Great ideas don’t just happen. You need to channel your brain into generating as many ideas as possible, and that’s where the best free wireframe tool comes in. By working out how best to put your idea into practice, you develop further ideas and create a solid plan of action. Here’s our pick of the best free wireframe tools — whether you prefer digital or analog — so you can channel your ideas and bring even bigger ones to life.
In this post, i will show you the best out there!
Balsamiq Mockups
With a free trial of 30 days and a basic plan starting from $12 per month, Balsamiq offers a browser-based Web UI mockup tool. It has everything you need to create a simple prototype like a collection of icons, buttons, frames, text generator and other elements. There is also a toggle button that lets you switch between a sketch like a layout and the real interface.
Protopie
Just like Proto.io, this tool allows interactive prototyping without any coding knowledge. Apart from applying all the latest styling features in your design, you can also control the sensor of smart handheld devices like tilt, touch sensors, sound etc. in your prototypes.
Apart from the free trial version, the basic edition starts from $79.20 for only 1 user. If you are planning to purchase multiple licenses, the pricing starts at $99.
Justinmind
Justinmind is a Web UI mockup tool that allows you to create a clickable and functional prototype or wireframe. It offers downloadable software which is free for 30 days. After which you have to pay $19 per month for the basic plan. You can create every UI aspect that you need in your site, like dropdowns, toggle animations, add shadows and other effects in your web elements and create a prototype for desktop as well as handheld devices.
Flinto
This is a Mac-based WebUI mockup tool popular among designers worldwide. You can create dynamic prototypes having animated transitions, customized scrolling, sound effects, and other features. You can also export the prototype as a recorded video or GIF and present it to your stakeholders.
Apart from the free trial, the pricing starts from $99 for a single user with a year of free updates.
Proto.io
Proto.io is a feature-rich Web UI mockup tool that provides a 15-day trial plan after which, the basic plan starts from $29 per month for a single user. If your aim is to showcase all the UX features which you want to add in your website, including animations, this is an free wireframe tool that gives you the liberty to create a dynamic prototype.
TemplateToaster
TemplateToaster is a robust desktop application able to handle heavy design work. With an interactive interface, it allows you to create responsive websites that are SEO-friendly as well.
The trial version provides unlimited usage with limited features, while the standard and professional editions are priced at $49 and $149 respectively.
Wireframe.cc
For creating a static wireframe, this is one of the best tools to try. You can sketch your single page prototype for free. While the premium version provides you a private account and allows you to create multiple pages and export them in different formats. The premium plan starts from $16 per month for a single user and for $99 per month, you will have access to unlimited accounts and features.
Sketch
This WebUI mockup tool is popular among designers who prefer to work in MacOS. The reason behind its popularity is its simplicity. Undoubtedly, the tool is more intuitive than Adobe Photoshop and makes prototyping an easier and less time-consuming job. If you have the idea ready, you can make it alive by just “Sketch”-ing it.
For personal usage, the pricing starts from $99 for a single user with $89 for additional devices.
Adobe XD
This is a free Web UI mockup tool available for both Mac as well as Windows. It allows you to create a static wireframe and while collaborating with your team, provides you with the option to create flowcharts, sitemaps as well as storyboards. If you want to access the premium features, you will have to pay a basic monthly charge of $19.99.
Adobe XD is a powerful prototyping tool that allows you not only to create a mockup for your website but also build a fully-functioning prototype based on your mockup. The tool makes it possible to preview a mockup on different screen sizes such as mobile, tablet, desktop. This is useful when you need to test how your site looks like on different mediums.
HotGloo
This is an HTML based prototyping tool, where you can save your projects offline or export them as HTML for presenting to the stakeholders. It is compatible across all devices and operating systems and provides the option for team collaboration where you can share a link to make your project viewable to your team members.
The tool offers a free trial of 7 days, after which the basic plan starts from $13 per month, billed annually where the tool can be used by 4 users simultaneously.
Froont
This is a free browser-based WebUI mockup tool used by TechCrunch, Wired and many other organizations. For designing single page responsive websites, the tool is perfect. Apart from providing a visual drag and drop editor, it also enables the designer to add behavioral animations in their prototypes. There is a trial period where you will get to enjoy all the features, after which the basic plan starts from $17 per month, billed annually. If not upgraded, the plan is downgraded to free plan with limited features.
UXPin
Providing a free trial of 7 days and after that a charge of $17.10 per month, UXPin gives you the liberty of viewing the work of your team members, their contributions, comments, and action. Not only can you create an interactive wireframe from the list of organized elements, but you can also create documentation parallelly.
Axure
This is another free Web UI mockup tool that allows you to create an interactive prototype with functional elements like clickable buttons or dropdowns with animated effects. With a 30 day free trial and a basic plan starting from $29 per month, you can also add complex animations like table filtering and list sorting.
Framer
Trusted by organizations like Airbnb and Dropbox, Framer is the solution for creating everything, starting from websites to mobile applications in MacOS. You can even make your own custom icons and finely tune them using a path editor and other Illustrator tools.
The tool offers a 14-day free trial after which the premium plan starts from $12 per month.
UX-App
This is another free WebUI mockup tool meant for designers who want something for rapid prototyping. Apart from adding stunning effects and events on your design, you can also invite your team to comment on it and share it via a link and export to PNG or HTML format.
The browser-based tool provides a free trial without any need to log in, while with $65, you will get a lifetime subscription.
Invision
Invision provides a cloud-based Web UI Mockup tool that allows you to design wireframes for desktop as well as handheld devices. What makes it special is an inbuilt collaboration tool where your teammates can share their feedback along with an intuitive and sleek interface. It even allows testers to navigate through the prototype and find out if all the navigations and links are working as expected. The tool is free for one project but for creating multiple projects the pricing starts from $15 per month.
Mockplus
Mockplus is an all-in-one platform powering design. It can help you create a mockup in minutes. It comes with more than 3,000 icons and nearly 200 components. Designers use the intuitive WYSIWYG editor to drag & drop all required components in canvas. Mockplus allows designers to test on native devices instantly. You can check a complete list of Mockplus features.
Website mockup for mobile devices in Mockplus
Mockplus has one interesting feature. Each project has its own QR code that can be scanned from a mobile device, and this will make your design immediately available on the device. Viewing your mockup on your phone is as easy as taking a photo.
Platforms: Mockplus is available for free download on Windows & Mac OS and Android & iOS devices
Free plan details: The free plan allows creating an unlimited number of projects but only for a single user. This makes Mockplus a perfect solution for solo designers.
Moqups
Moqups is a web-based tool that allows you to create wireframes, mockups, diagrams and prototypes. It has a very interesting onboarding experience — it doesn’t ask you to create an account right from the start. As soon as you click at a big CTA button on its homepage, you’ll see a Moqups editor.
First screen users see when they try to use Moqups for the first time.
The editor itself is very intuitive. As a user, you can create a mockup using any object from the rich collection of objects (anything from buttons or generics shape to a specific widget for iOS/Android).
Platform: Moqups is a web-based product
Free plan details: The free plan offers 1 project (limited to 300 objects) and 5MB of storage. It means you can’t have more than 300 objects on a canvas.
Conclusion
When you are designing a website, mobile app or any other interface for your users, the first step is to sketch ideas, create wireframes for your layout and basically do something that helps you visualize where all your different elements will go. For this purpose there are a lot of digital tools that will help you fill in the best design for your product. Some are premium, however many are free to use.