Let me start off by saying this is in no way, shape or form a paid post or anything crazy like that. Just a very happy person writing an honest review of the product and my interactions with the company, Balsamiq. I will say, however, I hope this fits into his, “Golden Puzzle” (watch the interview on Mixergy.com if you want to know what I am talking about).
How I found out about Balsamiq and why I like the company so much (already)
Well, I am a very big fan of the site, Mixergy.com (where ambitions upstarts mix!:-) ) and Andrew Warner interviewed a man named Peldi Guilizzoni. This was hands down one of my favorite interviews on Mixergy. I am not sure why exactly but I know that this one had me hooked…I was late for dinner with my girlfriend because I couldn’t stop watching it. Peldi seems to be a pretty humble guy who has a lot of the same values that we have at Website Consultants.
The story went like this: I was watching the interview and Peldi starting talking about how he never makes ‘do gooders’ pay for software. Which I don’t think they should either. They should 100% spend their money on important things (I’m not saying software isn’t important, but you know what I mean). Anyway, I thought to myself that someone ought to just send him something for free out of no where. Why not? He seems like a cool dude and he gives stuff away. Let’s give him something.
After I got back from dinner I was killing some time and decided to do a little redesign of his site and send it to him- free. I used all of his content on the site and added one lightweight contact form (missed the submit button- WHOOPS!). I sent him an email and showed him it and offered it to him for free- just say the word and I will send the PSD’s. Well, he actually already hired a designer who was working on the site so they didn’t need it, but then he did something I didn’t expect (and kind of felt bad he did). He gave me a license code (freakin’ cool + 10). I assure you, I had no angle to get a free code or anything when I did this design. I simply just wanted to give them something free. Why? Because I have worked with over 10 non profits and I can tell you from experience that shelling out a couple hundred bucks for Photoshop isn’t a money well spent (for them anyway). That money can be used to do good or help someone, not create a digital novelty.
Overall I am seriously impressed with what I have seen from them, granted I haven’t interacted too much but hearing the story from other folks on Mixergy I am pretty sure this goes all the way through. They remind me of Zappos.com (that’s an affiliate link) in that they are customer service oriented [and product oriented].
The Product; Balsamiq Mockups
Balsamiq Mockups is so freaking good it hurts. I played with a little bit last night and it was awesome. In fact, this week alone I would of probably saved 10 hours of work by using this. Hours = money, so this product would of paid for itself 10x over by now. The run down can be seen on Balsamiqs site…it will do a lot more justice than my couple hours of playing with it. For review at least. You can also check out some sample mock ups of popular software like iTunes and things like that- go over here for that.
The Skinny
As you can tell I never write reviews on products, I have done it once before. That’s it. It takes a lot to get me to write a post about a product on my companies site- period. So in all of history and the thousands of hours I have spent on the internet interacting with tons of products, services, etc this one takes the cake. It’s $79 and it is a bargain at that price. In fact, I do plan on paying for this free license anyway. I am going to buy one for my company. It’s just so good that $79 is cheap…seriously….cheap. Like I said, this week alone it would of saved me about $1k in time. So, go buy it and tell your friends about it. I will most certainly be a product evangelist for Balsamiq. You will too.
Couple more things…
- You can go check out mock ups to go if you want to share your mock ups or look at others.
- You can watch the demo and try it out for free here (hit try now under the video).
- YOU CAN BUY IT RIGHT HERE (and no that is not an affiliate link…I don’t even think they have an affiliate program)
- You can download Mock ups here
One more time for good measure. Try it and buy it. It’s a great product for everyone…not just developers and UI guys. I know my Mom could figure this one out. The support is said to be awesome and the people are great. (semi off topic- They actually use ROWE- which is how 99% of Website Consultants operates).
