Sketch vs. Zeplin

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Sketch
Score 7.4 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.N/A
Zeplin
Score 7.9 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
SketchZeplin
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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
SketchZeplin
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SketchZeplin
Considered Both Products
Sketch
Chose Sketch
Although there's a lot of overlap, we use these different platforms for different purposes. InVision allows us to create more robust prototypes, Zeplin is a better tool for design/dev handoffs, and Marvel is great for basic wireframes. None of these tools beat Sketch when it …
Chose Sketch
Sketch had been great and improved a lot in the past, but so has Adobe. If you are going to start new, it's better to plan long term and based on needs see what suits more. Figma is relying a lot on new technologies which are not bug-free, but that may be the future of design.
Zeplin
Chose Zeplin
I believe InVision is the only one that is supporting such inspection tools at this moment.
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 …
Chose Zeplin
These other tools are really helpful products for creating and sharing wireframes / prototypes. However, Zeplin is the best tool for the actual hand off between the design and development teams once the design is actually ready to share. Zeplin fills this gap and improves the …
Chose Zeplin
Zeplin is a really nice lightweight app, that is easier to use than InVision for sharing purposes. InVision does primarily handle prototyping, which Zeplin does not do. Abstract is my product of choice but is also a slightly different tool — almost a GitHub for design. It …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
SketchZeplin
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Sketch
-
Ratings
Zeplin
7.0
1 Ratings
11% below category average
Search00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Sketch
-
Ratings
Zeplin
7.0
1 Ratings
13% below category average
Notifications00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Sketch
-
Ratings
Zeplin
8.0
2 Ratings
2% below category average
Document collaboration00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Access control00 Ratings7.02 Ratings
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User Ratings
SketchZeplin
Likelihood to Recommend
6.3
(35 ratings)
7.0
(19 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(8 ratings)
9.5
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
SketchZeplin
Likelihood to Recommend
Bohemian Coding
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.
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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
Bohemian Coding
  • Auto Saving your work
  • Great library of plugins to use to make the software your own
  • Easy to understand interface that is very similar to other prototyping applications
  • They have been around for 12 years so you know the support and legacy stands
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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.
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Cons
Bohemian Coding
  • 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.
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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
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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Zeplin
Great tool
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Usability
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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Zeplin
Zeplin is not a fully functional prototyping software system, but having the ability to add notes to help explain what actions are expected allows me to rate it high.
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Support Rating
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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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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Alternatives Considered
Bohemian Coding
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.
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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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Return on Investment
Bohemian Coding
  • 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.
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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