Unclaimed: Are you working at Sketch?
Sketch Reviews: 4.5/5 — Highly Rated
Sketch is a vector-based digital design toolkit for the full product design process: native macOS app for design and prototyping, a web app for viewing/inspecting/collaboration, and iOS apps for previews and mirroring. It supports vector editing, components/libraries, prototyping and Smart Animate transitions, developer handoff and export, real-time collaboration, workspace/version history, plugins and a Cloud REST API, and enterprise security features including SSO, SCIM and BYOK. Sketch targets solo designers and teams, with subscription plans for collaborative seats plus an optional one-time Mac-only license for offline use.
| Company | Sketch B.V. |
|---|---|
| Year founded | 2010 |
| Company size | 1000+ employees |
| Headquarters | The Netherlands |
| Capabilities |
AI
API
CLI
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
Small Business
Mid Market
Freelancer
Enterprise
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Desktop Mac, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone |
| Support | Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
Sketch Pros and Cons
- Strong vector design tools with professional typography and color support
- Mature component/library/symbol system and design system support
- Built-in prototyping with good transitions and overlays
- Developer handoff features including export and inspect
- Real-time collaboration, version history and comment threads
- Native editing is macOS-only; Windows/Linux users rely on the web app for viewing only
- Raster/image editing capabilities are basic compared to dedicated raster tools
- Responsive/auto layout features are less powerful than some competitors
- Subscription costs for collaboration tiers can add up for large teams
- Some features (e.g., MCP server) are not available via the Mac App Store version
With Sketch I am able to see my different viewports (Responsive Web Design) side by side and that's great to keep the consistency through the design. I also like that I can create styles for my different elements and typography so I can change it whenever I need and see the change taking place everywhere on my document. The layout feature is also pretty good as It automatically generates a grid for your design without manually placing guides.
Although the shared styles are great to keep the typography consistent, it can get very messy when your design needs different styles of the same elements for different break points. It would be great if the different screen sizes could be integrated in the style setting itself, so we could use one single style through the different screens.
I am increasing the speed on the process of producing screen designs and styleguides for the development team. As well as better and easily designing exclusively for mobile when it comes to applications.
It's quick and simple. It's visible that it was created for UI - UX design purpose.
I'd like to have: glyphs management - organize all the font styles and symbols - links (as in InDesign) for all the images that you can put inside.
I use it for UI - UX design.
I live the fact that you don't need to define "laws" beetween objects you design. It's very easy and fast to design new objects. I like how the pen instrument work, sometimes it's also useful for very basic graphic jobs.
Symbols are not as efficient as components in Figma. They are easier to make thatn Figma but rules are not sufficient to define every aspect of a single component. Same for autolayouts, sometimes you don't need them, but in long run projects are needed.
I think they are going in the right direction for what concerns the symbols but still they are very basic compared to components in Figma. Overrides and Symbols should be mixed in one solution.
Sketch has been around for long enough that no matter what your goal is, there's a way to make it happen. There's an extensive library of available plugins, tutorials, and documentation available. It's widespread enough that most colleagues will be able to open and modify Sketch files.
Despite being one of the most advanced design programs available, Sketch remains clunky and at times buggy even with a detailed release and update cadence and transparency in bug fix docs. Frequent updates mean that I often reconfigure most components to the latest Sketch systems, such as using color tokens or other features. The lack of ease in maintaining a library of interconnected designs made this program feel dated and slow, and I didn't enjoy using it.
I maintained a company's design system in Sketch, created and organized library files, and protoyped designs which I was then able to share with colleagues. The company used this program by default and file sharing was frequent between users.
Sketch has a decent set of tools for creating UI/UX design, interactive prototypes, and vector graphics. Sketch has a massive library full of plugins and composites to run projects. It has smart layouts that automatically resize elements. It is possible to design and collaborate in a single workspace. Easy export of code and presets.
Unfortunately, Sketch was first in UX/UI, but with the advent of Figma and Adobe XD it has lost its position. It is inferior to competitors in almost everything: no Windows support and editing in the browser, relatively high price (competitors are free). It is also inferior in design: no repeating grid, much less possibilities for animating prototypes. In addition, Sketch gets very slow. Almost everyone I know has switched from Sketch to a competing tool.
I use Sketch to create wireframes for mobile app interfaces as well as for design, animation, and prototyping. It's not my permanent UI tool at the moment, but sometimes I have to use it if I can't open a file in another application.
This is an intuitive tool where the Ui work could be done without any issues.
I feel they have fallen behind... It was a strong tool but by not opening alternatives to other environments (windows & android) it has become a bit complicated to work on it.
Ui design
Native experience that looks and feels great to use, deep integration with macOS, great integrations with plugins
Slow development of new key features for UI/UX design and prototyping. Existing prototype tools is painfully inadequate in today's time.
Designing and handoffing UI/UX for company's products to developers.
I love how intuitive it was to learn this program. It also has sped up my workflow.
I wish I could animate more with sketch.
I have quickly shown ideas and concepts really quickly to my teammates.
Design and plugins help to work faster..
I think price to high and now you could easily find smth cheaper.
Desing problems
The ability to manipulate designs is super useful.
Collaboration is quite difficult. Using sketch cloud is quite time consuming having to upload, download etc. Someone should be able to edit and share without uploading.
I have to create design concepts and it is very helpful to easily crop and manipulate current designs without full details.
Sketch is really a easy to use design tool. It has lot of features included.
As I said it’s limited to apple products. So apple users can only use the design tool.
The software is light weight, so there is no lag while using the software. Collaboration using Sketch is nice!
Can be designed and drawn as we dream and can be shown to others or cleint with ease
More easier 3D optionals to be introduced
I can work my project sketches and presentation to my client
I love sketch. it was a game changer for me in switching from Photoshop for my UX/UI design work. Figma is performant, smart, feature rich while being easy to use. It's built around the needs of designers working with layouts and automates the grand majority of tasks that took a lot of time and effort to figure out inside PS.
it's just not quite up to the level of Figma. Figma came about to fix the spaces where Sketch lacked. Sketch doesn't perform quite as fast, it creates extremely bulky files that take up a lot of space on your hard drive after a while, it requires plugins to handle so many basic functionalities that are built into Figma. And above all, I miss Figma's auto-layout.
I was using Sketch for UI/UX design, and it was a big step up from working in Adobe Photoshop.
When we switch to sketch was a great moment because we used a really complicated tool (fireworks) Sketch brings us simplicity in some parts of the interface and the easy way of design for screens.
The integration of cloud and prototypes, in the past, using sketch we needed to pay for invision and also for ¨abstract¨ to make the handoff of design and even the way to have the way to the only source of truth of or files so just to have a great loop with sketch we needed to pay around 6k 7k yearly. Also, sketch becomes a bit complicated, creating complex Symbols, and the contains of them some times was very annoying.
- Best Design files - low learning curve - We as a Product Design Team learned how to make Design Systems using Sketch - Symbols become the most important things to have in our designs - Plugins helped us a lot to export and upload to platforms as Invision or Abstract - Easy way to export files - Easy way to create Artboards
The interface is really user-friendly. I like the components making feature. The layer selection controls are really handy. Pixel perfection towards creating images. Single payment life time purchase helps freelancers and students to learn on this tool more easily.
Sketch is not available on windows os. Prototyping feature is satisfactory and doesn't have a great impact on my work. I hardly use it and i prefer using framer over sketch for prototyping.
I design and build ui dashboards, websites and beautiful design elements. Sketch helped him lift of my design career and helped me learn new design solutions. I learnt how to use artboards, maintain a design system, folloe design guidelines and keep things consistent. I liked how sketch has provided a cloud service to save and use sketch files across various devices. The plugins market is still very small and needs more work.
I like the ability to easily create prototypes right inside of the application. As well as the pre-loaded artboard sizes
The lack of prototyping abilities (would like to be able to have horizontal scrolling on pages)
How to create user experiences that create delight. I’ve realized it’s easy to mock things up and make it usable for quick testing.
I love the freeform, infinite art board. The Craft plugin is indispensable when creating mockups
The cloud functionality leaves a lot to be desired, it’s hard for me to collaborate with key stakeholders.
Sketch allows me to rapid prototype and get to quick functionality decisions.
It's native to Mac OS and is easy to use
There's no collaboration or version control
Building mockups and prototypes, helps with product development process
The biggest advantage of Sketch is its performance compared to Adobe CC products. Thanks to it's simpliticy, I can quickly create my designs. I really appreciate working with components, which saves me a lot of time.
Altough the UI is great, there are some flaws when compared to similar products like Figma. When working on my touchpad, working with layers panel and selecting objects is quite overwhelming. Sketch feels very smooth, but sometimes I would appreciate better reactivity. When compared to Figma, Sketch also lacks collaborative tools. For these reasons, I've recently stopped using it.
It saves me a lot of time and often makes my design look better because it works in vector format. It is ideal for designing UI, which is a major part of my job.
Nice way to view wire frames with multiple people
Nothing. This product is great to use when figuring the wireframe direction we wanted to use
Starting a new website
I like its easy to use user interface. It took me not much time to figure out.
So far I've liked it so far. The only quirk is that sometimes it glitches and doesn't work so I need to restart my computer.
I'm figuring out how to design microscopes. It is use to use.
There are great plugins to really save time in your workflow.
Some things are not super intuitive and for an application used for UI/UX its own design looks like an app from the late 90s.
Right now it is the best software to be using for Interactive design in a design to development workflow.
Clean interface, great ability to export for devices and mobile friendly applications. I'm very impressed by the way this software took the design world by storm, and quickly became a must-have.
Quite a departure from the workflow of Photoshop and other Adobe products, took some time to adjust to a different way of working. I would have liked some better overall tutorials that help legacy designers adjust better.
Designing for apps and devices, staying on top of design trends and tools. I have realized an increase in speed for vector graphics, and I appreciate the relative low price of Sketch.
First and foremost, clearly outlining the different tiers of software is important to paint a clearer picture. While this is no Adobe Illustrator, it still offers many good integrative and essential tools for various social media based (low complexity) projects and quick UI/UX layouts. It is very intuitive and offers a wide array of functions that is easy for many beginners to dive into.
While I acknowledge I may biased as an Adobe Illustrator veteran, there are some holes I need to address here aside the glaringly obvious limitations in functions. First, the software is only offered on a iOS system and is not available at all for PC users. As a user of both systems, I found it stifling to have to work around this very basic compatibility issue. Second, due to the limited functions, which is not so much a criticism considering the fair price point of the software, there seemed to have developed a heavy dependence on third party plug-ins. Now what the developers of Sketch did successfully was having the vision of cultivating this community of developers outside the company to invest and improve the software by opening up the software. It did allow the various users to contribute and build interest around the software but there lies a major issue which is quality control. Many of these plug-ins are bug-ridden and if not, they are bound to be an issue eventually due to firmware version discrepancies. Those who develop the plug-ins do not consistently dedicate their time to updating the plug-ins to keep up with the various firmware updates and this causes confusion. Another point to piggy-back off the above point is the Sketch team is slow or negligent in implementing the aforementioned plug-ins. I think they should rush to incorporate the popular plug-ins rather than creating all this confusion. I will not comment on the limited features as it is not a fair assessment for this price point. I think it offers enough features worthwhile the money you pay, but is not the strongest software out there.
Bridging design to development gaps. Rapid prototyping.
The tool's flexibility makes it very easy for an individual contributor to execute and produce high quality output of whatever they have in mind. In this regard, the designer's imagination is not limited by Sketch.
Working with a team, it's not easy to collaborate on a project. We're forced to use the product in a very silo'd way that conflicts with our collaborative culture and makes it difficult to integrate with our workflow.
Sketch is used as the starting point of realizing design elements and building blocks before compiling them into low fidelity mocks and prototypes. It helps us design early stages of our products quickly without compromising visual fidelity.
It is simple to use and is the best if you are creaint wireframes
IT can crash once in a while and not save files
Design sharing and zeplin
Simple, easy to learn, seems to be efficient in compressing files.
Poor usability in selecting and manipulating objects, pen tool is pretty garbage compared to Adobe CC.
Use it for wireframing, quick diagramming etc.
Clean and easy to use interface with quick access to all features.
Lack of some basic functionalities like cropping.
Graphics for in-app usage
My company uses Sketch when we start a project. It is the easiest tool for us to digitally lay our ideas out there and get the project started. We find Sketch to be simpler than photoshop therefore a more preferred choice when just throwing around ideas. From there we can easily translate those ideas to illustrator without having to get into photoshop. The fact that it doesn't have all the robust photoshop features makes it easier to use quickly. I also like the export features that come in handy when something in Sketch becomes something we really like and want to use.
I don't really dislike anything. I only use this program and a work between photoshop and illustrator for specific projects or instances.
We needed a tool that still had great export/ output capabilities when we start brainstorming for projects. It is great quality in terms of producing vector art but also simple enough to use quickly during meetings.