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Wondering if Canva is good for wireframing? Learn why low-fidelity tools like Balsamiq are better suited for clear, fast, and collaborative product thinking.

Miro too cluttered? Not meeting your team’s needs anymore? Discover 6 Miro alternatives built for faster decision-making, lean teams, and focused product work.

New to the UX world and wireframing? Learn how to start a wireframe by mapping ideas with low-fidelity tools—keeping the focus on usability, flow, and collaboration.

Figma too complex or pricey? Explore 5 Figma alternatives for early-stage design, wireframing, and faster workflows.

Once you’re done with your wireframes, you’ll need to present them to get someone’s approval. Learn 3 effective strategies to get buy-in and move forward.

Wireframe annotations make designs look clear and collaboration feel smooth. Learn what they are and why you don’t need designer-level skills to use them.

A guide for non-designers who want to learn the basics of wireframing—perfect for anyone looking to bring their digital projects to life.

Learn what a wireflow is, how it compares to wireframes and user flow diagrams, and see real-life examples on creating user flows that actually make sense.

Discover how to design buttons that look clickable, feel intuitive, and encourage action. Get smart about structure, copy, and flow.

Learn how to wireframe a mobile app in 8 clear steps. Plan faster, design smarter, and build apps that users love—with no design experience required.

Learn the key differences between buttons and links, when to use each, and how thoughtful design choices can improve your user experience.

Launching a new brand, a new website, and a new UI for our wireframing tool! A design update that doesn’t change our focus: speed and clarity for product teams.

In 2024 we pruned to grow, we focused on clarity, and we adapted to embrace data analysis. Read about all the improvements and new features, too!

We have people in the USA (in California and Illinois), and Europe. This allows us to provide top-notch customer support and gives us a diverse and global culture.

A detailed recap of what we did in 2023 and a peek into our plans for 2024.

We wrote a book to help everyone participate in the design process! It’s about better ways to make wireframes and use them with your team. Order your copy now.

We've changed a lot in the last year! Here's our traditional recap of what we did in 2022 and our plans for 2023.

The Balsamiq team is growing! Join us in welcoming two new team members, JR and Arielle, in new roles.

A software specification answers the what, why, and how. Here are 7 proven tips to create better specs and wireframes before moving to implementation.

Even if you don’t call yourself a designer, there are some easy tips and techniques to help you see a digital product and its usability like a designer.

Digital products go through cycles of expansion and simplification. Today we focus on the “adult life” phase, which is where Balsamiq Wireframes is right now.

We believe Product Managers can and should wireframe! All you need are some ground rules for doing it, and good communication with your teammates. Here's how.

Learn how to improve your website’s user experience! For each mistake you’ll learn what usually happens and why, what it looks like, and what to do about it.

Wireframing for clients is different than design done in-house. Follow these 7 tips to avoid friction and ensure a smooth development process for the team.

A set of simple ground rules for product designers and other stakeholders in software projects, for a long-lasting, smooth, and effective collaboration.

Error management: help people avoid errors in the first place, see the error, and understand what's happened — and add instructions on how to recover from it.

Rigorous user research isn’t always possible. This talk for Smashing Meets explains how we adapted the theory to make it work in our particular world.

Even if you tend to do marketing projects internally, sometimes you could consider hiring outside contractors. This is how we do it - and some lessons learned.

Product roadmaps vary a lot depending on the size of your company. We try to keep ours simple.

With this guide you’ll learn how to work on user experience and copywriting together for your website. Follow these 7 easy steps and you'll be off to a good start!

Our traditional recap of what we did in 2021, and our plans for 2022!

Wireframing your website copy invites discussion, removes guesswork, and lets you show your team that you did your work and are ready to back it up.

User Research and Development are team sports. We go over the organization and processes our remote-first teams have in place to build Balsamiq Wireframes.

Quarterly roadmap meetings are great for making big plans, but how can we make much-needed smaller, everyday decisions? We use PRBs!

Designing a Sign-Up flow for a web app is much harder than you’d think. It requires a balance between usability and security, with a sprinkle of marketing on top.

Interview with Betsy Mikel about what it takes to improve Mozilla Firefox’s application menu: gather the data, use wireframes, validate with user research.

Modeling your written content visually before you start wireframing the page is a little-known practice that will make you better at writing for the web.

Peldi and Asia discuss why and how founders should overcome the discomfort of talking to their customers and how to prepare for conducting great interviews.

After two years, our Office Hours program is still going great. Several new Balsamiq mentors are now available for a chat. Come meet us online!

A detailed recap of what we achieved in 2020, and a quick look at what's to come in 2021!

Service Blueprints help organizations see the whole by showing the customer view and what’s behind the scenes. Learn the step-by-step process for creating them.

In November, we met for a 3-day mini virtual retreat dedicated to social time and fun. Here is how we planned the event and what we learned.

A behind-the-scenes look at some of the tools we built to help Balsamiq run smoothly, and the motivations behind building them. It’s educational and fun!

Learn how to conduct discount usability tests on wireframes with users — an effective step in validating your solution before implementation. For small budgets, too!

Advice and recommended resources for how to get into UX from your friends at Balsamiq

Big data can cause big problems for clean, usable interface designs. Here are some easy-to-understand tips to ensure that your data applications are easy to use.

Anil and Jess chat about the lessons and challenges of building a user research team from scratch, qualitative methods, and the value of talking to customers.

Features, bugs, chores: a behind-the-scenes look at how we decide to work on. Because no matter how big your product team is, there’s only so much you can push.

Guiding principles to help designers wireframe better and encourage the entire team to participate in the design process.

Validate your design solution early in the product design process to save time (and likely money!). Learn about 2 different usability inspection methods.

Like many other companies, we had to change plans for our annual company retreat. Here are the challenges we faced and the solutions we adopted for 2020.

Learn what SaaS UX design strategies work and why, from real users. Improve your site, convey your message and help more people with your product.

Feedback can be hard to take, but practicing it often and early makes it an integral part of the process to get your team’s best work out the door.

Wireframes can clarify your thinking and set a clear direction for your design. Here are 12 practical tips to help you improve your wireframing skills.

Good wireframes solve real problems and lead to strong products. From writing out the scenario to gathering inputs, here is a proven path to a great website or app.

The big rewrite is finally complete. Revenue grew over 11%. Read the recap of 2019, and take a quick look at what's to come in 2020!

A conversation with Content Designer Emileigh Barnes about content, why it’s so important to think content-first, and how to use wireframing as a writer.

A conversation with Founder and CEO Justin Mitchell about design process, the importance of understanding requirements, and how to take an idea and make it real.

Designers and product managers often need to work side by side. Read on for tips on how they can communicate, collaborate, and resolve conflicts effectively.

A conversation with Co-founder Ben Ihnchak about user-centered design, research methods and why he believes spending time on wireframes is really important.

In this article we analyze the anatomy of a great landing page wireframe and the elements you need to include. Bonus: the most common mistakes with wireframes.

Learn how to create a responsive design wireframe system and move on to detailed wireframes using 2 different techniques. Added bonus: a real-world example.

A conversation with Software Engineer Iheanyi Ekechukwu about side projects, objective feedback, and communication between developers and designers.

Tips to improve the shopping experience on your e-commerce site and present top-notch product listing pages, product detail pages, and cart designs to your visitors.

Documentation on designing applications for specific platforms, including Apple Mac OS and Android, and recommendations and principles for user interface design.

Follow these 4 simple, basic principles of form design to see higher completion rates, fewer errors, and a better experience on your website’s forms.

Proper element hierarchy and alignment will make your website or app easy to scan. Learn how to drive users' attention and guide them to the next action.

A conversation with Product Designer Jonas Downey about creating a weather app, what it’s like to run an app as a business, and tips for future Product Designers.

Why you should wireframe, what’s the right level of detail, where prototypes and sketches fit in, and how to make them a great communication tool for non-designers.

Beta programs are a common way to reduce risk when shipping new software. We like to take it a step further and run Gammas, as well! Less stress, more quality.

Gathering together in May for our annual retreat in our new Bologna office, 'The Nest,' echoed the journey we've been on as a company over the past year.

Have you ever wanted to talk to us in person? Would you like advice on your career, or software company? We are running a new program, which we're calling... the Balsamiq Office Hours!

A look back at Balsamiq's 2018 achievements and results.

In this tutorial we show you how we designed a landing page and followed a website project process, from the first notes to the final visual design.

Through the exercise of copying an existing app or website using wireframes you’ll get to know how it was designed and why some UI choices were made.

A conversation with Co-founder Shay Howe about building his 1-on-1 meeting assistance tool Lead Honestly and starting with words, or no-fidelity.

A conversation with Product Designer Camay Ho about the process behind redesigning a complex dashboard: research, idea exploration, wireframing, user testing.

A conversation with Director of Engineering Nick Barger about the role of design in creating something new from the perspective of a non-designer.

The Balsamiq family keeps on growing! Join us in welcoming our 3 new team members Amanda, Kendra, and Billy.

Learn how to use what you've learned in your research to make wireframes, organize the user interface, and create the user experience with this 3-step guide.

We cover the basics of mobile wireframing: design patterns that are unique to phones, common native mobile interactions, and tips for designing your app.

Sometimes you want or need to create minimalistic, polished wireframes. Here's how to balance aesthetics with the rapid iterative nature of wireframing.

Site builders have almost endless options to customize. That can be dangerous. Starting with wireframes makes the process of choosing and editing templates easier.

Content is design. By starting with a content-first mindset, you will ensure that the user interface evolves to support what's inside it.

Make sure your wireframes address 2 questions: What are some ways we can solve our customers' problem? How do I know if this idea actually solves it?

Balsamiq turned 10! To celebrate the milestone we gathered all together, with families and friends, for six amazing days in The Dominican Republic.

Using a design system, or pattern library, can free you from needing to create high-fidelity prototypes, and allows you to go from wireframe to working code.

A step-by-step guide on how to use wireframes in your Agile User Stories. Tips: add just enough detail and focus on what developers really need to know.

Key screens convey the essence of your digital product or service. Wireframing your product’s key screens should be the first pass of your interface design.

Welcome two new employees to the Balsamiq family: Laura Lei and Julia DeBari. Laura Lei is our Digital Artist and Julia is our first Design Educator.

Adding text to your wireframes is important. It can be just text blocks, but it’d be better to start thinking about real text, at least in its length and size.

Wireframing is essential to copywriting, whether you do it for a living or to create a message for your email campaign or a page on your company website.

Examples of how interfaces are used to solve specific kinds of design problems. In case you need best practices or inspiration while working on your wireframes.

The 5 most common questions or comments we've received about working from home. 'How does your boss know that you're actually working?' is the first one 😊

We have donated more than 10,000 licenses over the last 8 years. Here is why, and a kind invitation to other software companies to do the same.

It’s that time of the year when we recap the past year and share with you our plans for the next 12 months. Subscribe to the newsletter for more info!

Learn the basics of how to use UI controls for better navigation. A quick and easy guide, with best practices recommendations and real-world examples.

We're excited to introduce to you the two newest members of the Balsamiq family, Ali Servet Donmez and Alasdair Manson!

“Revenue, head count, PR, and quality--if one gets ahead of the others, you’re screwed.” An oldie, but goodie we have referred to since 2008!

We’re starting to ship updated versions of all of our products that include our new, web-native Balsamiq Wireframes editor!

Working with freelance developers has its challenges. The collaborative nature of wireframes is perfectly suited to help you communicate your idea with them.

Zenware means zen software. Here is a short list of tools that help you get focused, achieve the ultra-productive cognitive state known as flow, and stay there.

It is with great pleasure that we introduce to you four new members of the Balsamiq family! We are also hiring 4 more people over the next few months!

Every company has a natural size. Answer this question and you’ll find out what kind of company you should build and how to grow it.

We keep on growing, and this brings new challenges for our company retreats, too. Read how we plan our retreats and what happened in April 2017!

Our vacation policy was: Take some. But we noticed that some employees weren’t taking enough. Now our policy is: Take at least 20 days off a year.

Recognizing being stuck is the first step to getting unstuck. Here are 2 easy techniques with 11 practical strategies to help you break free from designer's block.

We continue to truck along nicely, executing on our vision. 2016 was yet another record year for us, with sales almost reaching $6.6 million.

Read how 5 game designers use Balsamiq wireframes and other rapid prototyping techniques in their workflow to work faster and smarter.

Hello friends! We're excited to introduce to you the two newest members of the Balsamiq family, Stefano Gozzi and Philip Nittenberg!

More and more companies are embracing remote working. For those who are considering it or have just made the leap, there are a lot of resources to learn from, such as the Zapier's Guide to Remote Work. Here are some of...

Hello, friends of Balsamiq! Our not-so-little-anymore team keeps on growing! Today I would like to introduce to you our two new team members: Drew Lafferty and Liz Green! Drew Lafferty Drew is a jack-of-all-trades Deve...

Annual retreats have become an essential part of working together at Balsamiq. From our first gathering as an entire company in 2010, we realized seeing each other face to face is an essential part of building awesome re...

In a marketing project, getting content creators and designers to work together using wireframes can align expectations and improve communication and feedback.

Hello, friends! I am Jessica, and I've just become the 21st member of the Balsamiq team as a Community Manager. How I landed here is a mix of timing, location and -maybe- luck. My love for Italy and my newly formed fami...

Hello again friends of Balsamiq! Peldi here with our traditional 'state of the union' end-of-year report. You can find previous editions here: 2008, 2009, 2013, and 2014. As usual, this is going to be a very long pos...

Dozens of inspiring quotes and practical tips to help you improve your wireframes, design delightful user interfaces, and create better products.

Empathy, common sense, negotiation and diplomacy: with these soft skills in your toolbox, you can go from being a good designer to being an effective one.

Hello friends of Balsamiq! It is my great pleasure to introduce to you three new members of the Balsamiq family today. Brendan Saricks Brendan is the guy in your family that everyone calls when their computer doesn'...

Instead of paying for someone's gym, which not everyone has access to or needs, we give our employees a more precious resource: time. Balsamiq's exercise policy Exercising has TONS of benefits. It prevents burnout,...

Simple tips to level up the wireframes of your software, website, or app: get into the wireframing mindset, take your time, and create several in-between concepts.

Since we are a remote, distributed team (9 from Italy, 5 from California, 1 from France, 1 from Germany, 1 from Netherlands, so far - and more are coming!), usually we see each other as two-dimensional people via webcam...

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context. We have become hesitant about sharing our company policies because they are, and they should be, forever in evol...

Hello again friends of Balsamiq! Peldi here with our traditional 'state of the union' end-of-year report. You can find previous editions here: 2008, 2009 and 2013. As usual, this is going to be a very long post. Summa...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! I'm Francesca, the seventeenth member of the Balsamiq family. What can we expect from you? My primary role at Balsamiq is to be the Community Manager; you can meet me on all the major Socia...

Ride pride Friends, I can't believe it's October. Before summer becomes a distant memory, I want to tell some stories from this year's Retreat. If you've been following our company, you'll recall that our little team ha...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! As 2013 comes to an end, it's time to revive an old tradition (2008, 2009) and look back at all that we have achieved this year. TL;DR: We continue to truck along nicely, growing organically....

Here at Balsamiq, we hear a lot of stories about people using our application to build great user experiences. We are so proud to be a part of the UX revolution that has taken place over the last ten years. There's no do...

With the SuperMoon shining upon us, the friends who make up Balsamiq met in San Francisco to celebrate our company's 5th birthday. Our team is scattered around Europe and the States, so being together is rare and deliber...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! Our little team is growing again! This time I'd like you to join me in welcoming my good friend and old college buddy Salvatore 'Sax' Cammarata to the Balsamiq family. Sax will take on the...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! It is my great pleasure to introduce to you Andrea Serra, the latest member of the Balsamiq family. Andrea is a client-side developer who will be focussing on our myBalsamiq wireframe edito...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! Another week, another piece of good news. No, two! 🙂 We hired a new team member to speed up our software development, and we partnered with a long term friend's company to improve our softwa...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! It is with great pleasure that I can announce today that Balsamiq has entered a long-term partnership with Aramis B.V., a Dutch software development company owned by my long-time friend Stefan...

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you Anna Mariotti, the latest addition to the Balsamiq family. Anna's main job is to ensure that our growing Italian company runs smoothly. She's going to work on purchasing, m...

My suitcases are not yet unpacked because I have Balsamiq Jetlag Syndrome (BJS). Luis defines that as 'A complication of ordinary jetlag, where the subject is kept awake by the steady stream of inspiration resulting from...

Hello friends. For the second time in the history of Balsamiq, I write you today to apologize for our mistakes. This morning we started what was supposed to be a routine myBalsamiq update. We couldn't do a zero-downtim...

Hello friends of Balsamiq! It is my great pleasure to introduce to you the newest member of the Balsamiq family: Florian Brauer! We first met Florian in July last year, when he posted quite a few detailed and accurat...

Giving back to our communities is a big part of our culture, from day one. We started with giving away our software, but in 2011 we decided to do more. These were our goals at the time: Make donations in an amount...

Since we have no plan on ever selling the company or going public, employee stock option programs never made sense to us. Instead, we set up a quarterly profit sharing program, so that employees could benefit from the...

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context. Given that we have different people all around the world and that we are 100% open books internally (i.e. everyo...

This post is part of a series about our VERY FEW company policies. Read this intro post for some context. At Balsamiq, we don't have deadlines. Ever. It seems so natural to me, but I sometimes get reminded of how unco...

I'm not a fan of policies. In fact, the tiny little essay on how policies are bad from Rework is my favorite of the whole book. It's called 'Don’t scar on the first cut' - worth buying the book just for that four-paragra...

Would you trust your software to these people? You bet What is it like when a small, dynamic, distributed software company gets together for a week-long sleepover at the CEO's villa in Italy? How can such a retreat boo...

One of the hardest things about working with my beloved distributed team (aka balsamici*) is our not being able to see each other in person more often. Just once a year are we together in the same time zone, in the same...

Hello everyone! I know it's been a while since our last blog post, my apologies. We've been crazy busy with lots and lots of new customers and working on our web app. It's all fun, but the blogs have been suffering a bi...

It is my great pleasure to introduce to you Paolo Ottanà, the newest member of team Balsamiq. Paolo will be working out of our Bologna office, helping us with lots and lots of different programming tasks. His main re...

Hello friends, long time no see! So sorry for not keeping you in the loop more about what's going on in Balsamiq-land. Although it might seem like we're not doing anything from the outside, the last few weeks have been...

I'm on a boat! Being a Balsamiq employee for just over two weeks, I wasn’t sure my perspective of the staff retreat would be of much value. After all, I don’t yet have a complete grasp of all elements that make up our...

I can barely contain my excitement as I type this, so I'll get right to it: Michael Angeles, the man behind Konigi and one of the people I look up to the most in our industry, has agreed to join Balsamiq. His job tit...

Wow. Just wow. It's hard for me to believe how much has happened in Balsamiq-land in 2009. I feel like a completely different person than when I wrote the 'A Look back at 2008' post, just 12 months ago. In a way, I am...

This is part two of a two-part post about what happened in 2009 and our plans for 2010. We did this last year as well, it's becoming somewhat of a tradition! 😉 By the way, thanks so much for all the support and nice wo...

Hi friends. So I made a big mistake today. No, I made a few. I was so excited about the new pan feature that I decided to release it without testing it properly. Not only, I also ran out the door right after the build...

Last week we participated in the Atlassian Summit, Atlassian's first worldwide conference and Balsamiq's first foray in being a conference sponsor. Below is an account on what happened and what we learned from the exper...

Feeling a great mixture of excitement, pride and trepidation, it is my pleasure to introduce to you Marco Botton, Balsamiq's first full time employee. How did this happen? A little bit of history Warning: the following...

Hi there, just a quick post to record the fact that today marked the 2000th customer of Balsamiq Mockups. That's 2000 monetary transactions, the number of Mockups users could easily be double that - lots of people buy v...

This is part one of a two-part post about what happened in 2008 and my plans for 2009. First, a few numbers about 2008: days in business: 196 - that's 6 months and 13 days, or 28 weeks. See my June 19th launch post her...

This is part two of a two-part post about what happened in 2008 and my plans for 2009. So 2008 was great, no, it was beyond great. I quit my job, moved to Italy and started Balsamiq Studios LLC, my first company. It wen...

I feel a bit sheepish posting this since I don't want to come across as bragging, but a promise is a promise, so here it goes... I just recently surpassed $100,000 of revenue. Balsamiq has been in business for less than...

The following is a story that I told many people already, but didn't think was interesting enough to put on my blog until a certain Tamales Princess I know practically forced me to write to 😉 so here it is. A little bac...

I just sold a license to my 500th customer! That's a much bigger number that I expected to reach in such a short time (it's been less than 3 and 1/2 months since I launched), but so far I don't feel that it has impacted...

The huge amount of attention that my 'Profitable, in 3 weeks!' post has received so far tells me that there's a thirst for financial results of small bootstrapped startups in the interweb, so here's another milestone rep...

Sorry for tooting my own horn here but I think my current and potential customers will be happy to hear that business is going well, so here it goes. Exactly 3 weeks after launching, Balsamiq Studios LLC is now profitab...

Hi everyone. It's been now a full week since my official launch, and my what a ride it has been! I know the adventure is just getting started, but I wanted to put together and share some quick stats from Balsamiq's 1st w...

What's happening: Balsamiq Studios LLC is launching today. What it means to you: Balsamiq Mockups 1.0 is now officially for sale, both as a Confluence plugin and as a desktop application. The website copy has been tw...

So I uploaded Mockups for Desktop to the Adobe AIR marketplace on Monday, and already it's showing 102 downloads of the demo app, plus my entry page is generating a bunch of traffic for my site. Not bad for a product th...

One of the reasons I have this blog is to help others like me who might be starting a software company on their own (micro-ISV-ers?). So if you are like me and know nothing about legal matters and get a knot in your stom...

I have sent a link to an alpha build of Balsamiq Mockups to two of my most trusted advisors. I am so nervous, this will be the first time someone other than me and my wife see the product and get to play with it. It's e...

So no-one liked WOPStudio, I was never really in love with it either. Plus someone pointed out that WOP doesn't really have very good connotations, given that I'm Italian and all. I had no idea! Anyways, after much thin...

I decided on a company name today: WopStudio. Wop is for Web Office Plugins, but you don't have to remember that...just remember wopstudio, or wopstudio.com! 🙂 I like the word 'studio' for a number of reasons: it has a...