Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Marvel
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Marvel is a prototyping and wireframing app.N/A
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft offers Visual Studio Code, an open source text editor that supports code editing, debugging, IntelliSense syntax highlighting, and other features.
$0
Sketch
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Sketch is a visual design tool of use for application prototyping, coming with a wide variety of extensions, plugins, and an active user community.
$10
per month billed yearly per editor
Pricing
MarvelMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeSketch
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Standard Subscription
$10
per month billed yearly per editor
Standard Subscription
$12
per month per editor
Mac-only license
$12
per seat
Business Subscription
$22
per month billed yearly per editor
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MarvelMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeSketch
Free Trial
NoNoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MarvelMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeSketch
Considered Multiple Products
Marvel
Chose Marvel
Marvel isn’t the most robust prototyping tool, but its simplicity is what makes the tool rise to the top when it comes to creating quick, simple prototypes to elicit feedback on designs and iterate upon them. While tools like InVision and Axure provide many tools to make more …
Chose Marvel
Ultimately, InVision was just a better fit for our company's needs. It's probably faster to create prototypes using Marvel, but InVision's collaboration features (comments, notes, etc.) are much more robust, which was helpful for our large team spread across multiple …
Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Chose Microsoft Visual Studio Code
For our software dev teams, they still use the products from JetBrains (PhpStorm, RubyMine, etc) when they are laser-focused on one technology. For our less experienced, less code specific web dev team, Microsoft Visual Studio Code knocks it out of the park. I'd recommend …
Sketch
Chose Sketch
We went from designing websites in Photoshop to designing in Sketch, and it is certainly much quicker and easier to design in Sketch, and you're more easily able to make sure that our designs are exact in Sketch, as far as spacing exact pixels. I have never used AdobeXD and …
Chose Sketch
Figma is great in a team setting, but Sketch seems to have far more tools that are aligned to the fast-iteration work we do. It also lacks a number of the plugins that make our work with Sketch so ideal. If we decided on Figma, we would definitely have to create more …
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MarvelMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeSketch
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User Ratings
MarvelMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeSketch
Likelihood to Recommend
5.1
(7 ratings)
9.5
(104 ratings)
4.5
(38 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(21 ratings)
6.3
(4 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.7
(23 ratings)
9.1
(8 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
MarvelMicrosoft Visual Studio CodeSketch
Likelihood to Recommend
MarvelApp
Marvel is a very strong tool in scenarios where designers seek to quickly create simple prototypes on their desktops using a simple, intuitive interface. It offers “just enough” functionality to create somewhat realistic designs to present to stakeholders and other designers. However, there’s a limit to how “realistic” those designs can be, given that Marvel has somewhat limited functionality around animations. Marvel is not a strong option for those who want to create very complex prototypes with many animations, or for those who want to edit prototypes on their tablet or phone. Marvel is a jewel for simplicity but starts to be difficult to use when creating complicated designs. For creating more complicated prototypes, I would recommend a more robust tool, such as Axure.
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Microsoft
As a general workhorse IDE, Microsoft Visual Studio Codee is unmatched. Building on the early success of applications such as Atom, it has long been the standard for electron based IDEs. It can be outshone using IDEs that are dedicated to particular platforms, such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code for .net and the Jetbrains IDEs for Java, Python and others. For remote collaborative development, something like Zed is ahead of VSCode live share, which can be quite flakey.
Read full review
Bohemian Coding
Here’s the proofread version: Sketch is a simple and lightweight tool for vector graphics, ideal for individuals. I would recommend it to anyone working alone on design tasks such as UI or website design. I have started and completed many projects in Sketch, ranging from simple websites to complex automotive UIs with extensive libraries.
Read full review
Pros
MarvelApp
  • Easy to use with a fast learning curve
  • The handoff option allows developers to extract CSS code to copy design styles
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Microsoft
  • Integrate with the git repository very well.
  • Integrated copilot chat is very helpful to write code snippets and helps beginners to start with coding and development.
  • Great library of available extensions is one of the best features in Microsoft Visual Studio Code.
  • Dedicated Testing option to configure pytest and others are quite handy to use.
Read full review
Bohemian Coding
  • Sketch is great for drawing and creating shapes, like buttons or icons. It lets you adjust every curve and line perfectly, so you can make your designs look exactly how you want. (All design tools can do that, though).
  • Sketch is built just for Apple computers, so it runs smoothly and uses all the special Mac features. If you’re already using Apple tools, Sketch feels like a natural fit. (The downside of this is that non-Apple users can't use it.)
  • If you make something, like a button, and need it in many places, Sketch lets you save it as a "Symbol." You can use it repeatedly, and if you change the Symbol, it updates everywhere automatically. (Figma can do this too.)
Read full review
Cons
MarvelApp
  • I really miss being able to duplicate, make a copy of the prototype I'm working on. Sometimes, I want to make a comparison with detail changes and without being able to duplicate it is difficult.
  • Compared to other similar services, I feel the animations could be more fluid and smoother.
  • It could have more free sophisticated icons and images.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • The customization of key combinations should be more accessible and easier to change
  • The auxiliary panels could be minimized or as floating tabs which are displayed when you click on them
  • A monitoring panel of resources used by Microsoft Visual Studio Code or plugins and extensions would help a lot to be able to detect any malfunction of these
Read full review
Bohemian Coding
  • The software can be buggy right after a release. It appears that they do very little QA testing right after releasing a new version
  • The software can crash a lot. And when it does, I continuously have issues with it reloading my plugins.
  • Only available for Mac. If you have a cross platform team, it may not be the best.
  • Lack of features in the software, so you will have to use plugins for those additional features (Designs system management, accessibility, repository and live collaboration without paying a premium)
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
MarvelApp
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Solid tool that provides everything you need to develop most types of applications. The only reason not a 10 is that if you are doing large distributed teams on Enterprise level, Professional does provide more tools to support that and would be worth the cost.
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Bohemian Coding
Sketch is a core tool for us and the cost to keep it going with our teams is low. It provides a good alternative to other screen design tools for our team members who prefer to use it.
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Usability
MarvelApp
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio Code earns a 10 for its exceptional balance of power and simplicity. Its intuitive interface, robust extension ecosystem, and integrated terminal streamline development. With seamless Git integration and highly customizable settings, it adapts perfectly to any workflow, making complex coding tasks feel effortless for beginners and experts alike.
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Bohemian Coding
At the end of the day, it's just simple. This goes a long way in design and goes even further when your talking productivity, intuitive design and turnover rate. It's not difficult to figure something out even if it's not something your directly familiar with, i.e. if you want to export in certain file formats or change the size of the canvas, you don't have to delay your end product trying to figure it out. Similar situations took me less than 30 seconds to solve without a Google search. That's Usability.
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Reliability and Availability
MarvelApp
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Overall, Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty reliable. Every so often, though, the app will experience an unexplained crash. Since it is a stand-alone app, connectivity or service issues don't occur in my experience. Restarting the app seems to always get around the problem, but I do make sure to save and backup current work.
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Bohemian Coding
No answers on this topic
Performance
MarvelApp
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is pretty snappy in performance terms. It launches quickly, and tasks are performed quickly. I don't have a lot of integrations other than CoPilot, but I suspect that if the integration partner is provisioned appropriately that any performance impact would be pretty minimal. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles (unless you start adding plugins left and right).
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Bohemian Coding
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
MarvelApp
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Active development means filing a bug on the GitHub repo typically gets you a response within 4 days. There are plugins for almost everything you need, whether it be linting, Vim emulation, even language servers (which I use to code in Scala). There is well-maintained official documentation. The only thing missing is forums. The closest thing is GitHub issues, which typically has the answers but is hard to sift through -- there are currently 78k issues.
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Bohemian Coding
The support is relatively decent, and they are quick to respond. However, their releases are not great. Sketch could use more robust testing of their software before releases. Over the last four years, I have had many days lost while waiting for Sketch to patch issues with their releases. It's actually a running joke in our office. So, support, good. Releases in the first place? Not great.
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Alternatives Considered
MarvelApp
Ultimately, InVision was just a better fit for our company's needs. It's probably faster to create prototypes using Marvel, but InVision's collaboration features (comments, notes, etc.) are much more robust, which was helpful for our large team spread across multiple continents. InVision also offers more advanced features, and Marvel felt a little too limited for our overall business needs.
Read full review
Microsoft
Visual Studio Code stacks up nicely against Visual Studio because of the price and because it can be installed without admin rights. We don't exclusively use Visual Studio Code, but rather use Visual Studio and Visual Studio code depending on the project and which version of source control the given project is wired up to.
Read full review
Bohemian Coding
Sketch's approachable UI allowed those using outdated technologies to transition efficiently. Among its peers, Sketch performs comparably with most prototyping tools. It falls behind compared to those that can better handle movement, like InVision Studio, which combines animation and prototyping into a single platform. However, these types of programs have a steep learning curve, whereas Sketch is approachable immediately.
Read full review
Scalability
MarvelApp
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It is easily deployed with our Jamf Pro instance. There is actually very little setup involved in getting the app deployed, and it is fairly well self-contained and does not deploy a large amount of associated files. However, it is not particularly conducive to large project, multi-developer/department projects that involve some form of central integration.
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Bohemian Coding
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
MarvelApp
  • It helped me improve my productivity. It took me lot of time to manually design mockups earlier when I used Adobe Photoshop to do it.
  • Because of quickly creating mockups, now I provide my clients with more than 4-5 options which is welcomed by clients and make them happy.
  • Definitely the ROI and improved, because of time saved and happy clients.
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Microsoft
  • Saves money by replacing suites of tools such as Visual Studio, IntelliJ, etc.
  • Speeds development time and developer environment setup time
  • Strengthens code quality with integrated autoformatting and linting
  • Strengths Git practices by keeping version control tightly connected with the code
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Bohemian Coding
  • Saved time -- Intuitive interface saves us lots of time/money because it is reliable and easy to use. Other programs have caused serious confusion, leading to project delays.
  • More captivating wireframes -- Stakeholders have been finding it easier to visualize potential “final products” with vector-based Sketch designs. Because of this, we’ve been able to have more targeted, focused discussions that lead to improved final products (with fewer immediate post-launch revisions!).
  • Increased productivity -- Because Sketch is so easy to use, our designers have had more time to do more work. Rather than finagling difficult tools in previously used products, our designers feel no hesitation with Sketch, and are producing more often and more creatively.
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ScreenShots