Wireframes are low-fidelityrepresentations of the layout and functionality of a web or mobile app. They provide a quick and easy way to discuss and review ideas with non tech-savvy stakeholders.
This blog provides you with an overview of the best free wireframe tools used by designers, developers and all other techies.
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.”
Cacoo
A diagramming software for designers, freelancers, and students to brainstorm flowcharts, mind maps, mockups, wireframes, and more.
Price breakdown
- Free 2-week trial
- $6 per user, per month (paid monthly); or $5 per user, per month (paid annually—2 months free!)
What’s great about Cacoo
Cacoo is a great wireframing tool for creating both low- and mid-fidelity wires. It’s cloud based and heavy on team collaboration with quality presentation tools and ways to share your ideas with colleagues. There’s a good amount of templates to choose from as well as other features for creating user flows, prototypes, and diagrams.
Marvel
If you need open-source wireframing software then you can use Marvel for that purpose. It is used for design platform that allows you to do wireframing, prototyping, user testing, and general design. Your design process, in one place.
Its wireframing tool offers templates for the web, Android, iOS, Apple TV, and even Apple Watch.
Features
- Create beautiful interfaces and wireframes in minutes
- Make designs interactive. No code required
- Design to development, automated
- See how users interact with your designs and prototypes
- Centralize feedback and ideas
- Marvel used for collaborative ideas, design feedback, and iterations
Official website: www.marvelapp.com
The free trial is on the shorter side but it offers unlimited users and up to 25 pages or projects— pretty generous! Especially since Cacoo can be a great tool for design tasks other than wireframes, such as flowcharts or user testing.
The downsides to using Cacoo to wireframe
The free version is a bit more limited than the subscription and you can only export projects as PNG files. You also can’t access your work once your free trial ends so you must back it up elsewhere in order to save it. Some users have reported its cloud-based nature to be a bit frustrating as it can lag or malfunction if they’re not using a very up-to-date computer.
Furthermore, there is a bit of a learning curve to using Cacoo as the keyboard shortcuts are not as intuitive as desired.
What are other designers saying about Cacoo
- “Easy to learn and use. Cacoo lets you make fast and great diagrams for many usages.”
- “Using a good computer is needed for flawless function.”
Figma (Clique favorite)
User-review rating: 4.5/5
Type: Web-based, Freemium
Overview: Figma is an all-in-one design platform for UX/UI pros and offers a robust free offering for creating wireframes. It’s starter package is completely free and is one of the most robust free offerings on this list – 3 active projects, 30 day revision history, 2 editors at any time, and unlimited cloud storage.
The first paid tier (which is free for students with a valid school email address) is $12/mo per editor and includes an upgrade to unlimited active projects and version history, custom permissions, private boards, and team collaboration features.
InVision Clique favorite
User-review rating: 4.4.5
Type: Web-based, Freemium
Overview: InVision is an all-in-one wireframing, prototyping, and mockup tool for designers and is one of the most well-known brands in all of wireframing software.
Invision came out of applications, specifically Photoshop (at the time) not having screens that could interact with each other (also why many moved to Sketch). It filled the void of
It does require some sort of external application (we like Sketch) to create the screens to be bought into InVision.
InVision’s free wireframing plan gives individual UX/UI designers the tools create one active prototype or wireframe at anytime. It’s a basic plan designed mostly for freelancers and those not working collaboratively.
The next level of pricing for InVision is $15/mo per user and gives design teams the ability to create up to three projects that can remain active at any time – with full feature access to the InVision app.
Draw.io
User-review rating: 4.3/5
Type: Web-based, Open source
Overview: Draw.io is a completely free and open-source wireframing software that feels similar in UI to Google Docs. It’s a simple layout with powerful features. Simply put, it may be the most robust free offering of any of the free wireframing tools on this list.
Users can export designs to their Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, their desktop, or directly supported integrations including Gliffy, Lucidchart and more. An added benefit is it’s active open-source community that works to fix product bugs and issues, and add new features.
Pencil Project
User-review rating: 4.1/5
Type: On-premise, Open source
Overview: Project Pencil is a completely open-source and free wireframing and prototyping tool. It has an unlimited amount of designs for UX/UI pros to utilize and all of its features come completely free.
The open-source community is another perk, meaning developers are constantly keeping the tool updated with new features and security.
Miro Clique favorite
User-review rating: 4.7/5
Type: Web-based, Freemium
Overview: Miro, which previously operated under the name RealTimeBoard, is an online whiteboarding tool for distribution product and UX teams. A nimble tool for fast prototyping, Miro is extremely collaborative and akin to using an extremely light version of figma.
Miro isn’t as robust as other dedicated prototyping tools, which sounds like a negative, but actually serves as one of its strengths, since its limitations help facilitate faster prototyping, with an experience that feels like sketching on a whiteboard in a virtual room with the rest of your team.
Miro is free for your first three boards, at which point each board costs $3 per-day-logged-in, or you can build unlimited boards for $15 per month per user.
Wireframe.CC
User-review rating: 3.8/5
Type: Web-based, Freemium
Overview: Wireframe.cc is a browser-based free wireframing solution for designers on the go. Accessible anywhere through a browser, it’s a simple and cluster free tool with a sleek UI. The free version allows for users to create one simple wireframe at a time and is equipped with tools to customize the grid layout, typography, canvas size, and more.
The next level for premium pricing is $16/mo per user and allows for unlimited projects and revisions, custom branding, and exporting directly into PNG format.
MockFlow
User-review rating: 3.4/5
Type: Web-based or On-premise, Freemium
Overview: MockFlow is an all-in-one UI tool that offers free mockup and wireframing features in its forever free plan. Its free offering allows for one active UI project at anytime, two reviewers per project for collaboration, feedback, and sharing, and basic wireframing and mockup features.
MockFlow’s entry-level paid package starts at $14/mo per user and includes unlimited projects and reviewers, version history, and MockFlow’s UI asset library.
Balsamiq
A promising free wireframing tool that is continuously thriving. It has fast speed and smart features especially with collaboration projects
Balsamiq builds for founders and business owners, UX professionals, developers, consultants and agencies, product managers and business analysts, anyone getting into UX.
Today, along with regular disease tracking, Balsamiq is a rapid low-fidelity UI wireframing tool, focuses on structure and content.
Features
- Designed for Collaboration
- Sketch-Style Controls
- Clean Wireframes Option
- Quick and easy wireframing tool
- Sophisticated simplicity
- Drag and Drop Simplicity
- Export to PNG or PDF
- Optimized for Speed
- Re-usable Symbols
- Interactive prototypes
- easy to use
Official website: https://balsamiq.com/wireframes/
Conclusion
Wireframing is the process of creating a blueprint or layout for software, webpages or mobile app. It is an essential step in the design process, because wireframes help you to figure out how your website will work before you implement it. All these wireframe tools that I’m going to list below are free and easy to use. You don’t have to be an expert web designer or programmer to create wireframes. It’s alright if you don’t know much about HTML or CSS, you can still use these amazing tools!