Altium CircuitMaker Pricing Overview

The user interface is intuitive, and anyone can start hands-on with a minimal learning curve. The tools are great for even some industrial projects. It's a perfect step to start the journey to Professional PCB design, as it is built on the foundation of Altium Designer. It inherits the robust features of Schematic capture, PCB Layout, 3D visualisation. One of the greatest strengths is its active and supportive community forum, which has helped me enhance my learning and troubleshooting experience. For its no-cost entry point, we have quite frequently opted for CircuitMaker to train interns and students just getting started, and the projects that are created can be easily migrated and integrated with Altium Professional. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

CircuitMaker’s reliance on cloud storage and mandatory project sharing limits its appeal for users needing privacy or offline access. The lack of advanced features like hierarchical schematics and limited third-party integration can hinder complex designs. Improved onboarding for beginners and more flexible project management options would significantly enhance its usability. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This is a cut-down version of Altium's higher end products. As such, it has several powerful tools for PCB layout. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The component library is probably its worst and most difficult feature. You can't place a generic component such as a plain resistor, then assign it a package, like I have done in just about any other EDA program I have used. Instead, you have to specify the part number ahead of time - makes sense for an integrated circuit, but not if you want a generic 1K resistor. Then the footprint library is all over the map; some are accurate and some are absolute garbage. Editing the footprints is also harder than in other EDA packages.

The second worst feature is the customer support. I can understand that a free program would have a community-based support forum. But the problem is that there's no moderation and Altium has completely neglected the forum. Predictably, it's been taken over by spammers who drown out any real conversation. The second most common thing you'll find on the forum is a bunch of user complaints that they have been requesting features for years and never received any response.

Unlike mechanical CAD packages, which have usually been following some attempt at a standard user interface, there's not much about the UI that this one has in common with other EDA packages, and so very little will carry over from other EDA software if you've learned elsewhere. But this seems to be true regardless of what EDA solution you pick - they all have wildly different UI.

This product is intended to get entry level users who Altium hopes will move on to their higher end products. Unfortunately, Altium has neglected this product enough that instead it's likely to drive entry level users who try this product on to use KiCAD. While KiCAD also uses a community design library and support forum, these are at least moderated properly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.