Visio Reviews

I'm into designing, so I'm using Visio for creating diagrams. Mostly it's for network, architecture, or data flow diagrams, depending on what the customers need.

What I like best about Visio is that it's flexible.

Sometimes, if I need to draw quickly, I use Microsoft PowerPoint, but if I need icons, which Visio has, I use Visio.

I also like that the solution gives me a much more powerful range of options.

The improvement I want to see in Visio is being able to edit it more quickly, particularly when pulling it out of another software and then editing it on that non-Visio software. Currently, the process affects the overall performance because it's not as quick as I want it to be.

If I were to add a new feature in Visio, and if I went wild, it's the feature of creating new diagrams from Visio, even if I'm on another document. If Visio is running in the background while I have another document open, it would be interesting to be able to draw diagrams on that document.

I've been using Visio for a few years now.

I didn't contact the Visio technical support team, and from what I know, the IT team didn't have to contact support either. Once, there was a bug, and the IT team couldn't do the installation until the next day, but even then, there was no need to contact the Visio support team. As a product, it's intuitive.

Setting up Visio is easy because you just need to check the block, click, and then it'll be set up, but that's because my company uses Microsoft 365. Setup-wise, I'm rating it as eight out of ten.

I'm not involved in the licensing of Visio for my company. However, for Visio licenses for my customers, I am.

Around fifty people use Visio within my company.

People in the company use Visio whenever necessary, but I use it more frequently. I talk to customers a lot, and I'm part of the sales process, which means I need to create diagrams, so I use Visio a few times a week. My usage is usually greater than other developers in my company.

I don't have any particular advice for people who want to use the solution, but Visio is a user-friendly product and easy to use.

My rating for Visio is eight out of ten because it's a good product.

My company is a Microsoft user.

The company uses Visio for a maintenance project occasionally. I use Visio for infrastructure architecture and create data models on it.

The most valuable feature of Visio is diagram creation. If you have a presentation, you can create your data model using Visio. The tool has Microsoft components you can find in Microsoft Power BI, particularly the drag-and-drop functionality and link creation between the two components.

An area for improvement in Visio is pricing. It's a costly tool for my company because it only uses Visio occasionally.

I've only used Visio four or five times in the ten years it's been in my company.

Stability-wise, Visio is an eight out of ten.

I didn't see the option to scale Visio because it's one user at a time and installed on your local machine, so I'm not sure about its scalability.

The initial setup for Visio is easy because it's a Microsoft product.

Visio is a pricey tool. It's a five out of ten, cost-wise. It would be great if it had a pay-per-use licensing model because my company uses it sparingly. If Visio had a two-day use license, that would be helpful.

My company uses Visio, but not very frequently.

My rating for Visio is eight out of ten.

My primary use case of this solution is for process mapping and a little for organizational charts. We are customers of Visio.

The solution has a fairly intuitive interface. When it comes to process mapping, the best thing about it is that it's already configured for swim lanes and for drag and drop and easy manipulation of the objects and connection lines. It makes it a very easy-to-use solution. In comparison, if you're using PowerPoint, you have to manually size things and then adjust the font and it's very tedious trying to get everything connected. In contrast, Visio is very fluid, very interactive, and designed with features that reduce the manual work for basic flowcharts.

As a user, it would be helpful if Visio was in a native format recognized by Microsoft Word products, but that's not the case.

We have been using this product for 20 years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. We're a global company although I'm not sure how many in the company use this product on a regular basis. 

The initial setup is straightforward and the solution is intuitive enough that you can begin using it immediately. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

I'm using only this tool for our full architecture block diagram development. We're using it for our action projects, what are we are running.

It's a part of our process where architecture and detailed document development are needed. That's it. From the architecture and flow diagram preparation perspective, when it comes to detailing the documentation before implementing other components can be done in Visio.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is good. We can reuse it as a model. It can be modified.

The tool is user-friendly. 

We are able to bring out what we want in terms of our architectural or detailed block diagrams.

The installation is easy.

I'm now used to the user interface. I like it. 

I can't speak to any missing features. It's been fine so far.

I've used the solution for a while. 

The product is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance is good.

We have found the solution to be scalable. If a company needs to expand it, it can do so.

Most people in our organization use the solution. It is meant for all engineers and then architects. Managers also use it when it comes to representing some project flow processes from the point of view of management.

We haven't dealt with technical support. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are.

The initial implementation is very easy. However, I cannot recall how long it took to actually deploy it.

Our IT team handled the implementation in-house. We did not need outside assistance from integrators or consultants. 

It's just a supporting tool. I can't speak to any direct ROI.

While I know that we do have to pay a licensing fee, I can't speak to the exact details. I don't handle that aspect. I'm not sure if there are extra costs on top of the license itself.

We're a customer and an end-user.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

I'd recommend the solution. It's always a useful tool. Instead of using other drawing tools, I'd say that this one is likely the best option.  

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

I use Visio for pretty much all of my landscape diagrams and for anything for management reporting, particularly on the technical side.

Visio has been something that I've been using for many, many years. It is ideal for putting out flowcharts and swim charts. It's really good. It has all the various options to use, particularly depending on what kind of audience you have. It provides you different kinds of options to insert the pictures and explain things. It really suited my requirements and I love it.

I have been able to get most of my things done using what's already been provided. It comes with a lot of functionality.

Another good thing I like about it is that it is already in the cloud. It's well integrated and I don't have any additional requirements at this point.

One thing that I always felt was missing was the ability to integrate with other Microsoft products, particularly with things like SharePoint or other Excel Office tools. It may be available, but it is not as good as it could be. There are some other tools that are very well integrated, but maybe they bought the product from a different company but it looks like the integration is not as seamless as other products that I work with.

I have been using Visio for many years.

I really have not encountered any issues. It is very simple to use. I never had formal training or anything of that kind. I just started using it and I learned it as I was using it.

In terms of scalability, Visio is single user, right? There's no challenge in terms of scalability.

It's open for everybody. It's a part of a package that we negotiated as a part of our licensing agreement with Microsoft. It's available to more or less all the users.

We have Microsoft support but I have never had a need to reach them. I think they're doing a pretty good job. There is a quarterly business review that we do for any issues that we have. That's not for Visio as such, but it is for all the enterprise products that we have from Microsoft.

I have never used anything else. I've always been using Visio.

We have multiple options available in the organization and Visio is one of them that I use. Of course, I use a lot of PowerPoint too, but Visio is among my favorite ones.

The initial setup is very simple.

I don't know pricing in particular for Visio, but since it is a deal that is negotiated, I'm assuming it's good. It's a part of the package that we have from Microsoft for all the tools that we procured from them.

My advice to anyone would be to try it out. Not many people are very familiar with it. A lot of people probably use PowerPoint. All the people who use PowerPoint should try it out, particularly if you are using a lot of detailed pictures. It's good for the techies, primarily for explaining things to the management. I think people who are into the techno-functional and mid-management level, who also have a technical background and are moving up to the management roles, it's a great tool for those people. It is pretty flexible. It provides a lot of options and it is very user friendly and it definitely provides a lot of value.

Particularly for enterprise architects and for people who are looking at drawings or putting together landscape diagrams and trying to document things at a high level, it is very good. Not necessarily at a very granular level, but at a high level, it's a great tool.

On a scale of one to ten, for me Visio is a 10. I don't think I've ever encountered a situation where I couldn't do something with it.

My primary use case is for designing the architecture diagram and the network diagram. 

The most valuable feature is how easy it is to use. 

Visio could be improved by adding more features. If you look at draw.io, they have more features. Also, if you want to design something for the cloud, Microsoft Azure still isn't enabled, so you need to install the plugin. This prototype is easily available, though. 

I have been using this solution for almost ten years. 

The stability is quite good. There is not much maintenance really required. If it's on your desktop and something goes wrong, it is usually available to repair again. You don't need anyone else to maintain it. 

I previously used the Sparx System Enterprise Architect, but my experience with it was limited. It was discontinued because they stopped the licensing. 

The installation was straightforward. It takes about five to ten minutes and you can do it yourself. 

I implemented myself. 

I pay for the license and it is very expensive. If you're only going to use this tool from time to time, you can save money by just using the available online tools. But if you plan on using it heavily, then it's worth it to invest. 

I would rate this product an eight out of ten. I recommend this product to others because it's a useful tool for designers and architects. 

I use Visio for visual rendering of technical concepts. I use the stencils that depict different workflows, data flows, or architectural structures from an IT perspective that I could render in other documents like PowerPoint or Word documents.

Since we work in IT, we deal with very technical abstract concepts. So having the ability to visually depict a concept that we're trying to get across is helpful. When we write documentation, we have to write it for the broadest audience possible. If you can reduce the number of words, either in technical documentation manuals or others, and do it visually, that seems to register with the targeted audience.

The thing I like most about Visio is the stencils. As the product has matured over time, it comes with more stencils and objects that you can just pick out of the menu and go with. 

It thinks that it knows what you want to do, but it doesn't. It has a way of behaving that can be very frustrating from time to time. Either it moves things about because it thinks its placement should be at a certain place, or it's keeping track of things that you don't necessarily see, so it moves something elsewhere. So when the software requires more keystrokes than one would think to either capture or register a placement, or a drag and drop function that you think should be easily executed, it sometimes doesn't always work that way. Regardless of the skill, the user experience can sometimes be interesting. The predictive behaviors of it at times can be a little bit of a drag.

I've been using Microsoft Visio for twenty plus years.

More often than not, stability is not an issue, it's a fairly stable product. I've noticed that when I have multiple products open, like PowerPoint, Excel, Microsoft, and a couple of others, sometimes it begins to act flaky and then I have to start cutting down services or closing things. In general the Office suite, sometimes it can let you know that it's going to start acting funky, or the behavior begins to be flaky. You have to just know by experience that's your cue to cut down services, close windows, close applications, because the robustness of the applications are not allowing you to be as multitasking as you want to be.

Scalability is okay. It's like everything else, most people they use at most, 30% of the product's capabilities, so there's a lot of stuff in Visio that doesn't necessarily get used. You don't know that when you do the typical installation, that a good part of the product capabilities are never going to get used. The default configuration is to load everything, as opposed to custom, and it's just easier just to let it deploy everything. As a result of that, there's a lot of functionality that gets pulled in, and memory and CPU that may be consumed that the user would never benefit from. That's just the nature of the beast.

Setup is mostly straightforward, but there are occasions where the installation process can be prone to some issues that may not always be apparent until after you deploy it. Sometimes the installation experience requires expertise. Sometimes it's not always clear if you're going to have compatibility issues with the 32-bit version or the 64-bit version, there's been those type of subtleties in the past.

Since I've worked in different shops, sometimes I have installed it from my own product license that I purchased. So I've deployed it from a physical media and I've deployed it from an on-site provider because I purchased the key and there was no physical media. Then there are other times where the company that I worked for, their end user computing team, or their desktop support team, because they have to keep track of the licenses, they own the deployment and the push down to the user and make it part of their image. Because there's a cost to deploying that product in some variation of the product packaging, they tried to keep control of that. 

Just be mindful that the software, while it's helpful, it can behave in ways that can be a little frustrating. A lot of companies say go and find a Visio-like product that can do 70% of what Visio does, for free. There have been companies that I've worked for that said we will not pay the license fee for Visio, go and get a similar product that you can download from the web that can do 70% of what you need it to do. 

I would rate Visio an eight out of ten. It's a product that's been known. Many people use it. It's got an established install base. It's not flawless by any means, but since it does allow some intimacy with the Microsoft products, that's probably its greatest thing, and in a business environment, that's important. Because of its cost structure, a lot of organizations are trying to figure out if there are alternatives out there, which there are. Those other products can do much of the heavy lifting that Visio does at a cost point that, in some cases, is very attractive.

The solution is primarily used for diagramming. I use it for a couple of different things, however, it's mostly for diagramming and documenting data center infrastructure including racks, wide area networks, logical designs, physical designs, and conceptual models.

The ability to clearly demonstrate and create labels has helped the organization immensely. To be able to create and to provide detailed configuration guidance on what ports to plug wires into, et cetera, is useful.

We use it to discuss design, network, and configuration options, as well as provide detailed guidance to the engineers on how to connect and how to configure our data centers.

The product itself is useful due to the fact that it's widely accepted. I can go out on the internet and I can pull down stencils in VisioCafe. I can easily get pre-drawn stencils for whatever I need and that makes life a lot easier.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The solution is stable. 

There are too many features. One of the things I find most annoying about Visio is the automatic connections. They're just like everything Microsoft does. They overdo it. There are too many features - especially when I have people who are not familiar with the tool. 

Users will start creating text boxes for objects that already have a text feature. For example, if you've got a computer and you take a picture of a computer or a stencil of a rack-mounted server, people wind up putting text boxes next to it instead of double-clicking on the box and adding the title there. It's mostly user error, however, it's overwhelming for new users. They don't realize what can be done.

I've been using Visio since before Microsoft bought it. It's been anywhere from 15 to 30 years. I've definitely used it for more than a decade. It's been a while. 

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable for the most part.

I use the desktop version of the product and cannot speak to how scalable the product is. It's only limited by the resources of the laptop itself. 

In our company, we have 10,000 users on the product. It's used extensively. All departments use it.

I can't say if the organization plans to increase usage or not. 

I never need to call technical support. I cannot speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

Our organization has used the solution for decades. We haven't used anything else. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. That said, I've also been doing this for three decades and therefore have had a lot of experience handling the process.

It's installed pretty cleanly. It's a Microsoft install and there's not really a whole lot of issues. If I don't have a stencil for what I'm drawing, I can go on VisioCafe and a couple of other websites to get them. You can get stencils for network devices, switches, routers, hubs, servers, and all sorts of fun stuff.

I cannot speak to the exact pricing. It's not an aspect of the solution I handle. 

We're a customer and an end-user.

Visio is one of the only approved products where I work, and it's one of the best.

I don't know if there's a newer version out, however, the only one I'm allowed, the only one the government provides me with is, is the 2013 version.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. The only real problem is that there are too many features and it's somewhat overdesigned.