Best Wireframing Software
Wireframing software creates blueprints for a website, web page, or application during the early stages of development. Wireframes range from simple sketches and page layouts to realistic and moderately responsive representations of a developing web page or application. UI/UX design and development teams use wireframing software to outline the website's desired functionality before development. Wireframing software allows users to drag and drop placeholder elements for images, text, banners, and logos to help them get a feel for the end product. Wireframing software helps to save development time and costs by allowing design teams to outline, review, iterate on, and finalize what the outline of the end product should look like before passing it to prototyping or development.
There may be an overlap in functionality between wireframing products and prototyping software products. Wireframing takes place in the web or app development process first, followed by prototyping. Wireframes are low-fidelity skeletons of a digital product with low functionality, while prototypes are high-fidelity visual representations of the end product. Wireframing products may have some prototyping functionality and vice versa.
To qualify for inclusion in the Wireframing category, a product must:
Best Wireframing Software At A Glance
G2 takes pride in showing unbiased reviews on user satisfaction in our ratings and reports. We do not allow paid placements in any of our ratings, rankings, or reports. Learn about our scoring methodologies.
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Miro provides a visual workspace for innovation that enables distributed teams of any size to dream, design, and build the future together. Today, 90M+ total users around the world in 200,000 organ
- Product Manager
- Project Manager
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 41% Small-Business
- 31% Mid-Market
38,542 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Figma is a design platform for teams who build products together. Born on the Web, Figma helps the entire product team create, test, and ship better designs, faster.
- Product Designer
- UX Designer
- Computer Software
- Design
- 59% Small-Business
- 30% Mid-Market
458,490 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite empowers over 70 million users globally to turn their ideas into reality. Trusted by 99% of the Fortune 500 and top organizations like GE and NBC Universal, Luc
- Software Engineer
- Product Manager
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 40% Small-Business
- 35% Mid-Market
14,757 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Freehand by InVision is the only visual collaboration platform built for full organizations. With pre-built templates, organized spaces tor project management, and interactive widgets and reactions. F
- Product Designer
- UX Designer
- Computer Software
- Design
- 39% Small-Business
- 33% Mid-Market
38,542 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
InVision is the visual collaboration platform powering the world’s smartest companies. We exist to make every kind of work more collaborative, inclusive and impactful. Between our platform, our practi
- UX Designer
- Designer
- Design
- Marketing and Advertising
- 49% Small-Business
- 33% Mid-Market
50 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Claritee is a web-app for showing digital design requirements without unnecessary complexity. Use it to plan, re-plan, discuss, share, update, and coordinate design project requirements at every stage
- Owner
- Marketing and Advertising
- Design
- 98% Small-Business
- 2% Enterprise
195 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Adobe XD is built to meet the needs of today's UX/UI designers, with intuitive tools that deliver breakthrough precision and performance and make everyday tasks feel effortless.
- Graphic Designer
- Designer
- Design
- Computer Software
- 58% Small-Business
- 23% Mid-Market
973,290 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Whimsical is the interconnected workspace for calm, focused work. - Ideate in Boards - Plan in Docs - Manage tasks in Projects - Share updates in Posts
- Product Manager
- CEO
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 57% Small-Business
- 32% Mid-Market
14,600 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Uizard is a rapid, AI-powered UI design tool used for designing wireframes, mockups, and prototypes in minutes. Uizard's AI features allow users to generate UI designs from text prompts, convert hand-
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 84% Small-Business
- 16% Mid-Market
38,542 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Balsamiq Wireframes is a rapid wireframing software that combines the comfort and simplicity of paper sketching with the power of a digital tool, so your work is easier to share, modify, and get hones
- Product Manager
- UX Designer
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 48% Small-Business
- 33% Mid-Market
17,404 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
UXPin is the design tool ideal for interactive prototyping, design systems and documentation. Some of our latest features include: Variables, conditional interactions, expressions, interactive states
- UX Designer
- Product Manager
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 49% Small-Business
- 41% Mid-Market
39,974 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Cacoo is a diagramming software solution designed to help users create a wide range of visual representations, including diagrams, flowcharts, and wireframes. This tool is particularly beneficial for
- Software Engineer
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 59% Small-Business
- 27% Mid-Market
2,232 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Moqups is a visual collaboration tool that combines whiteboard, diagram, and design features in a single, online app. Think, plan and communicate in real time to create a wide range of visual material
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 57% Small-Business
- 30% Mid-Market
4,113 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
Sketch puts the focus back on you and your work. We’re not a do-everything product. We’re a toolkit for design, prototyping, and collaboration — made by designers, for designers. Create, prototype,
- Product Designer
- UX Designer
- Design
- Computer Software
- 53% Small-Business
- 29% Mid-Market
- Reviewers like the ability to add third-party plugins and apps to Sketch to customize the functionality.
- Reviewers have called out the speed of creating useable prototypes and wireframes using the tool.
- Some reviewers have mentioned bugs with some recently released features, but the company responds quickly with patches.
163,641 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
HotGloo is a UX, wireframe and prototyping tool designed to build wireframes for web, mobile and wearables. HotGloo helps to visualize planning processes, build and test drive interactions very easily
- Banking
- 61% Small-Business
- 36% Mid-Market
1,145 Twitter followers
Learn More About Wireframing Software
What is Wireframing Software?
Wireframing software, like prototyping software, is used during the beginning stages of website design and product development. Prototyping happens after wireframing. Wireframing sets up the initial structure of the design, and acts as a map for the interface or layout of the product. Prototyping simulates the wireframe in a visual manner. While prototyping software helps users create interactive simulations of a design, wireframing software helps users create blueprints for the content and structure of a software or website design. Users can implement custom wireframes into prototyping software to create interactive, visual representations of a design that can be tested and presented. Wireframing tools often come with easy-to-use templates and stencils for quick mock-ups.
Wireframing software shares similar features to diagramming software. However, wireframing has more robust features built for creating interactive, visual mock-ups of software designs. Diagramming tools are more basic, and are ideal for users that want to create floor plans and flowcharts. Users can use a diagramming tool to brainstorm a wireframing project. In many cases, platforms include wireframing software, prototyping software, and diagramming software together. This is helpful for users that need to implement all three.
Key Benefits of Wireframing Software
- Lets users outline the structure or content of a design
- Allows users to create a library of wireframes
- Integrates with prototyping software
Why Use Wireframing Software?
Wireframing software is beneficial for product designers starting a design from scratch. Designers often must pitch and present design ideas before completing an entire design. Both wireframing software and prototyping software are ideal tools to use for these preliminary efforts. Wireframing software lets users create blueprints for a design, which helps non-designers understand what different parts of the design might look like. In addition, wireframing software helps users perceive the responsiveness of the design, and the overall appeal of the design. This software allows designers and developers to collaborate by utilizing a structured visual blueprint, rather than relying on verbal meetings and brainstorming sessions with no tangible outline. The collaboration aspect is a major benefit to wireframing software. This software enables seamless communication and collaboration between designers, developers, and managers; they can work on a mock-up project in real time using commenting and feedback features.
Who Uses Wireframing Software?
Due to its accessibility, wireframing software is typically used by product designers. However, developers that work with product design also use the tool.
Product designers — Product designers use wireframing software to create mock-ups of their designs. They then pass their blueprint to a development team. Product designers either use their own blueprints in prototyping software or pass off their mock-ups to developers to create an interactive simulation for testing purposes.
Software developers — Developers are often the designers and creators of software. Wireframing software can benefit software developers by helping them frame the beginning stages of a design. Software designers can create a rough or detailed design of a product and adjust specific assets in the design as the idea progresses. Once an idea is finalized, it moves onto the prototyping stage.
UI designers — Wireframing is a major step to take for UI (user interface) designers. Wireframing and prototyping makes the UI design process easier for designers. UI designers use wireframing tools to build a structure for a website’s interface. This blueprint includes as much or as little detail as the team requires. Wireframing is typically used as a brainstorming opportunity for UI designers, since it allows users to place specific elements of a future web page in a design and move or adjust elements as the design evolves.
Wireframing Software Features
Wireframing software comes with many features that help users build a software design blueprint without a big learning curve.
Stencils — Stencils are design templates used in place of freehand drawing — they help make the design process quicker. With stencils, designers can easily create professional blueprints without resorting to sketches, which take longer to create and require more effort on the artist’s part.
Sketching — Sketching is freehand drawing. Users that are adept at freehand drawing can use the sketching feature to draw outlines and other design elements. Users can create detailed drawings that can be later used within a prototype. Sketches can be rough for brainstorming purposes and are easily edited and adjusted using the design editing feature.
Design editing — The design itself is created in the sketching or stenciling phase, which is later edited using this feature. The design editing feature enables users to edit specific aspects of a design within the tool, including the shape, size, and position.
Stock designs— For users on a time crunch, stock designs are a useful resource. Many wireframing tools include a variety of stock images, icons and fonts designers can use in their mock-ups. For example, if a user is working with a mobile app mock-up, they might choose large, colorful buttons that are optimal for mobile devices.
Drag and drop — Users can drag images and other aspects of a design into the mock-up for efficient design building. The drag and drop is intuitive and often automatically adjusts the size and position of the image.
Collaboration — Entire teams can collaborate on one mock-up and provide comments, feedback, and edits all in the same interface. This is especially helpful for larger teams or teams with remote members. Comments and feedback help make the wireframing process quicker and more efficient since it alleviates the need for in-person communication for minor edits and issues.
Potential Issues with Wireframing Software
Restricted creative freedom — While wireframing software is an efficient way to create a visually detailed mock-up, in some ways it creatively restricts the designer. Wireframes are meant to be basic visual representations of a design, as a result, many designers find themselves representing a more granular visual display of their design idea without the necessary tools. Designers should be prepared to create simple designs since wireframes are basic, preliminary blueprints.
Rigid expectations — Wireframes are like blueprints to a house. Once the blueprint is made and approved, changes are difficult — especially further down the development line. Wireframes create a blueprint for a design to convey the idea before prototyping it. However, once a wireframe is approved and prototyped, major adjustment proposals may be more difficult to communicate, especially if the wireframing and prototyping is done by different teams. To avoid major complications down the line, businesses should prepare to make major adjustments, even if it strays from the original ideas presented during the wireframing process.
