Balsamiq is a wireframing tool that allows users to sketch out user interfaces for websites and web and and mobile apps.
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Sketch
Score 7.4 out of 10
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Sketch is a visual design tool of use for application prototyping, coming with a wide variety of extensions, plugins, and an active user community.
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Pricing
Balsamiq
Sketch
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Balsamiq
Sketch
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Balsamiq
Sketch
Considered Both Products
Balsamiq
Verified User
Professional
Chose Balsamiq
While I love these other tools for many different reasons, Balsamiq is the tool I use for low-fidelity wireframing every time. It’s the most simple and easy-to-use out of the bunch, and it gets the job done without a ton of effort and time required. In the early stages of …
It was simply a focused toolset that made building a toolset and a process around simple. Some tools required a lot of training to be proficient (Adobe products) and then there were tools like Balsamiq that was fast but did not make pixel perfect anything and was mainly for …
Balsamiq is a great tool for quickly getting ideas into visual form. At first it seems like there are not that many UI assets, but this constraint actually adds to the speed. There are less things for you to fuss over, you can focus on getting your ideas down. This is a tool for lofi rough drawings not a tool for building beautiful prototypes for developers to code to. It is fantastic for ideation because you mostly just drag and drop components onto the canvas and move things around. It's great in a live workshop setting for that reason.
It is very simple to master and has a variety of built-in tools that allows one to begin prototyping quickly, and can be powered using a variety of plugins for presentations. However, Sketch struggles with more complex designs, particularly those where animations or transitions are desired. It also isn't a good fit for agencies that use a variety of prototyping tools, as results from importing are not predictable.
Mock ups are obviously only just mock ups (this is important as if users see mock-ups in HTML, for example, they tend to think the system is ready to use or not far off)
Has a good selection of standard shapes that mock real world fields / controls
Allows not for profit organisations use it for free
The sketch-like style can be off-putting to some stakeholders, and it’s not initially very clear that there is the option to turn this “off.” While I do think there is benefit to the default style, knowing from the start that this flexibility existed would have helped us be able to use this tool more often in the past and in different situations.
There are very limited collaborative functionalities. When it’s early in the design process, it’s often really helpful to have a number of people in the design to offer in-app feedback so the designer doesn’t have the burden of collecting feedback from many disparate sources in order to incorporate the feedback.
There are limited UI elements. As design evolves, there are more and more UI elements to consider, and many to stop using. Our Balsamiq wireframes would be a lot more effective in communicating design ideas to stakeholders if there was a wider range of UI elements to choose from.
Color management can be finicky. For instance, the eyedropper tool sometimes isn’t very precise.
It would be helpful if there was a built-in commenting system that included tagging where designers and developers could have real-time collaborative conversations about designs.
Sketch is only available to Mac users. This is fine internally, but an issue when working with external folks.
I'm not sure how else we would be able to complete our work without Balsamiq or another similar tool. All of my experience with Balsamiq has been positive and they continue to develop new features so that my job gets easier. I would be very surprised if we didn't renew Balsamiq
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.
Very intuitive and easy to understand. It only takes minutes to get the hang of it and get back to work. For new analysts (like, brand new, fresh out of school) it's not difficult and they need minimal to no hand-holding. The training content that is embedded is easy to find and use.
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.
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.
Creating digital wireframes in Photoshop is a nightmare. Photoshop was not really designed for this purpose. It doesn't have good collaboration options and it doesn't allow pattern libraries, which are essential for consistency and efficiency. We use UXPin and Axure for some time, but found that these platforms were a bit bloated. Balsamiq is much simpler than any of these options. It's a perfect wireframing platform for non-designers or for designers that want to focus on content and element-placement prior to design
Sketch is great for creating digital assets quickly and easily. It is simple to figure out and easy to use. It has a very clean user interface and isn't a resource hog like Adobe products tend to be. Its export feature is fantastic, generating multiple asset sizes/resolutions in one shot. For anything other than print design, Sketch is my go-to.
The product works very well for showing product owners and developers design ideas for purposes of discussion, debate and refinement.
The products also works very well for specifying new designs for developers. This is best done in a series of screens that show various screen states and user interactions.
I also use the products to document bugs in software products and websites we have developed. This includes outlining and documenting bugs and changes to user interactions and refinements to the usability of completed interfaces and user experiences.
Sketch has had a positive impact on the amount of time my team needs to spend in meetings gathering feedback. By creating screen views in Sketch and posting to our InVision projects, we're able to collect feedback without requiring multi-person meetings.
Sketch is an extremely affordable price point with many free and inexpensive add-on options that allow me to work the way I want without spending a lot of money on additional products.
