TrustRadius Insights for Zeplin are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
Zeplin is a versatile tool that facilitates collaboration between designers and developers, streamlining the design handoff process and minimizing miscommunication. With Zeplin, designers can import screens from software like Photoshop or SketchUp, attach assets, and create convenient diagrams. This enables them to set a high bar for implementing designs and saves time on back-and-forth communication. For developers, Zeplin offers the ability to better understand layouts and be more assertive by providing ways to export assets and CSS code. It captures CSS styles and optimizes their work, making it practical for prototypes and the layout of web applications. Additionally, Zeplin allows for easy sharing of design specs with clients and provides a succinct set of features for viewing, sharing, downloading, and discussing design assets. It acts as a bridge between design and development teams by reducing the communication gap and enabling feedback from stakeholders through shared boards. Its user-friendly interface makes it easy for engineers and designers to share, discuss, and question designs, ultimately saving time, headache, and mistakes due to miscommunication. Overall, Zeplin is widely used by digital product teams, UX designers, and other departments to collaborate effectively on projects.
We use Zeplin as design tool for new UI of the web. As I tester I refers to design in Zeplin to verify with our webpage. By using this tool, Product owner, Designer, developer, tester are working aligned with product specification and requirements. Before this tool, everyone was not able to work in align.
Pros
Precise testing: Developers can inspect design elements CSS (spacing, fonts, colors, sizes) so that it can set as per the designer
Centralized components color palettes, text styles make it easier for teams to maintain consistency across whole project
Designers, developers, tester and product owner can add comments directly on designs.
Cons
Developer or QA can see static design but cannot see in animation like figma.
I feel like it lacks advance design management system
Role base control is not there
Likelihood to Recommend
The most useful about Zeplin is that we can centrilize design and communicate over that design by adding comments. Which helps to stay on same page for every coress team like product owner, designer, developers and tester. But, Zeplin is not helpful in one thing is that when we have any animation on elements then it is not showing. Overall, I am happy with Zeplin.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (Computer Software company, 51-200 employees)
Zeplin is used by several departments across our organization - our product, design, and engineering teams all make use of the software. It allows the product and design teams to do their work and then have a clean handoff to engineering to build out the feature with everything that they need.
Pros
Collaboration tools.
Design notes/documentation for engineers.
Simple prototyping.
Cons
Clickable actions to navigate prototypes naturally.
Subscription model.
Likelihood to Recommend
Zeplin is well suited for collaborating on product design and allowing the designer to include all the necessary notes and details required by the engineer in order to move forward and build what has been designed. It would be ideal to allow for clickable elements with the design to be able to show/experience some natural navigation and therefore be better suited for prototyping and understanding behaviors/interactions of elements.
VU
Verified User
C-Level Executive in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 11-50 employees)
Zeplin is used by our product, UX design, and content strategy teams to hand off designs to the dev teams. Zeplin allows our dev teams to pull specs, assets, and code snippets directly from the design itself, which makes the cross-department collaboration and communication so easy. Zeplin contains our design system which keeps our UI components consistent across the product.
Pros
Beautiful, clean, easy to use, easy to navigate interface. Zeplin looks great and feels intuitive from the start.
Zeplin is especially fantastic as a collaboration tool. You can easily annotate designs with unobtrusive comments, allowing teams to ask questions and make suggestions easily.
Zeplin keeps our designs very consistent. For example, it remembers colors and font styles and makes it easy to build a style guide.
Cons
Our design team uses Sketch to make mockups, which must then be imported to Zeplin. Basically, it adds another tool to the chain and more accounts to keep track of.
The plans are a bit expensive. The product ultimately feels worth it, but I think it could be priced more cheaply.
Internal navigation is sometimes difficult to figure out (e.g., the order of different screens and overall user flow).
Likelihood to Recommend
Zeplin is really a wonderful tool for handing off designs to more technical teams. It makes it super easy to share specs and collaborate on designs at a high level. Zeplin's integrations make it especially great for teams that already use Sketch, Slack, etc. While Zeplin feels clean and easy to use, it might be too lightweight for very large / complex teams.
VU
Verified User
Strategist in Product Management (Computer Software company, 201-500 employees)
We use Zeplin to share design assets with developers. It is used across the organization. We use this to reduce the communication gap between the teams, specially design and developers. This also lets you get feedback from other stakeholders by sharing the board with them and they can comment there. Before Zeplin, designers had to create PDFs with design specs and then share the design assets separately in a drive or email. If any asset was missing or if any clarification was needed, there was a long chain of emails, now it is very smooth and quick, happens on Zeplin and both the design and dev teams are happy. As a product manager, this has immensely helped me to get feedback, improve the process and make people accountable.
Pros
Its integration with Sketch is great, it just completes everything. You create the design and in one click it is there on the Zeplin board.
The notes and comments help to be more precise with questions and clarify on the Zeplin board itself.
One of the best things I liked about Zeplin was its simplicity, anyone who doesn't even come from a design, tech or product background can understand the product in just a couple of minutes.
Cons
Zeplin still is not on par with other tools like Figma, which help to transfer the code from design. It is the next step in machine learning.
Zeplin doesn't have a prototyping feature, which will be great for developers to understand the motions and animations.
Zeplin currently doesn't have version history, which would be good to have, since if a design is updated by the designer the developer could see what was updated.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is a great tool if your design and development teams are separate. It is also great for freelancing or remote scenarios. The tool can be taken up by a company of any size, we have used it for 1000+ size companies with ease. I think, if you are using Sketch, then this is good to go. If you are using Figma, you can skip it.
We use Zeplin to manage the handoff between product, design, and marketing. We used to struggle with unruly file systems and competing copies, missing assets, and disorganized product launches. Now, our designers can establish projects and guidelines for asset use, passing off product shots, and more.
Pros
Zeplin makes it super simple to share locked design assets across the organization, whether you're on the product, marketing, or support team.
Zeplin's integration with Sketch streamlines design.
Project organization is a breeze.
Cons
The user interface isn't as intuitive for those just beginning to learn the system—something simple, like leaving a comment, isn't always clear as it could be.
We do wish Zeplin integrated with more of our other tools.
Prototyping is pretty limited.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you need a system for simpler handoff between design and product, or product to marketing, Zeplin's a great solution. On the development side of things, being able to see properties is extremely useful. And for those who simply need to grab colors or logos, using Zeplin as a style guide is incredibly useful.
VU
Verified User
Director in Marketing (Computer Software company, 11-50 employees)
Zeplin is a very practical tool for prototypes and layout of web applications. It is very interesting for frontend development because it allows you to capture the CSS styles of the screens. This is a very comfortable job since you can optimize the work of frontend In terms of interface design. You can also import screens from Photoshop or SketchUp. Facilitating this task for the designer, you can also attach assets so that it is convenient for the developer to have all the references when it comes to diagramming.
Pros
You can get the CSS style code
You can import files from Photoshop and SketchUp
Cons
You can not define internal navigation by linking the screens
Likelihood to Recommend
Zeplin is very well at developing prototypes of applications. Also, you can base the development of frontend and layout, on the screens that are uploaded to the project. Besides the very good function of being able to upload assets separately so that the developer can have both the images and the assets in the project, I like that it is a pretty light tool. I like that it is much cheaper than other tools such as Marvel.
We've been using Zeplin for a few years and it has proven to be one of the best tools for User Experience and User Interface Design. Furthermore it helps us, while working as developer partners for agencies, to better understand layouts provided and be more assertive since it offers ways to export assets and even CSS code to better specify little details like colors, font size, margins and much more.
Pros
Has both a web app and desktop app
Great integration with Sketch
If you're developing the front-end, it really helps providing assets and layout specs
Cons
The web application doesn't offer ways to create new projects like Invision or Marvel
It could have a prototyping tool to navigate between screens
The mobile website doesn't work as well as it should
Likelihood to Recommend
It's great if you need to work with interfaces created by partners or agencies, since it offers a great way to inspect and understand the specifications. Also, it's a great way to create style guides to create a really solid user interface. On the other hand, it doesn't offer a fluid way to navigate between screens like other prototyping applications like Invision and Marvel.
We use Zeplin for collaboration between our designer and developers. Both of my companies have built very design/user experience centric products and we set a high bar for the implementation of the designs we create. However, developers are generally poor implementers of design and don't have a very good eye for design. Zeplin solves this problem and since we've started using it we've saved a lot of back and forth between developers and designers.
Pros
Provides dimensions across iOS, Android and Web which saves developers from a lot of guess and check when implementing designs
Allows for easy download of digital design assets for developers to easily organize and implement
Great user experience in terms of the product itself and a great value for your money
Automatically generates CSS for web designs which is AMAZING!
Cons
The uploading and syncing of assets is great for sketch and photoshop but we use illustrator and that can be cumbersome/tedious at times.
There are certain elements that have been a bit confusing to navigate at times, but for the most part, it's pretty user-friendly
More integrations
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe XD is more seamless across products but it's still being built out and lacks a lot of functionality. So for right now, what Zeplin does for the whole process of implementing designs between designer and developer it's the best product on the market. It has literally saved us hundreds of hours of back and forth between developer and designer and it's seriously been a gamechanger for that process. Can't say enough good things about Zeplin!
Zeplin solves the problem of product/design teams interfacing with engineering. It provides a clear and easy way for engineers and designers to share, discuss, and question designs in a very user-friendly and easy-to-manage way. Both teams heavily enjoy using Zeplin versus a million PDF files being sent around the org. Zeplin saves us time, headache, and mistakes due to miscommunication.