Draw And Share Diagrams Online

Anyone that needs to draw descriptive diagrams such as network designs, company structures, flowcharts, floor plans, etc. usually has to use Microsoft Visio. It's the industry standard application for the task but it is expensive and only runs under Windows so Macintosh and Linux users have to go down other avenues and, while there are solutions out there for those platforms, they are pretty proprietary. For example Kivio on Linux or ConceptDraw on Mac OS X. However, there is another option and it's free!

Gliffy.com is an online diagramming tool that works entirely in your web browser so there's nothing to install. It comes with symbol libraries with basic shapes, flowchart symbols, network components, UML symbols, user interface objects and floorplan shapes and all are customizable with placement, rotation, size and colour, etc. On top of that you can place text objects to annotate the drawing and you have control over font, colour, size, etc. of any text object on the drawing.


Where it scores highly is its ability to allow you to publish your design online or you can even share a design and collaborate with others on it. Another plus point is the fact that you can rollback through saved revisions of your design if required.

At the moment it's free and that should continue, although it may be supported by ads in future, but they do plan to offer a premium version for business users.