Balsamiq vs. Miro

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Balsamiq
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Balsamiq is a wireframing tool that allows users to sketch out user interfaces for websites and web and and mobile apps.N/A
Miro
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Miro provides a visual workspace for innovation that enables distributed teams of any size to dream, design, and build the future together. Today, Miro counts more than 60 million users in 200,000 organizations who use Miro to improve product development collaboration, to speed up time to market, and to make sure that new products and services deliver on customer needs.
$8
per month per user
Pricing
BalsamiqMiro
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
1. Free - To discover what Miro can do. Always free
$0
2. Starter - Unlimited and private boards with essential features
$8
per month per user
3. Business - Scales collaboration with advanced features and security
$16
per month per user
4. Enterprise - For work across the entire organization, with support, security and control, to scale
contact sales
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BalsamiqMiro
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BalsamiqMiro
Considered Both Products
Balsamiq
Chose Balsamiq
Balsamiq is lagging a lot as compared to Figma but it's comparable with respect to MockFlow.

Also, Figma is a full stack solution in designing and hence it was an overkill of my role. Balsamiq is easier to use & know in the industry and hence that helped in decision making.
Miro
Chose Miro
I receive value for all the Lucidchart and Balsamiq with Miro. When it comes to Figma, I believe Miro is not doing up-to-the-mark work. Meanwhile, I do believe it won't be long before I see the Figma-type feature implemented in Miro. Overall, I think Miro has done an amazing …
Chose Miro
Miro stacks up really well with these tools or it complement them well.
Chose Miro
Miro, to me, is a one-stop-shop whereas some of the other players go deeper in their disciplines. I consider Miro as a generalist (as opposed to a specialist) and it works well when you wish to work with a cross-functional team to get things rolling. I wouldn't use it to …
Chose Miro
I've used Mural before in training as a guest user, and I've found that the user experience seems to be easier than with Miro. Looking at Klaxoon, I used it a few times as a guest user and I liked it, especially the feature of being able to follow the facilitator of the session …
Chose Miro
It offers many features we used in the past across different products.
Chose Miro
I've tried and churned a lot of products in recent years. Even the products that closely compete with Miro, but it has been the stickiest for me, personally. The feature set this big and diverse with the simpleness and low learning curve involved, Miro has been an easy winner …
Chose Miro
Of course, Above maintained products are not Replacing the Miro and they are solving different problems for us, but there are also a lot of similarities between the products. like Prototyping or collaborating through Figma Boards
Chose Miro
Miro covers all the functionality that all the other products offer, in some cases even better. It's a one-stop shop.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
BalsamiqMiro
Small Businesses
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle
Score 9.6 out of 10
Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite
Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle
Score 9.6 out of 10
Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite
Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle
Score 9.6 out of 10
Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite
Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BalsamiqMiro
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(31 ratings)
9.0
(4543 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(98 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.1
(72 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(8 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(7 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(1 ratings)
6.4
(27 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.7
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(3291 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.4
(3633 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(8 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BalsamiqMiro
Likelihood to Recommend
Balsamiq
Balsamiq is a great tool for quickly getting ideas into visual form. At first it seems like there are not that many UI assets, but this constraint actually adds to the speed. There are less things for you to fuss over, you can focus on getting your ideas down. This is a tool for lofi rough drawings not a tool for building beautiful prototypes for developers to code to. It is fantastic for ideation because you mostly just drag and drop components onto the canvas and move things around. It's great in a live workshop setting for that reason.
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Miro
Miro is perfect if you need to either present an idea, or workshop ways of getting to alignment. It's pretty magic for all of that. Miro is less perfect than FigJam if you're just interrogating a Figma UI and you want to make direct edits.
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Pros
Balsamiq
  • Easy to use
  • Produces good quality mock ups and prototypes
  • Mock ups are obviously only just mock ups (this is important as if users see mock-ups in HTML, for example, they tend to think the system is ready to use or not far off)
  • Has a good selection of standard shapes that mock real world fields / controls
  • Allows not for profit organisations use it for free
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Miro
  • Exceptional templates help me get started quickly with almost any type of whiteboarding, creating consistency where needed and extreme variety when also needed.
  • Having multiple active users on the same board happens so smoothly. It's easy to get people on the board and updating objects simultaneously without weird conflicts is amazing.
  • The amount of objects & tools Miro provides allows us to create very specific and detailed artifacts.
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Cons
Balsamiq
  • The sketch-like style can be off-putting to some stakeholders, and it’s not initially very clear that there is the option to turn this “off.” While I do think there is benefit to the default style, knowing from the start that this flexibility existed would have helped us be able to use this tool more often in the past and in different situations.
  • There are very limited collaborative functionalities. When it’s early in the design process, it’s often really helpful to have a number of people in the design to offer in-app feedback so the designer doesn’t have the burden of collecting feedback from many disparate sources in order to incorporate the feedback.
  • There are limited UI elements. As design evolves, there are more and more UI elements to consider, and many to stop using. Our Balsamiq wireframes would be a lot more effective in communicating design ideas to stakeholders if there was a wider range of UI elements to choose from.
Read full review
Miro
  • Sometimes the text inside sticky notes is very small, it's hard to read.
  • It would be great to preserve the board layout and functionality when offline, such as when taking a flight. Load the board before the flight, keep working during the flight, then update it when the connection gets restored, instead of losing sync and functionality when internet connectivity is not available.
  • It would be helpful to denote progress on a board with some sort of recommended flow. Instead of having to depend on the user adding new inputs to the right of previous work, if Miro detects inputs to the board happening to the left or above existing work, ask if you'd like to add it to the right.
  • Also, it could be that you could replay a "video" or animation of the board (zoomed out) showing the order in which content has been added to the board over time.
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Likelihood to Renew
Balsamiq
I'm not sure how else we would be able to complete our work without Balsamiq or another similar tool. All of my experience with Balsamiq has been positive and they continue to develop new features so that my job gets easier. I would be very surprised if we didn't renew Balsamiq
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Miro
There is no other tool like Miro for process Mapping in particular. I've tried PowerPoint, Word, and other programs, but when collaborating virtually on how to improve a process, Miro has all of the tools and more to enable successful mapping. The colors, different types of shapes and text books, along with the ability to integrate different documents and other functionality, make it ideal for this purpose. In a virtual world, it's a must-have.
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Usability
Balsamiq
Very intuitive and easy to understand. It only takes minutes to get the hang of it and get back to work. For new analysts (like, brand new, fresh out of school) it's not difficult and they need minimal to no hand-holding. The training content that is embedded is easy to find and use.
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Miro
It's pretty easy to use. My gripes are with some small idiosyncrasies with selection behavior with objects and editing text. When I move an object, it automatically de-selects it when I am not done with it. I have to click to select again. Text control is challenging and could be improved. It could use a little more styling capability. It's also weird that it behaves differently in a shape then when using the text tool.
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Reliability and Availability
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Miro
I only give a 9/10 because of the speed at which it loads. I have never experienced issues with Miro logging me out early, or some other technical issue causing the program to crash, or even it just loading in perpetuity without ever actually coming up (unlike other programs such as SFDC). It take a minute for all of my boards to come up after I click on it in my favorites, but besides that, it's all good.
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Performance
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Miro
I took the loading quickly to be related to availability which I commented on before, so ditto with those comment on load time here. Although to reemphasize, Miro doesn't crash or just refuse to load like some other programs. The weak point of Miro for me is integration of files like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint (especially the later two). When you embed these, it gets slow, and complicated to bring them up while you're in the application.
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Support Rating
Balsamiq
We haven't had to use the support feature yet
Read full review
Miro
The support staff at Miro are fantastic. Whenever I have had an issue, they have been timely and helpful with their response. They are also very knowledgeable and go out of their way to not only help, but offer proactive training sessions on different topics and new functionality so everyone can try it out.
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In-Person Training
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Miro
Not applicable as never had in person training
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Online Training
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Miro
Superb. very well explained videos. Really helps get the knowledge up on the product. The slides are divided into the topics of usage. I have enjoyed following and implementing all of these slides. The videos are well explained and it is easy to follow. There are tutorials that you can take yourself later. It would be nice however if more training modules were added.
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Implementation Rating
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Miro
It was and still is a challenge to get our IT folks at 3M to support the tool. Single sign on still not implemented. I now have Miro on my personal computer. I had a few hardware issues, but nothing major.
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Alternatives Considered
Balsamiq
Creating digital wireframes in Photoshop is a nightmare. Photoshop was not really designed for this purpose. It doesn't have good collaboration options and it doesn't allow pattern libraries, which are essential for consistency and efficiency. We use UXPin and Axure for some time, but found that these platforms were a bit bloated. Balsamiq is much simpler than any of these options. It's a perfect wireframing platform for non-designers or for designers that want to focus on content and element-placement prior to design
Read full review
Miro
In many cases the other tools did a single thing better than Miro but overall Miro better solved all our needs. In some cases, like FigJam the hurdle was licensing. Teams just doesn't have an awesome set of features. MindMap is good for what it is but not so good for other uses. Mural is excellent...just not as good.
Read full review
Scalability
Balsamiq
No answers on this topic
Miro
Miro is great for scaling. In every department and subdivision across my entire organization, there is someone using it. From Sales to marketing, to manufacturing and operations; and even in legal and finance, there isn't a process or a department that is not using Miro, and if they aren't, they're missing out! Even at the highest to the lowest levels of the organization, it is essential for virtual collaboration.
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Return on Investment
Balsamiq
  • The product works very well for showing product owners and developers design ideas for purposes of discussion, debate and refinement.
  • The products also works very well for specifying new designs for developers. This is best done in a series of screens that show various screen states and user interactions.
  • I also use the products to document bugs in software products and websites we have developed. This includes outlining and documenting bugs and changes to user interactions and refinements to the usability of completed interfaces and user experiences.
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Miro
  • Simplicity- it’s simplified our communication
  • It’s taken away the stress of manually documenting research with pen and paper in live design thinking sessions
  • Remote - we can host our diverse teams from all over the world in quick productive meetings without paying for travel
  • Miro has helped me design for over 8 enterprise product teams
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ScreenShots

Miro Screenshots

Screenshot of Miro's design sprint templates, used to solve big challenges, create new products or improve existing ones.Screenshot of the Sprint Planning features in Miro, that assists Development Teams in creating a transparent understanding of what can be built and how. Users can run sprints and turn a team into creative and active participants. Today, many organizations use Agile tools to manage software development and other non-IT projects.Screenshot of the PI Planning Template that brings teams toward one vision of what stories to develop. Used to manage a backlog, increase productivity, and build the foundation for a successful PI Planning event. Miro’s PI Planning Template helps to get an overview of any PI Planning event, with step-by-step frames to guide the process.Screenshot of diagrams, concept maps, and system mapping templates used to communicate complex flows and create a shared understanding. Users can check off all the essential steps of the diagramming process and gain a complete overview of operations with Miro's diagramming templates collection.