Balsamiq is a wireframing tool that helps lean product teams turn early ideas into clear, actionable direction. The tool helps product managers, founders, and engineers worldwide share concepts, reduce rework, and build better products.
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HotGloo
Score 8.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
HotGloo is an online wireframing and prototyping tool. This solution has been designed for all those engaged in the concept, design and development of web or app projects: project managers, information architects, usability experts, freelancers, concept people, digital agencies, web companies, publishers, web designers, web developers and many more. The vendor’s value proposition is that this solution makes it easy to wireframe web and mobile sites and to collaborate with others due to the…
$13
up to 4 users, 2 active projects, unlimited reviewers
Pricing
Balsamiq
HotGloo
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Group
$13
up to 4 users, 2 active projects, unlimited reviewers
Team
$27
up to 10 users / 6 active projects / unlimited reviewers
Agency
$54
up to 20 users / 15 active projects / unlimited reviewers
Enterprise
150 +
More users and projects, priority support. Get in touch for an individual quote.
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Balsamiq
HotGloo
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Pay per project, not per user
The billing period starts on the day you upgrade from the free trial to a paying plan. If you pay by credit card the service is billed in advance on a monthly basis and is non-refundable. There will be no refunds or credits for partial months of service, upgrade/downgrade refunds, or refunds for months unused with an open account. If you do choose to cancel your account in the future, you will never be charged again, but you are responsible for charges already incurred up until your cancellation. For monthly recurring payments we accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express through our online payment system. You can also prepay any account for 12 months with credit card. In certain cases we also take money transfers – please contact us beforehand if you want to use this option.
Balsamiq is excellent for creating low-fidelity wireframes where the designer is trying to communicate a general, loose idea of how the design should look. Because of this, it should be used early in the design stage, when there are still many decisions to be made about how the final design should look like. However, it is less suitable for situations where one wants to communicate a more final-appearing version of a design. There are limited functionalities (which appear intentional, as the Balsamiq website says that the tool "has 'just enough' prototyping capabilities, but not more”). Because of this, it is likely wise to choose a more high-powered tool, such as Axure, to create a fuller design toward the later stages of the design process
HotGloo is well suited to a dispersed team of users who are looking to collaboratively wireframe and prototype their latest web solutions. It's extremely intuitive and comes with a large widget library meaning the newest user can be up and running very quickly. In browser access means it's extremely accessible whether you're working in a room together or across the country at home.
Ease of use: Balsamiq is the easiest wireframing platform I've ever used. You will be able to learn how to work with the drag-and-drop interface in less than a day. Use familiar resizing controls (click and drag) to control elements. Familiar keyboard shortcuts for grouping, duplicating, undoing, and more make the platform incredibility intuitive.
Cartoony: I think Balsamiq's intentionally "cartoony" style is great. Again, this helps clients focus on the "what" on the page without spending too much time worrying about the actual look. We have a content-first approach. We always want to nail down the user-flow first before we delve into graphics.
Symbols: The symbols library did not exist when I first started using Balsamiq 7 years ago, but it's a great addition. Assign design elements to your symbols library within a project for easy re-use throughout multiple pages. This is a great way to maintain consistency in your design and reduce re-work. For example, if you copy-paste a footer on each page of your 10 page design, you will need to go back and update all 10 versions if you make a change. If you use the symbols library, you would only need to update it once.
Presentation: Presentation mode allows you to display a full-screen presentation. This is extremely helpful when walking through mocks with clients.
Linking: You can link elements of pages in a project together. This can help you illustrate functionality.
The project can get a bit laggy around 70-100 pages (on a MacBook Pro). It didn't happen to me but I've seen it in a presentation of a project and it froze in a moment and had to restart the app.
I don't find the design of the components very "pretty". It's totally subjective but still wanted to mention it. I know this is the style they have had since the beginning and it's almost something that identifies Balsamiq, but I think it can be improved.
Balsamiq is just so simple, intuitive and fast at creating wireframes. It has just the right amount of UI elements to get the job done without weighing you down with decision fatigue. If you really need something that is not there, you can either draw or import your own elements. I also like the way that you can organize your assets for reuse.
Very intuitive and easy to understand. It only takes minutes to get the hang of it and get back to work. For new analysts (like, brand new, fresh out of school) it's not difficult and they need minimal to no hand-holding. The training content that is embedded is easy to find and use.
In the past I have just used HTML to mock up UIs, but as I've previously mentioned this can cause problems with user's thinking that the system is already built. Balsamiq is far quicker and easier to create wireframes, it is more collaborative and the resulting wireframes cannot be confused with a real system as they have a hand drawn feel to them.
HotGloo is tailored to this use case and therefore considers the right user needs. I think one strength is that it focuses on the main aspect. There are other tools, that have more extensive features. However, those are then more complex and not so well made for the specific work I use it for. Thus, I like HotGloo also because of the element and symbols library. Which has the right depth and detail - no more, no less then needed.
The product works very well for showing product owners and developers design ideas for purposes of discussion, debate and refinement.
The products also works very well for specifying new designs for developers. This is best done in a series of screens that show various screen states and user interactions.
I also use the products to document bugs in software products and websites we have developed. This includes outlining and documenting bugs and changes to user interactions and refinements to the usability of completed interfaces and user experiences.
