Every designer who starts their career wonders which tools to use first. Even professionals occasionally seek for hints, which tool is worth to consider in the future.
Recently more and more people are speaking about Figma. It looks like there has begun quite big huge hype to discover Figma. Is it able to threat Sketch? Let’s try to make a comparison of this design tool.
What is Figma?
Figma is a User Interface design that runs in a browser. It is vector-based design software that allows designers to collaborate in real-time.
Figma license is subscription-based pricing. However, the tools have got a free plan to get started.
What is Sketch?
Sketch is a software for macOS. It is known as the digital design tool, and it is used commonly for UI and UX Design.
Sketch is vector based. It can easily extend its possibilities thanks to the wide variety of plugins that may be easily installed.
Figma – Main Advantages
- works on all platforms (the tool is available in browser)
- it includes collaboration features with team
- it has a free plan, to get started
- Figma is usually very fast
- It is always up to date (browser tool)
- It saves files in the cloud
Sketch – Main Advantages
- it has the largest collection of design resources
- Sketch has got the largest selection of plugins (this could be a very very very long list if I would like to list the most useful ones)
- it gathers the biggest community of designers
- Sketch receives updates and improvements quickly
- It saves files in the could
- it includes collaboration features with team
Figma – Main Disadvantages
- fewer design resources than Sketch
no pluginsFigma finally got plugins, but there is not so many of them- subscription plan instead of a one-time purchase
Sketch – Main Disadvantages
- it does not work on all platforms
Pricing
Sketch license model is one-time purchase ($99) with one year of free updates after that time user can purchase the license for the next year of updates or use the last version. Recently launched Sketch For Teams costs $8.25/month (per Sketch app user).
Figma includes free plan to get started. However, if you would like to use it professionally with your team, you have to pay a subscription (from $12/month).
The future
Last years Figma became a real & strong competitor of Sketch. It is fast, and their developers introduced quite exciting features.
However, when Sketch team raised 20 million, we were witnesses of serious acceleration of updates and improvements. Bohemian just announced Sketch for Teams, and who knows maybe the tool will also appear as browser software?
This could wipe out competitors. What features the future will bring? We will see soon, but this convinces me that we still live in the golden age of design tools.
It will be hard to beat Sketch. Surely, Figma will remain the main competitor in the future. If you would like to see how Sketch looks with other competitive solutions, I have already compared other tools:
…and look even Adobe with its vast budgets cannot beat Sketch.
To conclude
To be honest, it does not matter so much which tool you will prefer. Your UX Design skills are more important. In the end, it is good to know them all (Sketch, Figma, InVision Studio, and Adobe XD).
My personal opinion is following – I continue to use Sketch as my primary tool because I found it the most convenient and time-saving of all. The recent speed of improvements and announced new features makes me sure Sketch will remain the most popular tool for designers for years.
There may be hype for Figma, but I really believe in Sketch.
On the other hand, it is excellent that competitors introduce better and better solutions. It mobilises the industry to make their products more advanced. What I would like to recommend to you is to try to keep up to date with all (or at least the three most popular) tools and use them occasionally to know what is happening around.
By the way…
If you are using Sketch or you consider learning the tool, you might be interested in time-saving resources.
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Thanks for reading!
