Inkscape is a free and open source design software focused on vector illustration. Designs done on Inkscape can be exported in different formats, and the software can be used on Windows, Mac, and Linux. We compiled Inkscape reviews from around the web and found that Inkscape has mixed ratings. We also compared the most popular pricing options for small business owners.
Inkscape Customer Reviews
Ease of Use: Fair
Customer Service: Fair
Pricing: Good
Summary of Inkscape Reviews
What Inkscape does well:
Users who gave Inkscape a positive review like that it’s free and is a good alternative to Adobe Illustrator.
What Inkscape does not do well:
Users who gave Inkscape a negative review said that the interface is a bit outdated and non-intuitive. Mac users specifically mentioned having issues getting used to working with the different shortcuts and tools.
Most Helpful Positive User Review
A positive reviewer from the site G2 Crowd said that Inkscape is not just a free alternative to Adobe Illustrator, but rather a fully functional and viable solution. He said he has used both Inkscape and Illustrator, and he noticed that Inkscape competes very well and even has some notable advantages. For example, he cited that it comes with a lot of great extensions and filters for creating complex vector items such as gears and even fonts.
Most Helpful Negative User Review
A reviewer from G2 Crowd said that he experienced occasional bugs and crashes more frequently than with other similar tools. He also mentioned that there tends to be a lot of incompatibilities when he tries to import elements or images from other software.
Other Inkscape Reviews From Users Around the Web
Here are a few other resources for finding helpful Inkscape reviews from customers. We rated the review sites on a scale from poor to excellent based on how trustworthy and useful the reviews seemed.
| *Average rating as of date article was written: Sep 6, 2017 | |||
Inkscape Pricing
Inkscape is completely free and adheres to open source standards. This means it is free of cost, free to distribute, free to use, and the source code is open for everyone to look at. It can be installed on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
There are a lot of file formats that can be imported to Inkscape such as SVG, PDF, JPEG, and PNG. However, the file formats Inkscape can export the work into is slightly more limited. Learn more about all the options here.
A large community is available for users to gain more insight about the product — whether it be usage, troubleshooting, or design techniques. Users can also opt to send an email to the support team for more in-depth assistance.
Compare Inkscape Competitors
Not sure if Inkscape is the right design software for your small business? Look through our design software reviews for more options.
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Julie Faloon
Review SourceFitSmallBusiness invited user to leave a review and offered a nominal gift card as a thank you.
It provides a free version of expensive software and it is quite free of bugs. Allows small companies to be competitive even with limited capital.
It is great. Not the company’s fault but you just have to get used to having different commands than the software you are used to using.
Nothing. It is a good program.
Review SourceFitSmallBusiness invited user to leave a review and offered a nominal gift card as a thank you.
Roberto Díez González
Verified Review
This reviewer provided a screenshot to verify they are an active user of the product.
Review SourceFitSmallBusiness invited user to leave a review and offered a nominal gift card as a thank you.
What we have here is a free and open source vector drawing tool, perfect for small companies or freelance designers. Inkscape is powerful and feature-rich, the best alternative to Illustrator, at zero cost. With an interface that will be very intuitive to Freehand or CorelDraw users, covers common daily design needs without any problem. There is a lot of documentation online and a very active community to ease the transition from other graphic design programs, but anyway it will be easy to master for any professional.
Development of much requested features like multiple pages, CMYK support or gradient meshes is being a little bit slow but it’s quite common in open source projects (and there are well-known workarounds to those features). To be fair, in recent years there has been much more movement and the community is constantly working to offer a better product.
This is an open source project so this does not apply. Nevertheless, the team and community behind it is very supportive.
Verified Review
This reviewer provided a screenshot to verify they are an active user of the product.
Review SourceFitSmallBusiness invited user to leave a review and offered a nominal gift card as a thank you.
Marco Schembri
Verified Review
This reviewer provided a screenshot to verify they are an active user of the product.
Review SourceFitSmallBusiness invited user to leave a review and offered a nominal gift card as a thank you.
They manage to create a very good and powerful open-source vector software which is actually a perfect substitute to its paid competitors. I’m now using it since years and every time I switch to some other software I always decide to go back to the “inkscape” solution to work faster and with interchangeable file formats.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to manage multiple pages and to create pages layout easily, also the software crashes suddenly sometimes
Software is on free basis so nothing to know before is needed…
Verified Review
This reviewer provided a screenshot to verify they are an active user of the product.
Review SourceFitSmallBusiness invited user to leave a review and offered a nominal gift card as a thank you.
Taylor Morgan
Verified Review
This reviewer provided a screenshot to verify they are an active user of the product.
Review SourceFitSmallBusiness invited user to leave a review and offered a nominal gift card as a thank you.
Inkscape provides an experience that is overall similar to other mainstream vector based graphic software. It is flexible and can accomplish most tasks that the paid solutions can, although it is sometimes more laborious with Inkscape. The SVG integration (and built-in editor) is great for understanding how the SVG system undergirding the software (and other vector based programs) really works.
The software occasionally crashes on every machine I’ve ever used it, but it is a minor inconvenience if you save regularly (this usually only happens on large projects requiring extensive memory usage).
Inkscape teaches good fundamentals about vector based graphics and is perfect for a student or someone wanting to understand and try them out. However, if one is eventually going to switch to a more mainstream paid solution the keyboard shortcuts, tools, and conventions of Inkscape can be a little hard to shake off.
Verified Review
This reviewer provided a screenshot to verify they are an active user of the product.
Review SourceFitSmallBusiness invited user to leave a review and offered a nominal gift card as a thank you.
Nancy Murray
Verified Review
This reviewer provided a screenshot to verify they are an active user of the product.
Review SourceFitSmallBusiness invited user to leave a review and offered a nominal gift card as a thank you.
This is a very full featured product for vector illustration development, and the fact that it’s free is even better. I do a lot of node by node editing and Inkscape makes it very easy and intuitive. I use Inkscape to develop patterns for 3D crafting projects. It provides a very easy to use tool (once you get past the learning curve) that allows me to edit node by node to create very smooth cutting files for my customers. If you’ve used other vector software it is fairly easy to learn, and I find it more intuitive than Illustrator for certain functions (such as node editing, combining shapes).
The software occasionally crashes, often it seems to be when trying to use certain fonts or special characters in fonts. Remember to save frequently and you’ll be fine.
Since this was a free download and is open source software, I had no specific expectations, but the software in general does not disappoint.
Verified Review
This reviewer provided a screenshot to verify they are an active user of the product.
Review SourceFitSmallBusiness invited user to leave a review and offered a nominal gift card as a thank you.