The Best Diagramming apps: Blended Perspective’s Opinion

By |2022-10-20T09:15:27+02:00August 20th, 2021|draw.io, Gliffy migration, migration, news|
Reading Time: 5 min

The Atlassian Marketplace is booming. Since 2018, instances have grown a whopping 99% to 1.6M. There are nearly 4000 third-party apps available on the marketplace overall, making it increasingly hard to know which apps can provide your company the most value. For example, what’s the best diagramming app?

At Blended Perspective, their Marketplace Analytic Research Service (MARS) makes them uniquely situated to help narrow your choices to the best of the best. They collect data covering all facets of the Marketplace including instances, growth, product, platform, license, price, reviews, and more. And recently, they turned their attention to diagramming.

Spoiler alert: draw.io came out on top.

The numbers

Blended Perspective’s analysis begins with some head-turning numbers that showcase draw.io’s popularity, sales, and impressive growth in the Atlassian Marketplace.

As their article points out, draw.io is the largest diagramming application on the marketplace with over 40,000 active installs. It’s also the fastest-growing. In 2021 alone, draw.io for Confluence ballooned at an impressive 10% growth rate.

Its nearest competitor’s growth rate was 2%.

Fasten your seatbelts

What’s fueling that meteoric rise? Well, one factor singled out by Blended Perspective’s research is something they like to call “Velocity.” Simply put, Velocity quantifies the frequency of new releases or app updates over a given period of time.

In their own words, “In 2020/21, Draw.io shows 45 releases, versus 11 for Gliffy. We assume this conveys investment in bug fixes and improvements and therefore in this regard Draw.io is excelling.”

Easy on the checkbook

And when it comes to price, draw.io is also the top diagramming app. draw.io’s solution for Data Center comes in slightly lower than Gliffy. But most importantly, considering the booming growth of Atlassian’s cloud platform, draw.io for Confluence Cloud is significantly cheaper than Gliffy. And that makes for massive savings for you.

The proof is in the pudding

But there are factors that are even more important to you. For example, an extensive feature set, secure handling of your data, or which solution is more intuitive and easier to learn?

Blended Perspective outlines multiple ways in which draw.io outstrips its top diagramming app competitors in terms of power features and ease of use, including:

And the list goes on…

Security

The most important question, of course, is what about security? BP’s article ends on a reassuring note for anyone concerned about the security of their valuable data.

draw.io’s cloud users, they point out, have access to all diagrams in their own instance. There’s never a need to connect to draw.io’s servers. draw.io diagrams are attachments on pages and issues, and this means that your data is only transferred between Atlassian servers and the user’s browsers.

Other solutions, however, require you to store your diagrams on their servers. That means you don’t have full control over your data. Some may even load external JavaScript sources that can call Confluence Cloud API endpoints with the same authorization as the currently logged-in user (learn more here).

What’s the takeaway?

Well, the biggest takeaway here is that you don’t have to just take our word for it. The many ways in which draw.io can make your diagramming life better, easier, and more cost-effective are easy to see for anyone who takes the time to compare.

So, thanks Blended Perspective! And, if you want to see their analysis for yourself, check it out right here! And for our own take on things, check out our feature page and a friendly side-by-side comparison to aid your decision-making process.

Now, what are you waiting for?

Visit our YouTube Channel for a constantly updated playlist of how-to videos, visit our one-stop tutorial shop to pick up all the ins and outs of draw.io diagramming, or book a free demo to learn more about the limitless ways in which draw.io can make life easier and more productive for you and everyone in (and outside) your company!

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About the Author:

Brad Boesen is a writer and editor of books, theses, blogs, articles, web content, and online educational material. His work covers topics ranging from AI to Web Development to Biological Science, Photography, meditation for children, and much more. He spent his formative years working for Gallup, IBM, and the Nebraska State Legislature before setting out on his own as a freelancer, doing the bidding of clients like Walmart, Expedia, and Oxford University. He's now the full-time content creator for draw.io.