30 Amazing Mobile App Design Software Tools

March 15, 2024

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Welcome to the world of mobile app design software! This article will guide you through 30 amazing tools that can transform your app development process. Each tool is unique, offering a range of features to suit different needs and skill levels.

From beginners to seasoned developers, everyone can find a tool that fits their workflow. These mobile app design software tools not only streamline the design process but also enhance productivity, leading to a more polished end product.

So, let’s dive into this exciting journey and discover how these tools can bring your app ideas to life. Stay tuned!

What Is a Mobile App Design Software?

Mobile App Design Software is a specialized tool that assists in the creation of user interfaces for mobile applications. These software tools offer a range of features that streamline the design process, making it easier for designers to bring their visions to life.

The primary function of mobile app design software is to provide a platform where designers can create, edit, and optimize the visual elements of an app. This includes everything from layout and color schemes to typography and iconography.

One of the key advantages of using mobile app design software is the ability to create interactive prototypes. This allows designers to test the functionality and user experience of their designs before moving into the development phase.

Moreover, most mobile app design software tools support collaboration, enabling teams to work together seamlessly, share ideas, and provide feedback in real-time. This collaborative aspect is crucial in maintaining consistency and ensuring the final product aligns with the project’s goals.

Why Do You Need a Mobile App Design Software?

So, why do you need a mobile app design software? Here are a few reasons:

Efficiency: Mobile app design software tools streamline the design process, enabling designers to create stunning and user-friendly interfaces quickly and efficiently. These tools come with a host of features that automate repetitive tasks, saving valuable time and effort.
Collaboration: These tools foster collaboration, allowing teams to work together seamlessly. Designers can share their work, gather feedback, and make revisions in real-time, ensuring everyone is on the same page and working towards a common goal.
Prototyping: Mobile app design software tools allow designers to create interactive prototypes. This feature enables designers to test and refine the user experience before the development phase begins, reducing the risk of costly changes later on.
Customization: These tools offer a high degree of customization, giving designers the freedom to create unique and engaging app interfaces. From color schemes and typography to layouts and iconography, designers have complete control over every aspect of the design.

In a nutshell, a mobile app design software is a needed tool for any designer looking to create high-quality, user-friendly mobile apps. It not only simplifies the design process but also enhances productivity, fosters collaboration, and ultimately leads to better end products.

Top 25 Best Mobile App UI Design Software Tools

1. Mockplus

Pricing: It offers a free-forever plan. Paid plans start at $10.95 per user/month.

Mockplus is a free and web-based mobile app design tool for designers to quickly create wireframes and prototypes.

It provides an intuitive drag-&-drop builder and tons of ready-made components, UI library, and reusable assets, speeding up your design work and saving you a lot of workload. With Mockplus, you can also import designs from Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, and PS for further collaboration and handoff.

2. Marvel

Pricing: Start at $12/month. The free plan is also available.

Marvel allows you to design, prototype, and work with your team quickly. You can see how your potential users will interact with your designs in real-time. Even if you’re a newbie in the world of designing Android/iOS apps, Marvel makes you feel like you’re professional. It’s actually the all-in-one mobile app design software for everyone.

3. InVision

Pricing: Start at $15/month. The free plan with one prototype is also available.

InVision offers you an over-the-top amazing user experience to design your mobile app. The mobile app design software comes with a modern studio that includes useful features such as vector drawing, adaptive layout, etc. Just enter an email, and the app lets you start the creation process immediately.

4. Axure RP

Pricing: Start at $29/month.

Axure RP is a robust mobile app design software for professional designers. The software gives you all the functionalities you need to create the best app ever. If you’re struggling with delivering your design to developers, Axure RP is your ideal choice. Using this tool, you can publish an Axure RP file to Axure Cloud, and then show your design on the web as a complete picture, including everything you want to display – documentation, prototypes, visual design, you name it.

5. Sketch

Pricing: Start at $99/year.

Many big names like Nintendo, Google, Facebook, and even Apple have been using Sketch to create design masterpieces. This tool not only offers you the same features as Marvel and InVision do but also provides you with hundreds of plugins. Look for Felipe, Runner, or Zeplin, Sketch got you covered! Note that the first time you download Sketch, you’ll have 30 days to enjoy full features. After that, you have to buy a license.

6. BuildFire

Pricing: $59/month.

When it comes to making apps for iOS and Android, many designers opt for BuildFire. The first reason is that this tool is 100% free to build, meaning you can create a mobile app design software without spending a dime. You won’t have to pay unless you publish it. Besides, you don’t need to know any coding knowledge to create an app on this platform.

Recommended reading: 21 Web Design Trends and Tips to Make Your Own Trend

7. Adobe XD

Pricing: $14.29/month. The free plan is also available.

If you’re looking for free mobile app design software to create designs for websites, mobile apps, games, etc., choose Adobe XD. This tool works like magic – it allows you and your colleagues to work together in real-time. Also, you can join daily challenges to get feedback on your design and learn from others.

8. Proto.io

Pricing: Start at $24/month. A free trial is also available.

Proto.io is trusted by companies such as Amazon, Evernote, PayPal, and Disney. This free app design software is easy to use and doesn’t require coding skills. It also offers a wide range of design and prototype templates. The latest version of Proto.io comes with useful features like preset templates, gradient colors, visual Easings Manager, etc.

9. Origami Studio

Pricing: Free.

Origami Studio allows you to create prototypes with intuitive layers. You can also bring Sketch layers to Origami and edit them with masks, animations, behaviors, etc. Besides, it comes with pre-designed material and iOS components, which allows you to design faster. Here is the fact: Origami Studio is a product of Facebook engineers, and it has been used to develop Facebook Messenger as well as Instagram! What’s more? It’s the best app design software!

10. OmniGraffle

Pricing: Start at $149.99/year. A free trial is also available.

As a diagram design tool, OmniGraffle will help you create screen flows, strategy maps, wireframes, and many other diagrams you want. This tool offers advanced features like artboard presentation, artboard layers, automation with JavaScript, etc. Currently, it’s available for Mac only.

11. Balsamiq

Pricing: Start at $9/month.

Balsamiq is meant for app designing tools. Using this tool, you can completely focus on structure and content without being interrupted by colors and details. It’s easy to use, so you don’t need to worry about the learning curve. Balsamiq is available on the web, Mac, and Windows. You can integrate the app with Google Drive, Confluence, and Jira.

12. JustInMind

Pricing: Start at $19/month.

JustInMind is the standalone mobile app design software for wireframe and prototype designers. This tool supports fully interactive, responsive prototypes, smart forms, and data, along with free UI kits. You can also import your work from Sketch or Microsoft TFS to JustinMind and edit images in Illustrator or Photoshop.

13. HotGloo

Pricing: Start at $12/month.

HotGloo is an optimized mobile app design software. It runs in your browser, so you need an Internet connection to work with this tool. Apart from that, GotGloo is useful to create interactive wireframes and prototypes. It currently offers a 7-day free trial.

14. UI Stencil Kit

Pricing: Diverse, depending on what types of products you buy.

Have you ever heard about UI Stencil Kit? If not, you miss a powerful kit to support your mobile app creation process. Basically, UI Stencil Kit is a set of tools to help you brainstorm and sketch your ideas on paper. It’s a must-have tool for every designer.

15. Flinto

Pricing: Start at $99/month.

Flinto is a Mac app design tool to create interactive and animated prototypes. The software offers a bunch of features like sound effects, gestures, scroll animations, animated transitions, etc. You won’t find any trouble when working with Flinto, for sure.

16. FramerJS

Pricing: Start at $15/month.

Compared with the tools above, FramerJS is a bit difficult to start with. You need some time to get familiar with the software and its features. Despite that, FramerJS is still the right choice if you don’t mind getting some training early. It covers all the features that the typical mobile design app software should have.

17. Zeplin

Pricing: Start at $19/month. The free plan is available, as well.

Want a perfect mobile app design tool to work with developers? Look no further! Zeplin will be your best choice. It’s considered the ultimate collaboration tool for designers to share their designs with engineers. More importantly, Zeplin supports many integrations with popular apps like Sketch, Adobe XD, Figma, Photoshop, Slack, and Trello.

18. UXPin

Pricing: Start at $24/month.

UXPin is a UI/UX design tool with a compelling drag-and-drop feature, available for Mac and Windows. The software platforms also support a vast collection of built-in elements, so you’re free to design anything you want. Also, UXPin continually adds new features to do your work more effectively.

19. IconJar

Pricing: Start at $27.5/month.

If you have a lot of icons but don’t know how to organize them, you should use a mobile app design tool named IconJar. The name tells it all – this tool works like a “jar” where you can keep your icons inside and manage them the way you want. For example, you can drag icons from IconJar to any app, export icons in any size/type/color, or use Smart Sets to similar icons. There are unlimited possibilities for you to work with this awesome tool.

20. Fluid UI

Pricing: Start at $8.25/month.

With Fluid UI, you can prototype and share your design instantly. This tool supports faster prototyping, epic collaboration, interactive previews, fluid UI, and more. You can’t miss it!

21. Principle

Pricing: $129.

If your designs need complex animations and interactions, you can use Principle to create them. It doesn’t matter that you’re making a multi-screen app or a new animation, you can do that with this app. The principle is now available for Mac only, and it supports all the Mac features you love: Full-screen mode, a Retina interface, and AutoSave.

FURTHER READING:

1. 12 Mobile App Development Tips to Help You Grow Faster

2. 3 Essential UI Mistakes and How to Fix It

22. 3Ds Max

With 3ds Max designers can make impressive 3D animations and, roughly speaking, any 3D model they need to create. 3ds Max has an extremely helpful library of 3D content one can borrow for their projects.

This is a trendy mobile app design tool that is frequently used for rendering, animation, and 3D modeling. It was developed with game design visualization in mind. 3ds Max is quite expensive, it costs $1,545.00/year.

23. Avocode

Basically, Avocode can cover the workflow from prototype to code. Avocode can hardly be called a tool for UI design. However, this software is extremely useful for working with designs. It costs $14 per month for one user and $90+ per month for teams.

In Avocode, you can drag, drop and share any design, import design prototypes, export layers, and discuss any component in the comments next to it.

24. Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop has a middle learning curve. It’s easy to learn the basics, but learning all the tricks takes significant time and effort.

This software has been the number one designer choice for many years. With this tool, designers can make anything from simple web pages to complex mobile app designs.

Bonus: Top 5 Free App Design Software

If your resource in terms of capital is limited, here I’ve brought together 5 brilliant app designing tools to help you get from concept to finished app faster — all free.

25. PopApp

If you liked Marvelapp but you want a working prototype on your Android device, look no further than PopApp. It is unique because it starts with photographs of your hand-drawn app sketches and links them together on your device.

26. Adobe Kuler

Use Adobe Kuler to take a photo of something with a color scheme you like, and let it pick the best complementary colors from the photo. Alternatively, you can pick a pre-made color palette from their library of popular colors to get a winning color scheme right off the bat.

27. Mobile Awesomeness

Mobile Awesomeness has a rating system for all of the designs posted on its website. Much like before, this is a website for inspiration, except that this website has design inspiration from a variety of sources, including mobile and web.

28. Android Patterns

This website categorizes tons of Android design patterns. If you’re looking for something new and distinctive or just something different to start using, you can go over to their design pattern library to take a look.

29. App design software free – Tuts+

Tuts+ tutorials are long and comprehensive, so you are walked through each button click you may need to get something done.

Tuts+ is an enormous library of tutorials from everything on CSS to Crocheting. Luckily, they have an entire section dedicated to Mobile Design as well. Head on over there to access enormous, visual design tutorials.

30. Adobe After Effects

Adobe After Effects is a program for making mobile apps for Windows and macOS. With a free trial, it costs $19.99 per month.

It’s not the easiest design tool to learn, but there are so many great things about it that you won’t be sorry about. Motion graphics, animation, and short movies can be made with Adobe After Effects. This tool makes sure that the design meets the requirements of the platform and is usable. It is also used to test out animations.

Conclusion

For app development, the right tools make all the difference. This article has explored 30 amazing mobile app design software tools that can streamline the design process and bring your app ideas to life. Each tool offers unique features, catering to a variety of needs.

Whether you’re a seasoned developer or a beginner, these mobile app design software tools can enhance your workflow, boost productivity, and ultimately lead to a more polished end product. Remember, the best tool is the one that fits your needs and skill level.

As technology continues to evolve, so too will these tools, offering even more possibilities for app designers worldwide. Stay updated, keep exploring, and happy designing!