What Happened to InVision? And the Best InVision Alternatives in 2026

Key Points

• InVision was a digital product design and collaboration platform used for interactive prototypes, design handoff, and stakeholder feedback.
• InVision shut down its design and prototyping products at the end of 2024 after Figma had already won the market.
• Freehand, InVision’s whiteboard tool, survived: Miro acquired it in late 2023 and folded it into its own platform.
• If you’re still searching for “InVision,” you’re almost certainly looking for a replacement. Figma is the default answer; Sketch, Miro, and a few AI-native tools round out the shortlist below.

InVision was a cloud-based product design and prototyping platform built by designers for designers. It let teams turn wireframes and mockups into interactive prototypes, share them with stakeholders, and collect feedback in one place. It connected the prototyping, review, and handoff stages of the product design process.

At its peak it reached a $2 billion valuation and became one of the best-known product design platforms. InVision shut down its core design and collaboration services on December 31, 2024, after Figma pulled ahead of it in the design tool market. Since InVision is no longer available, this guide explains what happened to the platform and the best alternatives in 2026.

Ultimately, InVision struggled to compete as the market shifted from standalone prototyping tools to browser-based platforms that combined design, collaboration, prototyping, and developer handoff in a single product.

Shutdown Timeline

• Jan 5, 2024 | InVision CEO Michael Shenkman announced the wind-down of all design collaboration services.
• Dec 31, 2024 | Last day of access. Prototypes, boards, comments, and other collaboration data were permanently deleted shortly after.
• $2B | InVision’s peak valuation (2018), before Figma overtook it.
• Freehand | Sold to Miro in November 2023; now part of Miro.

What Was InVision?

InVision was one of the earliest product design and collaboration tools built specifically for the interactive-prototype stage of the design process. Rather than a complete interface design tool, it worked as a companion platform: designers created screens in Sketch, Photoshop, or InVision Studio, then imported them into InVision to add clickable hotspots, transitions, and comments so the rest of the team could react to them without opening a design file.

How Did Teams Use InVision?

Teams used InVision across a few connected stages of product design:

• Interactive Prototyping: Teams turned static screens into clickable, presentable prototypes.
• Stakeholder Review and Feedback: Teams shared a prototype link so anyone could comment directly on a screen instead of a slide deck.
• Design-to-Development Handoff:  Designers shared specs, redlines, and assets that developers could reference while building the real product.
• Design System Management: The InVision DSM (and later, the newer DSM) kept shared components and style guides in sync across a design team.
• Real-Time Collaboration: Freehand, InVision’s whiteboard product, let distributed teams sketch and workshop ideas together live.
• Client Presentations: “Tours” let a team walk stakeholders through a prototype and narrate the thinking behind it.

What Happened to InVision?

InVision’s decline tracks closely with the rise of Figma. As late as 2017, InVision still held nearly a third of the prototyping-tool market, while Figma remained below 10%. But Figma’s browser-based, real-time collaboration, built into the product from the start, steadily pulled designers away from InVision’s hotspot-based workflow over the following years.

Founded in 2011, InVision was one of the earliest product design and collaboration tools. As InVision continued to grow, they raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture funding and reached a $2 billion valuation in 2018. But as browser-based, collaborative design platforms gained traction, it struggled to keep pace. In November 2023, InVision sold Freehand to Miro, signaling a major shift in the company’s direction.

On January 5, 2024, CEO Michael Shenkman announced that InVision’s core design, prototyping, and collaboration services would shut down at the end of the year, with users able to access their accounts until December 31, 2024. Those services officially ended on that date, after which hosted prototypes, boards, and other collaboration data were permanently removed. 

Freehand is the one piece of InVision still in active use today, just not under the InVision name. Miro acquired Freehand’s technology, brand, and team in November 2023, and Freehand’s former CPTO, Jeff Chow, joined Miro as its new Chief Product & Technology Officer. Miro brought select Freehand features into its own product and offered former Freehand subscribers access to Miro at no extra cost during the transition.

InVision vs. Figma?

InVision and Figma solved the same design workflow in fundamentally different ways. InVision treated prototyping as an add-on step: designers built screens elsewhere, then imported them into InVision to add interactivity and collect feedback. Figma folded that step into the design canvas itself, so prototyping, commenting, and handoff happened in the same file designers were already working in. That workflow difference, more than any single feature, is why teams comparing the two today experience Figma as a replacement for the entire process InVision only covered part of.

What Are the Best InVision Alternatives in 2026?

If you’re moving away from InVision, the best replacement depends on how your team used it. Some tools focus on end-to-end product design, while others specialize in whiteboarding, design systems, or open-source collaboration.

InVision vs. Top Alternatives

Note: You may still see Adobe XD recommended in older articles. However, Adobe no longer invests in new features for the product, so it’s generally not recommended for new projects. If you’re starting fresh, it’s generally better to choose an actively maintained platform.

Figma

Figma is the closest replacement for InVision, combining interface design, interactive prototyping, real-time collaboration, design systems, and developer handoff in a single browser-based platform. As a result, it now serves many of the design-to-development workflows that InVision once supported.

Sketch

Sketch remains a strong option for Mac-based design teams that prefer a desktop-first workflow. It offers prototyping, reusable components, and developer handoff, though its collaboration features differ from Figma’s browser-native approach.

Miro

If your team primarily relied on InVision Freehand for brainstorming, workshops, and collaborative planning, Miro is the natural successor. It acquired Freehand in 2023 and incorporated many of its capabilities into its own platform.

Penpot

Penpot is an open-source alternative that appeals to organizations looking to avoid vendor lock-in. It supports collaborative interface design and prototyping while giving teams greater control over how the software is deployed.

When Does a Prototyping Tool Matter?

A prototyping and collaboration tool pays off when a design idea needs to move through several people (the designer, product owner, developer, and stakeholder) before it becomes real. It’s less about the tool itself and more about what happens around it.

Where it helps:

• Interactive prototypes: Stakeholders can click through a flow instead of reading a static mockup.
• Centralizing feedback and comments: Feedback stays attached to specific screens, reducing lost context across email threads.
• Design-to-development handoff: Developers can access specs, assets, and design context in a single shared location. Today, that role is most commonly filled by platforms such as Figma, which combine design, prototyping, and developer handoff in a single workflow.

When it isn’t worth it:

• Weak handoffs: A collaboration platform can’t fix a broken design-to-development process on its own. A prototype is only as useful as the workflow around it.
• Overhead for small projects: For very small projects or solo work, a full collaboration tool can introduce unnecessary overhead. A lighter tool or shared document may be faster and more practical.

An InVision prototype was only the beginning. Teams that wanted the design to survive contact with engineering needed strong UX design services to carry design intent through implementation without losing what made the experience work. 

Key Takeaways

• InVision turned static designs into interactive, reviewable prototypes before its design and collaboration products shut down on December 31, 2024.
• Figma became the dominant platform in the category InVision helped create, largely on the strength of built-in real-time collaboration.
• Freehand is the only part of InVision still running today, now inside Miro.
• Adobe XD, sometimes suggested as a fallback, is also discontinued. Don’t count it as a live option.
• The tool matters less than the workflow around it: a clean design-to-development bridge is what actually makes a prototype pay off.