- Jul 30
- 8 min read
UI and UX design tools help you plan, prototype and test a website before it goes live. UI design covers the visual layer such as typography, color and layout, while UX design maps how a person moves through the site and completes what they came for.
The ten tools below span that whole process, from early sitemaps through interactive prototypes to real user testing, and each supports a different stage of your website design.
TL;DR: UI and UX design tools
UI and UX design tools fall into four groups. Whiteboard and sitemap tools handle early structure. Wireframing tools turn that into fast low-fidelity layouts. Design and prototyping tools cover the actual screens and developer handoff. Testing tools check the result with real users. Most designers run two or three together rather than betting on one. The table below shows which of the ten covers what.
Tool | Best for |
|---|---|
FlowMapp | Sitemaps, user flows and customer journey maps |
Miro | Whiteboard brainstorming and remote workshops |
Balsamiq | Fast low-fidelity wireframes |
Figma | End to end UI design and developer handoff |
Sketch | Precise UI design on macOS |
Proto.io | Animation-heavy interactive prototypes |
Marvel | Wireframing, prototyping and user testing in one app |
Maze | Validating prototypes with real users |
UXPin | Code-based prototypes using production components |
Penpot | Open-source design with self-hosting |
Tip: Wix lowers the barrier to UI and UX design when you create your website. You start from ready-made templates for whole websites, full pages, sections and individual components, so the structure is in place before you customize anything. Wix simplifies advanced website design by blending AI guidance with easy-to-use drag and drop customization.
10 best UI and UX design tools
Each tool below covers a different stage, so the right pick depends on where your process slows down.
01. FlowMapp
Best for: Sitemaps, user flows and customer journey maps
UX design takes into consideration the entire picture of a product’s creation, from its design to its launch. The process runs through ideation and definition, research, analysis, design and testing, then finalization and launch before the cycle repeats. To help you with the first three steps of the process, FlowMapp offers UX tools and templates for user personas, user flows, customer journey maps and sitemaps. The web-based app also provides clients sharing and collaborative capabilities for teams.
02. Miro
Best for: Whiteboard brainstorming and remote workshops
Both UX and UI designers use whiteboard tools throughout their process to brainstorm, plan, iterate and design. Miro is a whiteboard tool that comes with useful pre-built UX and wireframing templates.
You can also use it for UI, as you add images, files and third-party tools to your whiteboard and have your collaborators give feedback with commenting and voting features. The app is available for browser, desktop (Mac and Windows), as well as mobile and tablet devices (iOS and Android).
03. Balsamiq
Best for: Fast low-fidelity wireframes
Once you hit the design phase, you’ll likely create low-fidelity wireframes to communicate your vision. Balsamiq is a UI design tool that enables users to quickly create these web page sketches. In addition to laying down the structure and main components for each page, users can create wireframes based on specific devices and operating systems, using premade UI components and icons (e.g. Buttons, Forms, Media, etc.) The tool’s drag-and-drop interface can be mastered in minutes, and can be accessed via a browser or desktop app (Mac and Windows). If you want a sense of what to aim for, these wireframe examples show the range from rough sketch to high fidelity.
04. Figma
Best for: End to end UI design and developer handoff
Figma is a multipurpose web/desktop/and mobile solution that spans the entire UI and UX design process. The first three steps can be completed via its online whiteboard FigJam. From there, you can actually design and test both your lo-fi wireframes and hi-fi prototypes from the main Figma app as well as hand off your designs to developers to build.
Plugins created specifically for Figma will make the process of designing a website go more smoothly and quickly, too. For instance, there are plugins for spell check, stock photo integration, and data visualization.
05. Sketch
Best for: Precise UI design on macOS
Sketch is a great tool for efficient and precise UI design. Its editor is well-organized and includes easy-to-use features like Snapping and Smart Guides that help size, space and align UI elements. When it's time to hand off your designs to a developer, the app’s version control, UI inspection and asset downloads turn this into a seamless process. Sketch is available as a Mac app, plus a web app and Mirror (mobile) apps for previewing designs and testing prototypes.
06. Proto.io
Best for: Animation-heavy interactive prototypes
Proto.io’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor gives you the ability to prototype designs created in Figma or Sketch or to create designs from scratch with the help of Proto.io’s library of UI assets, fonts and more. Create them on the web-based app, then use their iOS and Android mobile apps for previewing and testing.
Because this is first and foremost a prototyping platform, Proto.io has all the tools you need to bring static designs to life: set up triggers and actions for different UI elements, create advanced animations for any page, layer, or component you want, plus add screen transitions, Lotties, GIFs, videos and more.
07. Marvel
Best for: Wireframing, prototyping and user testing in one app
Technically, you can do all of your design work with Marvel’s web-based app, meaning wireframe, design UIs, prototype and test, but you can also sync it with another design platform like Sketch. Validation is an important part of UX design, but it’s a process that designers often have to manage outside of their design tools. With Marvel’s user testing tool, you can run user tests on your prototypes right where they are.
08. Maze
Best for: Validating prototypes with real users
Design decisions are easy to defend when real users have already tested them. Maze runs usability tests, surveys, card sorting and tree testing against prototypes so you find out where people hesitate before anything gets built. Its core studies are unmoderated, which means you can send a link and collect results while you work on something else, and moderated interviews are available when you need to probe an answer in the moment. Reports are generated automatically and cover success rates, misclicks, task paths, heatmaps and usability scores, so the findings are ready to share with stakeholders who were not in the room. It fits into the validation stage, after you have something clickable but before a developer starts building.
09. UXPin
Best for: Code-based prototypes using production components
Most design tools produce a picture of an interface. UXPin produces something closer to the real thing. Its Merge technology imports React, Vue, Angular or Web Component libraries straight from Git, npm or Storybook, so the buttons and inputs in your prototype are the same components a developer will ship. That removes the gap where a design looks one way in the file and behaves differently in the build. Because the library syncs, prototypes update automatically when the underlying components change. This one earns its place on teams with an established design system and developers who are already working in React.
10. Penpot
Best for: Open-source design with self-hosting
Penpot is fully open source, which matters for two kinds of teams. The first are organizations that need design files on their own servers rather than a vendor’s, and Penpot supports self-hosting through Docker. The second are teams tired of the handoff translation problem. Penpot works natively in SVG and CSS, so what a developer inspects in a file is real CSS, including true spacing values, grids and flexbox layouts, not an approximation that has to be rebuilt. Self-hosting is free under an open source license and the hosted version has a free tier, so trying it does not require budget approval.
How to choose a UI or UX design tool
The right tool depends less on its feature list and more on where the friction sits in your own process. A solo designer handing files to one developer has different needs than an agency running six client projects at once.
Anna Suntsov, Blog and Social Design Team Lead at Wix, starts further back than the tool itself.
“The most important thing before building a website is good research. Know what you want to do and collect good inspirations that will contribute to your design.”
Once you know what you are building, four things separate a tool you keep using from one you abandon after a month.
Collaboration: If more than one person touches the file, real-time editing and comment threads stop being a nice extra and become the reason the tool works at all.
Handoff: Designs eventually have to become a real site. Tools that export clean specs, assets and code notes save hours that would otherwise go into clarifying what a spacing value was supposed to be.
Accessibility: Tools that let you check contrast, text size and focus order while you design catch problems while they are still cheap to fix. Building inclusive designs is far easier when those checks happen before launch rather than after.
Learning curve: A tool you have to relearn every time you open it costs more than it saves. Match the depth of the tool to how often you will actually use it.
The Codex Community, a group of AI web development experts, makes the same point.
“The biggest advantage of no-code tools is how quickly designers can implement ideas that once felt out of reach.”
Wix Studio is a professional web design platform that combines vibe coding, visual editing and React-based code development for professional designers and web design agencies.
Related reading: 6 lessons from my 6 years in UX that can be applied to your site
UI and UX design tools FAQ
What is the difference between UI and UX design?
UI design covers what a person sees, meaning colors, type, buttons and spacing. UX design covers what a person does, meaning navigation, task flows and whether the site is easy to use. A site can look good and still be frustrating, which is why most projects need both.
Do I need separate tools for UI and UX?
Not always. Several tools now handle wireframing, visual design and prototyping in one place. Separate tools tend to make sense when a specific stage becomes a bottleneck, such as user testing or developer handoff.
Can you build a website without a UX design tool?
Yes. Website builders with visual editors let you design directly on the page and preview across screen sizes, which removes the step of translating a static design file into a working site. Wix works this way, and Wix Studio adds custom CSS and a real code layer for designers who need tighter control. Dedicated design tools matter most when several people need to review and approve work before anything gets built.
What should a beginner look for in a UX design tool?
Look for a short setup time, a template or component library so you are not starting from an empty canvas and easy sharing so you can get feedback quickly. Advanced animation and code integration can wait until you actually need them.
Are free UX design tools good enough?
For solo work and early-stage projects, usually yes. Free tiers commonly limit the number of projects, collaborators or export options rather than the core design features. Paid plans become worth it once team size or client volume grows.
