Product Manager, Creatie · 10 min read · Aug 21, 2024
There’s no denying that Figma has a bit of a chokehold on the design market. It’s the default selection for most design teams today, and Figma knows it. However, Figma is charging more and more for its different modules, like Figma AI and Figma Slides, and continues to drive up prices for Dev Mode.
Some of the older tools that were common alternatives are either sunsetting or simply not innovating, so they don’t meet the same quality threshold.
Many see the non-user-friendly changes that Figma has been making as abusing its market powers, a pattern that often emerges when monopolies exist. Here’s the question: Is there a viable way out?
The short answer is “yes.” The long answer is that we’ve got seven Figma alternatives right here, and some of them even have viable free plans.
There are two major benefits of choosing us over Figma:
Creatie has powerful AI features that help your team generate design ideas, ensure design consistency, create logos and illustrations, and more.
Second, Creatie is free. No complex pricing plans or add-on charges here. Try Creatie out for yourself today. If you join now, we can also offer you months of free credit after our pricing plan is rolled out later this year.
Lastly, Creatie’s interface is incredibly familiar and user-friendly for anyone who’s been working in Figma to date. This minimizes the amount of time you and your design team will need to spend onboarding, training, and getting accustomed to a new system. We also offer easy one-click migration from Figma. So you can hit the ground running in no time.
Features:
AI-powered mockup generator: You can give Creatie a few prompts or select an area you’re having trouble with, and our AI engine will produce endless new design ideas.
AI image enhancer: You can change out backgrounds, expand images, and upscale low-resolution files with an interactive AI image enhancer.
Design auditor: You can use Creatie to audit existing assets and ensure that everything aligns with your current brand guidelines.
AI logo and illustration generator: Our AI-driven icon generator can produce dozens of beautiful 3D assets and icons for your next app or interface.
Pros:
Creatie is free.
You can generate many different design ideas in minutes, getting you off the blank page faster.
The platform has a familiar look and feel for ex-Figma users.
We have a free dev mode (for which Figma is charging more and more to use).
Cons:
Creatie has yet to implement some enterprise-level features such as single sign-on.
We’re still a little short on community and design resources compared to what Figma offers.
Sketch is another widely used Figma alternative. While it’s a usable option, there aren’t a lot of people making the jump from Figma to Sketch. It’s more of a legacy tool at this point.
While there is a web-based version of Sketch, available with their standard subscription, the company is more focused on the native Mac app, which is an offline tool sold on a perpetual license.
It is, however, quite a bit more cost-effective than Figma, especially if you’re only paying that one-off $120 fee.
Features:
Vector graphic editing: Sketch’s core competency is editing vector designs.
Prototyping: Sketch offers some simple interactive prototyping features that they are continuing to build upon.
Pros:
Sketch is pretty cost-effective compared to other solutions.
It has some good onboarding and learning resources.
Cons:
Sketch is primarily an offline tool, so it's not collaborative.
It’s only available for Mac users.
The learning curve is steep since the interface and layout is so different from Figma.
Pricing:
Sketch costs $120 for a Mac-only native app, with a year’s worth of updates. There is also a monthly subscription available for $12 per user, per month.
Lunacy is a freemium design tool for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
It’s designed to offer a no- or low-cost alternative to popular UI design tools like Figma, with features like real-time collaboration, a prototyping tool for turning designs into clickable prototypes, and AI image enhancement.
Features:
Built-in icons: Lunacy has over a million built-in icons to add to your designs.
AI image editing: You can use AI tools to upscale low-quality images or remove their backgrounds.
Auto z-index: The design system automatically sorts layers in the user interface according to size, with smaller elements being brought to the front.
Pros:
You can import files directly from Figma into Lunacy.
Lunacy is very community-focused. It offers an easy way for users to request new features to be developed and even has an accessible backlog of what it’s working on.
Cons:
Though it’s available on Mac and Linux, Lunacy is a Windows-first tool, so it will work best for Microsoft users.
Lunacy does lack a few features that more mature designers might require such as advanced animation capabilities.
Pricing:
Lunacy has a decent free version, but it’s limited to a maximum of 10 clouds and a 30-day version history—and it doesn’t offer access to its AI tools.
The paid plan comes in at $14.98 per user, per month.
Penpot is an open-source UI and UX design tool designed for collaborative interface design. It offers built-in CSS and SVG to reduce the back-and-forth between design and dev siloes.
Features:
Responsive design: Penpot uses built-in CSS to ensure that your designs are flexible and responsive to multiple display sizes.
Components and design tokens: These enable consistency and design scalability by creating a library of reusable design elements.
Whiteboard: Penpot offers a real-time collaborative whiteboard feature.
Pros:
Penpot is web-based, so it’s accessible from any device with web browser capabilities.
It’s open-source, so you can use it as a completely free tool.
Cons:
Penpot is a relatively new tool compared to standards like Sketch and Figma, and it offers few third-party integrations.
Pricing:
Penpot is open-source. That means that all of the features it offers are free, with unlimited team members and workspaces.
It does offer a pair of paid options, but these only add premium support or enterprise-facing features like access controls. However, its Professional tier does currently say “All-new premium features coming soon,” so Penpot might be switching over to a freemium model in the near future.
Marvel is another design and prototyping tool and is a good alternative to Figma if you want to create simple prototypes quickly.
Features:
Wireframing: Marvel has a simple tool for quickly drawing up wireframes. It even offers some basic templates.
Developer handoff: Marvel can automatically turn your designs into code, assets, and specs to make handoff seamless.
Pros:
Marvel offers some great integrations with tools like Sketch, Dropbox Paper, Slack, and Jira.
It also has an API available for custom integrations.
The platform comes with some helpful collaboration features like annotations and design specs.
Cons:
It’s missing a few of the advanced features that Figma offers, like complex vector editing and extensive component libraries.
Pricing:
Apart from a basic free plan, Marvel pricing starts at $7 per month.
What to prioritize when choosing new design software
Ease of use
You don’t want to spend weeks getting accustomed to a new tool. Look for a solution with an intuitive and user-friendly interface. Ideally, choose a solution with a familiar layout—Creatie, for example, looks and feels a lot like Figma.
This will help lower the learning curve and prevent unnecessary roadblocks.
Compatibility
Whatever tool you use, make sure it’s compatible with all of your current hardware and software.
Confirm that the Figma alternative you’re considering runs on your current OS (whether that’s Mac OS, Windows, or Linux) and that it integrates with any other tools and plug-ins you use regularly in your design workflow. Also, look into file compatibility.
You’ll want to prioritize a solution that supports all major file types, but the ideal choice is one that supports Figma files. For instance, Creatie allows you to import Figma files directly—no third-party conversion tool is required.
Support and community
Look for a solution that offers easy access to tech support if and when you need it. The last thing you want is to have to put a design process on hold because you’re having issues with file formats and you can’t get ahold of support.
Prioritize a tool with self-service documentation available, as well as an active user community to engage with or run ideas past, so you can resolve your own issues.
Feature set
Beyond ensuring that the tool is compatible with your chosen operating system, consider what ways you’d like to access the platform. For instance, are you fine working on just a web app or do you need a mobile app as well? It’s also worth considering what your design team members prefer.
Make a list of must-have features against which you can cross off options. Some important examples include:
Built-in templates
A drag-and-drop user experience
AI image expansion and upscaling
Support for design-to-code handoff
Advanced text editing
Support for Figma files
Growth
Look for a solution that still releases regular updates, has scalable pricing to support company growth, and is actively innovating and releasing new features.
For example, Adobe XD and InVision aren’t good choices since they’re either shutting down or are no longer developing and improving the platforms.
Cost
Make sure the software you choose is affordable for your current budget and offers a suitable subscription plan that won’t become too expensive if and when you scale.
For example, you might not require single sign-on right now, but it could be a future business need. If a platform’s enterprise plan is prohibitively expensive, you’ll end up having to change tools again or foot a large bill.
Creatie: The AI-driven Figma alternative
There are plenty of great Figma alternatives out there, from cost-effective solutions like Marvel to complex tools like UXPin. Few options offer the creativity, scalability, and agility that Creatie does, however.
Best of all, Creatie is completely free, which is a refreshing change from your ever-growing Figma bill.
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