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10 Best User Interface Design Software Systems of 2023 for Product Managers

Best User Interface Design Software Shortlist

Have a quick glance at the software I evaluated in this list.

  1. 1. Invision — Best UI design software for a vast template collection of product-building touchpoints
  2. 2. Marvel — Best UI design software for drag-and-drop iOS wireframe templates
  3. 3. UXPin — Best UI design software for component-driven prototyping
  4. 4. Justinmind — Best UI design software for responsive and gesture-based interactive prototyping
  5. 5. Uizard — Best UI design software for AI-inspired design sequences
  6. 6. Axure — Best UI design software for codeless interactive prototypes with conditional logic
  7. 7. Framer — Best UI design software for implementing stack & grid web designs
  8. 8. Zeplin — Best UI design software for a GitHub-like timeline experience
  9. 9. Figma — Best UI design software for effective cross-functional collaboration
  10. 10. Mockplus DT — Best UI design software for creating a brand-specific asset library and repository

User interface (UI) design software is a recent addition to a product manager’s staple technology stack. Forbes suggests that 88% of customers having a negative online experience simply won’t return. Be it a website, web application, mobile app, or even a vending machine, UI design plays a vital role in your customer experience.

The right UI design tools can help you better translate brilliant ideas into various design types like mockups, wireframes, and prototypes. If you’re looking for a UI design tool, read through my detailed summaries of the 10 best tools below.

What is user interface design software? 

User interface (UI) design software helps you create different UI designs for various operating systems and devices. For instance, if you’re working on a mobile music streaming application, a UI design tool would help you design the now-playing screen, play-pause buttons, colors, layouts, album art positioning, and other aspects.

Overviews of the 10 Best User Interface Design Software

Here’s a brief description of each user interface design software with screenshots and standout features. Feel free to check out how I picked the software on this list at any time.

1

Invision

Best UI design software for a vast template collection of product-building touchpoints

InVision is a popular visual collaboration tool that helps organizations reduce go-to-market cycles while increasing ROI. Interestingly, InVision claims that its platform helps spike up time-to-market cycles by 36%!

Why I picked InVision: As a product manager, it’s incredible having access to several templates curated for product building. InVision has great templates cutting through several critical categories, including product planning, product launch, customer journey, wireframing, sprint planning, and feature planning.

InVision’s Freehand is essentially a digital whiteboard for collaborating with stakeholders on a wireframe or mockup. You can leverage Freehand to bridge the gap, separating a low-fidelity product idea and a high-fidelity prototype. Additionally, if you’re proficient with Photoshop, you can copy-paste layers and other assets straight from Photoshop.

InVision Standout Features and Integrations

Features include a virtual whiteboard, real-time collaboration, app prototyping, rapid prototyping, creating prototypes from Photoshop and Sketch, prototype mirroring, swipe triggers, freehand mode, and others.

Integrations include tools such as Adobe XD, Asana, Azure DevOps, Google Sheets, Jira, Microsoft Word, Sketch, Slack, Spotify, Webex, Zoom, and others.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4 744

Free plan available

From $7.95/user/month

Pros

  • Real-time whiteboard collaboration
  • Rapid prototyping
  • Assets are easily shareable

Cons

  • Occasional plugin bugs
  • Shifting from demo to prototype mode requires a lot of clicks
2

Marvel

Best UI design software for drag-and-drop iOS wireframe templates

Founded in 2013, Marvel adds immense value to organizations seeking a simple and effective UI design tool. Marvel allows users to design wireframes, mockups, and prototypes straight from a browser.

Why I picked Marvel: As product managers, it’s critical to quickly create wireframes that give your thoughts and ideas some concrete structure. Marvel offers hundreds of wireframe templates specific to device types, including Android, iOS, and PC.

The prototyping features of Marvel are unique. In less than five minutes, you can transform low-fidelity design mockups into interactive prototypes without knowing how to code. Additionally, the Sketch integration is handy as you can import Sketch screens and add layers on the go.

Marvel Standout Features and Integrations

Features include rapid prototyping, wireframing, mockup design, a device-specific template collection, efficient design handoff, a Sketch plugin, real-time collaboration, team libraries for promoting brand consistency, and others.

Integrations include 10+ tools such as Dropbox Paper, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Sketch, Smartmockups, and others.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.4 220

7-day free trial + free plan available

From $16/user/month

Pros

  • Efficient workflows between screenshots
  • Great sketch integration
  • Easy to navigate UI

Cons

  • Limited prototyping features
  • No offline support
3

UXPin

Best UI design software for component-driven prototyping

UXPin was born back in 2010 in Poland. The founders created the tool to simplify some of their design and collaboration challenges. UXPin features a component-driven prototyping approach to promote efficiency and brand-design relevance.

Why I picked UXPin: The component-driven prototyping feature of UXPin never ceases to amaze me. Essentially, UXPin allows designers to build upon existing prototypes. Instead of visualizing and creating a design from scratch, designers use existing component libraries to design new products. As a result, your organization has better design and brand consistency.

UXPin enables you to ship designs complying with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - thus, fostering inclusivity. The prototyping capabilities are robust, with states, conditional interactions, variables, and auto layout at your disposal. 

UXPin Standout Features and Integrations

Features include component-driven prototyping, drag-and-drop designing, inclusive designing, interactive prototyping, remote collaboration, member tagging, a simple designer handoff process, and others.

Integrations include 10+ tools, such as Asana, Google Sheets, Jira, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Mosaic, NPM, Salesforce, Storybook, Zendesk, and others.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.2 116

14-day free trial + free plan available

From $24/user/month

Pros

  • Rapid prototyping
  • In-app video tutorials
  • 1000s of icons for mobile designs

Cons

  • Slightly steep learning curve
  • Limited video integration
4

Justinmind

Best UI design software for responsive and gesture-based interactive prototyping

Justinmind is a fantastic prototyping tool for websites, mobile devices, and web apps. Justinmind helps you easily create highly interactive prototypes. Creating responsive prototypes was a hassle back then, but Justinmind takes all the sting out of such “code-heavy” design elements.

Why I picked Justinmind: I’m particularly interested in the interactive and responsive design features that Justinmind offers. With Justinmind, you can effortlessly add advanced interactive designs, transitions, and animations to your UI.

Mobile gestures like custom actions responding to triggers like a scroll, rotate, tap, or pinch help boost prototype responsiveness. Since the digital demographics of your audience would consist of different device types, Justinmind’s responsive designs ensure your prototype proactively adapts as per the user’s screen size and resolution.

Justinmind Standout Features and Integrations

Features include responsive prototyping, lists, forms, easy prototype publishing, team prototyping, efficient design handoff, design systems, a great collection of free UI kits, and robust plugins.

Integrations include 10+ tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Azure DevOps, Clicktale, Figma, Jira, Sketch, UserZoom, and others.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4 51

Free plan available

From $19/user/month

Pros

  • Responsive prototyping
  • Perpetual license pricing option
  • The free version allows unlimited projects

Cons

  • Export bugs
  • Slow search feature
5

Uizard

Best UI design software for AI-inspired design sequences

Uizard strongly advocates for machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) powered prototyping tools. Uizard’s mission involves empowering non-designers to build interactive and digital designs.

Why I picked Uizard: I picked Uizard because of its no-design promise. I’ve heard of no-code earlier, but no-design is an exciting progression. Uizard’s Autodesigner feature (due April ‘23) enables users to create mockups by inputting ideas via text. You can consider Uizard to be the ChatGPT for UI design.

Additionally, you can upload screenshots to Uizard, and the tool converts them into mockups that you can edit. As a result, you can draw inspiration from websites and applications that align with your goals and sail from there. You can upload any random screenshot, and Uizard scans the asset to generate design assets. For product managers lacking design experience, Uizard is a great way to translate ideas into designs quickly.

Uizard Standout Features and Integrations

Features include a no-code and no-design UI, AI-inspired UX/UI designs, scanned screenshots to create mockups, attention heatmaps, a website/app copy generator, an AI-enabled theme creator, 100s of web apps, mobile and website themes, and others.

Integration details are currently not available.

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4 2

Free plan available

From $12/user/month

Pros

  • 100s of ready-made templates
  • You can upload screenshots of other websites to draw inspiration
  • Easy to learn

Cons

  • Mockup export bugs
  • Editing text is a little hard
6

Axure

Best UI design software for codeless interactive prototypes with conditional logic

Axure’s journey began as a solution for design and product teams frustrated with the typical software development lifecycle. Creating tools for better user experience (UX) design was among Axure’s prime priorities. 

Why I picked Axure: I’m impressed with the sheer amount of design firepower Axure packs. Axure enables you to create truly responsive and functional prototypes with many different event triggers and actions.

You can effortlessly implement conditional logic like the if-then-else sequence and bring your static prototypes to life. Axure Rapid Prototyping (RP) widgets help you with dynamic content for adding a new dimension to prototyping. Although Axure is primarily a UX tool, it's design and no-code capabilities are a real delight for product managers and UI designers too.

Axure Standout Features and Integrations

Features include rapid prototyping, real-time collaboration, functional prototype creation, user flow diagrams, adaptive and responsive views, dynamic content, conditional logic, interaction event triggers, and others.

Integrations include 10+ tools such as Adobe XD, Figma, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Sketch, Slack, and others.

30-day free trial

From $29/user/month

Pros

  • Vast online learning resources
  • Rapid prototyping
  • Powerful functional prototyping

Cons

  • Steep learning curve
  • Some technical design knowledge is a prerequisite
7

Framer

Best UI design software for implementing stack & grid web designs

Framer’s vision is simple: help organizations build and ship stunning visual designs. Starting from a mere JavaScript library, Framer has matured into a robust web design platform. 

Why I picked Framer: Framer has an impressive stack and grid feature that helps you organize multiple objects cleanly. A stack is a layer group stacked horizontally or vertically, and a grid houses numerous layers in a structured pattern. Stacks and grids in tandem help create responsive web designs that adapt to different screen sizes.

Framer’s UI design capabilities are pretty extensive, with the tool allowing you to build different types of interactions, including forms, galleries, and carousels. Lastly, the multiplayer feature promotes effective collaboration. If you’re a bit techno-savvy, you can harness Framer to embed CSS codes and add an extra layer of customization.

Framer Standout Features and Integrations

Features include real-time collaboration, great UX/UI interaction features, drag-and-drop UI designing, a Figma plugin, site speed-boosting tools, a CMS (content management system), and others.

Integrations include 10+ tools such as Bit.ai, Calendly, Formidable, Hubspot, Mailchimp, Notion, Sketch, Stripe, and others.

Free plan available

From $30/editor/month (Team package)

Pros

  • Great template collection
  • Truly no-code web design
  • Easy animations

Cons

  • Occasional buggy updates
  • Figma integration isn’t very robust
8

Zeplin

Best UI design software for a GitHub-like timeline experience

Founded in 2014, Zeplin aims to create software that enhances the design workflows of organizations worldwide. Several product design teams from reputable companies like HSBC, Starbucks, and Salesforce use Zeplin for creating UX/UI designs.

Why I picked Zeplin: I love the GitHub-like timeline experience that Zeplin offers against each screen. You can keep track of all changes made by different stakeholders, giving you a holistic view of how a design has progressed over time. This design version history feature also enables you to effortlessly restore your UI designs to a previous version for seamless comparison.

Zeplin allows you to organize screens into a logical hierarchy to streamline the designer-developer handoff process. User journeys are straightforward and fun to chart using Zeplin. You can “mouse-link” screens and create user journeys for a very clean UX.

Zeplin Standout Features and Integrations

Features include design version control, user journeys, Storybook and GitHub linking, a global style guide, and others.

Integrations include 10+ tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Figma, Microsoft Teams, Sketch, Storybook, Trello, Visual Studio Code, Zapier, and others.

Free plan available

Plans start at $8/user/month

Pros

  • Comprehensive design code documentation
  • Simple prototyping
  • Auto-generated code snippets

Cons

  • The interface is a little confusing
  • Steep learning curve
9

Figma

Best UI design software for effective cross-functional collaboration

Figma has been plying its designing expertise for over a decade now. Figma strongly believes in real-time collaboration and advocates for cross-functional participation in the design process. As a result, Figma features excellent collaboration capabilities in addition to its state-of-the-art design platform.

Why I picked Figma: As a former product manager, I recall spending weeks chasing stakeholders for sign-offs on my wireframes. Moreover, sometimes a stakeholder comes up with a suggestion late in the process, forcing you to redo the sign-off process. Figma’s popular “multiplayer” feature enables stakeholders to participate in the live collaboration. Product managers and designers can “hover” over designs and jointly build a great UI. 

FigJam from Figma presents an online whiteboard with diagramming and sticky-note functionalities, making brainstorming fun and effective. On the design front, Figma has unique arc designs, a sophisticated pen tool, and auto-layout responsive features. You can also leverage automation with Figma’s widgets and plugins. 

Figma Standout Features and Integrations

Features include private extensions, plugins, widgets, a drag-and-drop interface, design inspection, easy export, intuitive prototyping, mobile application, dynamic overlays, embedded commenting, and others.

Integrations include tools such as Axure, Bubble, Flinto, Framer Web, Maze, Microsoft Teams, Mixpanel, Pendo, Principle, ProtoPie, Sprig, Zeplin, and others.

Free plan available

From $15/user/month

Pros

  • Effortless file sharing
  • Real-time collaboration
  • Generous free plan

Cons

  • Bugs around converting designs to mobile code
  • Responsive prototyping could be better
10

Mockplus DT

Best UI design software for creating a brand-specific asset library and repository

Mockups is a jack-of-all-trades in the design software industry, with the tool offering prototyping, wireframing, collaboration, design systems, and UI features. Mockplus features two flagship design products: Mockplus DT, which is UI-focussed, and Mockplus RP, a prototyping tool.

Why I picked Mockplus DT: I’m excited about Mockplus’ assets-reuse capabilities. As your team members work on multiple projects, the asset repository grows massively, thus making it challenging to enforce uniform brand-design guidelines. Using Mockplus DT, your teams can save layer styles, colors, and other components to an asset library. Consequently, your teams can use the same assets for future designs and drive consistency.

Mockplus DT also offers a vector UI design with an easy drag-and-drop vector editing tool. You can also use the proportional scaling feature to scale all elements and layer styles while resizing features.

Mockplus DT Standout Features and Integrations

Features include vector UI designing, a drag-and-drop editing interface, an asset library, smart asset distribution, proportional scaling, custom plugins, free UI kits, real-time collaboration, and others.

Integrations include 10+ tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe XD, Axure, Confluence, Figma, Jira, Lark, Sketch, Slack and others.

Free plan available

From $5.95/user/month

Pros

  • Effective plugins for design handover
  • Mockplus DT (UI design tool) is free to use
  • Several useful free UI kits

Cons

  • Bandwidth intensive
  • Some design knowledge is needed

The Best User Interface Design Software Comparison Chart

Here’s a comparison chart that summarizes basic details about each of the top user interface design software I just covered in the overviews.

Tool Free Option Price
1
Invision

Best UI design software for a vast template collection of product-building touchpoints

Free plan available

From $7.95/user/month Visit Website
2
Marvel

Best UI design software for drag-and-drop iOS wireframe templates

7-day free trial + free plan available

From $16/user/month Visit Website
3
UXPin

Best UI design software for component-driven prototyping

14-day free trial + free plan available

From $24/user/month Visit Website
4
Justinmind

Best UI design software for responsive and gesture-based interactive prototyping

Free plan available

From $19/user/month Visit Website
5
Uizard

Best UI design software for AI-inspired design sequences

Free plan available

From $12/user/month Visit Website
6
Axure

Best UI design software for codeless interactive prototypes with conditional logic

30-day free trial

From $29/user/month Visit Website
7
Framer

Best UI design software for implementing stack & grid web designs

Free plan available

From $30/editor/month (Team package) Visit Website
8
Zeplin

Best UI design software for a GitHub-like timeline experience

Free plan available

Plans start at $8/user/month Visit Website
9
Figma

Best UI design software for effective cross-functional collaboration

Free plan available

From $15/user/month Visit Website
10
Mockplus DT

Best UI design software for creating a brand-specific asset library and repository

Free plan available

From $5.95/user/month Visit Website

Other Options

Here are a few more worthwhile options that didn’t make the top tools but are worth your consideration.

  1. Sketch

    Best UI design software for Mac native app and offline functionality

  2. Proto.io

    Best UI design software with ready-made templates for iOS and watchOS mockups

  3. Balsamiq

    Best UI design software for low-fidelity wireframing

  4. Adobe XD

    Best for OS-specific UI design kits

  5. Webflow

    Best UI design software for e-commerce website or application product managers

  6. Wondershare Mockitt

    Best UI design software for visualizing flowcharts and mind maps

  7. Flowmapp

    Best UI design software for creating intuitive sitemaps

  8. Origami Studio

    Best UI design software with freeform drawing tools for enhanced prototyping

How I Picked the Best User Interface Design Software

Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best user interface design software for this list. To build this top 10 list, I evaluated and compared various UI design tools with positive user ratings.

After determining my list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of product management experience to pinpoint features that are beginner-friendly and efficient.

Selection Criteria

Here’s a summary of the primary evaluation criteria I used to build my list of the best user interface design software:

Usability

As a product manager, time is of the essence. Does the UI design tool offer easy no-code and drag-and-drop features? Does the tool require any design or coding expertise? Did the tool creators offer any online training, certification or webinars for getting started?

Template Collection

UI design kits and templates help product managers get off the blocks quickly. Does the UI design tool have a vast number of editable templates? Are the templates easy to edit?

Software Integrations 

Does the UI design tool have integrations with other third-party design and collaboration tools? 

Pricing

How cost-effective is the UI design tool, and does it offer a free trial or freemium plan for you to test the waters?

User Interface Design Software FAQs

Find answers to common questions other people ask about this topic.

What's Next?

UI design can make or break your digital products. However, it is not the only thing that matters. Learn about the difference between product vision and product strategy and how to quickly find a product-market fit without breaking the bank.

Related tool lists:

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By Joshua Solomon

Joshua Solomon is a former product manager at a top telecom firm. He has amassed a great wealth of experience in roadmap creation, user story prioritization, cross-functional collaboration and other nuances of product management.

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