The corner bistro you'll be returning to for years.
Small Company
A cozy restaurant on the Web
Clear Focus
We bite off what we can chew
Profitable
We're in this for the long haul
Genuinely Caring
Life's too short for bad software
Outstanding Advisers
We are so lucky
Contagious Passion
We absolutely love this
Company
Why does Balsamiq exist?
We believe that life’s too short for bad software! Since we started in 2008, our goal has been to help people create software that is easier to use. We do this by providing software tools, teaching people about UX, and by building a long-lasting company so that we can achieve our ambitious goal. We like to compete on usability and customer service. We’re good people, and we care.
Contact us, we’re friendly people#
| Sales & Licensing | sales@balsamiq.com (it’s Val and Natalie) |
| Lost your license key? Retrieve it here! | |
| Need a formal invoice? Retrieve it here! | |
| Technical Support | support.balsamiq.com |
| Phone | +1 (415) 367-3531 |
| Fax | +1 (888) 349-8816 |
| Skype | balsamiq (best for sales-related questions) |
| Post | Balsamiq Studios, LLC PO Box 1138 Sacramento, CA 95812 |
Join the conversation!
| Our blogs | Get to know us! |
| Our forums | community.balsamiq.com |
| Mockups To Go | Download community-created stencils |
| @balsamiq | |
| facebook.com/mockups | |
| Google+ | Balsamiq G+ Page |
| Balsamiq Lovers | |
| YouTube | youtube.com/user/balsamiq |
| Subscribe to our RSS feeds. | |
What tools does Balsamiq offer to help rid the world of bad software?#
We have one tool called Balsamiq Mockups, which we support passionately and which has a big community around it.
What is Balsamiq Mockups?#
Balsamiq Mockups is a small graphical tool to sketch out user interfaces, for websites and web / desktop / mobile applications.
We focus on the ideation phase, providing you with a clean tool that lets your get in the flow and stay focussed on structure rather than colors and icons. Mockups provides enough interactivity to replace prototypes most of the time, and makes it easy to collaborate and get feedback on your wireframes.
Mockups is sold as a Desktop application, a web application and as a plugin to different wikis and bug trackers (compare all versions). An iPad version is in the works. You can try it out for free on our website, or download a free trial. You can also easily access a pre-release version or old versions.
How is Balsamiq Mockups supported passionately?#
We are spread across the globe to provide fast response times.
We have extensive docs, we improve the software with frequent new releases and we provide support via multiple channels. You can find beginner-to-expert tutorials and documentation on our support website, as well as pointers to books about Mockups.
You can keep up with our updates via the release announcements on our Product blog, as well as see our product roadmap. If you need help, you can reach us in many different ways: you can use our helpful email form, or write to support@balsamiq.com, or contact us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn.
Tell me about the Balsamiq Mockups community#
Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you Mockups is pretty much the gold standard in low-cost wireframing tools these days. Here’s a huge list of press mentions and web reviews. There is a large community of passionate users who are willing to help each other on our GetSatisfaction forums.
Software developers have created tools that integrate with Balsamiq Mockups, extending it in different ways like adding export to HTML/CSS/JS etc. You can also find a large number of community-contributed, ready-to-use stencils and controls for all your wireframing needs at Mockups to Go.
If you are a Mockups expert looking for work, you can look at these job offers. If instead you are looking for someone to help you with your wireframing needs, here’s a list of freelancers who know how to use Mockups well. You can also follow the balsamiq_jobs pinboard bookmark list.
How does Balsamiq teach me about UX?#
We partnered with UX guru and author Theresa Neil to create uxapprentice.com, where you can learn the basics of UX with an easy process to follow, and pointers for where to learn more. If you are working with a client who doesn’t understand the value of wireframes, you can send them this little page.
We also have a Balsamiq UX blog, where we talk about the user experience for our products, showing what we’re thinking and how we’re evolving.
To inspire you, we link to inspireUX and Little Big Details directly in the application’s Help menu. We interview Balsamiq power-users in the Balsamiq Champions blog, and have published a free ebook called Balsamiq Success Stories. We also sponsor Wireframes Magazine, and often raffle free tickets to UX-related conferences to our community. Last but not least, we provide examples of software we love, via the the "zenware" page.
We try to do our part to foster a vibrant UX community by sponsoring websites, conferences and events, providing a free integration with ux.stackexchange.com, and more. We also try to be very upfront about our position in the competitive wireframing / prototyping software tool space. We maintain a list of wireframing tools on twitter and are working on a "competitive landscape" page.
Who’s behind Balsamiq?#
We are trying to build a company we’d like to do business with ourselves. We aim to be a company that’s human, respectful, transparent, inclusive, socially and environmentally conscious, and a good citizen of the world and the Web.
We try to be approachable via a clear website, with lots of way to contact us or get self-service help (like for lost license keys or invoices).
We have been an example of transparency since the beginning, via our team blog, Peldi’s blog and his numerous interviews and talks. We try to be a fun company to deal with: we don’t take ourselves too seriously, we provide fun items in our swag stores, we even give you ideas for what to make for dinner!
We are a solid, independent little software company. We started in 2008 as a one-man-shop, and have been growing organically ever since. We have lots and lots of customers. We are both extremely profitable and fiscally conservative. We turn away external investors every week and have turned down serious, multi-million-dollar acquisition offers, because we believe it’s the right thing for us and for our community. We want to stick around and be here for you, simple as that.
We have clear EULAs & Terms of Use policies, lots of clear sales-related FAQs and are PCI compliant. We are friendly to the press, considered thought leaders in our field, and often copied by others, which we find flattering. We are well established in the UX software market, with big partners (Google, Atlassian, FogCreek) and with good relationships with big software resellers.
The Team#
Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni
Founder and CEO
You can read about Peldi in these interviews, in this blog post about his story or listen to some of his talks.
Marco Botton
Super-duper Coder
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqMarco
Marco is the lead developer of the Mockups editor. Editable groups, Symbols, Zooming…if it’s a really hard feature, we give it to Marco.
Valerie Liberty
Head Chef, Wow! Division
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqVal
Valerie helps with sales inquiries, support questions and in charge of donating our software as much as possible. She’s also our resident chef!
Luis Arias
Web programmer extraordinaire
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqLuis
Luis is our server-side guru: Java, Grails, Linux server administration, he can do it all. He’s the lead developer of myBalsamiq, our web app.
Mike Angeles
Designicorn
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqMike
Mike is our User Experience guy: educator via our UX Blog, Product Manager, Interface Designer, Front End Developer, Webmaster, and of course, the Konigi guy.
Natalie Gould
CFO & Wow! Division, Bologna Office
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqNat
Natalie is the master bean-counter, in charge of keeping our finances healthy. Based in Italy, she also handles sales and support for our European customers.
Paolo Ottanà
All-around Coder
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqPaolo
Paolo is in charge of the internal tools that keep us humming along, as well as being the lead coder for the plugin versions of Mockups.
Joy McCrea
COO, Balsamiq LLC
Joy makes sure our distributed team is well taken care of: payroll, benefits, taxes, accounting, dealing with the bank — she does it all!
Florian Brauer
Developer in Testing
Florian helps us maintain high quality by writing automated tests and supporting our customers.
Leon Barnard
UX Writing and Support
Email Blog
Follow @balsamiqLeon
Leon is all about documentation, UX design, and helping our customers be awesome.
Anna Mariotti
Virtual Office Manager, Balsamiq SRL
Anna makes sure our Italian company runs smoothly. Purchasing, filing, accounting, payroll, and more!
Michele Orsini
Senior Developer
Michele is a client-side developer working on Mockups and new projects.
Andrea Serra
Senior Developer
Andrea is a client-side developer working on Mockups and myBalsamiq.
Partners#
We have partnered with the following external companies which help us in different ways.
Aramis B.V.
Software Development
Aramis B.V., owned by Stefano Masini, is a Dutch software development company that helps us go really fast! :)
BSN Design, LLC
Quality Assurance
BSN Design, LLC, owned by Ben Norris, is an American consulting company that helps us maintain our software’s high quality.
How is Balsamiq trying to be a good citizen?#
First of all, we treat our own people VERY well. We always try to give each person their ideal job. We have few, clear and progressive company policies, and our jobs page tries to set the right expectations.
We also do our best to treat our customers well. In fact, it’s something we explicitly compete on since day one. We offer clear and affordable pricing for our tools, as well as trial versions and a usable web demo used by thousands for free every day. We also have very generous "free Balsamiq" programs for classrooms, open source projects and do-gooders in general.
We always include the community in the design and testing of new features, and thank them for their help when those features are released (of course). We reply to every email / tweet / facebook message, and try to never write to our customers unless it’s absolutely necessary (we hate spam and consider their Inbox sacred).
We try to be a good citizen in our competitive marketplace, never speaking ill of competitors, clones or software pirates. We also open-source parts of our software, when we can.
Last but not least, we give back to our local communities with a generous company donation policy (2% of our profits go to charity each year). In short, we’re good people, and we care.
Why "Balsamiq"?#
Balsamic vinegar, the high-end, aged for 25+ year kind, has a lot in common with what we want our software to be: rich, smooth, pleasurable, expensive. OK our software is actually pretty affordable but we still want it to feel like a treat! :)
Like a fine balsamic vinegar, our software adds flavor to something else (in our case wikis and bug trackers), requires craftmanship and is made in Italy!
Question for you: what else should we do to help rid the world of bad software?
Got an idea for something else we could do? Let us know at support@balsamiq.com, we can’t wait to hear it!
© 2013 Balsamiq Studios, LLC · Federal EIN 26-2200095 (W9 Form)
