenecks might exist. These diagrams aren’t just good for me to visualize my network, but also for documentation purposes.
On occasion, I’ll also use the tool while writing to help me create a process flow on how I want to approach an article. There’s plenty of flexibility here. Even for simpler tasks like outlining an idea or planning a project. Think mind maps, timelines, and more. That said, it’s important to note that draw.io isn’t a productivity tool or task-planning app. So these diagrams are at best an ephemeral way to track your thoughts, and you’ll want to move them across to a proper to-do app or something like Obsidian for long-term storage. Moreover, if your work requires collaboration and editing by multiple people, this might not be the best option for you.
Why I’ve switched from Lucidchart to this self-hosted alternative
Replacing Lucidchart for this self-hosted alternative wasn’t a decision that I took lightly. There’s a lot of institutional knowledge associated with a tool that you’ve been using long enough and are well-versed with. However, draw.io gives you enough flexibility in its ability to provide most of the same features, while also offering the benefits of self-hosting. All my data stays on my server, and it’s become an intrinsic part of how I visualize and understand my work practically every day.
