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 7.4 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.
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
If its already part of your organization, and they have a license for Creative Cloud, its worth learning. It doesnt take long to get started, but compared to other software in the same field, its lacking in many ways, from quality of life features to just simply not having the option for Darkmode. Even for website design, UX/UI, and mocking up proof-of-concepts, there are much better tools like Figma.
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
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.
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
Adobe XD is basically on life-support now, there are much better software out there that do everything XD can do, and a few that you don't even have to pay a monthly subscription fee on. While Adobe XD is great as shortcuts that are used in other CC software works, and its integration with CC is great. But it still lacks compared to its closest competitor.
-Inconvenient table of contents; -Search only checks screens' names in the Zeplin project, not checks text on the screens, even though it's stored there as text and can be easily read from a technical perspective; -I have to log in too often. This is too secure for such an application
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.
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.
Before XD came to the company, screens were designed in Illustrator or Photoshop and a PDF presentation was generated, which was extremely time-consuming. XD saved us a lot of time (and money) by generating interactive prototypes, which are much more tangible for the client than a PDF. The "fight" with Figma is frequent. Both have features in which they are better than their competition. And, while I still choose Adobe XD, don't rule out moving to Figma with its multiple updates.
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.
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.
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.