SmartDraw Reviews 190

Yet another greedy corporate company that doesn't care about the little guy, only their own income. decent product, but not great, wish i'd just drawn things out by hand instead of wasting my money and time using software that unless you keep paying, you don't own the works that you've created. save your time and money and use a pencil and paper.

Tried SmartDraw for the first time and instantly regretted it. Spent 3 hours designing, sacrificed my sleep, deadline is near… then boom. “Connection to servers lost”. One project gone, one of the most frustrating crashes I’ve ever faced. Never trusting this tool again.

Scammers, don't waste your time.

What a waste of time. Promotes itself as free but then when you try to print or save your work you are forced to buy the product or lose everything. Total ripoff.

Its really good i make

Beyond useless! When you finally try to export your work after finally being finished working with their useless software you find out that you need to buy their services to download your work! Why don't tell me beforehand!? Absolute scam.

Another trashy tool. Looks all good when starting, then, after you are done creating your map of some kind, you need to pay to download or advance. This is a commonly used method websites use to get people to buy their VERY mediocre product. But guess what, nobody is buying this. I'd very much consider it if you guys said beforehand: "Hey! We charge for you to use our tool and product". I'd respect it and likely use it. This "tactic" is overused and expired. Change your ways.

It's way too buggy and the paywall system is ridiculous. I used it in the manner they offered and then it glitched out when I was almost done. Wasted so much of my time. Avoid this product at all costs

You sign up and start using it for free. Then suddenly the paywall comes in and you can not access your plans without paying a subscription.

Worst business plan ever. The free trial is a joke. There are virtually no meaningful tutorials available, and after creating your project you are not able to print or export it without buying a year's subscription, paid up front. If they'd given a 30 day option I *might* have considered buying it for 30 days.

I have used the free version and provided my e-mail address. Day after I was scammed and this is the only website I've given this address to. DO NOT PROVIDE YOUR DETAILS!!!

Use another platform, this is a scam. Like other comments. I spent hours making a model for my PhD which was advertised as free. It is now hidden behind a paywall. It won't even let me stay signed in to look at the model because I haven't paid. The most predatory online behavior I've seen.

Spent hours working on a diagram only for it to be hidden behind a £140 pay wall

Disgusting

Holy Crap is all I have to say. What did this company do to their product!? I have a 2009 version of SmartDraw VP that is extremely versatile and powerful. They are forcing me to use the online version and pay for a subscription by not allowing me to save my work. I have spent hours completing a drawing then found out I can't save it (luckily I was able to print it), presumable because the software is "at the end of it's life". It of course works, just the company wants cloud subscription dollars. I would pay $$$ for the desktop version and for add-ons such as libraries, auto 3D rendering and animation. I can say that a company that has a superior product, good management can monetize other facets of the product - without sacrificing ease of use and added complexity. A refresh from time to time of the desktop is all was needed for me to pay for an upgrade of this product. Even the cloud trial version sucks. I tried to move some of the drawing to the cloud 7-day trial version only to find out I need to pay to print. OMG.... Update - testing Google Drawings.

Their billing is a scam. Program seemed to work. I feel bad for the developers. Obviousely the managment is does not care about product. DONT Use IT!

We have enrolled for their free trial for experience the product. We created some workflows but we realised that it is not fit for purpose. UX and UI are behind of the industry (personal opinion). Hence, we did not pay for the subscription. When we want to get a screenshot of what we have created so far, they said we need to get a subscription. Based on the GDPR they need to provide user generated data in their platform, however they are breaching the data protection law for generating revenue. Furthermore, when we want to get monthly subscription (apparently they dont provide), they wanted us to pay yearly fee to access to a single ill-designed workflow. We did not even want to get the workflow itself, just the data we have in the platform (in written). Disappointing experience

This company charged me for a renewal without notifying me that it was coming up. (They claimed they sent an email 30 days before, but I never saw it and it wasn't in my spam or junk mail folders.) I did get a refund from them, so that part at least went well.

However, after your license expires, they won't allow you to login and use your existing work. So in effect they are holding your prior work hostage until you pay them to renew.

I'm an Interior Designer and I have used SmartDraw for many years to draw layouts. It seems that it has gone worse over the years as it keeps crashing way too often and it doesn't even keep your previous versions of work. I just lost about 3 hours of work when it crashed AGAIN, even though I had saved all the time. It says I have a "damaged" file, but I can't open it. In my experience there's very little support for users.