Ten Years With Balsamiq: Praise, Concerns, and a Plea for Cloud Evolution

Hey Balsamiq :grinning:, it’s been about ten years that I’ve been using this software and frankly it’s super cool and easy to use. I think it achieves its goal of allowing almost anyone to create mockups.

For that, I want to thank the team and wish you continued success. However, there is a BIG “but” that frustrates me.

Like many users have felt the need and pointed out to you, some projects cannot fit within a single “project” or BMPR file. The need to split the project into multiple files is essential!

On the desktop version, it seemed I read a comment from your team that you didn’t intentionally want to take this feature further due to philosophical reasons.

I think technically making links between files on desktop is not simple or very stable - even Microsoft has never stabilized these links between Excel files…

Now that you have clearly decided for justified reasons to go 100% cloud, I have two remarks.

First, until now the Cloud versions have never managed to equal the desktop version in terms of user experience. Although I tested it again today and it’s not bad, it’s not at the level of something like Lucidchart which is very fluid and stable.

I think this is because, and you can see it in the menus, you “ported” the desktop version to the cloud with the same design, when you should have started almost from scratch to really match the cloud. I think to succeed in the cloud, that’s the path you need to take.

Second remark is that while on desktop it wasn’t simple, linking projects (BMPR files) together is natural and essential on a cloud version!

It’s not enough to link one page to another, but to create inter-project links in any wireframe that allows perfect navigation within the project.

I hope your philosophy has evolved - it’s good to have a philosophy but as you’ve already done in the past, and now you’re following the trend and your clients who preferred desktop to cloud and now prefer cloud.

For link functions, you also need to listen to your clients because it may seem like nothing but this feature has an ENORMOUS impact for a small development cost.

Don’t forget that NOKIA missed the boat on smartphones, despite the giant they were. Apple knew how to listen to future needs which led them to where they are today.

Thank you for your attention.

Hi @Sufyan

Thanks so much for the considered feedback which is always much appreciated.

We already have an internal ticket for tracking demand for links between projects so I have gone ahead and added your comments to that tracking.