Balsamiq vs Adobe XD Comparison

Easy to use with a wide library of object to craft any type of screen prototype from scratch. I would definitely recommend it for newbies in webdesign, UX / UI designers, or anyone who wishes to build a website without mastering other complex design software.

The sketchy style is not suitable for a professional environment and the final result cannot bear the comparison with prototypes designed with other tools in the market like Sketch or Adobe XD.

Hi there and thanks for sharing your thoughts. We just wanted to let you know that the style/skin can be changed to a more polished one from the Project Info Panel, as detailed here: https://docs.balsamiq.com/cloud/overview/#the-project-info-panel Hope this helps! :) -Virgin

Balsamiq has a short learning curve and comes with a simplified user interface,making it easy for new users to understand its work environment. It comes with a great search feature which makes it easy for me to search faster for graphical images needed for my wireframes.

I wish I am able to integrate my Balsamiq with other great design tools like Adobe XD,Invision, and Edraw max pro. which I currently am unable to do. Thereby missing out on ways to make my wireframes better.

Balsamiq is designed at creating rapid, low-fidelity static mockups. It does that very well, and is so easy to use. If you use Balsamiq Cloud, it's also easy to share and collaborate on mockups. The Cloud offering has a nice way to publish the mockups to use as a presentation for business customers. The symbol capability is great, allowing you to re-use components of a mockup across a project and even override the defaults from a symbol. I've seen other tools that fall down at this aspect.

Balsamiq is not intended to create high-fidelity mockups or animation, so it is not comparable to some mockup tools that have those features (Framer, Adobe XD). However, I think the price reflects that. Balsamiq is very affordable for some back-of-the-napkin type mockups that you can throw together quickly.

balsamiq is very intuitive and simple you don't need any design skills or even development skills to work with it. all you need to do is to drag and drop elements and you got your prototype ready in few seconds.

balsamiq is so simple that you can use it to do very complex and sophisticated UI. it can be useful for people who don't have design skills and just want to put transform their ideas into a prototype. But for professionals UX/UI designer they will turn to other tools like sketch or even adobe xd.

Balsamiq è un software con una storia ormai piuttosto lunga, e per anni ha rappresentato la miglior scelta per chi voleva fare sketching di wireframe e prototipi UI/UX. La sua interfaccia fino a qualche anno fa era decisamente la migliore, i template a disposizione e la facilità d'uso ne hanno fatto per anni un punto di riferiemento sul mercato.

L'arrivo di Figma e Adobe XD, che sono sicuramente debitori a Balsamiq per molte delle soluzioni che hanno implementato negli anni, ha reso sempre più difficile pensare a Balsamiq come un concorrente in grado di fornire la stessa facilità d'uso e comodità dei due prodotti di punta in ambito UI/UX. La soluzione cloud based, accessibile via browser, è arrivata tardi rispetto alla concorrenza, lasciandola indietro.Rispetto alle soluzioni Adobe, Balsamiq non può contare sulle stesse integrazioni con i prodotti della casa di San José.

I loved that as soon as I installed it I was able to create my wireframes without any struggles

It does not integrate with other tool like Adobe, Invision or Figma

This is the easiest way to do mockups for for software design. Within a few minutes I can have mockups that I can send out to my team. It quickly aligns, and the designs be edited after feedback. This is the best prototyping tool.

It seems dated that it ran on Adobe Flex. But now they have cloud versions.

I like the limitations of this software. The stripped back and lack of styling allows me to focus my time only on UX. Previously, I have had issues where doing UX in XD or Sketch the client would be trying to make too many visual considerations. Since moving to Balsamiq this has streamlined communications to focusing on interaction points, hierarchy and best practices.

Not a con, but being able to assign labels for titles (H1, H2, H3 etc) would really help improve integration with CRO and SEO specialists. Also being able to have titles with multiple lines of text. A larger and more consistent base of templates would be beneficial - i.e. landing pages, ecomm, brochure sites. Currently there's a lot of app based and molecule based templates and I don't utilise any of these.

You can create prototypes easy and fastest, you have lot of tools to drag and create awesome mockups.

Unfortunately now we have more tools that can generate mockups with better look and feel, you depends to adobe flash media to use it.

Thank you for the review, Luis! We are hoping to be completely Adobe Flash/Air free by the end of the year. Only the desktop apps are left. :) -Brendan

Is easy to use, for fast wireframes is fine, I just tried the windows edition, I'm not sure if there is another version of this sofware, probably don`t, also you are capable to export like an image.

This is the other side of the pro, use some Adobe Productos to work, so, probably you have to consider that, because you have to install another dependencies.

Balsamiq is quick, easy to use and does a good job of prototyping screen design and other UI elements.

Has a dependency on Adobe Air which wants to update almost every time I use the software! Would be good to have more "psudo dev" code-like behaviour built in.

Hi Rod and thanks for sharing your thoughts about our little tool! :) Just wanted to let you know that we're working hard on our next major Desktop version and it will be native (no more Adobe Air). It should be ready this year (2018) but in the meantime, you might want to try out our new web version, Balsamiq Cloud, that is already out: https://balsamiq.cloud/ Any questions, we're here! :) -Virgin

- Make mockups lightning quick - Get approval without nit picking - Very affordable - Runs on all my computers - Easily export for sharing - Import your own graphics

- It could offer additional built-in templates - It requires an update to Adobe Air if you don't use it for a while - Importing media could be a little better - It would be nice if you could integrate pre-built Javascript scripts into the mockups

- Probably the easiest wireframing tool to use - Focused feature set aimed at creating wireframes in the minimum of time - Very quick to learn with some depth for power users - Can be very quick to use for experienced users - Ability to download pre-made components from a central library or share components easily within a project - Much cheaper than some competitors - Very stable application

- Wireframes can look child-like and unprofessional with some settings - Currently based on Adobe Air technology which is outdated - No recent feature releases and no fixed release date for the next version leading to a feeling that the product is not moving forward - Some expected features are still missing such as an easy way to create click-through interactive prototypes

Is good to see that Adobe has finally developed a tool based on UX & UI design. It’s similar to Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop but without the bloat. They are finally putting UX and UI designers first with this tool and building a competitor to Sketch. The Artboard feature of Adobe XD is cool. It is also interesting because the same Adobe XD project helps you to build screens for different platforms (e.g. smartphone + web). I really like the prototyping feature. The software lets you collaborate and give feedback to each other. Because design has a lot of subjective parts to it, this is a great feature for people to give feedback in a collaborative approach.

It’s a little annoying that there aren’t any text editing options. For example, there is no underline option; instead, you must draw each underlines with a stroke. That means you then have to select and group the text with the underline when you want to duplicate or move that element around. It’s weird, and it slows me down. The same is true when changing text to, say, all capital letters, title casing, or anything similar.

I like Adobe XD because it is software that facilitates design of applications for the web, it is a fast tool, I like that I can make designs for different devices and for different types of screen sizes. Adobe XD shows the design in real time, the integration with other software from the adobe range is good such as, Photoshop, Balsamiq, Sketch, Adobe XD allows you to change images, decide colors, modify some shapes, this application allows you to edit, modify, making changes to a UX design is easy, and doesn't require as much programming knowledge.

Something negative about Adobe XD is that, being a relatively new software in the design range, today it does not have a large community behind it, this makes its learning curve a little longer.