Mockups and Rapid Wireframing Tool
4.4/5 (259 reviews)Balsamiq Mockups allows software designers and developers build great software by letting them easily sketch out their ideas, then quickly collaborate and iterate over them.
Mockups offers the same speed and rough feel as sketching with a pencil, but with the advantage of the digital medium: enlarging containers is just a drag operation, rearranging elements doesn’t require starting over, and your wireframes will be clear enough that you’ll be able to make sense of them tomorrow.
Pros
Ease Of Use.
Quick Search.
Default Icon set.
The switch between Wireframe and Sketch i modes easier.
I personally like the linking between the pages.
Cons
Designing the interface for Mobile Skins, and apps for Apple Watch seems to be a show-stopper. This has to be addressed.
At times the screen resolution doesn't supports to take the screen shot from a laptop and to use it in the Balsamiq tool.
I just love using Balsamiq! It makes it really easy and fast to build your mockups. I have use it for both desktop and mobile apps with very good results. Clients usually love its friendly appearance. Since the project can be exported as an interactive PDF (if you programmed any interactions), you can show your clients a simulation of the UX and they just love that. Anyone can program this interactions using the software, you do not require any previous experience, it is just a matter of connecting slides, similar to programing a Power Point presentation. 100% recommended.
Pros
I absolutely adore this tool and have done it for more than five years now. I discover it when I was working as an intern at Intel, and I just fell in love with it. Have use it ever since for a lot of projects that involve interface and user experience design. It is the most intuitive tool, extremely simple but also extremely efficient. It takes almost no time to understand how to use it, it is as simple as dragging and dropping elements from a wide menu to your canvas and start arranging them the way you want your interface to look like. It has a lot of elements to build your design and you can "program" them so that you can simulate user interactions. It makes it so easy to build your mockups and on top of that it is extremely fun to use. If you don´t believe me, try it, you can download a free 30 days trail version. It is available both as a desktop app and online, which is a great option if you are working with a team and multiple people need to access to the files. You can convert it to a PDF version once you are done with the project, which makes it really easy to show it to your customers, peers, clients, etc.
Cons
I know is going to sound like a lie, but I honestly don´t have any complains about this software. If I had to name one, I guess it would be the price, but is not really that expensive and it is totally worth it.
This is an efficient and fast program for creating mockups and brainstorming ideas. Easy to use with many features that play a very important role as the beginning point before refining the final design or idea. Also, it's a significant time saver, unlike using paper to illustrate you ideas and eventually waste a lot of time, this program, with its drag and drop wirefram, would allow the users and designers to take control and focus more on details
Pros
Balsamiq-Mockups is a software, made specifically for developers and designers to be able to design layouts and screen mockups. In this article, we are going to illustrate the pros and cons of the program, as well as giving an overview of the software's experience from an end-user's perspective.
1- Easy To Use This is a very quick to learn program, unlike like other programs in the same category where you have to go on courses to learn how to use it. Also, it's got a very simple and user-friendly interface to get you started right away.
2- Light Balsamiq-Mockups is a very light and fast program, yet very efficient. It has a drag and drop feature that is smooth, effective and saves a lot of time.
3- A Variety Of "ready to use" Components Also a time saving factor. It translates brainstorming ideas to the screen in no time. with its wide variety of ready to use components or templates, will save the user a lot of time wasted drawing or creating something from scratch.
Cons
1- Multiple Display Screens The size of the canvas could be improved, as it could be an issue if the user would like to draw multiple screens
2- Not Dynamic Enough The program only exports to certain file formats, which is inefficient to many users.
3- Built-in Shapes If the user wants to build something custom from scratch, Built-in shapes might be a bit restricting. This is definitely an area of improvement to this program.
Quick wireframing and mockups without having to go on a course to use it. A great way to get your ideas down and shown around.
Pros
This is my go-to wireframing tool when I just need to get an idea down on something more than paper.
It's simple to use thanks to the drag and drop interface, with plenty of predetermined UI options like forms, buttons, menus, pickers, etc.
It's also ideal for presenting interactive prototypes to clients thanks to the linking feature and full-screen presentation option. I also love the option of "sketch" or "wireframe" so you can make it your work look like a quick draft or a clean wireframe.
While there's a short learning curve to use this product, there's tons of help to be found over at the Balsamiq website. I got plenty of tips and tricks to use Balsamiq more efficiently from their blog posts.
Cons
The UI library could use a bit of an update. It would also be good to customize them more than just resizing, especially for picky clients who want a hi-fi mockup. Changing the color of the dropdown buttons or changing the button background color AND text color, for example. If I could double-click on an element and then be able to select specific things, it would be perfect.
It would also be useful to add another font option. Just having one font for the entire project is rather limiting when trying to recreate a client's website as closely as possible to sell them on the new UI design.
Overall, Balsamiq is sort of like the "quick and dirty" version of more advanced wireframing tools. It's fast and easy to use but may seem like a downgrade if you're used to more high-end programs.
Hi Jenny and thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.
I've added your vote for the different features/options you have mentioned but feel free to reach out directly if you have any additional input. It's always very helpful for us to hear it! [email protected]
-Virgin
Does the job quickly and efficiently, great to have collaboration and prototyping capabilities.
Pros
I mainly use Balsamiq to wireframe ideas, it's light and fast for the job. I like how you can quickly translate ideas to screen in no time in black and white. I use it mostly to create wireframes to present the ideas quickly with the team and brainstorm on top of it. It has ready to use components for different form factors so you don't need to draw/create anything from scratch, just drag and drop. In case you need to run a quick paper prototype usability test, just print your screens and you are good to go.
Cons
Though it is a robust tool to work in silos, it misses the collaboration part. In the cloud age, the expectation is to quickly add team members and take feedback on the flow, structure or the solution itself in real-time. Default small canvas size is also an issue if you need to draw multiple screens, you need to manually configure the canvas size as per your need. Also to make things interactive you need to export the screens in PNG format and use another prototyping tool to connect them all.
Hi Ashish and thanks for sharing your thoughts!
We definitely agree that collaboration is essential for most teams these days and we recently added many ways to collaborate in real-time in our new web version. More details here: https://docs.balsamiq.com/cloud/collaborating/
About linking your wireframes together, you can actually do it directly from our tool: https://docs.balsamiq.com/cloud/linking/
Hope this helps!
-Virgin
Personal - $12 /month
Starter - $24 /month
Team - $49 /month
Agency - $99 /month
Enterprise - $249 /month
Unlimited Active Projects - $999/month
A Single User License – $79
Plugins for Google Drive, Confluence, JIRA, FogBugz & XWiki - from $5/month
Below are some frequently asked questions for Balsamiq.
Balsamiq offers the following pricing plans:
Starting from: US$12,00/month
Pricing model: One Time License, Subscription
Free Trial: Available
Personal - $12 /month
Starter - $24 /month
Team - $49 /month
Agency - $99 /month
Enterprise - $249 /month
Unlimited Active Projects - $999/month
A Single User License – $79
Plugins for Google Drive, Confluence, JIRA, FogBugz & XWiki - from $5/month
Balsamiq offers the following features:
Balsamiq has the following typical customers:
Large Enterprises, Mid Size Business, Small Business
Balsamiq supports the following languages:
English
Balsamiq has the following pricing plans:
One Time License, Subscription
We do not have any information about what devices Balsamiq supports
Balsamiq integrates with the following applications:
Atlassian Confluence, JIRA Software, Jira Service Desk
Balsamiq offers the following support options:
FAQs, Forum, Knowledge Base, Online Support, Phone Support, Video Tutorials
Daily I use this tool to validate the user interface. Whenever there is a use case which I need to resolve in our product, I directly open this tool and start scratching. Yes, I start from the scratch, by having the components separated as a collage. Then I skin the UI by placing them in the positions which looks subtle and usable. Skinning the UI with this tool is easier. Just pick and play and the simplicity of this tool is THE key thing that I like in this tool. Minimized UI is something that we can achieve by splitting the UI into different frames. We can place the components in our desired place to check if customers can feel the importance of the applied element in the page that we are building. We can easily put ourselves in the user's shoes and think from their perspective to check if we are working on a usable interface.
Moreover, the linking between the pages/tiles help us to see how the transition between each pages looks like. I usually go with RAW prototypes by scribbling in my notes. After I started using the Balsamiq tool, I go ONE STEP BEYOND scribbling. Yes, I do mocks and share with my visual designers to think through the page/feature that we want to build. This has helped our designers to a great extend. The time of making them understand the flow and designs has drastically come down. Also, the number of iterations has minimized which in turn has improved the quality of the designs that we are converging. of course, the productive has improved a lot in terms of peer-to-peer level convergence.