Smartdraw House Design Software Review

Excellent

77%

Great

Average

Poor

Bad

10%

Dark pricing patterns

Okay tool, but dark pricing patterns on the "buy" page which makes me not trust the company.

Right now, the pricing says $9.95 per month, billed annually. That's not $9.95 per month, $119.40. Pricing like that usually implies the ability to switch to monthly pricing, at a more expensive rate - instead, they're using an unethical pattern for pricing.

The tool is fine, but the pricing model makes it an unacceptable business to work with. There are much much better tools available that offer annual AND monthly pricing (Whimsical, Mural, Miro, Figma, etc.).

Clumsy to use and would not load my saved files

After creating an account and spending a couple of hours getting used to the program and drawing a floor plan, I named and saved a couple of documents only to find the files would not load when I logged in again. It seems other people have had this problem.

Regarding using this software, anyone familiar with using Autocad or similar will find it clumsy and awkward to use.

Tried their free version to see if I…

Tried their free version to see if I wanted to purchase this. After several hours of working with smart draw, I will pass. Started off ok but when I wanted to break up walls, add etc. I did not like all the effort it took. To me it was so sketchy when trying to lay out a basic floor plan. Just connecting walls, adding walls, or corners was totally annoying when attempting to align with other walls. I found it very aggravating to deal with. I don't have the time to mess with a program that should be simple but to me is not. I will stay with what I been using. Very frustrating program in my opinion.

Horrible program

Horrible program. Don't pay for this program nothing different then the free version. Waste of time and money. If I could give a negative number I would.

Annoying and difficult with useless trial

At first try, it seems like it will be useful and easy, with numerous initial layouts and tools. But, that's when the troubles begin. First off, it wouldn't create a new document. I opened a new page and suddenly it created a document when I clicked on the template. That was just the start of the bugs and totally bizarre behaviors. Every operation was much more difficult than it needed to be. Many times I couldn't find a way to do simple operations. When I finally had something that was close enough, it printed watermarks over the entire page saying how it was created with a trial version. After all the previous problems that completely convinced to never spend anything on this product.

3+hrs wasted on a family tree that…

3+hrs wasted on a family tree that wouldn't load the next day. So annoyed. Beware. Glad I didn't purchase the software before testing it out.

Avoid at all cost.

2013 Smartdraw version. Of all the software packages I've used over the decades, this is the worst. Many bugs and deficiencies. I greatly regret having chosen this for software documenation as I now have to convert all my drawings to another drawing package.
As for technical support....forget it.

Pro User Review!

I have been using Smart draw for the last 9 years and have had a lot of mileage out of it. I've used this program for housing plans/design creation, infographics/web, logo's. SD does a great to excellent job! For house plans it is far-far easier than learning/using CAD. I can make changes to a house plan on the phone to the client at the time. I can save the plan to a rough CAD plan that a drafts person can trace over and or get exact dimenetions.

What I love - I can create shapes/Logos/House plans and store them in a visual library for re-use in the future. Compared to Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat or MS Publisher/Power point it is a faster learn time with pretty much everything I would ever need.

What I hate - SD wont/cant show print borders ) on the screen (only shows the page border) Cant work separately on one page alone (every page you are working on is present on the screen so the PC takes time to catch up). It wont tell you if an object is centered on the page (like PShop & PPoint). As an example I am working on a 28 page brochure with lots of images and when I print to PDF my intel i7 lags plus some images don't print out. I end up having to create dedicated files for groups of pages to get an exact print (these problems appear as i am literally pushing this program to its limits though) My running gear within my PC is not stressing, so it is a program thing.

Summary- I think the team at SD where obsessed with having there service work in the cloud for the light user and have not really focused on power or pro users, nothing has really changed or improved in that 9 years, which can be a good or bad thing depending how you look at it! For SEO, google is focusing on infographics and diagrams and I couldn't say there is a better program for this that is easier to use! I strongly recommend SD, but if you have to do large-large files, I would possibly look at other options! 1x Star lost for speed!

Okay(ish) but expensive

SmartDraw is a decent enough piece of software but we've found it to be both expensive and in many ways quite inflexible for our needs. By inflexible I'd say it is in no way as intuitive as, say, a package like Visio, and because of that we won't be renewing our subscription. If you need to create complex diagrams and have the time to really learn the nuts and bolts of SmartDraw I'd definitely recommend it, but our CAD people have found that through a combination of Visio and SolidWorks they can produce pretty much everything we need. Also, set your email filters up as you'll seemingly be deluged with messages from the company.

Easy to throw together very polished diagrams and visuals for professional purposes...

I've been using SmartDraw since 2012 and I LOVE how easy it is to throw together very polished diagrams and visuals for professional purposes. I use this product to build industry-standard process models, UML diagrams, UI mock-ups for clients, as well as many day-to-day reports and tables for business use. With a little practice, the interface becomes very easy to get around and its worth the investment to produce great outputs. I use expensive EA software in my job and some open source software for diagramming and graphics at home, but SmartDraw is a good affordable all-rounder in all environments. Highly recommended!

Poor all round.

Poor choice of scales available. Lacking in features and poor user friendliness. Inordinately complicated making simples drawings and tasks extremely time consuming.

Excellent alternative to Visio software…

Excellent alternative to Visio software which was discontinued years ago. I'm finally able to import and revise my old Visio files! Also, this software comes with many pre-made templates. Great for being able to "see" various estate planning concepts. Great software.

Great Tool, but I would like to see some options availables.

I love use smartdraw for all my diagrams, flows, networking, etc...But in the interaction for me I would like to see a 'Hand' Option to move me into the more fluid in the screen, other thing is the Zoom menu I think can be better and some times the screen freezes and closes it authomaticlally. Thank you!

Smartdraw House Design Software Review

Source: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.smartdraw.com