SmartDraw Reviews in April 2025: User Ratings, Pros & Cons

Dark pricing patterns

Okay tool, but dark pricing patterns on the "buy" page which makes me not trust the company.Right now, the pricing says $9.95 per month, billed annually. That's not $9.95 per month, $119.40. Pricing like that usually implies the ability to switch to monthly pricing, at a more expensive rate - instead, they're using an unethical pattern for pricing.The tool is fine, but the pricing model makes it an unacceptable business to work with. There are much much better tools available that offer ...

Clumsy to use and would not load my saved files

After creating an account and spending a couple of hours getting used to the program and drawing a floor plan, I named and saved a couple of documents only to find the files would not load when I logged in again. It seems other people have had this problem.Regarding using this software, anyone familiar with using Autocad or similar will find it clumsy and awkward to use.

Tried their free version to see if I…

Tried their free version to see if I wanted to purchase this. After several hours of working with smart draw, I will pass. Started off ok but when I wanted to break up walls, add etc. I did not like all the effort it took. To me it was so sketchy when trying to lay out a basic floor plan. Just connecting walls, adding walls, or corners was totally annoying when attempting to align with other walls. I found it very aggravating to deal with. I don't have the time to mess with a program that ...

just a waste of time

just a waste of time, takes more time to correct than it does to create.

Horrible program

Horrible program. Don't pay for this program nothing different then the free version. Waste of time and money. If I could give a negative number I would.

Annoying and difficult with useless trial

At first try, it seems like it will be useful and easy, with numerous initial layouts and tools. But, that's when the troubles begin. First off, it wouldn't create a new document. I opened a new page and suddenly it created a document when I clicked on the template. That was just the start of the bugs and totally bizarre behaviors. Every operation was much more difficult than it needed to be. Many times I couldn't find a way to do simple operations. When I finally had something that was ...

3+hrs wasted on a family tree that…

3+hrs wasted on a family tree that wouldn't load the next day. So annoyed. Beware. Glad I didn't purchase the software before testing it out.

Avoid at all cost.

2013 Smartdraw version. Of all the software packages I've used over the decades, this is the worst. Many bugs and deficiencies. I greatly regret having chosen this for software documenation as I now have to convert all my drawings to another drawing package.As for technical support....forget it.

Pro User Review!

I have been using Smart draw for the last 9 years and have had a lot of mileage out of it. I've used this program for housing plans/design creation, infographics/web, logo's. SD does a great to excellent job! For house plans it is far-far easier than learning/using CAD. I can make changes to a house plan on the phone to the client at the time. I can save the plan to a rough CAD plan that a drafts person can trace over and or get exact dimenetions. What I love - I can create ...

Okay(ish) but expensive

SmartDraw is a decent enough piece of software but we've found it to be both expensive and in many ways quite inflexible for our needs. By inflexible I'd say it is in no way as intuitive as, say, a package like Visio, and because of that we won't be renewing our subscription. If you need to create complex diagrams and have the time to really learn the nuts and bolts of SmartDraw I'd definitely recommend it, but our CAD people have found that through a combination of Visio and SolidWorks ...