Freehand, from InVision headquartered in New York, is an online whiteboard that enables teams to plan, brainstorm, and draw together. It aims to give everyone a simple way to visually represent ideas with charts, diagrams, and drawings. Whether for mind mapping, creating a customer journey map, or drafting up an org chart, Freehand can help teams make ideas and plans visual.
$0
per year per user
InVision
Score 5.8 out of 10
N/A
InVision is a collaborative design and prototyping platform with features such as freehand drafting mode and interactive mockups, collaboration, idea management, user testing, and integration with Slack and other collaboration tools. According to the vendor, 1 million designers are using the free version.
Cost effectiveness and while Miro is good for collaboration and sprint and PI planning, I think its too open-ended. Easy to get lost in a board. Snagit is my go-to tool but it is not a collaborative tool. If I could combine Snagits tools with Invisions look/feel...that would be …
I actually have access to all three. And I use all three for different things, though truthfully, I could probably get away with just using Figma. I'm not sure how InVision Freehand is better than Miro or Figma. But we already own it, so it has made sense for me to use it in …
InVision Freehand is closing the gap and adding all the functionalities that some of these tools provide separately. In the race towards a one-stop digital design ecosystem, InVision Freehand is well poised to deliver and connect where others can't. I hope that with the news of …
The sharing/accessibility of the mocks. It’s hard for someone not on the design team to see their mocks unless the links were shared but this might be by design or license based.
Miro (formerly Realtime Board) is the original product concept for this tool and I used it for 3-4 years for product development. Invision is aesthetically a carbon copy of the tool but lacks in fine usability controls. We actually didn't choose Freehand, it just came as an …
Freehand is the least polished of the bunch. It doesn't instantly make your thoughts and design look sexy. It doesn't open up your designs to be edited live, inspected, and sliced up for export. It doesn't let you interact with flow charts, like showing or hiding long pieces of …
All other programs I've used that claim to be similar use a grid function or "sticky" note system that is really limiting in how information can be laid out and presented.
One of the key differentiators between Miro and Freehand is that after a certain number of users Miro is a paid subscription plan, which can be unattractive. Freehand has many of the same features, and in my opinion, features a better UI for easy maneuvering. However, miro does …
Miro is the main competitor I have used. It is extremely similar to Freehand but I like Freehand more because we do a lot of our prototyping and design in InVision so it is more of a one-stop shop for me. I also enjoy the different types of templates in Freehand, a few of them …
Mural is very similar in the type of approach we could use to walk through certain items but it lacks many features that we rely on in InVision, so we typically stay away from Mural.
In my opinion, InVision Freehand is worse than every other option I've tried. I would not have selected InVision Freehand if given the choice, but it wasn't my decision at our company.
We were using inVision Freehand at the time based on a team member's suggestion. They were familiar with it, having used it at their prior organization, so we naturally adopted it after they introduced it to the organization. However, the team quickly moved on to other …
InVision Freehand is lacking in features compared to competitors like Mural and Miro, but its streamlined, easy-to-use interface makes it easy to pick up and throw something together in an instant. It does not do large complex work as well as its competitors, but InVision …
I didn't make the decision to purchase InVision Freehand vs Miro. If given the choice I would have chosen Miro. Miro has features that are more intuitive and automated. The product is just easier to use. InVision Freehand gets the job done and what makes it stand apart is its …
From personal experience, I think Miro and Mural focus more on collaboration. InVision Freehand is more about design, more like a subsection in InVision. The other tools are more about the concept of boards. InVision Freehand is more like a tool. I use InVision Freehand because …
I have only used InVision as a tool for designing mockups. I wouldn't be able to draw a fair comparison to other tools since I have more experience with InVision.
FigJam has more shapes, more importable reactions, and for me it's less likely to lag. It's also way easier to connect arrows to sticky notes in FigJam and overall rough designs look cleaner than in InVision.
[InVision] provides the ability to iterate really quickly, in fact, it is so intuitive that can be applied on live wireframe designing, while the ideas are being scratched and stormed from the team in a single discovery session, as well as allowing and giving access to the …
We went with InVision because we were already bought into that ecosystem. We have since decided to move to Figma, as we were not receiving the features we needed from InVision and the associated tools (Whimsical, Sketch, Abstract, and Zeplin). The ROI of Figma allows us to free …
InVision can be a powerful tool when paired with Sketch and other platforms like Freehand. However, Figma is currently the industry leader in terms of functionality and usability for collaborative UI design and prototyping. Invision's sharing and prototyping features are its …
Main difference is InVision's easy to use prototyping capability. When it is compared to Marvel and Axure RP, while it has less capabilities on tools it is more robust than both. I believe Figma is just a new and upgraded version of InVision where you could do everything online …
InVision is a bit limited overall compared to other programs like Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator and XD. At the time we selected InVision they were one of the leaders and introduced a lot of new features that were beneficial. However now we've moved back to many of the Adobe …
We only tested out using Adobe XD for similar uses and found it to be more challenging to fit within our processes. It didn't have as robust a set of capabilities as InVision and wasn't as easy to use enterprise wide. I recall also having issues with working with Sketch.
InVision was the best tool for our team. It has the features that best fit our process but is also flexible enough for make it work in various situations where visuals are a core component. We've been using InVision for over 5 years and we're not likely to move to another …
InVision's design is much more polished and seamless due to its apps on mobile and web. They are very easy to learn and gather feedback compared to Sketch or Principle. Although these features are quickly coming to the other apps, InVision has an upper hand at the moment with …
Zeplin also allows to share design spec and collect feedback, but the ability to have prototype changes the game.
Also, other products like Craft plugin is cherry on the cake.
Compared to other tools, InVision is a very solid tool with a great reputation and prototyping functionalities to back it up. InVision was the first prototyping tool we purchased, and it’s served us really well. However, more and more design tools are now also providing …
Balsamiq is a better tool for interactive prototyping and dynamic transition. InVision is definitely better for handling various designs, separated by projects and shared with different access levels across multiple organizations.
Other design tools have been creating their own prototyping functionality, which has made InVision less valuable over time. It is much more convenient to use the same tool for both design and prototyping, because it removes the unnecessary steps of exporting, importing, and …
InVision works seamlessly and easily when sharing and requesting comments from others. Other products I've used like Balsamiq and Dropbox (earlier versions) provided online displays of work, but no easy way to collect feedback or quickly update. InVision provides enterprise …
InVision is a great tool to use and well worth the price. However, if you're looking for some variety, UXPin and Figma are worth looking into too. While UXPin may be a tad simplistic in the design ability, Figma is a great competitor to InVision. Both tools are worth looking …
I actually haven't used anything that's similar to InVision, so can't compare. I'm not even sure there is anything out there that can actually compare to InVision. It's an ideal tool for any designer that wants to improve client/team feedback. I highly recommend it and look …
As the industry leader, XD and Figma have had some catching up to do. I think now InVision will have to innovate to hold these products off. Several are doing what made InVision famous, and in some instances do it even better. There is an insane amount of competition and …
Truthfully, while we have looked at others, InVision has the name recognition in the web design community and a tight integration with Sketch which is what was important to us. We have not seriously considered others, but may in the future as our needs change. This is our first …
Freehand has been well suited for creating process maps and getting stakeholder feedback. It has also been good for brainstorming and "freehand" board creation. Some of the templates are hard to customize for specific needs so it's sometimes better to build your own from scratch. There are a lot of navigational issues with larger boards that require zooming in/out and navigating to different sections.
InVision is well suited for design reviews and immersing yourself in the experience of an app-to-be. As a Product Manager, it's difficult to take abstract concepts, user pain points, and business needs, and produce a vision for an app without a visual aid to communicate a vision. InVIsion offers PMs, designers, and developers the opportunity to sketch a vision, communicate about it with inline commenting, and shareable with other stakeholders.
Designs can be very slow to load on mobile devices, particularly when they include many screens.
There isn’t an offline version of the full app, which feels less-than-ideal for many of our teammates who live in areas with more spotty internet.
There are limited functionalities to portray animations and transitions. This hasn’t been a huge issue, but it makes the app feel a little out of date, considering the range of such functionalities in other apps.
I am not in charge of the decision making on renewal or not, but my personal opinion would be to use FigJam instead as Figma is a software that we already have implemented and are familiar with. Invision would be my second choice on that topic
Color Selection can be tricky when changing colors for shapes and text I've seen other users struggle with creating sticky notes and getting text to fit in the box properly and had to abandon the tool for a workshop for this reason After having a demo, I learned of new features I wasn't using. I don't know it would have been intuitive to find on my own.
I think it is pretty readily available. I had some sign-in issues recently (could not log in no matter what), and my IT department created a ticket with Invision to solve it. Other than that, I have never had any issues.
InVision Freehand gets such high marks because there is no page-load lag at all. We have other applications integrated with it and we see zero lag, or drag on it's operability. We work a lot of platforms that promise smooth integrations and they don't always work that way - with inVision Freehand we know it plays well with others
I haven't had to use the support team for anything, which is great news because that means the product usually works as expected! In terms of online support, I've been able to find videos that show how new features work. Also, many of the people I work with have experience with the tools so they are a great resource for me.
I didn't need to contact InVision support, as I've never needed it. They have an intuitive UI, and most of the questions are answered in their help portal or in tutorials online. Since many people use it, there a great resources available on for example YouTube. No problems so far with InVision.
The implementation is pretty much easy-peasy and plug-n-play. We simply download the applications and install, signed in and were good to go. I really cannot imagine that there would be anyone who would have any difficulty whatsoever in getting started in more than just a few minutes. It's really how implementing these officewide improvements should always go.
InVision Freehand is closing the gap and adding all the functionalities that some of these tools provide separately. In the race towards a one-stop digital design ecosystem, InVision Freehand is well poised to deliver and connect where others can't. I hope that with the news of Adobe acquiring Figma, InVision Freehand can continue to be a leader and pioneer in this space.
[InVision] provides the ability to iterate really quickly, in fact, it is so intuitive that can be applied on live wireframe designing, while the ideas are being scratched and stormed from the team in a single discovery session, as well as allowing and giving access to the whole organization to the final outcome
Not everyone in the company has access to Invision, and they can't view the links I provide to them. I also wish everyone could view a file without logging in to the enterprise account. It comes in handy when I am doing focus-group studies or other studies with our customers that don't have Freehand. Unfortunately, if that is possible, I don't know how to do that.
Freehand has had a positive impact on WHO can collaborate on our designs. It's not just for designers. Anyone can pop in and contribute.
Freehand is a great value when included within everything else InVision has to offer. Really helps to bridge the gap between the "pretty picture" (prototypes) and the "deep thinking" behind why everything is how it is.
The only negative is that not everyone is on InVision. People use all sorts of collaboration platforms, and InVision is a bit of a barrier to entry when working with lots of people at lots of different organizations.