Figma vs. Zeplin

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Figma
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Figma, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their collaborative design and prototyping application to support digital product and UI development.
$15
per month per editor
Zeplin
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Zeplin, from the company of the same name, is a platform supporting collaboration in application development by engineers and designers by providing an API with popular collaboration, development and prototyping tools and creating a space where productions can be shared and reviewed.
$0
per user per month
Pricing
FigmaZeplin
Editions & Modules
Professional
$144
per year
Organization
$540
per year
Starter
Free
Free
$0
per user per month
Team
$6
per user per month
Organization
$12
per user per month
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FigmaZeplin
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
FigmaZeplin
Considered Both Products
Figma
Chose Figma
Figma has more features than Zeplin or Axure. Unlike Zeplin it allows to create and share dynamic prototypes. Unlike Axure it gives tools to create detailed designs.
Chose Figma
It's the organization's decision to move from Google Suite to Microsoft, so we changed our design tool to Figma.
Chose Figma
Figma compares to these other software packages as it seems to combine the best aspects of each, whilst simplifying its own interface to make usage more intuitive.
Although Illustrator is still excellent for vector illustration work, and Sketch does appear visually fairly …
Chose Figma
Figma enables people to create designs AND collaborate. The difficulty of keeping all of the feedback on a design in one place (or tracking it down!) can be difficult when working with other programs, and Figma facilitates the ability to have streamlined feedback loops all in …
Zeplin
Chose Zeplin
Zeplin is simpler. Zeplin lacks prototyping on par with InVision. Zeplin doesn't give a direct code for Android and iOS like Figma does. Zeplin doesn't have a lot of advanced features like InVision, for example, whiteboard. But Zeplin is good for at its job which is to share …
Chose Zeplin
Actually, we didn't select Zeplin. After a long time of internal discussions, the majority of the team decided that we want to move to Figma. We still use Zeplin as a legacy, but we don't use it for new features. In my opinion, it's less flexible than Figma, which allows …
Chose Zeplin
Zeplin is more focused on the handoff than in the creation itself. The other alternatives can do both, but Zeplin is an awesome tool for the handoff part. It depends in how big is your team and how the workflow is organized to understand whats the best tool for your team.
Chose Zeplin
Out of all of the products that I have used to support design-to-development handoffs, Zeplin is my favorite. It’s pretty lightweight and easy to use (once you get the hang of it). Zeplin also has a smooth interface and is, generally, clearer to use than other tools, such as …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
FigmaZeplin
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Figma
-
Ratings
Zeplin
5.9
2 Ratings
27% below category average
Search00 Ratings5.92 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Figma
-
Ratings
Zeplin
8.0
2 Ratings
1% above category average
Notifications00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Figma
-
Ratings
Zeplin
6.7
3 Ratings
17% below category average
Versioning00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Document collaboration00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Access control00 Ratings5.93 Ratings
Advanced security features00 Ratings4.01 Ratings
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FigmaZeplin
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Score 9.3 out of 10
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OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle
Score 9.4 out of 10
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Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
FigmaZeplin
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(201 ratings)
6.6
(20 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(7 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(33 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Availability
5.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(17 ratings)
9.5
(4 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
FigmaZeplin
Likelihood to Recommend
Figma
Figma is a solid design tool to craft the UX design concepts/solutions for digital products. For printed marketing materials such as brochures, marketing flyers, press releases, etc, other design tools such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign might make more sense to use for those use case scenarios.
Read full review
Zeplin
I still have some issues, especially with color integration between the style guide and also project. When we update the colors, it's not automatically sync to every project. Aside from that, zeplin solves my problem for hand-off design from design to developer. I set zeplin is source of truth design file
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Pros
Figma
  • Detailed enough to create pixel perfect designs with total control over the outcome
  • Creating and implementing design systems to improve consistency and speed up design work
  • Robust prototyping tools to create simple animations or to connect various pages
  • I love autolayout, which improves design spacing and responsiveness
Read full review
Zeplin
  • Ease in automatically building design style guides, saving time that might be spent on building style guides in another tool (such as InDesign).
  • Users can use Mac, PC, or web versions of this app to collaborate on a single project, enabling us to work with a wider pool of contractors.
  • Accelerates the design-to-development workflow, as it’s very easy to import Sketch or Photoshop files through plug-ins, and HTML/CSS codes are automatically created based on designs.
  • Provides cross-platform specifications for web, iOS, and Android, which can save developers time in figuring out specifications beyond the “main platform" on their own.
Read full review
Cons
Figma
  • Prototyping in Figma is pretty much nothing more than a glorified slide show. Sure, variables, etc are available but it takes way to long to set them up and even more time when there are revisions needed.
  • It would be helpful if there were a contextual help system for various functionality. For example, advanced autolayout (like space between) can become very tricky to implement sometimes. I often wish there were an AI assistant to ask for help. I often use ChatGTP to help me through these times.
  • Searching layers needs to be much easier and more intuitive.
  • I would like to be able to make groups like the layers palette in Photoshop. That would help with organization and speed a lot.
Read full review
Zeplin
  • The uploading and syncing of assets is great for sketch and photoshop but we use illustrator and that can be cumbersome/tedious at times.
  • There are certain elements that have been a bit confusing to navigate at times, but for the most part, it's pretty user-friendly
  • More integrations
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Likelihood to Renew
Figma
Figma is a pretty cool tool in many areas. My team almost uses it on daily basis, such as, brainstorming on product/design topics, discussing prototypes created by designers. We even use it for retrospectives, which is super convenient and naturally keeps records of what the team discusses every month. Furthermore, I do see the potential of the product - currently we mainly use it for design topics, but it seems it is also a good fit for tech diagrams, which we probably will explore further in the future.
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Zeplin
Great tool
Read full review
Usability
Figma
It's easy to use for designers who are familiar with design terms and functions from Photoshop and Illustrator. However, non-tech and non-designer collaborators have a hard time figuring out how to leave comments and apply changes, compared to other online design tools like Canva and Squarespace. Even simple drag-and-drops and rearrangement of certain blocks become too complicated due to uncommon functions like Hug and Lock.
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Zeplin
-Inconvenient table of contents; -Search only checks screens' names in the Zeplin project, not checks text on the screens, even though it's stored there as text and can be easily read from a technical perspective; -I have to log in too often. This is too secure for such an application
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Reliability and Availability
Figma
The only regret I have is, its not available when there is no internet
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Zeplin
No answers on this topic
Performance
Figma
I think its great, As there are many other software or systems which can be integrated with it as plugins or API's
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Zeplin
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Figma
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.
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Zeplin
Zeplin has classic support with a chat from the website. It's working fine, and we're also getting the support needed when needed. However, Zeplin is very good at closing the incidents and moving on. It was a while ago we had a case with their support so that it might have improved since then.
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In-Person Training
Figma
In-person training has its own benefits - 1. It helps in resolving queries then and there during the training. 2. I find classroom or in-person training more interactive. 3. Classroom or in-person training could be more practical in nature where participants can have an hands on experience with tools and clarify their doubts with the trainer.
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Zeplin
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Figma
Online training has its own merits and demerits - 1. Sometimes we may face issues with connectivity or the training content 2. The way training is being delivered becomes very important because not everyone is comfortable taking online training and learning by themselves. 3. With the advancement of technology online training has become popular but there is a segment of people who still prefer class-room training over online one.
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Zeplin
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Figma
Figma compared to other tools has user friendly UI which is very easy for all levels of designers. Compared to Adobe XD and Sketch Figma is stable, while in other tools I have faced software crashing in the middle of the work which resulted in loss of data/design. Compared to other tools it's fast and shows less lag. Collaboration in Figma is very easy as it is cloud based but in XD it's not that smooth working with other designers.
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Zeplin
Zeplin is great to inspect and share user interfaces, specifications and assets, perfect for developers. Tools like InVision and Marvel are much better to create prototypes for both developers, coworkers and even stakeholders, but they don't have this kind of feature (inspection) as Zeplin does. So each of them can be used for different purposes, offering different approaches to share and interact with layouts for apps and websites.
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Scalability
Figma
I think this is great and as I mentioned at ADP we use Figma extensively whether by designers, researchers or content writers
Read full review
Zeplin
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Figma
  • Allows us to get funding for further phases of the project (which is uncountable)
  • Well, it lets us show off when needed due to well suited UI-oriented character
  • Easily approachable by anyone (browser use)
  • User friendly interface
  • More advanced cooperation requires some of the users to have a license
Read full review
Zeplin
  • Development time has reduced as the design updates are communicated in real time to developers and they don't have to write the boilerplate code as it's already generated.
  • Employee engagement has improved as every stakeholder is aware about the design changes from the beginning and can give their inputs.
  • Designers save a lot of time as they don't to explicitly communicate when the update or publish their designs and also it just takes a couple of clicks to publish their designs. Also, lot of rework is saved as every stakeholder is involved right from the beginning.
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ScreenShots