Balsamiq vs. Venngage

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
Venngage
Score 7.7 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Venngage is an infographics creation platform. Users can create inforgraphics for their marketing team from scratch or from a template.
$19
per month per user
Pricing
BalsamiqVenngage
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Premium
$19
per month per user
Business
$49
per month per user
Enterprise
starting at $499
per month 10+ seats (billed yearly)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BalsamiqVenngage
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details50% discount for Premium and Business plans for annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
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User Ratings
BalsamiqVenngage
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(31 ratings)
6.6
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BalsamiqVenngage
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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Venngage
If you are a small business or even a small team within a larger firm, Venngage is extremely useful. Larger enterprises, with in-house designers or multiple design stakeholders, may not find the offering appropriate as it's THAT easy to use that it could lead to folks going outside the lines of official, corporate-mandated brand guidelines. That said, for small businesses, this is absolutely the best tool I have come across (after trying many from Adobe Spark to Canva and others), and for the monthly price of $49, you cannot beat the amount of original graphics and materials you are able to produce, without having any prior "design" experience to boot
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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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Venngage
  • Venngage comes with a good suite of templates for starting projects from. For anyone working with infographics, getting started is usually 3/4 of the battle and having a good set of templates to choose from is a nice feature to save you time searching the internet.
  • Venngage makes it easy to change colors on most of their shapes, lines, backgrounds, etc.. ie., it is simple to customize in Venngage, which is incredibly important if you have a large team of users and not a great deal of time to train them in working with these types of tools.
  • Venngage's auto-save feature is not only one of it's best assets, but it has saved our team many times! Not all competitors have this feature and when you're working with precision as intricate as you typically are with an Infographic, auto-save is imperative!
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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.
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Venngage
  • On closer inspection, many templates were the same.
  • I also found it a little difficult to edit for my purposes, which included being able to show more detailed analysis, for example, placing excel data in the file.
  • If you want to download in an editable manner, such as into Powerpoint, which is currently offered in beta production, you had to upgrade beyond the $19 charge to a more costly business plan.
  • There were constant email bots asking me to upgrade. I then went to cancel the subscription and the refund has been refused, after three emails explaining my situation.
  • I understand Venngage wishes to grow its business, but refusing refunds is not the way to do it. They should be trying to develop fans, not frustrated business people exploring this new product. I believe the Customer Service personnel should be empowered to do the right thing. If this poor customer service had not happened, I would have tapped this product from time to time for catch graphics. Now instead, I am steering clear and using products such as Canva
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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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Venngage
I use Venngage for a new project 1-2 times per week... I could not see using another program at this point.
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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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Venngage
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Balsamiq
We haven't had to use the support feature yet
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Venngage
I think that the attention that I get as a small business owner from Venngage is excellent. They quickly respond to questions and provide information that helps to resolve the issue that I am having.
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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
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Venngage
We prefer Canva but feel Venngage is easier for us. In comparison to Adobe, we prefer Venngage because of the ability to have everything in one system and not have to jump around.
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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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Venngage
  • We used this basic platform for some our lower paying clients v/s using a more expensive tool.
  • We eventually had to take another platform to supplement Venngage, impacting our overall marketing investment.
  • Positively helped employee onboarding in terms of time commitment
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ScreenShots