Cacoo is a user-friendly online diagramming tool that allows users to create a variety of diagrams such as wireframes, flowcharts, UML diagrams, network diagrams, mindmaps, sitemaps, database diagrams, and more.
Cacoo includes an extensive collection of templates and shapes, collaboration features such as simultaneous editing, version tracking, and commenting. Cacoo is simple, cloud-based software users can access from anywhere with an internet connection.
Cacoo is web-based and OS independent. OmniGraffle is a local install and mac only. Microsoft Visio is a desktop app also and Windows only. Two strikes for me, as I use between 2-4 different computers daily where I expect my applications to be always up-to-date and files …
Particularly helpful to an organization that has Windows people who are staunch Visio users and Mac people who are die-hard OmniGraffle or Sketch users.
Omnigraffle is great for documentation, mapping, flowcharting, and other technical diagramming scenarios. It's simple enough to bang out a quick illustration and powerful enough to build complex blueprints for complicated technical systems. If you need cross-platform compatibility, though, you're probably better off looking elsewhere. If you want complex integration with data sources (ala Visio's SQL Server integration for shape metadata), OmniGraffle also falls short — but those scenarios are few and far between in my experience.
OmniGraffle is fairly simple to use, but the one thing I think it does best is working with curved lines, particularly if you are using some of the available arc templates. Drop an arc onto your page, then tell it the dimensions it needs to be, and viola! Done. Manipulating the arcs is as simple as clicking and dragging offset points.
OmniGraffle has also done an excellent job in stirring up the creative minds of many people who create templates and tools to work with OmniGraffle (not that Microsoft hasn't done so either), and managed to get the bulk of those into well organized repositories.
What it all boils down to for me is: it just works. One doesn't need to have a computer science degree to work with it either. It is as simple or complex as you want it to be.
I'd love to be able to keep more than one of the different tool tabs open at a time.
The stencils are amazing. Would be great if a whole lot more of the free ones came standard as opposed to having to download them from Graffletopia or other sites.
Cacoo is web-based and OS independent. OmniGraffle is a local install and mac only. Microsoft Visio is a desktop app also and Windows only. Two strikes for me, as I use between 2-4 different computers daily where I expect my applications to be always up-to-date and files synchronized.
While these other tools are great for what they are, OmniGraffle’s solid focus on and support for diagramming makes it our tool of choice for communicating workflows and concept relationships, creating documentation, and creating other diagrams. Its libraries allow us to create designs quickly, and its ease of use enables us to use the tool widely across the company without much time or effort spent on onboarding.
Easier to diagram and create workflows without having to engage a designer's assistance. That means staff at lower billable hourly rates, reducing overall admin or billable hours cost.
Less time involved in creating support documents for less robust product options. Again, reducing overall admin or billable hours cost.
Most of our staff use the free version so no added cost until they are familiar and really embrace it = a reduction in upfront cost.
Omnigraffle isn't an expensive software tool, so there isn't really any negative from the perspective of raw cost. Thinking in terms of time spent using it on a project - what you create in omnigraffle will inevitably lead to a dead end. It's useful only as documentation. There are other tools like Sketch that integrate into prototyping software and can create useable visual assets for applications in addition to being able to create wireframes.