Figma Vs. Sketch: Which Is The Better Tool For Designing UI

When in business it is needless to say that all your inputs, perseverance, and steps are towards one end goal, which is to fulfil the needs of your customers. On the digital front, the core aspect of meeting your customer’s needs and expectations best is through decking your User Interface (UI) right. It not only meets the expectation of your customers but also enables the effective functionality of your website or application. A well-designed interface that consists of a clean layout, easy navigation, contrasting visuals, and responsiveness, facilitates effective interaction between your user and the program or application. 

In this blog, we will deliberate and draw a comparison of the two most popular UI design tools and what may work the best for your project, Figma or Sketch.  

Figma

Figma is a powerful design tool that has revolutionized the way designers can now make design tools on the browser. It is a cloud-based design application that can work on any operating system, from Mac, Windows, and Linux to Chromebook. 

Pros 

Compatible

In many organizations, it so happens that developers work on Windows while designers work on Mac, and then they have to corroborate their development together. Figma brings these two separate sects together by being accessible on both operating systems for sharing, viewing, and editing and needs no mediating mechanism for the same. 

Collaborative 

Being browser-based, working on Figma is like working on Google Docs. So for teams, it is easy to view, edit and work together keeping their eyes on each other’s contribution. For team leaders, it is just as easy to pry at the work being done by different members simultaneously in real time. Thus it stimulates a more collaborative and shared-environment feeling among the team of designers. 

Communication

Figma communicates through the channel Slack, which is an organized space for teams to discuss, deliberate, and connect. What is special about it is that when you create a Figma channel on Slack, the amendment done to the design is ‘slacked’ off to the team. This saves developers from the annoyance when the Figma file updates every other moment where the file is embedded while designing live. 

Cons  

Offline work

Figma is not enabled for offline work. Being a browser-based application, one can not work on Figma offline which means your work can come to a halt any moment there is an internet outage. 

Usability

With Figma one has to find their way around the updates. Some of the tools in Figma are not easy to discover at the first glance, so being a novice designer or an amateur, you get a grip on Figma gradually with time and varied project experiences. The changes on the interface take place uninformed, so you have to figure out the new updates on your own as and when implemented. 

Overview

Figma is primarily a proto-typing tool, hence the best feature that it offers is that one does not need to know coding to create a website mockup, since all you need to do is simply drag and drop the objects onto the canvas. 

Sketch

Similar to Figma, Sketch is a product design tool that helps designers to create web elements like concept pages, icons, and more. As a vector graphics application, Sketch is operational only on macOS for designing and creating files. 

Pros

Plugins 

Sketch offers a large pool of plugins that designers love to install to enhance functionality and automate the elements that they are creating. Furthermore, not just the designer community but Sketch itself continually release new plugins officially to simplify workflows. 

Presets 

Creating infinite canvases and switching between different artboards is seamless on Sketch. Just click on the Artboard button on the toolbar and you will find different and impressive presets for iOS, Android, and Windows. Moreover, you can create your own presets too!

Pixel

While working on vector images, Sketch allows you to zoom to the granular pixel level to design, align or even fix broken pixels, enabling the designers to quickly layer up their designers on top of one another ceaselessly. 

Cons

Accessibility 

This is the one Achilles heel that every other iOS or macOS-driven application encounters, the fact that they only work on the Apple operating system. Though it does have a web version now, which is compatible with other popular operating systems, it yet does not have an app version for the same. Moreover, it is a heavy tool that works best on Mac. 

General Overview

Sketch is loved primarily by the mac community because of its functionality and easy learning curve. However since it offers precarious compatibility with other operating systems, it has an exclusive base of designers. 

Verdict – 

As we have discussed both the best and problematic features of both UI/UX design tools, Figma and Sketch, we will now move on to their comparative analysis on different aspects.

Pricing 

Sketch 

In terms of pricing, Sketch offers a straightforward plan, that is one has to pay USD99 for a license per annum, in which they shall receive all updates to the Sketch app, throughout the year. On the expiration of the license, though one can continue to use Sketch, they will not receive the updates. It also has a standard access plan costing per editor USD9 per month. 

Figma

Figma has a categorically laid pricing structure into 3 sections that are-

Starter plan— free of cost.

Figma Professional plan— costs per editor USD12 per month if billed annually—or $15 per editor per month if billed monthly.

Figma Organization plan— costs per editor USD45 per month, billed monthly, which offers advanced features such as Single Sign-On, private plugins, and centralized file management.

Note– both Figma and Sketch offer a free trial period, so it is advised to try both before making a financial commitment. 

Thus, it is conclusive that Figma comparatively even in its most standard offerings, is slightly more expensive than Sketch. 

Features & Functionalities 

Both Figma and Sketch are popular in the UI/UX designing circuit, however because of their key difference in terms of accessibility as discussed above (Sketch works best on macOS) and approach. While Sketch offers a plethora of third-party plugins for creative heads, Figma is team-oriented and is comparatively far more collaborative than its notable counterpart here.

Bottom-line 

Considering the fact of its accessibility and compatibility throughout operating devices, a bigger pool of dedicated designers and developers, and enabled remote UI designing, Figma steals Sketch’s thunder as the better UI designing tool in 2022.