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Best Tools to Create a Mockup Design for a Website

Best Tools to Create a Mockup Design for a Website

Picking which mockup tool will best work for you and your website design can be a tedious process. Knowing the importance of a great visual presentation when brainstorming about design options, can be overwhelming, especially when researching all the different available software that could help you do the job.

Mockup designs aid in website creation because of their ability to quickly showcase a purposeful design, make clear and faster revisions, incorporate easily implementable elements for functionality purposes, and create effective team collaboration and communication. A mockup tool cannot be overstated when discussing its effectiveness in website design. With all these advantages in favor of mockups, now we can focus on picking the best mockup tool for our individual projects.

There are so many different mockup tools out there that you can choose from. However, doing research on all the tools can be very overwhelming considering the number of tools that are in the market. Each tool has its own advantages and disadvantages; it's very difficult to say which one is the best tool and a tool that suits one person may not suit another. In this article, we will outline some of the best tools based on our opinion.

Mockplus

Best for solo designers or smaller web design teams, Mockplus is one of the most powerful website mockup-free tools available. It allows you to create scalable website design systems, build mobile and desktop app mockups, and design functional prototypes with icons and interactions without code. This is because Mockplus uses a drag-and-drop editor to create web design mockups. This means that you don’t need to be a developer to design a visually appealing, branded website.

This type of editing tool also allows you to build your website and visualize it in the process. Thus, instead of having to fuss over code without the ability to see your website’s progress; you can see the experience you’re creating for your site’s audience as you build it. The free version of this website maxes out at the creation of five projects. To build more with Mockplus, you will have to pay around $9 a month.

Balsamiq

Balsamiq’s mission on their website is to “help rid the world of bad user interfaces.” It does this by helping their customers learn to wireframe on apparently the fastest, low-fidelity tool in the industry.

Balsamiq is a paid tool that will help you create clear and interactive mockups for your website. Unless you purchase a paid plan, you can use a 30-day free trial to broaden your website design’s UI elements. You can use Balsamiq to generate digital sketches of an idea or concept for your application or website before any code is written.

The company offers Balsamiq Wireframes, Balsamiq for Desktop, and Balsamiq Cloud. Each of these is a different version of the same design tool for different interfaces. The Cloud version, for example, is the web app version of Balsamiq Wireframes. It is a top leader in the UI wireframing market. The mockup tool is regularly appreciated over other top design tools like Figma, simply for its ability to generate complex, interactive designs.

Figma

Figma is a cloud-based design tool that allows you and your fellow designers to work together on the same file in real-time. This makes it easier for companies to maintain a design system across the organization for use by engineers to PMs. While it does require you to stay online as long as you’re working, Figma makes up for this by cutting down the rate at which you must open and share design files with your team. It’s cloud-based; allowing the files to be opened on different computers without downloading.

Figma also has a sub-application called FigJam, an online whiteboard that you and your team can use to brainstorm, design, and do research workshops. Many users exclaim over the incorporation of FigJam and Figma into one design interface.

There’s even a way to use Figma freely when working on a digital product for a team of two designers. Simply, set two accounts as The Editors, then invite unlimited Viewers. Put all your design files in Draft. While only the two Editor accounts can work on the files, you can access the accounts from multiple devices. Viewers could include other tech persons, marketing, supervisors, etc. They will all have the ability to comment as much as they need on the files.

To keep the plan free, you have to put all your design files in Draft. This means that anyone with access can claim your file as the owner. To access more of Figma’s components and tools, a monthly subscription is necessary.

Visily

According to the Founder & CEO of Zinnie, it takes 90% less time to create a wireframe using the software. As a non-technical founder, she found Visily easier to utilize compared to UXPin, Miro, and Figma wireframe tools. Visily is a mockup tool that has both basic and advanced wireframes and prototypes. It also has built-in templates, an AI design assistant, icon set integration, smart theme setup, and code inspection.

These advantages of Visily have them determined as the easiest and most powerful wireframe software on the market according to Software Advice. Visly has an individual mission of helping non-designers iterate and validate their design ideas. All without the messiness of lacking design skills.

Users comment on its screenshot-to-design feature, where the design team can convert app screenshots to mockups using Visily. Visily offers four simple options to generate a project theme.

  1. Customize an existing them
  2. Generate theme from text description
  3. Upload app or website screenshot
  4. Input app/website URL

With all these options, as well as the rich UI library and built-in templates, Visily has been the new choice for non-designers in terms of prototyping and collaboration. Better yet, it's completely free!

UXPin

UXPin is regularly commended for its ability to create both lo-fi and high-fidelity prototypes with its available functionalities. You can invite viewers like stakeholders to review your design while you’re still brainstorming, test your designs early to avoid time-consuming changes, create a mockup to design your UI anatomy and work faster with built-in libraries; all with UXPin’s tools. You can even create team libraries with UXPin, which is great for brand and design consistency across projects.

Some designers will use the software to build mockups for mobile experiences for clients. This can be interactive and shared to clients including a phone frame. However, UXPin is only available with a subscription. Every contributor has to have an account, whether they would be a viewer or an editor.

This tool allows you to create website and app flows to better help clients understand how their websites and apps will function. Clients then have a visual reference and some real-life applications regarding their projects. However, many users say that the tool could be more intuitive. Especially, as designers spend months trying to figure it out despite it being a robust tool. There’s no free version but also no setup fee, with UXPin.

Justinmind

This is an easy-to-use system, consisting mainly of dragging and dropping. Justinmind allows one to wireframe in real-time, prototype products faster, and seamlessly start a business online.

Justinmind provides interactive mockups for both web and mobile apps. It supports animations, interactive graphics, and more. Justinmind is a prototyping and wireframing tool for the creation of high-fidelity prototypes of web and mobile apps. Analogous to other similar software, Justinmind provides smart templates. It is also compatible with all sorts of Adobe plugins, which entails zero programming or coding knowledge. Thus, resulting in a user-friendly experience.

With such a simple interface and design, this software enables individuals with a vision and creativity for app design to create an application. Even when their technical capabilities are inferior to their idea. Although some users claim Justinmind has the best GUI among software of this nature, the lack of Justinmind’s exposition can cause the learning curve to be somewhat challenging. Especially, since few tutorials or courses can be found online.

Justinmind provides a free plan which includes many of the crucial features. However, for features such as unlimited storage or user flows, Justinmind has subscriptions at $9 and $19 a month.

Designing a website without the help of a mockup can be very challenging. And out of the list of wireframe tools available, researching the options thoroughly is time consuming. After all, there are many available that would suit your needs making it a tedious process. Hopefully, this list helps you somewhat narrow down the specifications you’re looking for when choosing the mockup tool that suits you.

Now, you still may not know which tool you need, but it's always worth testing the tools to find the best one for you. There are tools out there like Visily that you can try for free. Or, you can take out a subscription for a paid tool like Figma. After all, you can cancel at any time if you feel that the tool is not suitable for you. Hopefully, our article is useful for you and you can find the tool suitable for your needs.

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