Figma, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their collaborative design and prototyping application to support digital product and UI development.
$15
per month per editor
Gliffy
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Gliffy is an online diagramming tool with collaboration features from the San Francisco company of the same name, offering standalone versions of Gliffy and integrated versions for Jira and Confluence.
A solo developer or small team that wants to integrate development, feature planning and ui design in a single app can find a lot of value in using Figma, since the FigJam whiteboard and UI editor are in the same app. Business plans and software features can be mapped out on FigJam and then implemented in the UI editor, that way there is reduced context switching and teams can operate smoothly without having to toggle between multiple apps.
Gliffy is great if you have a need to show images directly on a Confluence page. It’s also good for people that just want to illustrate something that would be harder to draw with a strict modeling tool. Gliffy is less appropriate if your personnel are skilled modelers and appreciate the modeling functionality provided by a real modeling tool.
As a visual designer, I spend 90% of my working time in Figma. So, as a design tool, Figma is mature and feature-rich. It covers all the basic needs and provides extras, such as simple prototyping and the ability to use external plugins.
Collaboration: It’s very easy to work together on the same file in Figma. You can easily brainstorm together or use Figma as a shared screen.
Smartness of components: Figma provides many adaptability options for components that allow building very flexible and scalable layouts.
First it's important to point out that Gliffy has priced itself incredibly well for small to medium sized businesses. Most other similar solutions are so expensive that organizations will avoid getting workflow software overall. Gliffy can take pride in knowing they're helping small business operate better.
Gliffy is incredibly easy to use for a first time user. I rarely have to train someone on how to use it. It's a lot of fun to see people get excited about systems and processes when using Gliffy. If you need to get up and running quickly I can't think of a better solution for workflow visualization.
I also like using Gliffy for mindmapping. I'm sure some mindmapping experts can tell me how I'm doing that incorrectly, but it just works for me. This points to the ease with which Gliffy allows you to get your thoughts down quickly and easily.
Access control - it wasn't apparent to me at first that a project was shared with everyone in the company vs just people i choose to share it with. I think the inverse should be the default.
Sometimes it struggles to import old sketch files - no clue how to make this better, but its frustrating
I have had some trouble saving complex diagrams and viewing them on the fly. On a handful of occasions, diagrams are unable to save, which means I either need to try to "save as" a separate diagram, or I am perpetually stuck trying to "load" recent changes. Overall, this means I always have a slight lingering fear that my diagrams aren't fully saved or recoverable. Support has been pretty responsive helping me to reload corrupted diagrams.
Adding Text, Notes, and Images can be a challenge. While laying out objects with simple text is a strength, adding formatted text and commentary can be a challenge. I often find my objects ghost-moving all over the screen and lost. I'd love a drag-and-drop way to load images in to diagrams. The process is a bit cumbersome with the file upload wizard.
Template environments - I struggled a bit to try to create a default starting point for my diagrams. I've tried to load common libraries and ignore others, those settings are often ignore upon reload. I'd love to use the same 10 objects and ignore the rest, I am not able (yet) to create this scenario, though there may be more to learn.
Searching, Indexing, Retrieving my diagrams. As part of an enterprise plan, I find there are too many clicks required to a) find/search for my diagrams and b) save diagrams into my Gliffy folder. In our implementation I can see all folders for all of my colleagues, and need to drill down a bit before I get to my folder, where I can actually search my documents in a list. I'd prefer a more intuitive way to land on my diagrams and to organize them (e.g., by customer) so that I can access them more quickly.
Because of its great versatility and ease of use. From diagramming to roadmpas and even user interface wireframes. Once a draft or first version is done we like to use the Confluence integration so we can collaborate and have one single source of truth
It's so simple to use! I have no background in UI design but basic designing and I was able to learn this software Figma within 3-5 days. There are tons of tutorials available on Youtube from so many popular YouTubers in the space, you can just go through them and start designing.
I didn't bother answering all of the other questions because all you need to know is that Gliffy is incredibly easy to use. It's perfect for first-timers or really anybody who wants to view a process visually and quickly. It's simply fantastic from a user-friendly standpoint. Keep up the great work!
I haven't used their support lately but in the past, they had a chat that I used often. They often responded in a few hours and were able to give a satisfactory solution. I would imagine it's less personal now but the community has expanded drastically so there are more resources out there to self serve with a bit of Google magic.
Much more intuitive, Adobe XD fails to keep up with the newest market changes thus it did not let us stay on top of the technology. The big plus of Figma is that the majority of our clients worked with it, whereas it was not the case with Adobe XD. You can get similar results working with both, but the process will be different in Figmas favour
The Gliffy platform supports only web whereas Lucidchart and Zoho Creator both support web, iPhone App and Android App. Gliffy is geared toward SMB and MSB whereas their competitors also market to freelancers and Enterprise customers providing solutions for each. Gliffy only offers online support whereas their competitors offer phone support, online support, knowledge base and video tutorials
Gliffy had a positive ROI on our initial efforts in getting team members to map out their workflows, provide them in confluence through its integration and get them distributed to our organization. The ease of use was a huge success for adoption.
Gliffy did seem to have unfriendly costs. Even as a customer for years that signs year-long contracts the price needle did not move much. Enterprise-wide software is expected to have discounts at a bulk buy within the industry.
Gliffy for the first time provided a tool for us to put our thoughts in a shareable format. It paved the way for increased organization and getting to buy into pre-existing processes.
