Skip to main content

With so many different user experience solutions out there, figuring out which one is right for you is tough. You know you want to enhance collaboration among design teams and have the ability to gather and incorporate user feedback to create more user-friendly and intuitive interfaces but need to figure out which tool is best. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, making use of my personal experiences using dozens of different tools with larger teams and diverse products, with my curated list of the best UX tools.

What are UX tools?

A UX tool is a software application that helps UX designers create, prototype, and test user interfaces. These tools are instrumental in the UX design process, providing the necessary features and functionalities to ensure a user-centric approach to digital product development. These features include wireframing capabilities, prototyping functionalities, user flow mapping, usability testing integration, and collaboration features.

UX tools play a crucial role in translating design ideas into tangible and functional prototypes, fostering a user-centric approach to digital product development.

Overviews Of The 10 Best UX Tools

Here’s a brief description of each UX tool that showcases the best use case and standout features.

Best UX tool for collaboration with team members

  • Free plan available
  • From $15/editor/month
Visit Website
Rating: 4.7/5

Figma is a popular UX design tool well-suited for collaborative work and high-fidelity wireframes. 

Why I picked Figma: A remarkable aspect of Figma is FigJam, which is an online whiteboard tool. FigJam can help you sketch your ideas, map your user journey, and collaborate with other team members. In addition, its audio chat feature enables users to communicate with each other through voice chat while working on the whiteboard.

Figma is ideal for individual designers, design teams, and product teams. One of the standout features of Figma is its collaborative capabilities, which allow multiple team members to work on the same project simultaneously without the need for any additional software or plugins. 

Another key feature of Figma is its vector editing capabilities, which allow designers to create and manipulate complex shapes and illustrations.

Figma Standout Features and Integrations

Features include version history, team libraries, audio conversations, plugins and widgets, advanced drawing tools, prototyping, Figma editor, design system management, Sketch import, content management, overlays, automated provisioning, and advanced animations.

Integrations include Asana, Dropbox, Flinto, Maze, Microsoft Teams, Notion, Slack, Sprig, Trello, Zeplin, and others.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Good interface
  • Cloud-based software
  • The free version provides several features

Cons:

  • Requires a powerful computer
  • Occasional downtimes

Best UX tool for collaborative design reviews and feedback

  • Free plan available
  • Pricing upon request
Visit Website
Rating: 4.4/5

InVision is a popular digital product design platform offering various tools and features for creating and collaborating on design projects. It helps designers, design teams, and product teams create high-fidelity prototypes, animations, and other design assets.

Why I picked InVision: The Freehand tool is a standout feature of InVision, which helps designers sketch, draw, and annotate designs. It's an intuitive and powerful collaboration tool that allows multiple users to collaborate, share feedback, and iterate on designs quickly and easily. Designers and stakeholders can communicate ideas and concepts in a fluid and dynamic way, making it a must-have for any team focused on collaborative design workflows.

InVision is a useful tool for UX designers, product managers, and other stakeholders involved in the design and development process. Features such as the Freehand tool, design libraries, and native integrations with third-party software make InVision a popular tool for UX design.

InVision Standout Features and Integrations

Features include presentations, prototype creation and development, digital whiteboards, wireframing, feedback management, reporting and analytics, real-time collaboration, threaded comments, and version control.

Integrations include Asana, Basecamp, Dropbox Business, Google Drive, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Notion, Rippling, Slack, Trello, and others.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Extensive documentation and community support
  • Robust prototyping and animation capabilities
  • Large library of design assets and templates

Cons:

  • Some users have reported issues with version control
  • Steep learning curve for beginners

Best UX tool for conversion rate optimization

  • 30-day free trial available
  • Plans start at $390/month
Visit Website
Rating: 4.5/5

Omniconvert is a conversion rate optimization platform that enables businesses to create personalized experiences for their website visitors, leading to increased engagement, conversions, and customer loyalty.

Why I picked Omniconvert: Omniconvert offers a robust A/B testing feature that allows businesses to test different website versions and identify the most effective design and messaging. It also includes advanced segmentation and targeting options, which enable users to test different variations of their website pages for specific user groups.

It also offers a range of features, including A/B testing, web personalization, surveys, and more, that work together to improve website performance and drive revenue growth. The easy-to-use visual editor and advanced targeting options make it simple for users to create and test different variations of their website pages, allowing businesses to optimize their websites for maximum performance.

Omniconvert Standout Features and Integrations

Features include web personalizations, surveys, multi-device website testing, advanced segmentation and targeting, advanced tracking and reporting, data audit, and UI/UX audit.

Integrations include Campaign Monitor, FreshMail, GetResponse, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Hotjar, HubSpot, Inspectlet, Kissmetrics, Mailchimp, and others.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Comprehensive analytics and reporting features
  • Excellent customer support and resources
  • Easy to set up

Cons:

  • The UI needs improvement
  • Limited integrations

Best UX tool for both UI and UX design

  • 7-day free trial + free plan available
  • From $16/user/month (billed annually)
Visit Website
Rating: 4.4/5

Marvel is a design platform that allows you to create wireframes, mockups, and website or app prototypes for any device right from your browser.

Why I picked Marvel: The best part about Marvel is the 'Handoff' feature, which helps developers extract design specifications, assets, and CSS code directly from the prototype. This makes the handover process much smoother and reduces the risk of errors.

It works well for creating high-fidelity interactive prototypes that closely resemble the final product, allowing designers to test and validate their designs with users or stakeholders. Marvel also natively integrates with other design tools, such as Sketch, which makes importing designs and prototypes easy.

Additionally, it aids collaboration among team members through features like comments, feedback, and version control.

Marvel Standout Features and Integrations

Features include team libraries, animations, drag-and-drop design interface, UI kit library, version history, commenting, responsive web design, and feedback.

Integrations include Ballpark, Confluence, Dropbox Paper, Jira, Keynote, Microsoft, Sketch, Smartmockups, YouTube, Zeroheight, and others.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Easy to use
  • Automatic backups
  • Compatible with Windows, Linux, Android, and Apple

Cons:

  • The free plan has limited features
  • Lacks organization

Best UX tool for creating quick and low-fidelity wireframes

  • 30-day free trial
  • From $9/month
Visit Website
Rating: 4.2/5

Balsamiq is a design tool that helps users create low-fidelity wireframes. Its simplicity makes it an excellent tool for non-technical users.

Why I picked Balsamiq: A cool feature of Balsamiq is its Quick Add feature. It lets users quickly add UI elements to their wireframes by typing the element's name in the search box. Moreover, it supports many UI elements, such as text boxes, CTA buttons, and more.

Balsamiq is an ideal design solution for product managers, designers, and developers who need to sketch out design ideas quickly. Its pre-built library of UI elements helps designers create wireframes quickly. In addition, its collaborative features enable team members to share and review wireframes with ease.

Balsamiq Standout Features and Integrations

Features include built-in UI components, wireframes, project history, collaboration tools, data import and export, drag and drop editor, feedback management, UX prototyping, user management, and whiteboards.

Integrations include Bubbles, Confluence, Google Drive, Google Workspace, Jira, Shift, and Trello.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Offers real-time collaboration features
  • Affordable pricing plans
  • Easy to learn

Cons:

  • Limited customizations options
  • Limited export options

Best UX tool for creating visual representations of website and app architecture

  • 14-day free trial available
  • Plans start at $9/month for a single user

FlowMapp helps UX professionals create sitemaps, user flow diagrams, and other visual representations of the website or app architecture.

Why I picked FlowMapp: A remarkable feature of FlowMapp is its ability to create and visualize user flows dynamically based on user behavior data. This feature enables businesses to identify potential user journey bottlenecks and optimize the user experience accordingly.

FlowMapp offers powerful collaboration and sharing capabilities, allowing teams to work together seamlessly on UX design projects, share feedback, and iterate quickly, resulting in faster time-to-market and improved user experiences.

FlowMapp Standout Features and Integrations

Features include collaboration tools, sitemap tools, user flow diagrams tools, cloud storage, drag and drop pages, project activity, SSL security, sharing features, team workspaces, and others.

Integrations include Framer, Google Drive, Google Sheets, InVision, Intercom, Photoshop, Pipedrive, Principle, Slack, Zoho, and others.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Simple interface
  • Provides collaboration features
  • Supports multiple diagram types

Cons:

  • Limited design capabilities
  • Limited prototyping capabilities

Best UX tool for user testing and creating iterative design

  • Free plan available
  • From $99/month

Maze is a user testing and design validation platform for UX designers, product managers, and researchers who want to build user-centered products and services.

Why I picked Maze: The software enables users to create and run tests on prototypes, which simulate real-world user experiences. This helps designers identify usability issues and improve the user experience.

Maze also has an A/B testing feature that helps designers compare the performance of different design iterations and make data-driven decisions. This helps designers optimize their designs for usability, engagement, and conversion, ensuring that the final product meets the needs of users and stakeholders.

Maze is a great tool for gathering user feedback and testing design iterations.

Maze Standout Features and Integrations

Features include prototype testing, live website testing, in-product prompts, team management, open card sorting, custom templates, amplitude targeting, and enterprise-grade security. 

Integrations include AdobeXD, Figma, InVision, Marvel, Sketch, and Slack.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Simple interface
  • Generates quick results from user tests
  • Integrates with popular design tools

Cons:

  • Limited collaboration features
  • The email campaign manager needs improvement

Best UX tool for creating interactive prototypes of websites and mobile applications

  • 30-day free trial
  • From $29/user/month

Axure RP is a powerful prototyping tool that helps users create high-fidelity prototypes with advanced interactivity and collaboration features, making it a valuable tool for designers.

Why I picked Axure RP: Axure RP's responsive design capabilities enable designers to test how their designs will look and function on different devices without additional coding or development work. Designers can set up breakpoints and define how different elements will behave on different screen sizes, ensuring the user experience remains consistent and effective across all devices.

With Axure RP, designers can quickly create and test different design iterations, gather feedback from stakeholders, and refine their designs before moving on to development. The software's robust collaboration features also enable designers to work closely with developers and ensure that the final product meets the needs of all stakeholders. 

Axure RP Standout Features and Integrations

Features include dynamic interactions, conditional logic, animation effects, code export, diagramming, customer journeys, and others.

Integrations include Adobe XD, Confluence, Figma, Jira, MS Teams, Sketch, Slack, and others.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Wide range of design features
  • Robust collaboration and sharing features
  • Responsive design capabilities

Cons:

  • Heavy software requirements
  • Steep learning curve for beginners

Best UX tool for both individual designers and teams

  • 7-day free trial
  • From $9.99/user/month

Adobe XD is an all-in-one UX/UI design and prototyping tool ideal for UX designers, UI designers, and app developers. Its native integration with other Adobe Creative Cloud tools enables designers to work more efficiently on design projects.

Why I picked Adobe XD: Adobe XD is suitable for both individual designers and entire teams because it offers a range of features and capabilities that support both individual design workflows and collaborative design projects. For individual designers, Adobe XD offers a wide range of tools for designing and prototyping while also providing native integration with other Adobe Creative Cloud tools. 

It offers powerful collaboration and sharing capabilities for teams, including real-time co-editing, version control, and commenting features. These features enable teams to work together seamlessly on UX design projects, share feedback, and deliver better user experiences faster.

In addition, it also provides powerful prototyping tools, collaboration, and sharing capabilities.

Adobe XD Standout Features and Integrations

Features include prototype design tools, 3D transforms, animations and transition designs, repeat grids, document storage, feedback management, pre-built templates, usability testing, version control, wireframe creation, mockup creation, and data synchronization.

Integrations include CloudApp, Crowdin, Frontify, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Miro, RoboHead, Slack, Sisense, Zeplin, and others.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Powerful prototyping tools with interactive elements and animations
  • Native integration with other Adobe Creative Cloud tools
  • Regular updates and new feature releases

Cons:

  • Steep learning curve for new users
  • Requires a powerful computer

Best UX tool for the entire design process

  • 30-day free trial
  • From $9/user/month

Sketch is a digital design tool that helps users create high-fidelity designs and prototypes for digital products such as websites, mobile apps, and icons. 

Why I picked Sketch: The tool's vector editing capabilities help designers easily create vector graphics. The vector editing tools also offer advanced features such as Boolean operations, path editing, and shape manipulation, allowing designers to create complex and detailed vector graphics.

Additionally, Sketch supports the creation of reusable design components, which saves time and improves consistency across designs. Overall, Sketch's intuitive interface, vector editing capabilities, and extensive library of plugins and integrations make it a powerful and efficient tool for the entire design process.

Sketch Standout Features and Integrations

Features include vector-based graphics, design libraries, artboard templates, plugins, collaboration tools, Boolean tools, tools for high-precision, Smart Guides, pixel perfection, color picker, and Artboard presets.

Integrations include Abstract, Avocode, Crystal, Drafta, Droplr, Flinto, Flow, Framer, Maze, ProtoPie, and others.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Advanced vector editing tools
  • Wide range of plugins and integrations
  • Comprehensive text styling options

Cons:

  • Only available for Mac users
  • Limited support for non-screen-based design

The Best UX Tools Comparison Chart

Here is a table you can use to compare the software we just covered in the overviews.

Tools Price
Figma From $15/editor/month
Invision Pricing upon request
Omniconvert Plans start at $390/month
Marvel From $16/user/month (billed annually)
Balsamiq From $9/month
Flowmapp Plans start at $9/month for a single user
Maze From $99/month
Axure RP From $29/user/month
Adobe XD From $9.99/user/month
Sketch From $9/user/month
Preview Image - 
<h2  class="c-block__title b-summary-table__title c-listicle__title h3" >
	Compare Software Specs Side by Side</h2>

Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.

Compare Software

Other Options

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

  1. Framer

    Best UX tool for creating code-based designs

  2. Miro

    Best UX tool for visual ideation and mapping user flows

  3. Survicate

    Best survey tool for collecting contextual UX feedback

  4. MockFlow

    Best UX tool for creating wireframes, user flows, and sitemaps for websites and mobile apps

  5. UXPin

    Best UX tool for creating high-fidelity prototypes that emulate the final digital product

  6. Justinmind

    Best UX tool for designing and testing interactive prototypes of web and mobile apps

  7. Origami Studio

    Best UX tool for creating mockups, designs, and animations

  8. Webflow

    Best UX tool for designing responsive websites without coding skills

  9. ProtoPie

    Best UX tool for creating interactive prototypes without code

How I Picked The Best UX Tools

Here’s a breakdown of how I selected the best UX tools. First, I researched UX tools with high user ratings. Then, I combed through reviews of users to understand their experience with the software.

I used my years of experience in product management and product design to set parameters against which I evaluated each tool. Below are the selection criteria I used to review the tools in this article.

Selection Criteria

Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best UX tools for this article:

Usability

Is the software easy to use? Does it have a short learning curve? Is the interface easy to navigate or clunky? How is the customer support service?

Standout Features

UX tools that stand out have unique features that solve specific problems in the design process. These features can range from collaboration tools to advanced prototyping features and user testing capabilities. The best UX tools should offer innovative features that make the design process more efficient and effective.

Software Integrations 

Teams use multiple software for an efficient workflow. A good UX tool offers built-in integration with other design software and third-party tools.

Pricing

Does it offer flexible pricing plans? Is the pricing clear and transparent? Does it offer adequate features for the price? I considered all of these options as I created this list.

Best UX Tools FAQs

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

What are UX tools?

UX tools are software applications or platforms that help designers and researchers create and evaluate user experiences for digital products, such as websites and mobile apps. These tools offer features that support various aspects of the design process, including wireframing, prototyping, user testing, UX design, and analytics.

The right UX tools can help your team streamline the design and development process and deliver higher-quality products so it’s important to pick the best options available.

What are the benefits of UX tools?

Research shows that slow-loading websites cost $2 billion in sales every year. This shows that neglecting the user experience results in huge losses.

However, incorporating UX tools in your product management workflow will reap several benefits and might save you from lost sales. Let’s look at 6 key benefits:

  1. Increased efficiency: UX tools automate many design tasks and offer features such as reusable design components, pre-designed templates, and drag-and-drop interfaces that save time and streamline the design process.
  2. Collaboration: UX tools provide real-time collaboration features that enable designers, researchers, and stakeholders to work together on a project, share feedback, and make updates in real-time.
  3. Early identification of issues: Features such as user testing and prototyping enable designers to identify potential usability issues early in the design process, reducing the risk of costly redesigns.
  4. Better design consistency: UX tools provide design libraries, style guides, and design systems that help maintain consistency in the design and ensure a unified brand identity across all touchpoints.
  5. Actional user feedback: They offer features such as surveys, heat maps, and click tracking that provide accurate and actionable feedback from users, enabling designers to make more informed decisions.
  6. Improved user engagement and satisfaction: Features like user testing and analytics help designers understand user behavior, preferences, and pain points, allowing them to create more engaging and satisfying experiences.

What are the 6 types of UX tools?

The main types of UX tools include the following:

  1. Prototyping tools: These are software that help users create interactive, clickable visual representations of a website or application, which represents how the design will look and feel.
  2. Wireframing tools: Wireframes are basic sketches or outlines of a website or application that show the layout and structure of the user interface. Wireframing tools allow designers to create and iterate on these sketches quickly.
  3. Design tools: These tools help create high-fidelity designs and mockups of a website or application using graphical elements such as icons, typography, and images.
  4. Usability testing tools: These tools help test the usability of a website or application, which can include actions like completing a task or providing feedback on the design.
  5. UX research tools: These tools help gather data and insights about users that inform the design and development of digital products.
  6. UX documentation tools: These tools help document all the UX and product design steps.

Conclusion

I hope you found this list of the best UX tools helpful. Keeping with the design side of product management, I recommend you read our article on how product managers should use wireframes. You will also benefit from learning how to create the perfect product requirements document.

Related tool lists:

If you’d like to know more about such tools and the latest news and product management tips, then sign up for The Product Manager newsletter.

By Hannah Clark

Hannah Clark is the Editor of The Product Manager. Following six years of experience in the tech industry, she pivoted into the content space where she's had the pleasure of working with some of the most brilliant voices in the product world. Driven by insatiable curiosity and a love of bringing people together, her mission is to foster a fun, vibrant, and inspiring community of product people.