Grafio 4 - Diagram Maker 4+

I watched all the videos about Grafio beforehand, so I was really excited to try it, but after buying it, I was disappointed in how clunky it was. I thought I could just draw some boxes and arrows really quickly like in the videos, but that’s not the case. You have to be very precise with what you draw. I kept ending up with rotated rectangles or parallelograms, so then I would need to erase them and start again. I thought I could use the shape library instead to quickly drop some boxes in, but you have to hold your finger on the icon before dragging a shape into the diagram. It’s just too slow and clunky.

Even something that should be straightforward like the grid functionality doesn’t really work right. It seems to only work when moving objects and only for the center of shapes. So it’s not possible to get boxes to be the same size or to get their edges aligned using the grid.

The text stuff also sometimes get confused, so you can be editing the text for one shape while another shape is selected. The app is just not managing text focus correctly.

Also, the app gets really sluggish if you try to create a gigantic diagram and won’t export it correctly.

Even though I’ve purchased the app, I don’t think I’ll actually use it for anything. I’ll have to purchase a different app for my diagramming needs. Perhaps I’ll try it again when version 5 comes out.

Thank you for the detailed review! We always listen to users and we take into account every single report. If you have a minute to spare, we'd love to get in touch by email to discuss some of your findings in more detail: feedback@tentouch.com

It used to be the best app in my iPad and iPhone. I used it to create hundreds of drawings in the most diverse topics.
However, in the past few years it became almost unusable: clunky, buggy, slow, not that user friendly, and the list continues.
I’m very disappointed because I used to love it so much.

We're sorry to hear this. Nevertheless we are here to listen and assist. Just let us know what is bothering you and we will do our best to help: feedback@tentouch.com

Really, what the title says. The potential is there, but there is no startling or clever interface or interaction model here: it’s just a very basic implementation of a flowchart app.

But that said, it feels rough, clunky, and doesn’t end up producing better than adequate results.

Really, the only thing that makes this what it is, and not the world’s worst vector drawing app, is the connector lines. Without that feature, you’d never use any app like this. Affinity Designer would be far better.

So you’d expect that to shine. But no – connector lines are frustratingly hard to reliably connect. Once connected, the controls to change the type of connector are OK, but often don’t work as expected. Repositioning of lines is either difficult, as when connecting between two objects, or impossible, as when moving a line connected to one box to a different box.

Connection points start off on boxes in designated locations, but there’s no visible targeting, partly because control handles are unnecessarily large. Suggestion: when I start drawing a connector line, SHOW me that it’s connected, by rubber banding it from the start point. Labels added to the lines can’t – as far as I can tell – be moved around along the lines. And if there is a way to rotate to be either perpendicular or inline, I haven’t found it.

That raises the next issue: controls have been built without much consistency, and without much reference to standard iPad UI approaches. A proper Inspector panel would do a better job than most of them, and the ones in the app aren’t fun to use.

What I got is what I expect from a free software package. A very basic free package. The author is smart to go after a sector without much competition, compared to other common classes of software. But that seems to have left him free to deliver a tool that just doesn’t match the price (which I regret paying now). $2 would not have bothered me, maybe up to $5. But as it is, this is an amateur app with a pro price.

Where the author isn’t so smart is establishing a market price for a competitor to come in below, with a better product. Grafio is not a product I expect to be around in 2 years, to be blunt.

Thank you for sharing your view! Looks like you're looking for a far more advanced product. Feel free to request a refund and get a subscription for any of the advanced vector packages out there. We feel Grafio's current price is fair and if there was a better and cheaper product on the App Store we would have heard of it for the past 10 years. And as always, we would be happy to hear your particular suggestions on how to improve Grafio to meet your expectations on feedback@tentouch.com.