Altium CircuitMaker Pricing Overview

User-friendly interface: CircuitMaker has a simple and intuitive interface that makes it easy for users to design and edit PCBs.

Powerful design capabilities: CircuitMaker has a wide range of design tools and features, including support for multi-sheet designs, advanced routing, and 3D visualization.

Active community: CircuitMaker has a large and active community of users, who contribute to the software by providing feedback, bug reports, and new features. This can be helpful for users who have questions or need assistance with the software.

Free to use: CircuitMaker is a free and open-source software, which makes it accessible to a wide range of users, including hobbyists and students.

Altium's reputation: Altium is a well-established company in the EDA industry and CircuitMaker is a product that is aligned with their philosophy of making PCB design accessible and easy to use.

Continual development: Altium continues to develop and improve CircuitMaker, adding new features and fixing bugs regularly.

Compatibility with other Altium products: CircuitMaker can also be used in conjunction with other Altium products to create a seamless design to manufacturing workflow. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

the software can be slow or unresponsive at times, especially when working with large or complex projects. CircuitMaker is not as feature-rich as paid version of Altium Designer, which is the commercial version of the software and it may not have all the features that some advanced users may require 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.