Microsoft Office Visio makes it easy for IT and business professionals to visualize, explore, and communicate complex information. It is a very powerful and flexible app, usable for many different purposes, but its main function is to help users draw flowcharts, control diagrams, layouts, and other structured graphical ways of presenting information.
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Visio makes it easy and intuitive to create flowcharts, network diagrams, org charts, floor plans, engineering designs, and more using modern shapes and templates, with the familiar Office experience. Below are some of Visio’s alternatives, they may not necessarily be better but if you’re looking for something simple that gets the job done, then these are good alternatives.
1. draw.io
draw.io is a free online diagram drawing application for workflow, BPM, org charts, UML, ER, network diagrams. No login or registration are required and features include the ability to save locally (including svg), a range of stencils, .vsdx, Lucidchart and Gliffy import and real time diagram sharing.
draw.io online is a free-to-license web application for everyone. It is completely free to use for any purpose, there is no premium pay-for functionality, watermarking, or other limitations. However, it is limited to 1 individual user.
2. yEd Graph Editor
yEd is a powerful desktop application that can be used to quickly and effectively generate high-quality diagrams. Create diagrams manually, or import your external data for analysis. Their automatic layout algorithms arrange even large data sets with just the press of a button. You can use yEd to quickly create flow charts, BPMN and UML diagrams, organization charts, mind maps, and many other kinds of diagrams, graphs, and networks.
Choose from a wide range of highly sophisticated layout algorithms to automatically arrange diagrams in no time. An intuitive and visually appealing user interface makes creating diagrams fun. Once a diagram has been created, it’s easy to save, print, or export it to popular formats like PDF, SWF, EMF, SVG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, or HTML image maps.
3. Pencil Project
Pencil is built for the purpose of providing a free and open-source GUI prototyping tool that people can easily install and use to create mockups in popular desktop platforms. Pencil provides various built-in shapes collection for drawing different types of user interface ranging from desktop to mobile platforms. Starting from 2.0.2, Pencil is shipped with Android and iOS UI stencils pre-installed.
Pencil supports outputting the drawing document into different types of formats. You can have your drawing exported as a set of rasterized PNG files or as a web page that can be delivered to the viewers. Pencil also supports exporting documents into popular formats including OpenOffice/LibreOffice text documents, Inkscape SVG and Adobe PDF.
4. LibreOffice Draw
Draw lets you produce anything from a quick sketch to a complex plan, and gives you the means to communicate with graphics and diagrams. With a maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm, Draw is a an excellent package for producing technical drawings, brochures, posters and many other documents. Draw lets you manipulate graphical objects, group them, crop them, use objects in 3D and much more.
Design powerful and intuitive flowcharts with Draw. Smart connectors make it easy to build flowcharts, organization charts, network diagrams and much more, even if you’re not a naturally talented artist. You can define your own “glue points” for connectors to adhere to, for precise and easily repeatable positioning. Dimension lines automatically calculate and display linear dimensions as you draw.
5. Apache OpenOffice Draw
Makes drawing business processes and diagrams a snap! From a quick sketch to a complex plan, Draw gives you the tools to communicate with graphics and diagrams. With a maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm, Draw is a powerful tool for technical or general posters, etc. Import graphics from all common formats (including BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and WMF).
6. Google Drawings
Google Drawings is a free, web-based diagramming software developed by Google. It allows users to collaborate and work together in real time to create flowcharts, organisational charts, website wireframes, mind maps, concept maps, and other types of diagrams. Google Drawings allows multiple users to open and edit drawings simultaneously in real time. It contains a subset of the features in Google Slides but with different templates. Drawings can be inserted into other Google documents, spreadsheets, or presentations. They can also be published online as images or downloaded in standard formats such as JPEG, SVG, PNG, or PDF.
7. ThinkComposer
As a professional, student or creative person, you probably work analyzing, creating and exposing entities with complex attributes, relationships and dependencies; struggling to make effective solutions on time, needing to explain and convince an audience; and facing diverse perspectives on different problems.
With ThinkComposer you can apply the power of comprehensive visual documents to get the job done and work better. Your flowcharts, concept maps, models and other kinds of diagrams can be much more than just embedded images in text-docs or presentations, they can represent the insights and knowledge of your very specialized domain or environment.
8. UMLet
UMLet is a free, open-source UML tool with a simple user interface: draw UML diagrams fast, build sequence and activity diagrams from plain text, export diagrams to eps, pdf, jpg, svg, and clipboard, share diagrams using Eclipse, and create new, custom UML elements. UMLet runs stand-alone or as an Eclipse plug-in on Windows, macOS and Linux.
UMLet is a UML tool aimed at providing a fast way of creating UML diagrams. UML elements are modified using text input instead of pop-up dialogs. Elements can be modified and used as templates; this way, users can easily tailor UMLet to their modeling needs. UMLet supports a variety of UML diagram types: class diagrams, use case diagrams, sequence diagrams, state diagrams, deployment diagrams, activity diagrams.
9. Umbrello
Umbrello UML Modeller is a Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagram program based on KDE Technology. UML allows you to create diagrams of software and other systems in a standard format to document or design the structure of your programs.
10. ClickCharts Home
A free version of ClickCharts Diagram & Flowchart Software is available for non-commercial use. If you will be using ClickCharts at home you can download the free version. Flowcharts provide a unique way of organizing and displaying data so that even highly detailed and complex processes are easier to understand. This makes their flowchart software an ideal method to visualize your data, troubleshoot and optimize processes, and share information.
- Visualize complex processes and organizations
- Create value stream and data flow diagrams
- Identify bottlenecks and process optimization opportunities
11. Dia
Dia is an application for creating technical diagrams. Its interface and features are loosely patterned after the Windows program Visio. Features of Dia include multiple-page printing, export to many formats(EPS, SVG, CGM and PNG), and the ability to use custom shapes created by the user as simple XMLdescriptions. Dia is useful for drawing UML diagrams, network maps, and flowcharts.
12. Calligra Flow
Calligra Flow is an easy to use diagramming and flowcharting application with tight integration to the other Calligra applications. It enables you to create network diagrams, organisation charts, flowcharts and more.
