Creately Diagramming Tool Review

Creately is a web based application to draw diagrams online. Launched in DEMO Falls 2008 it was featured in TechCrunch, BestOfWeb and many other leading technology publication. It’s a low cost reliable alternative to Microsoft Visio and has pricing plans suitable for almost anyone. This Creately review focuses on its advantageous and disadvantageous and so you can decide to buy it.

For me the biggest advantage of Creately is the ability to access your diagrams from anywhere in the world. Because it’s a web based application you simple have to create an online account and you are ready to draw diagrams. Many companies allow employees to work from home and there are busy users who are constantly on the go. Creately is perfect for users like that.

Although the price is low it has most of the features found in traditional diagramming software. You have an innovative user interface and an extensive library of beautiful shapes so you can draw diagrams quickly. There are pre drawn diagram templates if you are really in a big hurry.

Also you have the ability to collaborate online with your peers. Because you can draw diagrams in a collaborative way you reduce lots of time spend on email exchanges, meeting etc. and increases your productive time. The tool was built with software teams in mind so has lots of features supporting collaboration.

Another impressive thing is the amount of diagram types the application support. Flowcharts, UML diagrams, network diagrams are common and supported by many similar applications. But Creately supports wire-frames, Gantt charts, SWOT analysis and many not so common diagrams.

Additionally they have resource sections for most diagrams types these are available for free. You can learn about the symbols used with different diagrams, best practices to follow when drawing certain diagrams, case studies on how these diagrams are used in real world scenarios and links to templates of diagrams.

What makes Creately truly unique is its auto adjusting smart objects and one click diagramming abilities. Adjusting the length of an object changes the associated values and one click create helps draw diagrams without dragging the most back and forth over object libraries.

Although it’s a great tool there are some limitations especially if you’re a mobile phone user. Creately needs the Flash player to run its applications and some mobiles don’t support the flash player. Another thing is its fairly limited language support. At the moment it only supports seven languages although more are planned for the future.

Overall Creately online diagramming tool is a great low cost tool to quickly and easily draw technical diagrams.

Nishadha Silva is a software engineer turned Internet marketer. He loves most things related to Internet marketing and always looking to grow his limited Twitter followers.