draw.io vs. Gliffy: starting a new business, all you need to know

There comes a time when it’s time to diagram.

You may be a hungry new start-up with a great concept, or maybe a seasoned developer launching their own business determined to launch the next big thing. We wish you well.

You have the idea; now you need the tools

Among the many development tools you will need, diagramming is undoubtedly in the top three.

Atlassian Confluence and Jira

Atlassian has a powerful presence in the developer scene with Confluence and Jira. These are the industry-leading tools for developers and teams.
So it makes sense to seek a diagramming app that integrates seamlessly with both. There are many diagramming applications, but only draw.io and Gliffy offer complete integration within Confluence and Jira.

draw.io or Gliffy

Deciding on which one is not a decision to be taken lightly; it’s more than just the pricing, which is essential, but it´s the features and functionality that are the major drivers in any purchasing decision. The decisions you make now will affect:

• Your business workflows.
• Team training.
• Communication with customers (exchanging diagrams and live collaboration).
• Support.

So it is essential to get it right from the off.

draw.io offers more features and functionality than Gliffy

So let’s do a brief side-by-side comparison of the key features

For a more detailed comparison —> read here.

Real-time, live collaborative diagramming

Live real-time collaborative diagramming

Live collaborative diagramming within Confluence, draw.io Cloud users now can enjoy this incredibly powerful feature. You and your team, regardless of location, can collaborate on a diagram in real-time. Projects can evolve live during conference calls.

Launched in February 2022 at Team 22 in Las Vegas, it was a show stopper and one of the major attractions for developers, even for those using our competitor’s products.

Many attended our stall to inquire about our recently launched Whiteboard but were blown away by the live collaborative demo we were running.
We kept being asked, Is this live inside Confluence?

And all of this within the Cloud, offering all the advantages that the Atlassians Confluence Cloud brings.

Offering this functionality within Confluence was a significant feat of coding, but draw.io delivered.
In addition, it is more than just sharing. Users are offered a level of customization, such as the ability to hide their cursor (stealth mode, useful in blind tests) or to hide other users’ cursors on their display.

And every change is recorded; draw.io merges and synchronizes the diagram changes while you are editing. So you don’t even have to publish the diagram to Confluence to see everyone’s changes in the editor – draw.io saves and synchronizes automatically.

Gliffy freely admits they can´t offer real-time live collaboration. From their website: “Real-time” collaboration is not currently available.

The draw.io Board editor

Whiteboards

Again a recent innovation, whiteboards,  available not only for our Cloud users, but On-Prem and Data Center users can also access the Whiteboard editor.
The goal was to offer a simplified, streamlined diagramming tool similar to the traditional Whiteboard in many offices worldwide. It is opened in Confluence in seconds, allowing rapid diagramming during meetings, Retrospectives, or breakout sessions.

Simplified, streamlined, yet powerful, allowing access to all of the Diagram editor’s features.

Diagramming has never been so simple.

Tracking, Data Residency and Data Governance

Security

Both draw.io and Gliffy use industry-standard Encryption and Network Security, but only draw.io offers Data Residency and Governance.

Data Residency and Data Governance

Atlassian implemented Data Residency options for Confluence Cloud and Jira Cloud. This means that all of the primary data stored in your Confluence and/or Jira instance will reside on servers in your chosen region.
In short, draw.io matches the data residency settings and compliance of Confluence and Jira Cloud. Furthermore, you don’t have to do anything additional for draw.io once it is set for the host product.

draw.io and Gliffy are both part of the Cloud Fortified program, which is issued by Atlassian. The difference here is that we always set our own standards. The Cloud Fortified program requires Data Residency.
We even offer you even more with Data Governance and our lockdown feature, which limits the endpoints to your browser and Confluence Cloud.

We also allow you to customize your settings. To learn more, read our blog post on Data Governance.

Third-party suppliers and vendors

We don’t believe in tracking, so you won’t find tracking codes or pixels in our apps. Gliffy tracks usage in their apps. Ask your compliance officers for their opinions on tracking.

What is drawn in draw.io stays within draw.io with positively no access allowed to any third-party vendors.

Elegant, flexible, and powerful

Features and functionality

draw.io can be as simple and elegant or as powerful and complex as required.
It’s an app that everyone can instantly feel at home with, from new employees to seasoned developers.

Do you want to create interactive diagrams with button navigation? Or mathematical formulas? How about having multiple pages in your diagram to outsource sub-processes and easily link them? Or would you instead like to create the entire diagram directly via SQL or CSV and display the code as a diagram?

First with revision history, first with the shape picker tool, we introduced the concept of connectors, constantly innovating.

You get all this as standard with draw.io and much, much more.

The continuing evolution of draw.io
As software development evolves, so do we.

Our product support and sense of community

Got a problem? Contact us. Our customer support is second to none, and depending on the issue, there is every chance you will be speaking directly with one of the draw.io founders.

draw.io thrives on feedback. We have a vast international community on our GitHub repository. It’s where developers can ask questions, request features, and hang out.

You see, for some companies diagramming is a business model; for us, it’s our passion.

Marketplace popularity

As this article is being written, draw.io for Confluence is approaching three times the number of installs compared to Gliffy. And not only that, we have more positive reviews than Gliffy, our reviews are all 4-star (the max), and Gliffy’s reviews average at 3.5-stars.

Early in 2022, we passed the 50,000 installs mark. Today as this article is being written, we are closing on 60,000 installs. Right now, we are at 56,490.
This growth rate is spectacular and speaks volumes about the product as more and more businesses move to draw.io

Thinking of migrating

Are you currently using Gliffy on Confluence Server? Then you are probably well aware that you will have to move to Confluence Cloud or Data Center before 2024

Warning!

With Gliffy, you will lose the links in your diagrams.

Please read Gliffy’s own guide on migration issues!
(https://www.gliffy.com/resources/cloud-migration-guide).

In addition, there is a high risk of Gliffy embedded diagrams crashing. Would you like to manually rework 10% of your 2,000 diagrams?

We have a solution

Simply migrate to draw.io while you are still on Confluence Server (you can run the migration in trial mode, so you don’t even have to pay more).

draw.io offers a smooth migration plan. It doesn’t matter if you like to move from Server to Data Center, from Cloud to Data Center, from Data Center to Cloud, etc. Your migration will be completed in seconds.

Then after the migration to draw.io, move to Data Center or Cloud, simple, painless, and stress-free.

draw.io’s pricing is exceptionally competitive

Draw.io vs Gliffy pricing

We thought we would leave the best to last.

Regardless of your deployment, you will find draw.io’s pricing extremely inviting.

draw.io offers more functionality, more use cases, class-leading security, whiteboards, and, for our Cloud users, real-time interactive collaborative diagramming.
We beat Gliffy in every metric, but our pricing structure goes right to the heart of draw.io’s DNA.

draw.io was designed to be a powerful, flexible diagramming app for developers, but it also had to be affordable.

Perhaps another factor is that draw.io is privately-owned. In contrast, Gliffy has shareholders and needs to deliver quarterly dividends to its stockholders as well as servicing its day-to-day running costs.

That’s the difference, one is a business driven by passion, and the other is purely a business.

But see for yourself, go onto the Atlassian marketplace and price a fixed number of installs of draw.io compared with the same number of installs of Gliffy.

Atlassian Marketplace

A verbal contract is not worth the paper it’s written on

This well-known British legal adage implies that verbal statements and reassurances are nice but are worthless. So while some sales teams perhaps are understandably quite enthusiastic about their product, we feel it is best to do your own research or due diligence.

Both applications offer a 30-day free trial. Or are free for up to ten users in Confluence.

We recommend you take both apps for a test drive, compare features, and then after a period of evaluation, contact our sales team.

We look forward to welcoming you to the draw.io community.

Discover how others feel about draw.io