↵

Ask DN: Successor to LayerVault?

over 8 years ago from Gabriele Cirulli, Creator of 2048; Freelance Designer & Developer.

  • Dan V PetersonDan V Peterson, over 8 years ago (edited over 8 years ago )

    If you have a very small team Pixelapse looks pretty good. Unfortunately they don't differentiate between designers and observers like LayerVault does so it gets expensive really quick if you want to be able to get feedback from more people. They've been acquired by Dropbox but say they'll have a migration path when the new stuff is done on Dropbox.

    Invisionapp.com is reasonably priced and has all the features you want I think. The thing I really dislike about them is they have a very rigid file/folder structure that is limiting. Also each project has to have a specific type (desktop/web, iPhone landscape, iPhone portrait, iPad, Android... ) so you aren't supposed to mix even iPhone and iPad mockups in the same project. Subfolders aren't allowed anyway so it wouldn't work well even if you didn't have to choose from those options. Very frustrating but outside of that it seems to work well and has some nice features.

    2 points
    • Gabriele CirulliGabriele Cirulli, over 8 years ago

      Thanks, could you tell me something more about the pricing structure of Pixelapse? I couldn't find a number on their site. We have around 7 people directly involved in the design process (mostly as observers).

      We tried Invision a few months ago but it seemed a bit too rigid and opinionated for our liking, and the way commenting on mocks worked was just atrocious. Maybe they've changed since then, though.

      0 points
      • Graham Odds, over 8 years ago

        Pixelapse is $15 per designer per month. That's what I've switched my team to trialling for now. So far it all seems pretty good really. The desktop syncing client seems a lot faster, more reliable and stable than LayerVault's. There are some differences but no deal breakers we've found yet.

        1 point
        • Daniel FoscoDaniel Fosco, over 8 years ago

          Pixelapse was acquired by Dropbox early this year, and will be discontinued in 2016 — though they say some features will be implemented in Dropbox.

          I wonder if LayerVault's shutdown changed their plans in some way.

          1 point
          • Graham Odds, over 8 years ago

            I doubt it to be honest. My interest in LayerVault was always the syncing and versioning first and foremost. The commenting, etc was a nice extra, but made the tool too broad in my opinion.

            Version control and code review are generally related but distinct tools for coders. I think that separation of concerns makes for better, more focused tools.

            The Dropbox acquisition of Pixelapse suggests their long-term strengths will be on the version control side of things, which is what I'm after.

            1 point
          • Daniel GoldenDaniel Golden, over 8 years ago

            How do you know it's going to be discontinued in 2016.

            0 points
            • Daniel FoscoDaniel Fosco, over 8 years ago

              That's what I gathered from this paragraph in their announcement from January:

              Pixelapse as a standalone product will continue to operate and be supported for the next year as we work towards this goal, at which point we’ll offer a migration plan for your work.

              0 points
        • Mike Gintz, over 8 years ago

          This pricing structure sucks, and is a deal-breaker for our use. Seems like it might work for an internal-only product design team, but at an agency where we need clients to have project-level access to leave comments, we can't afford to pay an extra 15 bucks per month per user every time a client wants to add a new person to their team! Oof. Thought this was the one!

          0 points