Balsamiq FTW!
March 11, 2016

Balsamiq FTW!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Balsamiq

Balsamiq is used by me, the Web Dev, in the IT department of our institution. I use it to design mockups of our external and internal websites during the review and approval process, after which I develop the sites. Balsamiq mockups has saved me a huge amount of time and effort.

Pros

  • The buttons and objects are intuitive.
  • Flexible, easy, and quick. Low learning curve compared to much pricier mockup software.
  • Highly customizable. Ability to design with a high level of granularity, which is key when dealing with older, less-techy stakeholders.

Cons

  • While I understand the comic sans font, I do wish I could use a more professional font because I usually have to explain to stakeholders that they should ignore the font.
  • Stronger right-click context menu functionality would make editing box colors and fonts simpler.
  • Pre-defined responsize-sized templates would be awesome. Just pick a starting screen res and 5 breakpoint templates are displayed...
  • Price tag vs. time it's saved on building full sites; Balsamiq is basically free.
  • Of the 6 months it took for me to single-handedly build our website, 2 were spent building mockup after mockup. Had I had to learn a more complicated piece of software to build those mockups, the project would have taken at least 2 months longer.
  • Balsamiq is a one-time fee rather than the dreaded subscription. It's paid for itself multiple times.
  • Axure
Axure is basically a direct copy of Balsamiq for 4x the price.
Moqups is painful to use and it's a monthly subscription.
Although I have not used Adobe Comp, the learning curve is so high, it cannot even come close to the ease of Balsamiq. And Illustrator and Photoshop for mockups is a joke if you are a designer AND a developer. I don't have time for all that nonsense!
It's particularly well-suited for small-scale projects, but I don't think it would be any less appropriate for large scale projects. I work in a hybrid museum/library/gallery with many stakeholders of varying expertise and Balsamiq has made it easy for me to provide examples to all of them with little fuss.

Comments

  • Virgin Pereira | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Hi there, Thanks a lot for sharing your review! Great to hear that Mockups is helping you with designing your websites. :) We'd love to help with the few pain points that you mentioned: - You can change the font used at any time from the Project Info Panel: https://docs.balsamiq.com/desktop/projectinfo/ - About the right-click options: we'd love to hear more about that, could you reach out to support@balsamiq.com with more details? Only if you have some time of course. :) We are trying to make it useful and simple enough at the same time, so getting input is always a great help. - While we don't have default templates within the tool (I'm adding your vote for this feature), you may want to have a look at Mockups to Go elements. Please find all the details here: https://support.balsamiq.com/resources/mockupstogo/ Hope this helps! Feel free to reach out via support@balsamiq.com if you need anything else. -Virgin from Balsamiq

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