5 Best Mockup Tools Shortlist
Here are the top 5 mockup tools I’d like to highlight out of the 20 I cover in this article:
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
There are seemingly countless mockup and prototype solutions available, so figuring out which one is best for you is tough. You want to conceptualize and communicate design ideas, ensuring a clear representation of the final product's structure and layout but need to figure out which tool is the best fit. I've got you! In this post I make things simple, leveraging my experience managing big, complex products, and being exposed to dozens of different tools to bring you this shortlist of the best mockup tools.
What is a mockup tool?
A mockup tool is a software application that facilitates the creation of visual prototypes or mockups. These representations help stakeholders, including designers, developers, and clients, to visualize the look and feel of a product before the development phase, allowing for effective communication and feedback using mockup generator software. This software's features include drag-and-drop functionality, a variety of pre-built design elements, collaboration tools for team involvement, and the ability to simulate interactivity.
As a result, mockup tools streamline the design process, enhance collaboration, and contribute to the overall efficiency of product development by reducing the likelihood of misunderstandings and revisions later in the project.
The Best Mockup Tools Comparison Chart
Here’s a comparison chart that summarizes basic details about each of the top mockup tools I selected. You can view pricing details and the availability of free trials or demos side-by-side to help you find the best tool for your budget.
Tool | Best For | Trial Info | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Best for collaborative interface design | Free plan available | From $15/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
2 | Best for streamlining design feedback processes | 7-day free trial + free plan available | From $16/user/month (billed annually) | Website | |
3 | Best for generating mockups based on existing websites or applications | 14-day free trial + free plan available | From $6/user/month | Website | |
4 | Best mockup tool for mobile application focused product managers | Free plan available | From $14/user/month | Website | |
5 | Best for designing responsive website mockups | Free trial available | From $9/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
Overview Of The 5 Best Mockup Tools
Here’s a brief description of each mockup tool showcasing its best use case, noteworthy features, and pros & cons. I’ve also appended screenshots to give you a glimpse of their user interface.
Figma is a collaborative interface design tool that operates as an all-in-one design platform, offering features for design, prototyping, design systems, and development. It was created with the goal of making design tools accessible to more people by utilizing the web, allowing for real-time collaboration and eliminating the need for multiple versions of design files.
Figma was developed in 2015 as the first design tool to combine the accessibility of the web with the functionality of a native app, and it has since become a popular choice for teams looking to streamline their design process and work together more efficiently.
Why I picked Figma: Figma provides a platform for users to create and share wireframes for web and mobile mockups. The tool is designed to support UI and UX design, wireframing, diagramming, brainstorming, and team collaboration, making it a versatile choice for design professionals.
Figma facilitates collaboration by allowing users to share wireframes and collect feedback, either in real time or asynchronously, by simply sharing a link. Figma's ability to allow users to drop comments directly on the wireframes adds a layer of contextual feedback that can be crucial during the design process. Users can also convert wireframes into detailed, high-fidelity components, which is suitable for both beginners and experienced designers.
Figma Standout Features and Integrations
Features include interactive prototyping, design systems with with linked UI components and style libraries, plugins and widgets to automate repetitive tasks, aggregate data, and more, and features for organizing design files, including team spaces, project folders, and file browsing.
Integrations include Dropbox, Trello, Jira, Confluence, GitLab, Storybook, Notion, Slack, Asana, and Zoom.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Community support is available
- Supports an atomic design approach
- User-friendly interface for UI designing and prototyping
Cons:
- Real-time prototype views can be slow with many screens
- Limited language and translation features
Marvel started as a side hustle in 2013 and quickly rose to prominence in the mockup and wireframe designing industry. Marvel's powerful collaborative platform helps reduce friction from multiple iterations with stakeholders to attain sign-offs on product ideas.
Why I picked Marvel: In my books, Marvel is an absolute marvel mainly because of the supreme collaboration and handoff features. As a product manager, getting sign-offs on ideas to start development takes time and effort. With Marvel, you can promote effective cross-company collaboration and reduce the GTM (go-to-market) time for a new feature or product.
With shared folders and real-time activity notifications, all relevant stakeholders are constantly in the loop to close open points and march towards sign-offs. Additionally, maintaining team libraries on Marvel helps you elevate brand consistency in your company.
Marvel Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a drag-and-drop design interface, editing Sketch designs, team libraries, a huge repository of pre-made images & assets, and effective design handoff tools.
Integrations include 5+ tools, such as Ballpark, Dropbox Paper, Jira, Sketch, Slack, Userflows, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Easily shareable links to prototypes
- Clean and simple UI
- Nifty slack integration
Cons:
- Animations are not very fluid
- Assets could be more comprehensive
UXPin
Best for generating mockups based on existing websites or applications
UXPin has been around in the prototyping and wireframing industry for over a decade. Founded in 2010 in Poland, the company was acquired by Xenon Partners in 2020. UXPin offers a revolutionary technology called Merge that allows you to import and maintain in-sync ReactJS elements.
UXPin promotes component-driven design. This means you can build upon your existing UI components and design mockups with these exact elements.
Why I picked UXPin: UXPin made my cut because of the emphasis the tool places on design customizations. You can design inclusive mockups aligning with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards. Features like color blindness simulator and contrast checker help test your prototypes. UXPin enables you to build a tailored UI anatomy focusing on color usage, content layout and typography.
Component-driven design is a significant feature that enables you to create mockups in line with your brand style guidelines easily. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; leverage existing designs using UXPin’s prototyping tool.
UXPin Standout Features and Integrations
Features include user journeys, usability testing, user research, animation, remote collaboration, and logic-based prototyping with variable definitions and conditional interactions. Heat Mapping is a nifty feature that allows you to visualize where users click or scroll and how far users scroll.
Integrations include 10+ tools, such as Asana, Google Sheets, Microsoft Dynamics 365, NPM, Salesforce, Storybook, Zendesk, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Password protected prototypes
- Custom fonts upload
- Rapid prototyping
Cons:
- Lots of marketing spam emails
- Poor customer service
MockFlow
Best mockup tool for mobile application focused product managers
MockFlow helps product and development folks achieve flow in their work. MockFlow has several wireframing and product design tools to help you quickly nail low-fidelity designs and business processes.
If you’re a product manager handling a mobile application launch, MockFlow is your ally! Using MockFlow, you can draw UI for many mobile devices. The tool provides several UI wireframe libraries to design a visually stunning low-fidelity wireframe quickly.
Why I picked MockFlow: As a product manager, you often get bombarded with several ideas. Being able to translate these ideas into something presentable quickly is crucial. MockFlow offers valuable tools to visualize the UI for a mobile app or website effortlessly.
Mockflow also has direct CSS support that helps add an extra layer of customization to your wireframes and mockups. The annotation feature is quite helpful in dropping insights and suggestions.
MockFlow Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a comprehensive UI change log, UX design documentation, a proposal creator, file management, a UI heat mapper, a time-tracker, and video feedback. The whiteboard feature helps you effectively present UI designs during meetings.
Integrations include 10+ tools, such as Adobe Photoshop, Azure, Confluence, Google Drive, GSuite, Jira, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, Okta, Slack, Trello, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Frequent product updates
- Easy to learn
- Lots of pre-built UI templates
Cons:
- Requires an Adobe flash plugin to operate
- Difficult to use for non-English users
Justinmind is a prototyping software company based out of San Francisco, California. The company has been specializing in software simulations and wireframe tools since 2005.
Justinmind helps product managers create a highly responsive website mockup in minutes. Even if you don’t know basic HTML commands, Justinmind enables you to create aesthetic and interactive mockups.
Why I picked Justinmind: I was impressed with the liquid layouts that Justinmind offers. You can use liquid layouts to create interactive prototypes that dynamically adapt to several screen resolutions. Justinmind takes the sting out of complicated web-design concepts like pinning elements on a specific position and auto-resizing elements. If you’re dealing with a mobile application, Justinmind has fantastic app transitions like a pop, flip, fade or slide to improve engagement.
The testing functionality is also quite handy. Using Justinmind, you can quickly test a mockup and ensure smooth flow with minimal friction. The tool allows you to simulate applications and websites on various devices. Justinmind also allows you to import multiple file formats from applications like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Sketch to add them as layers or images to your mockups.
Although some responsive features typically come under prototyping, Justinmind blurs the line (in a good way) between mockups and prototyping - enabling you to collaborate better with technical teams.
Justinmind Standout Features and Integrations
Features include 4,000+ elements in a library of UI kits, smart templates, responsive and adaptive web design, Adobe and Sketch plugins, mobile gestures, animations, and data-driven variables. You can also set conditions and rules for a given interaction (for example, you can define how the app must react to a mouse-over).
Integrations include 10+ tools, such as Azure, Confluence, Figma, Hotjar, Illustrator, JIRA, Photoshop, Sketch, UserZoom, XD, and others.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- The free app is quite extensive
- Responsive prototyping
- Mobile app available
Cons:
- Lack of comprehensive tutorials
- Occasional app freezes
Other Mockup Tool Options
Here are a few more worthwhile options that didn’t make the best mockup tools list:
- Mockuuups Studio
For generating Android and iOS mockups
- Wondershare Mockitt
Mockup tool for preparing visual flowcharts and mind maps
- Visme
Mockup tool for generating packaging and print designs
- Axure
Mockup tool for implementing interaction events and conditional logic
- Moqups
Mockup tool for UX research & mind mapping
- Smartmockups
Mockup tool for packaging and apparel
- Lucidchart
Mockup tool for defining product roadmaps and customer buying journey
- Fluid UI
Mockup tool for building link-connected prototypes
- Mockplus
For effective collaboration amongst product & technical stakeholders
- Balsamiq
Mockup tool for building B2B wireframes
- Framer
Mockup tool for creating interactive designs
- Adobe XD
Mockup tool for content-aware design layout feature
- Flinto
Mockup tool for vector curve animation
- MockupsJar
Mockup tool for wall poster mockup designs
- Mediamodifier
Mockup tool for business card and postcard designs
How I Picked the Best Mockup Tools
While compiling my top list, I evaluated and compared mockup tools with positive user ratings. After building an initial shortlist, I further honed the list by weighing each tool against my selection criteria.
I also applied my product management knowledge to determine which tools and features would have helped me during my stint as a senior product manager at a B2B telecom firm.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a summary of the primary selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best mockup tools:
Ease of Use
With mockup tools, you expect a boost to your ideation process - not a hindrance. As a result, I’ve assessed the ease of use and the initial learning curve for the following tools while compiling my top 10 list. The best mockup tools are user-friendly and allow beginners to start exporting mockups in minutes.
Stakeholder Collaboration
As a product manager, seeking and assessing inputs from your cross-functional team members is critical. Creating mockups on one tool and then exporting them to email is pretty time-consuming. The best mockup tools have robust collaboration features that allow you to tag, comment, and assign tasks to streamline the ideation and sign-off processes.
Template Collection
Tools with a rich library of relevant mockup templates can help you get started quickly. When you feel stuck in the “designer’s block,” you can scroll through some templates and edit the placeholders.
Software Integrations
Mockup tools that offer software integrations can help elevate your company’s overall efficiency. For instance, if a mockup tool integrates with a design tool like Sketch, you can pull your design files, libraries, and assets directly from Sketch, streamlining the entire user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design process. Similarly, some mockup tools have integrations with Jira, which can help with user-story tracking while implementing Agile methodologies.
Pricing
Finally, pricing is a significant factor before you fixate on a mockup tool. It’s crucial to pick the right tool with the best return on investment. That’s why I’ve included the pricing for each tool and whether or not it offers a free plan.
People Also Ask
Here are some frequently asked questions that often arise on mockup tools:
What features are included in mockup tools?
Some standard features mockup tools offer include a drag-and-drop functionality, codeless design, and a pre-built library of assets, templates & widgets. With paid plans, you would receive heightened cloud storage and access to premium tools like collaborative and prototyping features.
What’s the difference between a mockup, wireframe, and prototype?
It’s all a matter of what and when. A wireframe is relevant right at the start of a project. Wireframes are low-fidelity designs because they usually only depict the bare bones of a product with no functionality. A mockup builds upon a wireframe and resembles the final app or website. Mockups bring in color, content and contrast. However, again mockups are static designs with no functionality. Finally, a prototype is a simulation of your product. A prototype is functional and would have conditional logic like certain actions to take place upon a trigger (like a scroll or click).
What's Next?
Not quite ready to build a mockup? If you’re still exploring visual themes or collecting inspiration, moodboard creator tools are a great way to kick off the design process and align your team on the overall vibe.
Related tool lists:
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