Axure: Robust and Proven, but Less Efficient
June 23, 2019

Axure: Robust and Proven, but Less Efficient

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Axure RP

A subset of our design team is working with Axure to create high-fidelity, interactive prototypes for our sales team to demo for clients around the world in order to sell products in production before release. By providing our sales reps with clickable, realistic, and accurate prototypes to share and use with existing and potential clients, we’re often able to secure contracts well before a product is released (and after, for that matter!). It’s also nice to get feedback from these organizations that might inform changes we might want to make in a current or future iteration of a design.
Also, because Axure is considered to be the “industry standard” for prototyping, we also use the tool to collaborate with external designers, as they often already have the platform in their arsenals.

Pros

  • Adaptive views enable us to create truly responsive designs, even when they are very complex.
  • The platform’s many available templates and ability to create a library of reusable designs enables us to prototype faster and more efficiently than creating every single design from the ground up.
  • The company provides a lot of support options, from training videos to online forums. This is a pretty complex tool, so knowing that we can always look up or ask a question and get a quick answer has helped us immensely.
  • Axure’s comprehensive suite of tools to portray interactivity in prototypes has truly helped us show stakeholders and clients what an end product will look like, which has really helped us gain necessary internal and external buy-in.

Cons

  • There’s a pretty steep learning curve to this tool. Even though everyone on my “sub-team” is pretty well versed in a wide array of prototyping tools, we’re still having some trouble figuring out some of Axure’s more complicated features, like repeater tables. This is a large reason why we are not using this tool beyond this small group of designers.
  • The interface is outdated and much less impressive than many other tools on the market, like InVision.
  • It’s pretty expensive. Even if we wanted to expand the use of Axure to the entire design team, we’d have a pretty tough time selling it to the higher-ups when there are plenty of comparable tools (a number of which we already have access to) that are much cheaper per user.
  • Master styles help save time and create brand consistency in creating prototypes, as designers can choose from existing styles, which they can build their designs upon.
  • Axure’s functionality allows us to build highly realistic prototypes, which enables us to easily portray user workflows for potential and existing clients, as well as for stakeholders, to create more buy-in for the end product.
  • The source files aren’t a reliable resource for application code for our developers, so we have to spend significant time on documentation to ensure that the design doesn’t get built out incorrectly.
Axure stacks up pretty nicely against other tools, in terms of available functionality and support for users. It’s probably the best tool I have used to create the most realistic and complex prototypes for sales purposes. However, its interface is outdated compared to other tools, and it’s a less efficient tool than other tools, such as Sketch, that enable users to create and iterate upon designs more quickly. We will continue to use Axure for complex designs, particularly for prototypes that need to be external-facing, but we’ll opt to stick with Adobe XD or another tool for internal use, to save time and energy by using a more straightforward tool.
Axure is a robust tool for teams who seek a reliable, proven, and powerful prototyping tool (and have the budget for it!). Because it has been around for a longer time than some similar products, it includes a ton of features to make incredibly realistic and interactive prototypes. Teams who use Axure will likely benefit from how the tool enables users to create master designs that designers can share and reuse, saving time that may otherwise have been spent building a design from the ground up. However, this tool can be very difficult for new users to learn, so it’s not a great solution for teams who don’t have a lot of wiggle room between adopting the tool and using it to create designs on a deadline. Also, the tool is less intuitive than some of its other competitors, which can make it more time-consuming to whip up a design. For teams who often need to iterate on prototypes quickly, Axure is likely not to be the most efficient solution.

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