 has once again proven its success in the world of design tooling. In the recent 

, with 4,260 respondents mostly from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, ProtoPie was ranked as the top choice for product & UI/UX designers in the 

One of the most impressive results from the survey was ProtoPie's high satisfaction score of 4.29. This placed ProtoPie among the top tools in terms of user satisfaction, further cementing its position as a go-to choice for product designers.

But that's not all: ProtoPie was also ranked number 3 in the basic prototyping space, showing the versatility and power of the tool.

"We are absolutely thrilled to see ProtoPie continue to be recognized as a leader in the prototyping tool space," said 

, CEO & co-founder of ProtoPie. "Our team has worked tirelessly to provide the best possible experience for our users, and it's incredibly gratifying to see that effort reflected in the survey results. As a 

pioneer paving the way for designers into high-fidelity prototyping

, we're especially proud of our high satisfaction score. These results inspire us to continue pushing the boundaries of what's possible with high-fidelity prototyping, and to deliver even more value to designers in the future."

But the good news doesn't stop there: ProtoPie was also ranked number 2, behind Figma, among tools that people are most excited to try in 2023. This indicates a strong and growing interest in ProtoPie as a must-have tool for designers. 

Overall, the survey results affirm ProtoPie's position as a leading player in the world of prototyping tools. We are grateful to our users for choosing ProtoPie and supporting us in our mission to empower designers to create any high-fidelity prototype for any digital product. Stay tuned—there’s more to come in 2023.

Curious about what designers in the 2022 Design Tools Survey have been raving about? 

 with ProtoPie for free. Create your first high-fidelity prototype, and 

ProtoPie earns top rankings in advanced prototyping and user satisfaction in 2022 Design Tools Survey.

ProtoPie Continues to Lead in Advanced Prototyping

We have great news for those of you who are learning ProtoPie. 

Together with our tutorials and tips & tricks, ProtoPie School elevates your learning journey thanks to free, easy-to-follow courses for all levels - from beginner to advanced.

We designed this learning platform to give users a more user-friendly, self-paced learning experience, from the basics to our most advanced features. Each course is divided into micro lessons with video tutorials recorded by our ProtoPie experts. All courses include e-books and a wrap-up session, to help you revise and test yourself.

ProtoPie School soft launched this month with two free courses: 

. More lessons and courses will come, so stay tuned!

Below is a preview of what each available course dives into.

1. Using Send & Receive to Make Multiple Pies Talk to Each Other

3. Arduino (1/2): Connecting with Blokdots

Video Tutorial: ProtoPie Connect + Blokdots

4. Arduino (2/2): Roll Your Own Sketch Code

Video Tutorial: ProtoPie Connect + Arduino

5. Creating A Dashboard Experience with the Logitech G29 Steering Wheel

6. Your First Bridge App - Provide Date, Time, and Current Weather Conditions to your Pie

7. Advanced Bridge App - Connect to Your Smart Home

Video Tutorial: A More Advanced Bridge App

Start your learning journey with ProtoPie School. Find great video tutorials and training resources to help you get started! 

ProtoPie School : Free ProtoPie Courses For All Levels

 is a tool your team needs in their tech stack. However, you’re full of doubt over which of our several plans to use. This article will unmuddy the water, clear up those niggling doubts, and help you choose the right plan for your team’s workflow.

 on May 30, 2022, for teams who prototype advanced digital experiences in ProtoPie.

 plan has been enhanced to offer more security features and crucially, the ability to prototype for industry-specific devices including smartwatches and custom hardware.

Both Pro and Enterprise plans enable design teams to create extremely realistic prototypes for a wide range of displays and devices.

But how different are they and which one is right for your team? Without further ado, let’s dig into their differences and specificities.

The Pro plan allows you to create and test highly realistic prototypes in a flexible, collaboration-friendly ecosystem — without the feature restrictions of the Free plan.

What makes the Pro plan particularly suited to teams prototyping innovative products is the access to 

ProtoPie Connect is an extension app that unlocks powerful features in the 

. In particular, it makes it possible to recreate digital experiences involving multiple displays, hardware, and APIs.

Although ProtoPie Connect is available to both Pro and Enterprise users, there are some important differences to consider when choosing a ProtoPie plan.

Connect for the Pro plan vs. Connect for the Enterprise plan

The Pro plan only gives access to the basic functionalities and built-in plugins of Connect Desktop — ProtoPie Connect’s desktop app.

The ability to run more than two prototypes simultaneously (in the Player app and/or on web browsers)

Run mobile and desktop prototypes offline (via localhost)

Debug messages sent and received between prototypes, hardware, and APIs

 — to integrate your prototypes with the hardware and APIs supported by these services.

Connect for the Enterprise plan gives you all of the above features. However, the Enterprise plan unlocks the ability to:

Add your custom plugins to Connect Desktop — to create interactions between ProtoPie prototypes and any custom hardware or API using 

 — to run prototypes in embedded systems and offline environments such as Linux

In short, Connect for the Enterprise plan gives you greater flexibility and customization potential when connecting ProtoPie prototypes to APIs and custom hardware and devices.

But the differences are not limited to ProtoPie Connect. The Enterprise plan comes with unique features making it the ideal solution for large organizations with strict security requirements.

Aside from enabling teams to make the most out of ProtoPie Connect, the Enterprise plan is also the ProtoPie plan with the highest level of 

Depending on your company’s security requirements, you have the choice between two tiers:

On-Premises — allowing you to store ProtoPie data in your server

Private-Cloud — securing your data in an isolated private cloud at AWS

Whereas, Pro plan subscribers’ data are always stored at ProtoPie’s AWS Cloud in Oregon (USA).

Teams on the Enterprise plan can also use single 

 to access their ProtoPie environment, killing two birds with one stone by strengthening security while achieving greater efficiency.

If security is a top priority for your organization, the Enterprise plan is a better fit.

Compared to Free plan users, Pro plan subscribers benefit from better support. For example, if you need help creating an interaction in ProtoPie Studio or debugging mistakes in a prototype, a Pro plan user needn’t solely rely on the community to help. Pro plan users can simply contact our support team through our dedicated 

The Enterprise plan goes one step further. Enterprise users are given priority support by dedicated account managers. Moreover, only companies on the Enterprise plan can request in-depth assistance replete with security assessments and legal agreements.

This premium service is extended to education and training for teams on the Enterprise plan. They can achieve success faster in ProtoPie through private workshops for all levels of expertise, given by experienced ProtoPie trainers.

Using ProtoPie across different teams within the same organization? The Enterprise plan allows organizations to create multiple ProtoPie teams in a single secure environment.

Enterprise service admins can create new teams anytime in the Admin Dashboard and designate a team owner for each. Designers can create team-specific component libraries and projects. All in all, you can grow and scale your organization while keeping your ProtoPie environment efficient and well organized.

In the end, both Pro and Enterprise plans offer a team-oriented and flexible environment for collaborating on cutting-edge digital experiences. If your team doesn’t have strict security requirements and doesn’t necessarily need personalized training or the advanced functionalities of ProtoPie Connect, then you may want to opt for the Pro plan.

But if you’re part of a security-conscious organization, if you have multi-team capabilities, or if you want the ability to add custom integrations to ProtoPie Connect, the Enterprise plan is for you.

Subscribe now and discover endless possibilities with ProtoPie.

Find out what sets these two plans apart and which is the best fit for your team.

Pro vs. Enterprise Plan : Which One Best Suits Your Needs?

We are pleased to announce that we raised $8 million in 

's Series A extension, allowing us to ramp up our operations and scale up our journey empowering companies to prototype the connected future entirely without code. Although 

 before, I still wanted to write a piece for our own ProtoPie blog.

We’re so amazed by the generosity of our partners—existing and new. Existing investors like HB Investment, DevSisters Ventures and Introps Investment contributed. New investors included Mirae Asset Venture Investment, and most notably the big hitter Korean investment firm, LB Investment. Thank you for your trust.

This funding is a big deal for us. It seems it was only yesterday that we were a small startup in Seoul, founded by former Samsung software engineer Scotty Kim and myself.

We had and still have a singular founding vision: revolutionize prototyping for digital products. We’re proud to say that ProtoPie is fulfilling that vision every day—radically changing the way companies explore & validate ideas and put these interaction ideas into implementation.

A wide variety of the world’s most innovative global companies already use ProtoPie as their main high-fidelity prototyping tool for all their digital experiences. Think of companies like Microsoft and Samsung all the way to BMW and Roblox.

Their reason is simple. ProtoPie is the only rapid high-fidelity prototyping tool that enables them to explore, experiment and validate ideas easily, quickly, and efficiently. Best of all, ProtoPie enables them to create realistic prototypes replete with rich designs and complex interactions.

And this demand for high-fidelity prototyping tools covering the entire spectrum of digital products is only getting bigger.

Our world is increasingly interconnected. People don’t just interact with a single device these days—they interact with multiple interconnected devices.

Indeed, the number of connected devices per U.S. household has more than doubled in the space of a few years—

The global wearables market is a big part of that trend. Indeed, wearables are 

projected to reach 776.23 million units by 2026

, with a compound annual growth rate of 19.48% from 2021 to 2026.

“Look at connected cars and wearables,” said Ki-Ho Park, CEO of LB Investment. “Digital, connected products play an increasingly prominent role in our everyday lives. We believe in the potential and vision that ProtoPie has in building that future.”


As consumer demand for connected devices grows, the need for 

 tools grows too. Companies making these connected digital products must test and validate increasingly complex ideas.

Until earlier this year, no company was addressing this new prototyping landscape. ProtoPie changed that. Our new COO Mark Lee said, “Now, ProtoPie provides a solution for companies prototyping digital experiences for wearables.”

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. During the pandemic, we added 

. Additionally, we released an expansion product called 

, which enables companies to prototype fully connected environments consisting of multiple prototypes, screens, devices, hardware, and data.

Now UX designers, engineers, and researchers can prototype for the entire spectrum of connected, digital products—from mobile apps, to 

, all the way to IoT and connected car experiences. The best part of it? This puts design teams at the epicenter of product development.


This $8 million in funding will allow us to ramp up our 

—from integrations and usability testing to no-code publishing features.

Needless to say, we’re incredibly excited—we can’t wait to roll out these new developments over the coming year and see what the 

The new funding will also turbocharge our global reach. Currently, 85% of ProtoPie’s growing revenue comes from outside of South Korea—35% of that comes from North America alone. Now, we can expand our growth and sales teams in North America—from our offices in Vancouver, British Colombia, to those in Austin, Texas.

Stay tuned. The future of ProtoPie is golden.

We intend to ramp up product development (integrations, usability testing, no-code publishing features) and expand in North America.

$8M for ProtoPie to Accelerate the Connected Future

 replaces the 30-day trial and Individual plan. Anyone can use ProtoPie for free forever.

 right now—can keep using this plan for its current price as long as they remain subscribed.

 with a price of at least $67 / editor / month, with more features for connected prototyping.

 grow from a prototyping tool used by individuals to a fully-fledged high-fidelity prototyping tool used by some of the world’s most renowned companies.

We’re proud of where we are now—yet there’s still a lingering question: 

We noticed that design teams with very specific, often complex high-fidelity prototyping needs are the ones that use ProtoPie to its full potential. As a result, we realized that we don’t want ProtoPie to be a prototyping tool “for the masses” in a market already overcrowded with design tools.

 Instead, it’s a high-fidelity prototyping tool that empowers teams to do what other tools cannot—to prototype advanced interactions, scenarios, and environments without the help of engineers. We want ProtoPie to be a specialized prototyping tool for design teams and their stakeholders—the sort of people who value the benefits of high-fidelity prototyping.

However, we found that our users would run into two major limits within our current plans:

 When people learn ProtoPie, they need enough time to invest in 1 or 2 prototypes to fully understand how ProtoPie can fit their workflow.

Limited access to high-fidelity features.

 Most of our users couldn’t benefit from connected prototyping and cross-device experiences because ‘ProtoPie Connect’ was exclusive to the Enterprise plan only.

The new Free and Pro plans fully address these issues, allowing everyone to experience ProtoPie to the max.

We learned that most users couldn’t experience all that ProtoPie has to offer within a 30 day period. While we don’t want ProtoPie to be a tool for the masses, we do want to give everyone enough time to do high-fidelity prototyping with ProtoPie.

The biggest change is the Free plan, which replaces the 30-day trial and Individual plan. 

With the Free plan, anyone can use ProtoPie for free forever

. Everyone should be able to experience the true value of ProtoPie at their own pace—from high-fidelity prototyping to handing off interaction specs and usability testing.

Ability to create up to 2 prototypes saved in 

If you’re on the 30-day trial on May 30, 2022, or have an expired trial, we’ll move you to the Free plan automatically.

 Users—on the Individual plan right now—can keep using the Individual plan for its current price as long as they remain subscribed

. However, it won’t be possible for new users to subscribe to this plan after May 30, 2022.

If you cancel the Individual plan after May 30, you cannot subscribe to the Individual plan again.

Interaction recordings for the Individual plan

 (previously known as interaction recipes) are now available for users on the Individual plan.

Now, Individual plan users will be able to create interaction recordings for any of your prototypes in 

We’re replacing the Team plan with the Pro plan.

 The Pro plan has a price of $67 / editor / month (billed yearly) or $79 / editor / month (billed monthly).

If you’re on the Team plan now, your team will be transitioned to the Pro plan from May 30 onward. As a courtesy, you will be billed once at the current price for the next billing period after May 30—regardless of the billing option.

With the new Pro plan, you’ll have everything you already had in the Team plan... and more.

Bringing ProtoPie Connect to the Pro plan

With the increasing demand from our users to take their high-fidelity prototyping to the next level and stretch the value of a prototype, we’re including 

ProtoPie Connect is your gateway to building your own dynamic prototyping environment for your specific use case. ProtoPie Connect’s features include (but are not limited to):

Standalone offline player on the desktop.

Hub for all connected prototypes and cross-device experiences—across desktop, mobile, and tablets. The advanced example scenarios you can prototype with the Pro plan include:

A driver app boasting one-to-many interactions with multiple passenger apps at the same time.

A streaming app on your TV that you can navigate with a companion app on your smartphone.

A voice assistant on your smartphone that can lock, unlock, and start your car.

Hub for prototypes working with external hardware and platforms. The Pro plan supports integrations for the following hardware and platforms (no code required):

Logitech G29 Driving Force Steering Wheel

What happens to my current plan on May 30, 2022?

If you are on the trial plan or if your trial expired, we’ll move you to the Free plan automatically.

If you are on the Individual plan, you can keep using the Individual plan for its current price as long as you remain subscribed. Unlike before, you will be able to access 

If you are on the Team plan, we’ll move you to the Pro plan automatically. As a courtesy, you will be billed at a discounted price (the current price) for the first billing period after May 30—regardless of the billing option.

Are discounts for students and teachers still available?

 Yes, the conditions remain the same. Individual students have the same benefits as Individual plan users. Teachers and their students using the 

I don’t want to pay anymore. Can I move to the Free plan?

 Yes, you can downgrade to the Free plan and use ProtoPie for free. But there are 

Pricing changes can sometimes be needlessly complicated and difficult—fortunately, these new plans make ProtoPie more accessible, allowing us to fully optimize our product and move our company in the right direction.

If you have any questions or input regarding the new Free and Pro plans, please 

Anyone can use ProtoPie for free forever. Learn how the new plans affect you and how you can benefit as an existing ProtoPie customer.

Introducing the New Free & Pro Plans

, released in October 2021, introduced some major changes that our users were delighted with. Beyond just productivity-boosting features, like the dashboard and tabs, we also implemented many visual changes which we believe has vastly improved how ProtoPie looks. These all stem from the new ProtoPie Design System, which was created to deliver a more robust brand and user experience. Let’s delve into the story behind these changes.

The ProtoPie ecosystem consists of several products: ProtoPie Studio for the actual prototyping, ProtoPie Player for trying out prototypes on smart devices, and ProtoPie Cloud for collaboration and sharing. Users go back and forth between these products all the time when working on their prototyping projects.

However, each of these products used to live their own lives. They had their own visual elements (such as icons and colors) and their own UX. As a result, we were providing an inconsistent experience across the ecosystem. For example, the website and ProtoPie Player would use coral as a primary color, whereas ProtoPie Studio and ProtoPie Cloud used different shades of indigo. This mismatch led to a confusing experience for our users. In order to solve this, we had to face reality and create a single design system for the entire ProtoPie ecosystem.

We brought together all of ProtoPie’s brand and product designers to consider two questions:

What core design values does ProtoPie want to promote?

What kind of design principles should ProtoPie itself adhere to?

To decide on the appropriate next steps, we realized that we needed to first create an environment where designers with different opinions could come together and find common ground.

We began by compiling all relevant keywords that came to mind. We then explored the kind of brand that we wanted ProtoPie to be—and the value that we wanted to provide to our users.

This process helped us narrow down to the three keywords shown above. In the end, we found that the common values that each keyword shared were 

. As ProtoPie is a productivity tool, the most important thing for us is creating products that make users' ideas shine, increase their productivity, and make users happier.

We began the process by going through the 

. This methodology states that you should start the design process by focusing on the smallest element possible, before expanding by trying different combinations of elements together. We therefore started by defining the smallest design elements that would serve as the foundation of our overall design efforts.

We tried to blend our product principles—directly and indirectly—into each of our elements. Below, we’ll delve into more details about the thought process behind our decisions. Let’s take a look at 4 of the elements that make up the ProtoPie Design System: colors, iconography, typography, and layout.

Our first step was to integrate two colors, coral and indigo, into one primary color. This might sound simple—but it was surprisingly complex.

If we chose to also use coral, our initial brand color, on our product, our brand would stand out more. However, coral is typically associated with warnings or even danger. Therefore, using coral as a primary color could backfire from a UI perspective.

We decided to use purple as our new primary color. It’s fairly similar to our current brand color and is perceived as being fairly neutral. We also changed our product color from blue-gray to neutral gray, reflecting our goal to make our users’ ideas shine without being distracting.

With this in mind, we also introduced two new themes: light and dark. Users can pick and choose which theme to use depending on the type of work environment they want to create, or what they feel most comfortable using.

We tried to maximize each theme’s readability by setting the same color in subtly different shades as a pair. For example, you might notice that the purple is slightly darker and more saturated in the dark theme compared to the light theme.

Digital environments have bidirectional interactions between a product and its users, so it helps to clear visualize how state changes appear. While the rules for state changes across ProtoPie’s products used to be inconsistent, we made sure to standardize and integrate them in this update.

We established new iconography to accompany our logo typeface. As you can see, this iconography is bold and geometric while also unifying the various different styles from our products. We paid close attention to creating a universal shape that can be intuitively understood by our diverse group of users working across various product domains, beyond simply mobile app design, (e.g., automotive and wearables.)

We created each icon with a clear silhouette so that they would be clearly distinguishable regardless of their size. The ProtoPie icons often need to convey complex metaphors. To intuitively communicate their meaning, we used a two-tone style that differentiates primary and supporting parts using different tones.

We consolidated icons that had different shapes but the same meaning into one. Then, we created icon shape variations to indicate different states—and to intuitively convey what each state means.

Gilroy, ProtoPie’s brand typeface, is a beautiful and high-quality font that fits our brand identity. However, it has strongand decorative characteristics. We therefore wanted to find another supporting font that would not draw unnecessary attention—but would instead help make our users’ prototypes stand out more.

Hence, we adopted Inter as our secondary typeface. Created by 

, it’s a highly readable, more standard typeface that’s carefully crafted for computer screens. We applied Inter to the entire ecosystem except for the title area, where we still wanted to prominently display our brand identity. In summary, we use a total of three fonts throughout ProtoPie. These are all based on our design system guidelines, including the one for code snippets.

Furthermore, to ensure a certain level of readability, we enforce restrictions for the maximum and minimum size of fonts used throughout.

In terms of the layout, we came up with a series of guidelines to ensure an immersive user experience. We considered the number of items in a row and the ideal size of each item to maximize user engagement.

We also established breakpoints that all products could share so that it feels like a single, continuous experience across the ProtoPie ecosystem. We applied the same responsive design to our website, to ProtoPie Cloud, and to ProtoPie Studio.

We made sure to continuously explain these guidelines and changes to all the teams involved in updating our design system, from designers to engineers. Whenever they had questions or queries, we took the time necessary to explain our thinking—and to communicate how these changes would have a positive impact on our users.

These guidelines—from the basics of our elements and the rationale behind each style, all the way to steps to further expand the design system—serve to form a consensus between our teams and solidify the design principles that we had previously established.

The introduction of ProtoPie 6.0 has provided our users with a better, more consistent, and more recognizable experience across the entire ProtoPie ecosystem. We strive to ensure that the design values that we want to convey in our products resonate with ProtoPie users.

But establishing consistency across the ecosystem is just the beginning. Establishing the ProtoPie Design System eliminates unnecessary decisions and allows us to focus on more important matters with a higher level of agility. In other words, these changes have given us the momentum to fuel further improvements going forward. Stay tuned for more features and improvements that will make ProtoPie an even more effective, and enjoyable, prototyping tool for your team.

Introducing the new ProtoPie Design System—a shared language and visual consistency throughout the ProtoPie ecosystem.

The New ProtoPie Design System

After our brand redesign, we've been mainly focusing on increasing brand awareness. We've promoted our brand across various channels - from our website, to social media, ads, and educational programs - so that customers can see, experience, feel and ultimately purchase our product. However, we've encountered some issues when executing and managing our brand design as the company has grown. Generally, these issues have centered around the following areas:

Do our product and branded assets contain our brand philosophy? 

Is our brand delivered as a consistent image to users? 

Are our brand and product on the same page? 

Above all else, we needed a consistent brand tone. That's why our brand and product teams came together in a bid to integrate our design from different channels. Over the past few weeks, they've gone through a series of focused, bitesized workshops to define our brand in granular detail. The participants had two main goals:

Through several workshops, we defined our brand as below:

Step 1. Brand Personality Keyword (Tone of Voice)

We've chosen 3 keywords to represent our tone of voice and brand personality, based off our vision and mission 

. You'll notice that our brand positioning is quite different from many other SaaS companies. However, after considering the value that we want ProtoPie to deliver to its users, we're confident that these keywords are just right. But it's important to clarify that these keywords relate to our brand as a whole rather than our product specifically, which can be described as having 

However, this clarity into our brand positioning did raise another concern: How can we have an overarching design consensus when we have different values for our brand and our product? What design principles do we need in order to cover both?

These questions lead to us running the Design Principle workshops. Through this workshop, Brand and Product designers came to the conclusion that we need a larger theme or keyword that can cover both the brand and the product. As a result, 

 became the basic keywords to represent our design principle, although they are not used officially.

Every visual representation of ProtoPie must portray a clear message and leave no doubt in viewers' minds. They should instantly make sense.

Fine-tuned, micro-interactions breathe life into our brand

ProtoPie animates still objects and brings them to life. Adding a subtle but powerful

motion is the best way to demonstrate this attribute throughout our design.

Our friendly attitude and unique visual tweaks make us recognizable and attractive. We must be friendly, positive, and always accessible to users (or potential users.) We want to have an identifiable look by adding unique details that are customized in the ProtoPie way.

News

ProtoPie Continues to Lead in Advanced Prototyping

Latest posts

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Pro vs. Enterprise Plan : Which One Best Suits Your Needs?

$8M for ProtoPie to Accelerate the Connected Future

Introducing the New Free & Pro Plans

The New ProtoPie Design System

The Future of the ProtoPie Brand

ProtoPie & ISO Compliance : This Is What It Means

Become a ProtoPie Ambassador

ProtoPie for Education : Why Design Students & Teachers Need ProtoPie?

Not Your Prototypical Prototyping, ProtoPie's CEO Says

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When Words Fail You, Stop Using Them

Let’s Talk About More Than the Weather

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Notebooks Are Leather-bound Graveyards for Your Ideas

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