Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Balsamiq

Balsamiq

Overview

What is Balsamiq?

Balsamiq is a wireframing tool that allows users to sketch out user interfaces for websites and web and and mobile apps.

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Balsamiq has proven to be a valuable tool for various departments and teams within organizations. Users have found that Balsamiq is …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

What is Balsamiq?

Balsamiq is a wireframing tool that allows users to sketch out user interfaces for websites and web and and mobile apps.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

4 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is Figma?

Figma, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their collaborative design and prototyping application to support digital product and UI development.

What is Optimal Workshop?

Optimal Workshop, a company in New Zealand, offers their suite of user research tools on a subscription basis, including the Treejack information architecture tool, OptimalSort card sorting test, Chalkmark first-click testing, and other tools.

Return to navigation

Product Demos

Demo website penjualan laptop dan komputer menggunakan mockup belsamiq

YouTube

Balsamiq demo

YouTube

Demo for using Balsamiq to design a login interface for a healthcare app

YouTube

Balsamiq Demo Smidig2009

YouTube

Rapid Wireframing – LIVE Demo using Balsamiq

YouTube

Balsamiq Mockups in XPages

YouTube
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Balsamiq?

Balsamiq is a wireframing tool that allows users to sketch out user interfaces for websites and web and and mobile apps.

Balsamiq Video

Balsamiq Cloud is the industry-leading solution for fast, approachable, collaborative wireframing. Check it out at https://balsamiq.cloud

Balsamiq Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(105)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Balsamiq has proven to be a valuable tool for various departments and teams within organizations. Users have found that Balsamiq is particularly useful for creating wireframes and low fidelity prototypes in the early stages of the design process. This helps teams and clients focus on user flows and on-page content, allowing for quick iterations based on user feedback. Balsamiq has also been utilized by product management departments as an alternative to more complex design software like Photoshop or Illustrator, enabling the quick mocking up of layouts and workflows. Additionally, Balsamiq has been used by software development teams to visualize new feature enhancements and refine requirements based on customer feedback. Multiple departments across organizations have found value in Balsamiq's ability to set up mockups quickly, refine requirements, and gain approval for project planning. The software has also helped standardize the design process and improve communication between marketing and design channels. Overall, users appreciate Balsamiq for its ability to create low fidelity wireframes early in the design process, allowing for a focus on layout before getting distracted by colors and other design elements.

Based on user reviews, here are the three most common recommendations for Balsamiq:

  1. Use Balsamiq for quick prototypes and wireframes. It is recommended for creating talking points and drafting design concepts. The software is particularly useful for rapid low-fi comps and prototypes, making it a great choice for beginners learning about user experience design.

  2. When working on more complex applications, consider exploring other options in addition to Balsamiq. While Balsamiq is suggested for wireframing needs and offers a free trial, users also recommend checking out alternative wireframe tools that may better meet specific UI element needs or pricing requirements. They suggest considering other tools after the initial design sprint.

  3. Reach out to Balsamiq's support team for any questions or assistance. Many users appreciate the helpfulness of the support team and find it beneficial to have access to assistance while using the software.

Overall, users find Balsamiq to be an easy-to-use tool for wireframing, especially for quick prototyping and creating basic wireframe concepts. It is considered a good option for beginner designers and teams working with difficult stakeholders. However, some users mention that as users progress in their careers and require more advanced prototyping tools, they may need to explore alternatives to Balsamiq.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 30)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a Product Manager, I use Balsamiq to create Low low-fidelity mockups of the UI Screens to visually orient the Cross-Functional Teams of the Proposed Solutions. The solution in terms of new features is created post due diligence of the Business Problem Statements and is shared with the cross-functional team to get their agreement on clarity in problem statement and scope. Balsamiq helps in this process to make the cross-functional teams aware of the UI solution & scope way before the actual high-fidelity wireframes are created.
Ming Hon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Balsamiq for a range of applications. Firstly, I use it for ideation and creating mock ups to flesh out ideas. Secondly, I use it to create wireframes for quick communication with clients. Lastly I use it for verification and collaboration with clients. I find that it is much more effective for requirements elicitation to have something visual drawn up and Balsamic is fast and easy.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Balsamiq is used in my organisation to assist in the development of systems. Usually in the early stages of development, we will use Balsamiq to mock up screen designs / prototype the UI / UX of the system. We also use it to mock up changes as part of a change request or new screens when the system is in the maintenance phase. It is an excellent product that makes it very easy to quickly produce high quality mock ups and prototypes. It is used in the development team of the IT services department.
March 02, 2020

Balsamiq is Sweet

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Multiple people at my company use this for software design mockups. We've used it to gain approval for the pages in a customer's portal, including how customers would be funneled and traverse them (depending upon their goals), and how processes would work through APIs we are developing. For this type of design, we previously used Visio.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, we use Balsamic to quickly create wireframes that “feel” like wireframes. In other words, we use Balsamic to create designs that communicate the idea of a design to stakeholders without presenting a design that looks “finished.” The benefit to this is that our stakeholders don’t get too tied to what a potential finished design may look like, so they can contribute big-picture feedback that helps us create a high-fidelity wireframes that answer their needs. When we offer stakeholders more polished designs earlier in the design process, we find that they get too wrapped up in the details and end up offering feedback that is less relevant to solving the design need.
John Rougeux | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Balsamiq to create quick mockups for website design. This process tends to cover rough drafts, copy, layout, image needs, and other high-level ideas. It's much faster than using a more technical product and the fact that it's "low res" by design helps collaborators focus on high-level feedback and not get caught up in minutia.
Craig Orser | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We create a great deal of affiliate properties, and since the business case comes from marketing, we often need to describe mockups in detail to our in-house design team. Balsamiq helps us standardize the design process and give an even means of communication from marketing to design channels with little risk of misinterpretation or conjecture.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized

Balsamiq is simply a quick way of drawing out your idea and is easy to pick up and put down. When you launch Balsamiq, your previous "Mock-ups" are ready and waiting.

Its great for mapping out a system diagram, but excellent for application/web development. Each item you add to the page has a "Link" function will allow you to link this to another mock-up. This means that you can mock up a website then when you preview it, all of the links work and take you to other pages. The beauty of it is that you do not have to be a web developer to make a great mock-up. We find it very useful to plan our ideas and then hand our mock-ups over for them to develop.

Ben Seigel | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Balsamiq for low fidelity wireframes early in the design process. Because of its intentionally ugly approach (Comic Sans, anyone?), it allows us, and the client, to focus on layout and not get distracted by colors, fonts, or other design elements that come later.
Elizabeth Coppinger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Balsamiq is primarily used by our UX department to wireframe concepts prior to design.Creating wireframes in black and white before moving into the design phase helps us (and our clients) focus on the user flows and the on-page content rather than colors and graphics. We find that this leads to more thoughtful, effective final products. Balsamiq is also a great way to create quick mock-ups of existing pages to facilitate problem-solving conversations with clients.
Alexis Medvedeff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have been using Balsamiq as a prototyping tool at the Product department. Being a small software startup this allowed us to make low fidelity prototyping very fast. It has been great for showing users the basic functionality of new features and iterate rapidly with the feedback. It's also perfect for the development team to understand the basic idea and complement it with some written specifications.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've used Balsamiq off and on for a while. First while working on the design of a new user interface for a software system for a defense contractor. The software functionality was quite complex, and needed significant amounts of prototyping and iteration. Balsamiq allowed us to prototype the functionality and general layout on each screen without getting very attached to any particular look and feel. This helped significantly with iterating designs from a functional standpoint while separating out any distractions of particular colors and aesthetics. I'm currently using Balsamiq to prototype a GUI interface for wind speed monitoring equipment that we are using.
Eliz Marvic Melicio Carvajal | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Balsamiq is currently used in the Software Development department, as a design tool. We rely on the tool to design screens that are discussed with the internal users, the versions of the screens are made and it is possible to assemble a whole process with all the screens and it is shown as a presentation for the final approval before starting to develop.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Balsamiq is being used in the business in multiple departments and by multiple people, mainly in design, product and project teams. The tool helps to communicate ideas and flows in a quick and effective manner. Balsamiq wireframes are often attached to design briefs which makes the whole creative process much more efficient and successful.
February 01, 2018

Balsamiq - Easy Peasy

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The analyst team uses Balsamiq regularly to wireframe use cases for business review and approval of concepts. The real gain is translating and throwing back to the business their requests as drawings, "You mean like this, with a drop down? No? Oh, those are called radio buttons; no problem." Ensures a common understanding.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Balsamiq is used in an Interface Prototyping class at Georgia Tech, the class is meant to provide skills/training for a professional career in UX design. Every semester about 20 students register for the class with different levels of understanding of design and level of comfort with manual sketching. Balsamiq is a tool that the students in the class are offered to do their assignment in case the students are not comfortable with their hand sketches and would like a more refined version of their sketch. It is pointed out that Balsamiq doesn't help overcome the need for sketching - as that is still the best way to think rapidly - it is just a way to present some final designs for feedback.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company purchased Balsamiq software after using the free trial. It was mainly bought for wireframing for a new website we were creating for a new software platform. It's mainly used by the marketing department to relay the vision for the new website to the developer team overseas.
February 24, 2017

Cooking Up Quick Mockups

Grant Wilkins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Balsamiq is software being used by the UX Design team for the e-commerce channel of Northern Tool + Equipment. Balsamiq provides a great way for us to quickly create mockups and prototypes to share with other members of our team and project stakeholders. The style of Balsamiq elements intentionally looks cartoony. This helps communicate to others that it's a work in progress and not a finished pixel perfect mockup.
Pooja Sawant | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Balsamiq is used in our organization for creating wireframes usually in the early stages of the design phase. Whenever there is a need to create rapid prototyping and/or getting feedback. We use it in our creative department. Mainly, during collaborative sessions where the creative team works on them and we need feedback from our clients. It typically addresses any redesign problems that we may have or could face.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used Balsamiq in one of my projects with my previous employer. This product is used by almost all the engineering teams which focus on designing the front-end portal applications. It is basically used to design and structure your thoughts in the form of wireframes which can be further leveraged by the software developers.
Jordan Sakowitz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Balsamiq within the product management department to create wireframes that will be used for requirements documentation. We find it to be a good alternative to Photoshop or Illustrator for quickly mocking up layouts and workflows, where the visual design is secondary to determining which components are needed on a page, and where they should go. This is much quicker to implement than a full Photoshop/Illustrator mockup, and much more useful than trying to describe requirements in words to the developers.
Abbie Cataldo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
UX designers use it at their discretion depending on the situation and need of the project. Sometimes designers opt for more visually stimulating tools. However, I use and encourage the use of Balsamiq to put together a basic design solution to communicate with engineering and product team members. I think having a quick way to wireframe without the "noise" of colors and highly polished design elements is important to starting a conversation.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Our team uses Balsamiq to get high fidelity napkin sketches put together. We have a team of key stakeholders that are spread across the country and having the ability to create, share, markup and version has been tremendously valuable. Having Balsamiq helps us all envision the same end in a way that using only words tends to leave too much open to interpretation.
Return to navigation