Dia Diagram Editor Alternative Top 12 Free Alternatives To Visio For Mac
What do we mean by best? These are the top-rated Microsoft Visio alternatives in our diagram software directory.
Microsoft Visio is a well-known flowchart and diagramming software that’s highly rated by users. With over 1,400 reviews on Capterra’s software directory, it’s actually the most-reviewed diagram software on our site and has earned a 4.5 out of 5 star overall rating.
As part of the Microsoft Office family, it has a familiar interface and is well integrated with their other products, making it a good option for dedicated Microsoft customers.
Of course, belonging to a well-known brand doesn’t make it the right fit for everyone. That’s why we’re highlighting five top-rated Microsoft Visio alternatives in Capterra’s diagram software directory.
What does “top-rated” mean? Each of the five tools included in this piece have an above-average overall user rating compared to other products in the category. You can read our full methodology here. Products are listed alphabetically.
Visio also enables you to make detailed organization charts, floor plans, pivot diagrams, etc. However, Microsoft Visio has some limitations like it does not work on mobile phones and mac operating system. Furthermore, this tool does not support a collaborative environment. Here is a curated list of top tools that are capable of replacing Visio.
5 top-rated Microsoft Visio alternatives
1. Cacoo
| Overall rating: 4.5/5.0 Reviews:110+ |
Cacoo is cloud-based data visualization software used to create and share flowcharts, diagrams, wireframes, organization charts, and process models. Key features include collaboration, multi-user editing, dynamic charts, embeddable diagrams, pre-built templates, and an icon library.
Plans and pricing:
- Free: Includes one user license, six sheets, access for up to three collaborators, and limited functionality (e.g., PNG export only, and accepts file uploads up to 500 KB).
- Paid: $6 per user, per month (must be purchased on a tiered plan starting at three users and going up to 200), and includes 1,000 sheets, unlimited collaborators, and full functionality.
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Reviewers praise Cacoo for being easy to use and easy to learn. They also positively note the product’s templates and icon library. | Reviewers note some difficulty finding elements for specific environments, as well as some inconsistencies with icon styles. |
Who rates Cacoo highly? | |
| In the past year, 61% of Cacoo’s reviews came from users at small businesses, 8% from midsize, and 31% from large. It was highly rated by reviewers in the internet, consumer services, and computer hardware industries. Additionally, it was highly rated by reviewers with the following job titles: owner/CEO, software consultant, and student. | |
User dashboard in Cacoo (Source)
2. D3M
| Overall rating: 4.5/5.0 Reviews:30+ |
D3M is a cloud-based network diagramming application designed to help project managers, engineers, technicians, and sales reps design network topology, rack diagrams, and floor plan diagrams. Key features include autogenerating project inventory, quotes, proposals, documentation, and live collaboration.
Plans and pricing:
- Free: Includes five user licenses, one project, full functionality, live chat support, and video training.
- Paid: Users can pay per project (starting at $9 per month for two projects) or subscribe to an unlimited project plan. Plans with unlimited projects start at $199 per month for up to five users and include everything from the free plan plus additional support and training options.
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Reviewers praise D3M’s ease of use, the quality of their training and documentation, as well as their icon library. | The biggest complaint from users is around the quoting function in D3M, e.g., not needing it, or wanting to have several quotes inside the same project, or not being able to discount different sections of a quote individually from the rest. |
Who rates D3M highly? | |
| In the past year, 81% of D3M’s reviews came from users at small businesses and 19% from large. It was highly rated by reviewers in the following industries: electrical/electronic manufacturing, wireless, and telecommunications. Additionally, it was highly rated by reviewers with the following job titles: owner, sales director/executive, and general manager. | |
Preparing a quote from a diagram in D3M (Source)
Wolves Of The World Show: see the schedule for show times every day and night of the fair. Ag-Magic Shows with Mike Klee: see the schedule for show times November 1-12. 
The Plant Guy: appearing when you least expect it from open to close. Motorcycle Wall of Death Shows: Check out these daredevils every day and night of the fair.
3. Draw.io
| Overall rating: 4.5/5.0 Reviews:330+ |
Draw.io is free, open source, and cloud-based diagram software for making flowcharts, diagrams, organizational charts, and process models. Key features include a template and icon library, drag-and-drop functionality, ability to track and restore changes, and collaboration.
Plans and pricing:
- Free: Draw.io is a free tool that anyone can use simply by visiting their site in a web browser.
- Paid features: There are some interactions with other tools that are not free, such as Confluence Server and Data Center and JIRA Server and Data Center.
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Reviewers praise Draw.io for being free while still offering various templates and an extensive icon library. Additionally, several note that the tool is very intuitive and easy to use. | Some reviewers take issue with the import/export options. |
Who rates Draw.io highly? | |
| In the past year, 60% of D3M’s reviews came from users at small businesses, 17% from midsize, and 23% from large. It was highly rated by reviewers in the following industries: telecommunications, internet, and computer software. Additionally, it was highly rated by reviewers with the following job titles: software engineer/developer, CTO, system engineer. | |
4. Edraw Max
| Overall rating: 4.5/5.0 Reviews:50+ |
Edraw Max is a data visualization tool that helps users create and share flowcharts, diagrams, mind maps, organization charts, and floor plans. Key features include a template library with 280 pre-built templates, several export options including PDF, Word, PPT, JPEG, and HTML, as well as the option to save and collaborate with other users via Edraw cloud storage.
Plans and pricing:
- Subscription license: Costs $99 per user license for a one-year subscription, includes 280 diagrams, supports two computers, and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux OS
- Lifetime license: Costs $245 per user license, includes everything in the subscription version plus 1000M cloud storage and unlimited email support. Also includes free lifetime upgrade guarantee.
- Perpetual license: Costs $179 per user license, includes everything from the subscription version plus a three-year upgrade guarantee.
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Reviewers praise Edraw’s extensive template library and data export options. | Reviewers note that the free trial version limits some key functionality, which makes it difficult to get to know the software fully before purchasing. |
Who rates Edraw highly? | |
| In the past year, 58% of Edraw Max’s reviews came from users at small businesses, 19% from midsize, and 23% from large. It was highly rated by reviewers in the following industries: education management, financial services, and electrical/electronic manufacturing. Additionally, it was highly rated by reviewers with the following job titles: managing consultant, VP of marketing & production development, and student. | |
Creating a flowchart in Edraw Max (Source)
5. MindManager
| Overall rating: 4.5/5.0 Reviews:45+ |
MindManager is a data visualization tool that helps users create mind maps, flowcharts, diagrams, and process models. Key features include brainstorming, presentation tools, co-editing/collaboration, and a robust template library.
Plans and pricing:
- MindManager 12 for Mac: $199 per user license; includes several templates and limited project planning and task management functionality.
- MindManager 2020 for Windows: $350 per user license; includes everything in the Mindmanager for Mac version plus full project planning and task management functionality.
- MindManager Enterprise: For teams of five or more (contact the vendor directly for pricing). Includes everything from the MindManager for Windows version plus integration with SharePoint.
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Reviewers praise MindManager for being intuitive and providing a robust template library. | Reviewers note that MindManager’s interface is a little dated and that the product is expensive which makes it a tool geared more for individuals than teams. |
Who rates MindManager highly? | |
| In the past year, 65% of Mindmanager’s reviews came from users at small businesses, 13% from midsize, and 22% from large. It was highly rated by reviewers in the following industries: accounting/financial services, marketing and advertising, and telecommunications. Additionally, it was highly rated by reviewers with the following job titles: business analyst, CEO, and finance management. | |
Want to see other alternatives?
To be included in this update, products had to meet our 20-review minimum and have an above-average overall user rating compared to other products in the category (see our methodology section below).
The following products met our review minimum, but their overall rating was below the category average:
- Lucidchart (1000+ reviews, 4.48/5 stars)
- Creately (100+ reviews, 4.47/5 stars)
Additionally, you can visit our diagram software directory and filter the list to show only products that meet various criteria (such as key features needed or number of users).
Methodology
This article was updated October 17, 2019. Products considered for this article had to appear in our diagram software directory and meet the category feature requirements, i.e., one or more of the following: collaboration, drag and drop, mind map, templates, data import/export, flowchart, organizational charting.
Software that met this requirement also needed a minimum of 20 user-submitted reviews published between Sept. 28, 2018, and Sept. 28, 2019, and have an above-average overall user rating compared to other products in the category. “Top” tools were rated at least 4.5/5 stars overall by users.
Looking for Project Management software? Check out Capterra's list of the best Project Management software solutions.
Updated: January 11, 2020 Home » Freeware and Software Reviews
Microsoft Office Visio makes it easy for IT and business professionals to visualize, explore, and communicate complex information. It is a very powerful and flexible app, usable for many different purposes, but its main function is to help users draw flowcharts, control diagrams, layouts, and other structured graphical ways of presenting information.
Alternative 2020 Article ➤ 6 Free Mind Mapping Maker Tools And Brainstorming Creator Software
Visio makes it easy and intuitive to create flowcharts, network diagrams, org charts, floor plans, engineering designs, and more using modern shapes and templates, with the familiar Office experience. Below are some of Visio’s alternatives, they may not necessarily be better but if you’re looking for something simple that gets the job done, then these are good alternatives.
↓ 01 – draw.io Web
draw.io is a free online diagram drawing application for workflow, BPM, org charts, UML, ER, network diagrams. No login or registration are required and features include the ability to save locally (including svg), a range of stencils, .vsdx, Lucidchart and Gliffy import and real time diagram sharing.
draw.io online is a free-to-license web application for everyone. It is completely free to use for any purpose, there is no premium pay-for functionality, watermarking, or other limitations. However, it is limited to 1 individual users.
↓ 02 – yEd Graph Editor Windows macOS Linux Web
yEd is a powerful desktop application that can be used to quickly and effectively generate high-quality diagrams. Create diagrams manually, or import your external data for analysis. Our automatic layout algorithms arrange even large data sets with just the press of a button. You can use yEd to quickly create flow charts, BPMN and UML diagrams, organization charts, mind maps, and many other kinds of diagrams, graphs, and networks.
Choose from a wide range of highly sophisticated layout algorithms to automatically arrange diagrams in no time. An intuitive and visually appealing user interface makes creating diagrams fun. Once a diagram has been created, it’s easy to save, print, or export it to popular formats like PDF, SWF, EMF, SVG, JPEG, GIF, PNG, or HTML image maps.
↓ 03 – Pencil Project Windows macOS Linux
Pencil is built for the purpose of providing a free and open-source GUI prototyping tool that people can easily install and use to create mockups in popular desktop platforms. Pencil provides various built-in shapes collection for drawing different types of user interface ranging from desktop to mobile platforms. Starting from 2.0.2, Pencil is shipped with Android and iOS UI stencils pre-installed.
Pencil supports outputing the drawing document into different types of formats. You can have your drawing exported as a set of rasterized PNG files or as a web page that can be delivered to the viewers. Pencil also supports exporting documents into popular formats including OpenOffice/LibreOffice text documents, Inkscape SVG and Adobe PDF.
↓ 04 – LibreOffice Draw Windows macOS Linux
Draw lets you produce anything from a quick sketch to a complex plan, and gives you the means to communicate with graphics and diagrams. With a maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm, Draw is a an excellent package for producing technical drawings, brochures, posters and many other documents. Draw lets you manipulate graphical objects, group them, crop them, use objects in 3D and much more.
Design powerful and intuitive flowcharts with Draw. Smart connectors make it easy to build flowcharts, organization charts, network diagrams and much more, even if you’re not a naturally talented artist. You can define your own “glue points” for connectors to adhere to, for precise and easily repeatable positioning. Dimension lines automatically calculate and display linear dimensions as you draw.
↓ 05 – Apache OpenOffice Draw Windows macOS Linux
Makes drawing business processes and diagrams a snap! From a quick sketch to a complex plan, Draw gives you the tools to communicate with graphics and diagrams. With a maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm, Draw is powerful tool for technical or general posters, etc. Import graphics from all common formats (including BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and WMF).
↓ 06 – Google Drawings Web
Google Drawings is a free, web-based diagramming software developed by Google. It allows users to collaborate and work together in real time to create flowcharts, organisational charts, website wireframes, mind maps, concept maps, and other types of diagrams. Google Drawings allows multiple users to open and edit drawings simultaneously in real time. It contains a subset of the features in Google Slides but with different templates. Drawings can be inserted into other Google documents, spreadsheets, or presentations. They can also be published online as images or downloaded in standard formats such as JPEG, SVG, PNG, or PDF.
↓ 07 – ThinkComposer Windows
As a professional, student or creative person, you probably work analyzing, creating and exposing entities with complex attributes, relationships and dependencies; struggling to make effective solutions on time, needing to explain and convince an audience; and facing diverse perspectives on different problems.
With ThinkComposer you can apply the power of comprehensive visual documents to get the job done and work better. Your flowcharts, concept maps, models and other kind of diagrams can be much more than just embedded images in text-docs or presentations, they can represent the insights and knowledge of your very specialized domain or environment.
↓ 08 – UMLet Windows
UMLet is a free, open-source UML tool with a simple user interface: draw UML diagrams fast, build sequence and activity diagrams from plain text, export diagrams to eps, pdf, jpg, svg, and clipboard, share diagrams using Eclipse, and create new, custom UML elements. UMLet runs stand-alone or as Eclipse plug-in on Windows, OS X and Linux. All the mods 3 mod list.
UMLet is a UML tool aimed at providing a fast way of creating UML diagrams. UML elements are modified using text input instead of pop-up dialogs. Elements can be modified and used as templates; this way, users can easily tailor UMLet to their modeling needs. UMLet supports a variety of UML diagram types: class diagrams, use case diagrams, sequence diagrams, state diagrams, deployment diagrams, activity diagrams.
↓ 09 – Umbrello Windows macOS Linux
Umbrello UML Modeller is a Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagram program based on KDE Technology. UML allows you to create diagrams of software and other systems in a standard format to document or design the structure of your programs.
↓ 10 – ClickCharts Home Windows macOS
A free version of ClickCharts Diagram & Flowchart Software is available for non-commercial use. If you will be using ClickCharts at home you can download the free version. Flowcharts provide a unique way of organizing and displaying data so that even highly detailed and complex processes are easier to understand. This makes our flow chart software an ideal method to visualize your data, troubleshoot and optimize processes, and share information.
- Visualize complex processes and organizations
- Create value stream and data flow diagrams
- Identify bottlenecks and process optimization opportunities
↓ 11 – Dia Windows macOS Linux
Dia is an application for creating technical diagrams. Its interface and features are loosely patterned afterthe Windows program Visio. Features of Dia include multiple-page printing, export to many formats(EPS, SVG, CGM and PNG), and the ability to use custom shapes created by the user as simple XMLdescriptions. Dia is useful for drawing UML diagrams, network maps, and flowcharts.
↓ 12 – Calligra Flow Windows macOS Linux
Calligra Flow is an easy to use diagramming and flowcharting application with tight integration to the other Calligra applications. It enables you to create network diagrams, organisation charts, flowcharts and more.