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October 04, 2019
Gliffy is a great alternative to Visio. I use it in my side consulting gigs to create process flows, charts, diagrams, wireframes, and organizational and project hierarchy diagrams. It's not perfect and there are definitely better tools available, but free is great. I can also share Gliffy diagrams with other users and collaborate, which is nice.
- Gliffy is a great alternative if you need to create easy to understand process flows, diagrams, wireframes, and organizational charts.
- The free version works for easy and simple diagrams, but you need to understand that your documents will be public, which is not ideal.
- The paid version is still much less expensive than Visio at $7.99 a month. That will also give you additional abilities not available in the free version.
- Callouts for comments are really nice. I can make a comment on a diagram and it's called out with a big orange dot. There isn't any guessing on what piece of the diagram the comments relate to.
- The only reason I use Gliffy is because I can use the free version, and it's always in a pinch, honestly, if someone needs a professional-looking process flow. I'd much rather use Visio, but it just depends on the needs of my client. I've gotten away with sketching process flows in a notebook, taking a picture, and sending that too. It just depends on client expectations. But if I had a short engagement with a client (less than two weeks) and we needed to collaborate, and I wasn't looking to spend budget on a tool, Gliffy would work great (the trial is 14 days).
- The Visio import doesn't work great. Everything is brought over usually without issue, but you'll spend time reformatting.
- The import images feature isn't as user-friendly as I'd like. It's not hard to figure out but takes a minute to understand how my image was imported, and then how to drag it onto the canvas. If I click the image upload button and select my image, I want to just import the image once I select the image, not put it in a staging area and then drag it over.
We use Gliffy to easily create diagrams and process flows to help others understand the steps necessary in our enhancement submission process. Gliffy lets you get down to business without opening an account. Create your diagram first, worry about saving it later. The first thing you'll see when you start working in the Flash interface is a large dialog inviting you to pick a template. These are subdivided into nine categories, spanning the gamut from web design and Venn diagrams to flowcharts and UML (Universal Modeling Language, used in programming).
- Ease of use
- Templates make getting started fast and simple
- Intuitive Flash interface makes it easy learn for beginners
- The limitation on the color customization of the diagrams.
- There are bugs in the view via web browsers like Google Chrome
- Should provide an ability to download diagrams in various available formats
May 29, 2019
We use Gliffy as an add on in our Google Doc templates in G-Suite. Gliffy offers us a bit of flexibility when we are using flowcharts to describe processes and other similar applications. Gliffy, offering a better low-cost solution than competitors, (lucid charts etc) is sufficient for most of our charting applications.
- Low-cost quick solutions
- Basic, professional looking flowcharts & org charts
- Great integration into Google Docs & G-Suite
- The shapes library isn't as large as some competitors
- Not ideal for finely-detailed work (I switch to other products when laying out circuits/schematics etc)
Gliffy is a tool used across the organization in a variety of capacities, from modeling user interfaces to process and data modelling. There is heavy use in the solutions engineering and best practices teams as they work daily with customers to understand their current business challenges (process, data etc.) and brainstorm with them to improve future states. Gliffy is a tool most if not all of those teams use to visualize these discussions in real time. Gliffy diagrams also serve as a great reference post call and in subsequent discussions.
- The drag & drop interface enables ideas to take shape very quickly. I can ease model discussions live as they are happening and our customers are often impressed with how fast we can accurately represent their processes, data architectures, and organizational priorities
- Once diagrams are complete, it's fairly easy to share via export to JPG or creation of a share link. As I mentioned in the introduction, I will create share links for all of my diagrams and share them with customers and internal sales teams as an ongoing reference. I have also recently started using the comments to gather feedback from view-only roles on models created, which is nice
- The pre-made templates provide a great starting point for visualizing common business discussions. I use 5-10 diagram objects frequently and having them pop up as "most used" makes creating fast. I'm also keen on making the diagram look good, so I'm thankful Gliffy has implemented a grid and alignment tools to make layout of objects straight forward.
- 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.
February 01, 2019
We use Gliffy for a number of reasons. The biggest one was visualizing our Org Chart and using colors, etc., to add emphasis and help us make decisions. We also use it to quickly visualize workflows for various systems and processes. Typically it's used by our operations team and hasn't been used outside of that team, at least not often. That's not a knock of Gliffy but more of a reflection for how we operate.
- 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.
- I would love to see Gliffy have some kind of integration that allows us to automatically update our org chart. I can see why that would be difficult, but if they could do that I'd be having Gliffy tattoos and name my dog Gliffy.
- Offline usage, of course, isn't really there. Minor for a world always connected, but that would be a nice to have.
- Honestly there isn't really anything major to knock Gliffy for. It's a great solution overall.
February 14, 2019
Gliffy is being used in our organization of about 200 by about 60 team members in IT. The main problem is addresses we embedding workflows, diagrams and work break down structures within company wide confluence pages. The organization needed a solution outside of Visio that was easy to use, required little training and was able to be editable within confluence in a single pane of operation.
- Gliffy makes use of its templates and tutorials very very well. Out of the box, it is easy to use and does not require stopping your production workflow to get your staff up to speed. The support on their side and videos make this easy to use and produce buy-in from team members.
- Gliffy's plug into confluence is very strong. It feels as if its part of the product itself and not even a plugin. The fact it does not pull the workflow down locally to edit it and keeping it within the page during editing really helps limit version issues.
- Gliffy does need to improve its pricing model. I believe they were early to market with their product and offerings, however, with the increased competitors they are falling behind in keeping their prices competitive.
- Gliffy does need to increase its export conversion migration tools. I can understand why they would not want to port items uses by their products to another product but we are in a world where products need to play nice with others in good faith. It can be done, but you do need to check over what you port either incoming or outgoing.
- Would like to see Gliffy allow us to build templates and import them into the repository and have increased the ability to archive those, share and have owners.
We use Gliffy sporadically across the development teams. I personally use it when creating network architecture diagrams for customer-facing documents, and many developers have also created software architecture diagrams to create onboarding and reference documents for bringing new developers up to speed on the product.
- Robust asset libraries to match legacy Visio documents or use familiar iconography from vendor documents/diagrams.
- Integrates with Confluence to make diagramming within our internal wiki simple.
- Decent fine-tuning of illustrations to match size/style constraints of documents (curve radius, text size, etc.)
- Some simple tasks like creating basic elements can involve more work than you'd expect. There are no immediately apparent or customizable shortcuts or hotkeys for some common tasks.
- Needs to have ways to limit the styling of a document. It can be tough to collaborate when someone else will, for example, use a different Firewall icon than the one you've been using.
February 01, 2019
Gliffy has been a very helpful tool with ironing out multi-step processes and sketching out automated marketing workflows before building them.
- Ease of use
- Clean interface
- Lots of options
- I don't have any major issues with Gliffy
We use Gliffy across the organization as a plugin-in to Confluence. With the need to document in diagram, workflow, and picture form Gliffy is able to give us a simple tool to get our point across easily. Given our dependence on information and knowledge storage in Confluence a tool that can be embedded and maintained directly in the pages is invaluable.
- Many templates to utilize as a quick start.
- Embedded inside of Confluence pages.
- Clean visual interface and objects.
- It is not as robust as higher end tools in regards to object options and breadth of visualization options.
- Some versions of Gliffy were buggy and work was lost.
- Always felt like the properties box should be persistent, not a selection each time you needed it displayed.
Gliffy Scorecard Summary
What is Gliffy?
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.
Gliffy Pricing
- Does not have featureFree Trial Available?No
- Does not have featureFree or Freemium Version Available?No
- Does not have featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?No
- Entry-level set up fee?No
| Edition | Pricing Details | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Professional | $7.99 | Per Month |
| Team | $4.99 | Per Month |
Gliffy Technical Details
| Deployment Types: | SaaS |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application: | No |