Balsamiq is a wireframing tool that allows users to sketch out user interfaces for websites and web and and mobile apps.
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Miro
Score 9.0 out of 10
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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.
$10
per month per user
Pricing
Balsamiq
Miro
Editions & Modules
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1. Free - To discover what Miro can do. Always free
$0
2. Starter - Unlimited and private boards with essential features
$8
per month (billed annually) per user
3. Business - Scales collaboration with advanced features and security
$16
per month (billed annually) per user
4. Enterprise - For work across the entire organization, with support, security and control, to scale
contact sales
annual billing per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Balsamiq
Miro
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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Monthly billing also available at $10 per month for the Starter plan, or $20 for the Business plan.
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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
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.
In JTBD terms, Miro is tackling a very upper-level job. It lets you do everything you could do with a notepad, a whiteboard, and even more conveniently than with physical prototypes. - Need to outline a migration plan for the new service - You need to describe the scheme of the service operation - You need to brainstorm the team
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
Allows a presenter to explain a concept quickly with a few utilities like sticky notes, shapes and arrows
Color codes on a digital white board to represent teams or people to have all voices "heard" / represented during a collaboration session
Zoom in and out to capture months worth of work in one space allowing you to easily move from various sections and revisit without hopping from tabs or various files
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.
It's so difficult to know what I'm entitled to with my license, especially if I'm accessing a board through someone else's link. I believe I have an enterprise license and own/edit more than three boards. My team has more than three boards. All of a sudden, I'm flagged as having a free version, and one of my boards is locked as "read-only." I have no idea what to do to restore my entitlement. I've logged out and logged back in.
Using projects to manage multiple boards is good, but somehow, the dashboard feels like a mess. It's not clear who on my team is actively doing what on which board. I'm not suggesting a new scheme; I'm just saying the current scheme isn't very good.
I hate not knowing the terms of my account, who my team is, and where it's all managed. Frustrating!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There was a series of webinars which Miro hosted with our organization that went over the basics, then progressively became more advanced with additional sections. The instructors were knowledgeable, and provided examples throughout the sessions, as well as answered peoples' questions. There was ample time and experience on the calls to cover a range of topics. The instructors were also very friendly and sociable, as well as honest. Of course Miro isn't a "God-tool" that does absolutely everything, but the instructors were aware and emphasized the strengths where Miro had them and sincerely accepted feedback.
There was not enough training for users to understand all the key features. The rollout was very high-level, but when users are expected to start adopting it, you have to ensure they are given the proper tools to do so. Miro is a great tool, and proper training is key to adoption.
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
I'm not a UX pro, but for my needs, Miro blew away the competition for two main reasons. First, Miro is so incredibly easy to get set up with and get running. It's not intimidating to use and it's easy for anyone on my team to just jump in and collaborate with me (even those adverse to technology). Secondly, it's easy to collaborate with others who don't have a license. A lot of other whiteboard tools require that even if I just want to share something with you (even without editing rights), you must have a license to even view. It's super challening when I have high stakes stakeholders I want to share something I build in a whiteboard app but I know it's going to be clunky for them to have to log in/sign up.
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.
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.
We're able to collaborate remotely as if we had a big wall with a lot of sticky notes, avoiding costly travel to offsite locations. ($350 per day)
Meetings flow more efficiently when we use the timer, helping us to stick to the meeting agenda and avoiding distractions.
We can save our work and return to it, without having to refer to a picture of a whiteboard that is hard to read. This saves us from confusion and helps to keep collaboration going.
