Balsamiq vs Axure

All the Balsamiq UI elements are drawn by hand and have a really nice low-fidelity design.

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.

Balsamiq has a built in library of over 75 built-in user interface components and 187 icons, as well as community generated plug-ins.

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.

You can link together pages to create shareable user demos

You can use common keyboard shortcuts like Shift to select multiple elements or to resize while maintaing proportions, F2 for renaming labels etc.

Allows creation of interactive HTML mock-ups which is accessible for both websites and mobile applications.

Great web options, but you can also save your wire frames out to Word and convert the notes to annotations.

You can create a component (widget) that you can use over and over again.

Available for use on Windows and Mac.

You can set up a project with SVN-like check-in/out system to work with others.

There is a wealth of online training including videos for getting the basics down, a great community to mine, and support team to help assist with more technical details.