Adobe XD vs. Zeplin

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe XD
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Adobe XD is a prototyping and UX/UI option for website and mobile application design, featuring a range of UI tools and and templates, a versatile artboard and contextual layer panels, and deep integration with Adobe's creative suite of products for fast import of objects from these applications.
$33.99
per month per license
Zeplin
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Zeplin, from the company of the same name, is a platform supporting collaboration in application development by engineers and designers by providing an API with popular collaboration, development and prototyping tools and creating a space where productions can be shared and reviewed.
$0
per user per month
Pricing
Adobe XDZeplin
Editions & Modules
Individual
$9.99 ($119.88)
per month (annual, prepaid)
Students & Teachers - All Apps
$19.99 ($239.88)
per month, annual plan (for the year)
Business - Single App
$33.99
per month per license
Business - All Apps
$79.99
per month per license
Schools & Universities - Institution Wide
Contact Sales
Free
$0
per user per month
Team
$6
per user per month
Organization
$12
per user per month
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe XDZeplin
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe XDZeplin
Considered Both Products
Adobe XD
Chose Adobe XD
While I have used Zeplin, InVision, and Adobe XD on various projects, partly dependent on in-house client teams preferences, Adobe XD is the most familiar to me based on 20+ years [of] working within Adobe applications. They all can do most of what I am looking to do within …
Chose Adobe XD
If we compare with Sketch, I would still prefer Adobe XD. Sketch is a pioneer as a UI design tool, but the features and integration (without plugins) that Adobe XD provides are number 1, especially on the prototyping side.
Chose Adobe XD
I've tried all those softwares and the one that I found better was Proto.io. But, it has a high cost, and as we already had access to Adobe XD by our Adobe Creative Cloud membership, we chose to go with it. Some of those software have more features and functionalities than …
Zeplin
Chose Zeplin
I know there are other products out there but Zeplin has been so effective that I haven't even bothered to look elsewhere. The whole experience of Zeplin has been excellent. However, once Adobe XD is more built out Zeplin will finally have a formidable competitor as it will be …
Chose Zeplin
Zeplin is more focused on the handoff than in the creation itself. The other alternatives can do both, but Zeplin is an awesome tool for the handoff part. It depends in how big is your team and how the workflow is organized to understand whats the best tool for your team.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Adobe XDZeplin
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe XD
-
Ratings
Zeplin
7.0
1 Ratings
11% below category average
Search00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Adobe XD
-
Ratings
Zeplin
7.0
1 Ratings
13% below category average
Notifications00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe XD
-
Ratings
Zeplin
8.0
2 Ratings
2% below category average
Document collaboration00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Access control00 Ratings7.02 Ratings
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User Ratings
Adobe XDZeplin
Likelihood to Recommend
7.6
(32 ratings)
7.0
(19 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.7
(3 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(16 ratings)
9.5
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe XDZeplin
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
Adobe XD is particularly useful and extremely easy to learn if you are a designer or a frequent user of the Adobe Creative Suite. Like all Adobe software, the tools, shortcuts, and interface are very similar to each other and allow for easy migration. Now, if you are not a frequent user of Adobe, it will probably cost a bit more to learn how to use the software, plus it is probably not going to be worth the price just for Adobe XD.
Read full review
Zeplin
I still have some issues, especially with color integration between the style guide and also project. When we update the colors, it's not automatically sync to every project. Aside from that, zeplin solves my problem for hand-off design from design to developer. I set zeplin is source of truth design file
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Pros
Adobe
  • Easy and simple animations.
  • Good tool for website mock-ups.
  • Easy user interface and tools that are like most Adobe products.
  • You can share a dev link and it displays all assets for developers to download or user like it's very own style guide.
Read full review
Zeplin
  • Ease in automatically building design style guides, saving time that might be spent on building style guides in another tool (such as InDesign).
  • Users can use Mac, PC, or web versions of this app to collaborate on a single project, enabling us to work with a wider pool of contractors.
  • Accelerates the design-to-development workflow, as it’s very easy to import Sketch or Photoshop files through plug-ins, and HTML/CSS codes are automatically created based on designs.
  • Provides cross-platform specifications for web, iOS, and Android, which can save developers time in figuring out specifications beyond the “main platform" on their own.
Read full review
Cons
Adobe
  • Doesn’t have image editing tools, so having to go back to Photoshop or Lightroom just to make a sight edit can be a pain.
  • Could add some text editing functionality. It feels silly that I have to draw a line under text when I should just be able to underline.
  • Would be nice to have some real-time collaboration functionality.
Read full review
Zeplin
  • The uploading and syncing of assets is great for sketch and photoshop but we use illustrator and that can be cumbersome/tedious at times.
  • There are certain elements that have been a bit confusing to navigate at times, but for the most part, it's pretty user-friendly
  • More integrations
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
We utilize many of the applications in the Adobe CC suite and our usage of this application came about simply because it was the one that was already paid for. Bearing that in mind we will definitely be renewing the software upon the expiration of the licensing. I am not sure if this is the solution we would go with were it not already included, we would have to evaluate all other options
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Zeplin
Great tool
Read full review
Usability
Adobe
Very easy to use even for novice software users. A lot of the functionality is ubiquitous among the different software applications so the learning curve is relatively small. The biggest limitation may be someone's creativity or lack of it. There are some functional limitations but my understanding is that reviews come out fast and furious
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Zeplin
Zeplin is not a fully functional prototyping software system, but having the ability to add notes to help explain what actions are expected allows me to rate it high.
Read full review
Support Rating
Adobe
I have not had a need to connect with the Adobe XD support team as of yet, but from past experience when dealing with the other products, the support has been very very good, and I would have no reason to think that this product would be any different. There are a good number of training videos on the Adobe site for this product as well as on other social media sites so a quick search should let you find the answers in several different ways.
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Zeplin
Zeplin has classic support with a chat from the website. It's working fine, and we're also getting the support needed when needed. However, Zeplin is very good at closing the incidents and moving on. It was a while ago we had a case with their support so that it might have improved since then.
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Implementation Rating
Adobe
Implementation was a snap
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Zeplin
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Adobe
While I have used Zeplin, InVision, and Adobe XD on various projects, partly dependent on in-house client teams preferences, Adobe XD is the most familiar to me based on 20+ years [of] working within Adobe applications. They all can do most of what I am looking to do within their toolset, from what I can tell, but jumping from Photoshop to create raster images and to Illustrator for my vectors, it is very second nature then to bring those right into XD to layout, basically as a digital experience analogy to InDesign. The fact that Adobe XD is already there in Creative Suite makes it very hard to consider any other product since it works well with what I do.
Read full review
Zeplin
Zeplin is great to inspect and share user interfaces, specifications and assets, perfect for developers. Tools like InVision and Marvel are much better to create prototypes for both developers, coworkers and even stakeholders, but they don't have this kind of feature (inspection) as Zeplin does. So each of them can be used for different purposes, offering different approaches to share and interact with layouts for apps and websites.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Ease of use means we are up and running in no time.
  • Integrates and is a part of the Adobe CC platform (which we already subscribe to) so there was no additional cost.
  • Online proofing and developer handoff links are the icing on the cake. Keeps everything in one place.
  • Handles all our assets (mostly created in Illustrator) like a dream. Even imports native Photoshop docs, too, so that saves us so much time round tripping.
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Zeplin
  • Development time has reduced as the design updates are communicated in real time to developers and they don't have to write the boilerplate code as it's already generated.
  • Employee engagement has improved as every stakeholder is aware about the design changes from the beginning and can give their inputs.
  • Designers save a lot of time as they don't to explicitly communicate when the update or publish their designs and also it just takes a couple of clicks to publish their designs. Also, lot of rework is saved as every stakeholder is involved right from the beginning.
Read full review
ScreenShots