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Add to SafariWhen comparing Balsamiq vs Diagrams.net, the Slant community recommends Balsamiq for most people. In the question“What are the best mockup and wireframing tools for websites?” Balsamiq is ranked 2nd while Diagrams.net is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Balsamiq is:
All the Balsamiq UI elements are drawn by hand and have a really nice low-fidelity design.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Low-fidelity UI elements
All the Balsamiq UI elements are drawn by hand and have a really nice low-fidelity design.
Pro Clean and easy to use interface
Balsamiq has a very easy to use drag and drop interface that lets you quickly build and adjust your mockups. The UI is centered around low-fidelity wireframes that help focus the reviews on the core layout and functionality instead of getting hung-up on visual design.
Pro Large & extensible UI element library
Balsamiq has a built in library of over 75 built-in user interface components and 187 icons, as well as community generated plug-ins.
Pro Awesome team collaboration features
myBalsamiq has been built with teams in mind and has a variety of featured to support collaborating on the mockups:
Notifications - Real-time notifications to enable you to keep track of team member actions
Revision Control - All mockups have a revision history to enable reverting to previous versions and keeping track of design decisions.
Skype Integration - Easy to use Skype integration to host design reviews.
Access Control - Access controls allow sharing projects with team members as well as allowing external reviewers to leave comments on the designs.
Pro Usability testing features
You can link together pages to create shareable user demos
Pro 30-day trial available
Pro Keyboard shortcuts
You can use common keyboard shortcuts like Shift to select multiple elements or to resize while maintaing proportions, F2 for renaming labels etc.
Pro Rich functionality for a web-based application
Pro Integrates with multiple cloud storage services
Draw.io offers saving files directly to services such as Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox along with saving to to computer.
Pro Real-time collaboration
Pro Great flexibility customizing text labels
Pro Completely free
Pro There is also a Desktop version
Pro Good list of different output formats
Draw.io supports export for PNG, GIF, JPEG, PDF, SVG, HTML, and XML.
Pro Internet Explorer 6-8 and touch device support
Draw.io works with every browser (even IE 6) without plugins.
Cons
Con Stifling innovation
Doing anything that is not directly supported by Balsamiq's conservative component library is next to impossible. User is forced to think within the corset of yesterday's standards.
Con No easy way to quickly play with the product
Con Import from Visio .vsd is useless
Even simple diagrams get all scattered.
Con Behaves strangely for certain diagram types
For example the snapping function for arrows doesn't work properly for the sequence diagram template.
