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When you need to create rough mockups, Balsamiq is the fastest choice.
December 19, 2018

When you need to create rough mockups, Balsamiq is the fastest choice.

John Rougeux | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Balsamiq

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.
  • Creating layouts and mockups to get a rough feel for how something looks.
  • Quickly getting your ideas on paper.
  • Preventing you from overthinking design details and keeping you focused on the big picture.
  • No collaboration ability, would be much stronger if web-based.
  • Support for images is awkward and a bit clumsy.
  • No ability to share files via the web.
  • Faster iteration time on website development.
  • Little time spend learning new tools.
  • Low cost of software.
OmniGraffle can get you to the same place as Balsamiq will, but it will take you longer. Balsamiq has more built-in elements that help you create mockups very quickly. With OmniGraffle, though, you'll be spending more time creating elements by hand. And because OmniGraffle is so precise, it encourages you to create more exact mockups. But with Balsamiq, it feels more appropriate to create something fast and loose.
Balsamiq is great if you're a non-designer and want to share ideas with people who will be executing design or front-end development. It's also good for getting feedback from non-designers as well - the fact that you can only create "crude" mockups helps the people you're sharing with give comments on fundamental issues like content and layout and avoid getting bogged down in fine design details.