Mockup tools are not about providing you with the most realistic wireframes. There are many tools for this purpose. The best mockup tools are the ones that save your time with fast wireframing, content reuse, automatic design generation, easy collaboration and comfortable collaboration environment.
Here are the best out there!
Wondershare Mockitt
In Wondershare Mockitt, designers design and create wireframes, mockups, and prototypes bringing your ideas to life. It is a professional and handy product allowing real-time collaboration with your team. With quick features, you can have more time for thinking and editing. The features of this free UI mockup tool include design, interaction, inspection and discussion, cloud, templates, and enterprise. In the design feature, the designers can use the widget panel to add more creativity to the website design.Try it Free
Pros
- Create a beautiful interface with the widget panel. Drag and drop widgets to the design area quickly.
- Rich templates catering to different industries speed up your design process.
- Useful cloud feature to store designs online and sync with your Windows desktop.
Cons
- It is a paid software with premium features
- Watch tutorials before using the tool.
Compatibility – All platformshttps://www.youtube.com/embed/X5HVZQ9Nii4Try it Free
Moqups
Moqups is a UI streamlined app for free that helps designers to create real-time mockups, wireframes, and prototypes for Windows. It is another UI mockup tool and an all-in-one platform that offers simple, fast, and smart features to collaborate and create designs. In this tool, you can visualize your ideas, explore, and iterate with your team. It is a flexible design solution that allows customization features to suit your workflow. The tool allows designers to work with your team remotely on Cloud. You can easily work with a geographically dispersed team with cloud and sync features. You can upload ready-made templates, designs, and stencils; convert them into prototypes.
Pros
- Drag and Drop features allow importing images from your apps and desktop with ease.
- You can use the ready-made templates for your prototype.
- You can resize, restyle, and rotate objects with smart and dynamic tool features.
Effective Page Management- You can handle projects with powerful page management tools.
Cons
- Several features are locked in the free version. You cannot use the full functions unless you buy a paid version.
- Watch tutorials before using the UI tool.
Compatibility – Windows, Android, iOS, but not Linux
Mockplus
Mockplus is a rapid wireframing/prototyping tool for designers to create interactive wireframes for websites and mobile apps, which enables you to share and test design ideas across PCs and mobile devices from an early stage in the design process.
Price breakdown
- Basic: Free
- Pro: 15-day free trial, $16 per month( Billed annually)
Why should you use Mockplus for faster and easier wireframing?
With a large number of ready-to-use components, icons, UIs and templates pre-installed, Mockplus goes beyond simply providing you the tools to create your wireframe and lends you a hand with your designs. A full set of interactions and animations also make it easy to create more realistic wireframes. It’s also a collaborative tool: Your entire team can work on the same project.
What’s not so good about Mockplus?
Mockplus is much suitable for you to create low- and medium-fidelity wireframes, mockups and prototypes. If you are looking for tools to create high-fidelity designs, it may not be a good option.
What users are saying about Mockplus?
- “Mockplus does what it advertises which is a great thing. No learning curve and free plans that you can check all the features for free. Using the team just an invitation away.”
- “What used to be time-consuming can now be done with the speed of thought, everything is a drag-and-drop away and with the number of components Mockplus has to offer, you will never feel the need of creating one.”
Balsamiq Wireframes
A wireframing tool for creating quick designs, running user testing, and sharing mockups with a design team.
Price breakdown
- Free 30-day trial period
- Pro (single-user license): $89
Why should you use it for wireframing?
One of the many Balsamiq Studios products, Balsamiq Wireframes is a Flash-based wireframing software with an extensive library of UI elements and templates that make wireframing a breeze.
The complexity of the Balsamiq Wireframe library can be a source of great inspiration for designers when producing desktop and mobile wires. Not only does it have many diverse elements, but it’s also easy to learn and use. Most designers describe it as being as simple as dragging, dropping, and arranging elements from the menu onto your canvas until you have the interface you desire.
Balsamiq Wireframes also has built-in presentation tools that make presenting your designs to clients a seamless process.
Where Balsamiq Wireframes falls short
Balsamiq Wireframes is not the best for building larger prototypes and lacks animations or interactive features. Designers wishing to simulate the UX of their software must be able to program interactions themselves and export as an interactive PDF.
This wireframing software is unique in style as the design elements have a hand-drawn appearance to them. This gives your designs a bit of a cartoony feel that may not be desired. Also, it’s important to note that once your free 30-day trial is up, you’ll have to purchase a license to save any of your previous designs.
What other designers are saying
- “Probably the easiest wireframing tool to use. It’s focused feature set is aimed at creating wireframes in the least amount of time possible. Very quick to learn with some depth for power users.”
- “Wireframes can look child-like and unprofessional with some settings.”
Wireframe.CC
A simple, minimalistic wireframing tool for mobile apps and websites that’s easy to learn.
Price breakdown
- Basic: free
- Premium: 7-day free trial, $16 per month (single-user)
What does Wireframe.cc offer?
If you need a quick and efficient tool for putting together some simple wireframes then Wireframe.cc is your best choice.
This web-based wireframe tool is super intuitive as the layout is a bit like drawing items on pencil and paper and cutting and pasting them on to your design. Wireframe.cc made it very easy to turn your mouse into a multipurpose tool. Simply draw your shape on a blank canvas and select what you want it to be from the 9 options on the appearing toolbar.
Wireframe.cc’s design templates are simple with the ability to choose from the mobile landscape, mobile vertical, and webpage. This focus on the basics makes Wireframe.cc a great option when you just need something rudimentary done quickly.
What doesn’t it offer?
Some see the simple nature of Wireframe.cc to be a downside—especially if you are looking to create anything mid-fidelity and up. No animation or interaction options are provided and it also lacks mockup creation, presentation tools, prototyping, screen capture, and feedback management.
It also doesn’t allow for the creation of more than one wireframe at a time so comparing various iterations side-by-side can be difficult. So while this wireframing tool is quick and easy to use, it is a bit limited in features and complexity.
What people are saying about Wireframe.cc
- “I suck at designing. This dead-simple tool allows me to get my web design ideas out.”
- “Quick to start. No installation needed. Minimalistic. Easy to understand for everyone.”
Figma
A cloud-based design platform great for sharing and collaborating among team members.
Price breakdown
- Starter: free (up to two editors and three projects).
- Premium: free for students or $12 per editor/month (unlimited projects).
Why is Figma good for wireframing?
Not all designers would associate Figma with wireframing as many people use it solely for its wonderful prototyping and graphic design features. However, this design tool gives you the freedom to create pretty much any design you want, including wireframes all the way from low- to high-fidelity.
Its open and expansive layout gives you the ability to create many designs within one project. It also gives you the ability to produce many iterations side-by-side, making brainstorming exercises and redesigns super simple. Figma’s design-centered approach makes it a wonderful tool to get your wireframing ideas out quickly by making usually tedious tasks quite easy.https://www.youtube.com/embed/Saz6S1svYns
Are there downsides to Figma?
To be honest, it is difficult to find reasons why Figma wouldn’t be good for wireframing. However, it’s not a tool designed explicitly for creating wires as it has multiple design purposes and functions. So if you are looking for something more specifically designed for wireframing, you might want to look elsewhere—especially if you and/or your design team will need to upgrade to paid versions. You might be paying for more than you really need.
What other people are saying
- “It’s a great tool to share prototypes, wireframes, even other kinds of deliverables such as mood board.”
- “Figma provides all the comprehensive features of a software diagramming tool but with a laser focus on designing user interfaces and user experiences….The price point for large teams can be a bit prohibitive.”
Pencil Project
An open-source graphical user interface tool great for wireframing, mockup creation, and prototyping by both solitary designers and big businesses alike.
Price breakdown
Totally free!
What is Pencil Project good for?
Pencil Project is a downloadable wireframing tool for both Mac and Windows and is also available as a Firefox add-on. Pencil Project has loads of templates to choose from for both mobile and web so you can create many different low-fidelity wires of your interface.
This diverse UX tool has a good amount of interactive elements and is especially noted for its diagramming capabilities. Linking shapes, wireflows, and other flowcharts is made quick and easy with Pencil Project’s “connector” tool and page linking.
Free of charge and intuitive to use, Pencil Project is a great choice for basic wires or beginner designers.
What does Pencil Project lack?
Pencil Project is not the best wireframing tool for big design teams as collaboration features are a bit limited. Users have also noted that the variety of available shapes is a bit light and many designers are left needing to hook up to a more extensive online shapes library.
Other users have noted that Pencil Project feels a bit out of date and could use better-looking features. Furthermore, designers looking for mid- to high-fidelity wireframing capabilities will most likely want to use a different software.
What users are saying
- “I love using Pencil for the initial mock-up of a project. I can work quickly and get the printout to all of my coworkers for input.”
- “Pencil is a little limited in what you can add to your design. They have great options, but sometimes you wish they had more to offer.”
NinjaMock
Collaborative mockup and wireframing application for designing and testing mobile apps and web pages.
Price breakdown
- Free version (one project with 200 elements)
- Personal (three projects, single-user): $6.99/month
Why is NinjaMock great for wireframes?
NinjaMock lives up to its name by making wireframe creation super fast and efficient. It’s simple, quick to learn, and includes many interactive elements for both mobile and desktop.
The speed and intuitiveness of NinjaMock means you can spend less time learning how to work the software and more time getting creative with your wireframes. It’s also available for many platforms including IOS, Android, Windows phones and web.
Sharing and editing designs with clients is also made easy by the ability to produce unique links that can then be shared with customers allowing for real-time collaboration and editing.
Issues you may encounter with NinjaMock
If you’re a smaller company working on multiple projects that require various elements, NinjaMock’s pricing may not be feasible for you. Furthermore, users have reported issues with navigation between mockups and have requested more interactive layouts.
What users are saying about NinjaMock
- “I love the link feature which allows me to navigate through different pages: my customers love the live results!”
- “The major problem is with pricing, it’s a bit high for small companies.”
FluidUI
An intuitive wireframing tool for supported on a wide variety of platforms including mobile Android and iOS.
Price breakdown
- Free version (one project, single-user, 10 pages max)
- Solo (three projects, single-user): monthly, $15/month; yearly, $8.25/month
How FluidUI can help you make great wireframes
FluidUI is all about making great-looking high-fidelity wireframes. The free version offers up to 10 pages of workspace and even allows transitions and gestures between them.
FluidUI is unique among most other wireframing softwares in that it offers a wide variety of interaction elements and animations. Not only that, but it also comes equipped with over 2000 icons, widgets, and design elements that you can customize and drag-and-drop onto your page. Fluid UI puts everything you need for an awesome wireframe right at your fingertips.
What’s not so great about FluidUI
Although FluidUI does its best to give you great wireframing tools for free, their unpaid version is still a bit limited and many designers feel the need to upgrade. Another frustrating aspect to FluidUI is that multiple image upload is not supported, leaving you uploading images one-by-one.
What are FluidUI users saying?
- “I haven’t actually used any other software other than FluidUI but I truly have no reason to! It’s got everything you’d possibly need.”
- “Sometimes it can be a little awkward to position things…although it does get easier with practice.”
Conclusion
If you’re working on the design, development or QA of any web-based application, it’s important to define your mockup beforehand so that everyone stays on the same page. A prototype isn’t just a way to check how something should look. It also serves as a communication tool because visual representation is much easier than text to grasp for other members of the team.