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.
$6
per month
CommUnity by Personify
Score10 out of 10
N/A
Small World Labs Community is a hosted collaboration and social networking platform with easy drag & drop modification capabilities. Small World Labs offers implementation and community engagement services, plus an open API for integration with other systems. Small World Labs has clients across industries, but a high concentration in the nonprofit area.
Small World Labs was acquired by Personify Corp in 2016.
Gliffy is user-friendly, with a drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to create clear and visually appealing diagrams without steep learning curves. It’s perfect for creating straightforward, quick wireframes. Gliffy lacks features for detailed UI/UX wireframing and prototyping compared to specialized tools like Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD.
You can tell from the CEO and all staff that this is a very competent company that wants you to succeed with integrity. There is a strong support and services team that works collaboratively with us to make sure we are always getting what we need. They provide 24x7 emergency support, online ticket support, email support, a client community, and the ability to call and talk to the same account manager or community consultant every time (I even have Mariano's skype and he replies on weekends!). They recently launched a client community - so they are now even practicing what they preach. Our questions in the client community are always answered quickly.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It's easy to use. The admin panel has a number of drag and drop options to modify the experience
Flexibility. There are a large number of standard block features that can be added to areas. In addition, each dynamic block as a number of settings that allow you to tailor the experience you want to create. You can do this without being a programmer.
Personalization. There are good tools that allow you to personalize the experience based on whether users are logged in or not, whether they are in particular segments (which we can create) or recommendations based on information the user has provided about themselves.
Mobile. Small World Labs has a really great way of doing mobile. They give you a drag and drop interface for designing the mobile environment so there is a lot of flexibility with this. We are currently turning this module on.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Integration with our Association Management System (AMS) didn't go as smoothly as I had wished. Having said that all of the issues with that integration have been addressed.
Because the platform is updated so frequently you need to stay on top of what is available to you and your end users or you may miss out on key functionality releases.
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
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
From the first conversation and beyond, it has been a pleasure working with Small World Labs. Their staff are genuinely interested in understanding our business and our goals, and actively make recommendation on continued improvement and long-term strategy. All of their staff demonstrate a clear understanding of the product and when to expect new features. Furthermore, their CEO, Michael Wilson, is more than competent and has proven to be an industry expert. He understands both the technical side and the community strategy side of the business. In fact, we have already initiated a project to build a second community with Small World Labs for a separate business unit
I based my assessment on aggregated user feedback and reviews from platforms like G2 and Software Advice. Many users highlight the simplicity and versatility of Gliffy’s interface, which makes it accessible for both beginners and professionals. Features like drag-and-drop functionality, a variety of templates, and integration options (e.g., Atlassian tools) contribute to its high rating.However, it doesn’t score a perfect 10 because some users report performance issues with complex diagrams, limited advanced features compared to competitors, and occasional difficulties with collaboration features. Balancing these strengths and weaknesses lands Gliffy in the 8-9 range for usability
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The people at Small World Labs are very accessible. I can email, open a ticket, or call and they are there. I'd also point out that senior management is quite available too. We frequently have talks about potential strategies and new things we might be doing, which is great. I think the whole organization genuinely likes what they do and likes helping us succeed.
In-person training is more ad-hoc based on if they are traveling to you or you are going to visit them. I imagine that if I paid for in-person training that it would be set up as well, but I've just used the standard training that comes with the initial set up and ongoing support.
We had staff turnover at our own organization during the implementation. We were able to get the community up and live in a good timeframe even though that happened and we had to switch some people around for managing the project on our side.
Gliffy is easier to use together with Confluence since it provides an integration where you can edit an image directly on the page. Visio and PowerPoint is better drawing tools but we have moved away from them since there isn’t a good way to keep track of the original file of the vector/bitmap included in the Confluence page.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We evaluated a few different community platform vendors over the course of a couple of months. I believe we also evaluated Jive, Lithium, KickApps, and Powered.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Our community has been very active since the re-launch of our site. Have seen some increases in member engagement.
Feedback from our membership has been nothing but positive since we transitioned off of our older Sharepoint community. Look and feel and ease of use have been real pluses for our members.
Having the Small World Labs community is allowing us to be more creative with the way we integrate our community into all aspects of our online presence, web-site, social media, etc.
