--- title: Altium Develop Reviews meta_title: 'Altium Develop Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 1016 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Altium Develop works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 1016 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-03' parent_category: name: CAD url: https://www.g2.com/categories/cad --- # Altium Develop Reviews **Vendor:** Altium **Category:** [PCB Design Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/pcb-design) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 1,016 ## About Altium Develop Altium Develop is a collaborative platform for electronic product development that connects requirements management (via Requirements Portal), ECAD design, supply chain, and manufacturing into a single, unified environment. Built on Altium Designer® and Altium 365®, it enables real-time collaboration across engineering, design, and operations teams, reducing delays caused by disconnected tools and file-based workflows. Designed for electronics teams and organizations managing complex PCB and hardware development, Altium Develop supports cross-functional collaboration throughout the entire product lifecycle. Through Requirements Portal, stakeholders can contribute to and review requirements in a centralized workspace, helping ensure alignment from definition through design and delivery. Key capabilities include: • Real-time collaboration: Shared workspace for ECAD design, reviews, and project coordination • Component and supply chain visibility: Access to live component data, pricing, and availability • Requirements management (Requirements Portal): Capture, review, and link product requirements to design decisions for end-to-end traceability • BOM and workflow management: Manage bill of materials, sourcing, and change processes in one platform • ECAD-MCAD co-design: Enable collaboration between electrical and mechanical teams By centralizing design data, workflows, and collaboration, Altium Develop improves visibility, reduces rework, and helps teams bring electronic products to market faster. The platform is particularly well suited for organizations looking to streamline PCB design processes, enhance collaboration, and scale development across distributed teams. Altium Develop is used by teams evaluating alternatives to tools like Autodesk Fusion, KiCad, Cadence OrCAD, and SOLIDWORKS for PCB design and collaborative electronics development, including requirements management for hardware and electronics systems. ## Altium Develop Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **intuitive ease of use** of Altium Develop, which significantly speeds up their PCB design process. (272 reviews) - Users value the **powerful collaboration features** of Altium Develop, enhancing teamwork and efficiency in complex PCB designs. (218 reviews) - Users commend Altium Designer for its **user-friendly interface** , providing comprehensive tools and seamless integration for PCB design. (145 reviews) - Users value the **collaborative environment** of Altium Develop, enhancing teamwork during design and prototype testing. (136 reviews) - Users find that Altium Designer significantly enhances **efficiency** in PCB design through seamless integration and intuitive workflows. (101 reviews) - User Interface (92 reviews) - Sharing (86 reviews) - Customer Support (82 reviews) - Users find Altium Develop to be incredibly **intuitive** , facilitating faster PCB design with helpful features and shortcuts. (82 reviews) - Library Management (82 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users face a **steep learning curve** with Altium Develop, requiring time to master the numerous options and features. (93 reviews) - Users find the **expensive pricing** a barrier for non-commercial users, hindering learning and adaptation to Altium. (91 reviews) - Users are disappointed with the **missing features** in Altium Develop, limiting their editing and design capabilities. (65 reviews) - Users find the **complex interface** challenging, needing better tutorials and intuitive menus for ease of use. (57 reviews) - Users report **slow performance** in Altium Develop, citing long loading times and clunky UI affecting productivity. (51 reviews) - Users report **performance issues** with Altium Develop, including bugs, crashes, and slowdowns on large projects. (48 reviews) - Learning Difficulty (46 reviews) - Software Bugs (40 reviews) - Lack of Features (36 reviews) - Complexity (35 reviews) ## Altium Develop Reviews ### 1. Altium is a great integrated tool to design products for easy reviews, visibility collaboration. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vijay P. | Sr. Electrical Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Integration All in one tool, Mechanical CAD integration Single Software Library management and approval workflow integrated Server based shared approach Smart tool set to easy many repetitive tasks Great ease of use and low learning curve Great amount of help and tutorials available online free **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Some items need extra steps which can be optimized for the smoother flow for component creation Sometimes the tool becomes too slow which can be optimized A general mapping settings and modifcation template can be set to allow quick dynamic changes while importing Symbols and Footprints for smoother import process Checklists for Footprints can be added to run a report for the errors. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** All great tool for PCB design, MCAD integration, BOM Management Benefits - All in one place including review with good amount of collaboration is possible Also helping to view clearly the properties and manage BOM, Component lifecycle and cost with availability ### 2. Powerful tool extends beyond schematic and PCB design **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 30, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium Design allows not only schematic and PCB design, with mechanical and harnesses integration in one suite, it allows for system level design. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Altium license management can be difficult to understand and at time, seem conflict to the purchased license agreement. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** With multiboard project, electrical, mechanical and harnesses integration in a system is easier to manage and able to identify system integration issue earlier in the development, such as fitment, placement and other potential issue that may arise when developing a product. Save cost and time to identify system integration issue before proceeding with prototyping. ### 3. A useful tool that helps our team collaborate on projects **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium 365 helps us to work together on daily basis. It streamlines the review process allowing other users to easily review and provide feedback on the work of other without accessing the full Altium experience. Sharing parts and components is very useful and works well. The process of implementing the tool was relatively simple, and importing our libraries was quick and straight forward. 365 provides quick access to customer support and the helpdesk, as well as a range of online help tools. I use this tool daily to review the work of other and myself. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Altium 365 doesnt allow you to make any changes to components. It would be useful to allow a user to modify component paramters from within this tool. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** 365 helps us to collaborate on projects and share parts and components ### 4. Altium Hates Their Users **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Richard V. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 05, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Good question! I do not have an answer. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** It's expensive. It's always CHANGING so you can't rely on your PREVIOUS experience using it. That STUPID Integrated Component Library is not MANDATORY to use. I can't find any of the OLD library parts anymore! **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Their stupid Integrated Component Library makes the job 10x harder. I find it impossible to use at all. I'm going to QUIT my job to get away from this CRAPPY tool my company INSISTS on using; let THEM deal with Altium's crappy attitude. Altium must HATE its customers. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Hi Richard, thank you for sharing your honest feedback. We take customer input seriously and are committed to improving our user experience. Please contact our support team to discuss your current challenges, and we'll do our best to assist you https://www.altium.com/support. ### 5. There are a number of beneficial features that enhance the collaboration and reusability. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Peter N. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 22, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Schematic sheet reuse along with saved layout. As well as online collaborative review capabilities. Both of these feaures allow creating of new boards at a much faster pace. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** That we are unable to self host features we want to keep local. Such as reusable circuits being the primary culperate. We work in military and aerospace applications, and as such, there are requirements for us to keep data on-site. And this means we struggle to use 365 due to the lack of self-hosting options. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It allows us to transfer circuit designs and layout from one design to new boards much more easily when we can actually use this feature, as we need the ability to soft host data for many projects. ### 6. Experience using Altium365 **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ahmed K. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 05, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It provides alot of features that helps me achieve what i desire in an easier and more efficient fashion. Cloud based which allows working in a team much easier. Customer support replies in a good time. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Hard to be implemented at first due to complex design ans steep learning curve **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Exlporing this software allowed me to achieve a better understanding of hardware design thanks to the options available. It also allowed me to more easily work with people, sharing our projects on a workspace and easily accessing and commenting on our projects. ### 7. Recommended, but hard to use as only tool for system engineering **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** it is very user-friendly. Short learning curve. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The flexibility in the analysis section is very limited. Exports as well from that section should be improved. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Moving away from a document based approach. ### 8. Altium is my favourite electronics design tool to use. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Military | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 07, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Great colaborations within electronics teams as well as with mechanical teams. Teams can easily and seamlessly work together on designs. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** You need an internet connection to work on Altium 365. It is not possible to work offline and sync later, the connecting pinwheel keeps popping up. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Integrating and sharing my electronic designs with the mechanical designers. Interfitment has never been as convenient and easy as it is with MCAD and Altium 365. ### 9. Engineer **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luca M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 30, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The link between schematic and pcb layout **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The spice simulator is not so easy to undesrtand and use. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** The availability of components showing the life cycle and where to buy them ### 10. Enhanced engineering process **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 28, 2022 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** End-to-end , immediate propagation of computations, requirements management **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Absence of a bin to recover deleted components, random bugs that may happen **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Single source for systems engineering data management, subsystems sizing, budgets, requirements organization and links with design parameters ### 11. Strong PCB Design Software with Unique Features **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sidsadee B. | Development Officer and Mentor, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium designer is cloud connected, has many strong tools, and is perfect for team-oriented PCB design with advanced component manufacturing and links to other softwares features. It can be taught and learnt in little time with practice and is easy to use once the workflow has been developed. Features are well documented and supproted. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The learning curve from other programs can be difficult for team members due to the massive amounts of features, as well as integrated Git and cloud service. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium Designer allows our multi-dozen Avionics team to work together and develop both our critical flight computation stack while also developing auxiliary boards and introduction learning boards. ### 12. Altium is better **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** More intuituve than any other Schematic, PCB CAD tool. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I wish it was a little bit more friendly to modify and import whole design parameters in spreadsheet format. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allows internal layout, mot needing to go to expensive outside services for EVERY layout, and end up with un reviewable results and find later things are wrong. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Thank you for sharing your feedback! We appreciate your input on the modification and import features, and we'll take that into consideration for future improvements. It's great to hear that Altium Designer allows you to do internal layout and avoid external services (and costs) and that you're finding value in its intuitiveness. ### 13. Cloud access works great for communicating design across multiple disciplines **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James B. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 22, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Web access is helpful and the xprobing is seemless **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The file management of generating symbols/ footprints is not as straigntforward as it should be in my opinion. The learning curve for knowing where all the appropriate buttons are can be daunting at first. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Documentation, versioning, and communication to team members is a strong point. ### 14. Seamless experience with PCB designing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sanmeet H. | Electronics Design Head, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2022 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The user interface is easy to use. On top of this there are many communities and blogs that can be referred to for doing advanced actions. The PCB making process is very quick. Definitely best option among all options out there. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Occasionally selecting and dragging elements in PCB design is difficult as undesired parts get selected. Also, occasionally, the software crashes and we have to start over again from the last saved design. The software can be overwhelming for a new user. Pricing is high for Annual support/ maintenance (Upgrading service) **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Inspite of the user interace being user-friendly, designer has access to advanced functions that can be used to perform advanced PCB designs. The 3D view is especially helpful too. ### 15. Easy to use and collaborate **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 04, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The feature to share the pcbs between the users without the right to change anything is usefull as well as that we don't need to buy extra licenses for any individual who wants to only check a PCB pins once a year! It is pretty easy to use the software. The application is pretty userfriendly and it is self explanatory. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The selector of the pins, when you select a pin, it always select the +Vdd as well and highlight it. The pin name and the place of the pins are not alwasys aligned and that make it some times tricky to read the correct GPIO number. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It solve the sharing of PCB between different collaborators as welll as different departments. For our case the software team and the hardware team. ### 16. Strong tool, but not customizable enough. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Calvin H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 11, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I really like the curved trace making system. It takes some getting used to, but it's very powerful. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The biggest issue for me, by far, is the lack of sub-file-level merging. It makes working with others on PCB layout difficult because two people can't work on different aeeas of the same file at the same time. Another complaint I have is that the default default settings are awful at times. For instance, the default is for polygons to default to not connecting to same-net objects, and if you don't realize this is a setting it results in a lot of wasted time trying to figure it out. A smaller complaint I have is that there is no dark mode for the schematic applet. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium makes it very easy to create curved traces and polygons. ### 17. THE BEST TOOL ON THE MARKET FOR PROFESSIONAL PCB **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ivano P. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 15, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** capability to manage everything on schematics and circuits **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** it's not easy to start, it'd be better a semplified tool that leads beginner users **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** bus matching lenght **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > We're glad to hear that you find Altium Designer to be the best tool for professional PCB design. We understand that the learning curve can be a challenge, and we're continuously working to improve the user experience, including creating resources for beginner users. Here are some existing resources that you might find helpful: https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer, https://resources.altium.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/@AltiumAcademy. Thank you for your feedback! ### 18. Altium 365 Smooth and Fast! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Manufacturing | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 02, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Easy to naviagte and good intergration with ciruitmaker project from past projects. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Sometimes tutorials are can be hard to find extaly what you are looking for. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Liberaries always are up to date. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Thank you for sharing your positive experience with Altium 365. We understand the importance of up-to-date libraries, and we're pleased that this feature is benefiting you. We'll take your feedback about tutorials into consideration as we strive to enhance user experience. ### 19. A365 Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 10, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** What I like best and best features about A365 is that vast numbers of components available and custome electronic components and layouts and PCB designing. We can manage our own library for custone component. New electronic part making with A365. Amazing for electronic projects R&D. It makes our PCB designing projects seamless and easy. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** No nothing can't tell anything about this one. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business problems I would say for PCB layouting and editing ### 20. combining the work of electronics and mechanics **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Łukasz K. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 15, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Shearing 3D documentation between colleagues, updating the documentation and having a quick acces to it. I also like the new feature of sharing the CAD design between CAD programs and Altium. It makes the work much quicker. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I would like it to have an option to simplify the PCB design before exporting it to step file. ( usually not using most components of the pcb during CAD work) . **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It makes the cooperation of mechanics and electronics much faster, simpler and more efficient. It also provides easy acces to documentation for people who don't use Altium on daily basis. ### 21. powerful software, pretty expensive, wish it were less buggy **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 15, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It's the most user friendly professional CAD software I've used **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** There are a lot of bugs and weird idiosyncracies that can screw up your work or slow you down **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** PCBA design ### 22. Great tool to review designs and manage libraries, but would be great to be able to make editions **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aleksandr A. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 03, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** access from any point without Altium installed and sharing project with someone who doesn't have Altium license **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** For me not very clear is positioning of Altium 365. If this tool is only for reviews, why there suggested to keep libraries? Also predefined way of managing libraries may not suit for everyone **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I don't think Altium 365 solves some problems, but sharing projects can beneficial ### 23. Easiest to use software for PCB development **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jonathan v. | Electrical Engineer, Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 02, 2021 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** All functions are easy to find and use. The interface is self-explanatory, and schematics are easy to navigate. This is the most complete and useful ECAD program I have used up to now. The program is used every day, either for reference or for design. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Altium has limited support for drawing PCB outlines without the use of external formats like DXF. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium has enhanced the development of electronics at the company. The fluid work environment speeds up PCB design. ### 24. Very powerful software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Daniel P. | R&D Hardware Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It is a complete tool which allows to develop every step of electronic design, from symbol and footprint creation to the generation of the output data. More pro than other softwares **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The licenses are way too expensive, they make it unaffordable for physical persons. It takes a long time to fix a bug since it is reported. Long time to execute for the first time. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** The design of our products, their maintenance, the ease of cadout generation by using outjobs files, the draftsman to let the manufacturer know the specs of the board and panel... ### 25. Great PCB design software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Grigoris S. | Lab Demonstrator, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 23, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The best parts about altium, is the wide availability of help articles, the online collaboration tools, and the active BOM, allowing for easier ordering of materials. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Sometimes having too many options can be confusing, especially if you don't use the software daily for work, like in my case. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using Altium to design PCBs to verify concepts for academic research. The software allows me to customize everything that is required (even soldermask/paste layers), and allows easy collaboration with colleagues. Exporting PCBs for FEA simulations is also simple thanks to their own exporting tools. ### 26. Best Ever PCB Designing and Development Software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Hardware | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 15, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** PCB designing automation, PCB layouting and prototyping are the most useful features as per experience working PCB Development and Designing projects. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Complexity for beginners. But step by step tool guide is there. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Industrial CB schematic diagrams ### 27. Altium - The great PCB designer software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Cop T. | Electrical Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 04, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium is easy to use, many feature. Great customer Support **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** you need to understand well the software in order to use it. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Having good 3D module to review. Easy to generate the production packages. ### 28. Altium 365 Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mahmoud H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 02, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Easy access to projects with the ability to comment and communicate with other members of the platform, easy to use on any browser, using it on a daily basis to review and check the projects, and easy to manage and integrate different projects. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** There are some server issues, and it's not possible to have multiple workspace owners. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?**

The ability to review and check any project by only using a web browser without the need to open Altium Designer.

The ability to manage organization members with ease.

Managing large projects with ease.

### 29. Overall good but a few changes possible **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aman V. | Secretary, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** 1. Vast diversity of options. 2. Spice model integration. 3. Cloud space to easily work across team. 4. Regular software updates and bug fixes. 5. Unlimited potential and high-frequency use. 6. Fast response time from customer support over mails. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** 1. Updates shuffles options very frequently. 2. Interface is quite complicated for a beginner. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being connected to the PCB design domain as a university student, Altium is a beneficial tool for PCB design, schematics, CAD, simulation and eventually for making gerber files. ### 30. Altium after 7 years **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexander N. | principle e/e, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 08, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It's fun to use, and generally all needed features are available and easy to find. I'd recommend it for designs up to 3000-4000 components max. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Having to pay for cloud services by keeping subscription current, and some common things that are needed to move components to cloud or back to local libraries are missing. They are possible but in a very convoluted way. After about 4K parts in a design things get really slow even on overclocked super fast computer. The pcb rules manager is not as comprehensive as one would like - it's very simplistic really, however, adequate for many things. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's nice to be able to collaborate online through the portal when working with multiple engineers or projects that need to be examined by (especially) remote team members. Routing is fairly easy by hand in Altium. Autorouting is not useful and more of a sales gimmick as it will not work on complex boards. ### 31. Great tool, good UI for high speed PCB design. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Electronics | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Ease of use, great UI. Good high speed design tools. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The BOM tool can be frustrating to use. Works only on windows. MacOS would've been great. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Design of high speed PCBs. We are a company that manufacturers hardware, so PCBs are essential part of the product. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Altium Designer is designed to solve the challenges of high-speed PCB design, and we're pleased to hear that it's benefiting your hardware manufacturing company. Thank you for sharing your feedback! ### 32. Doesn't work like it should😔. **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** matt l. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It has lots of good features and is an all in one program. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** It is slow, clunky, and sometimes it doesn't even run. Most of all it is buggy and the developers don't appear to want to fix them. The developers spend all of their time creating features for the pro users while taking away features from the standard users. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** They have fixed minor bugs like the compnents refresh shortcut (F5). **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Thank you for sharing your feedback. We understand the importance of reliable and user-friendly software and are committed to enhancing the overall performance and addressing any issues that may impact your experience. Your input helps us prioritize improvements and deliver a better product for all users. You may already utilize this, but many users find our BugCrunch forum useful for flagging any technical or performance issues that our team can look into further https://bugcrunch.live.altium.com/#/bugs/new. Thank you again for your input. ### 33. Good product, mediocre service **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Software and training resources for new engineers **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I've bought lots of expensive engineering software, and in most cases the sales folks do a much better job of handling requests, quotes, payments, etc. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium designer is our primary PCB software and helps with our multi-board design. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > We're glad to hear that you find our software and training resources helpful for new engineers. We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced with our sales process. We are constantly working to improve our customer service and appreciate your feedback. ### 34. Excellent professional PCB design tool, if you can get access to it **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 07, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Easy to get started, many guides and tools. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Can be overwhelming considering the amount of functions. Although it it an expensive tool to have (luckily we have a University-wide license). **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Altium mainly for prototyping. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > We're glad to hear that you find Altium 365 easy to get started with and that it offers many guides and tools. We understand that the amount of functions can be overwhelming, but we're constantly working to improve user experience. We appreciate your feedback. ### 35. Brings the development of products to a next level **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Guillem P. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 27, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I like the easy usablity that allows, and for people like me that we are working very deeply with HW and SW development, it allows me to review and consult the schematics and layout that HW team does without having it installed in my PC. I really love to access directly with a browser without needed anything else. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Maybe it lacks some features of the desktop version, but for me they are not needed. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Acessing the altium projects without the need of installing the desktop version. ### 36. Altium Pro User **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brad C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Standard in industry. Has prefromed well. Number of Features. Ease of Use. Customer Support. Frequency of Use. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Ease of Intergration, Ease of Implementation **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Printed Circuit Board Design ### 37. Everything its easy an fast, but the errors stop me **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Miquel L. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 21, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I really like version control, I think that it helps my company reviewing old versions of a layout and finding errors to correct. Moreover, working with mechanical cad has made it really easy with the MCad compatibility **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** I think that a lot of errors shoud be considered warnings. I have been working with old libraries in my buissnes (they have been working on electronics since 1995) and I don't have the time to update everything, so a lot of errors pop up all the time. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Version control, MCAD compativility was a big problem, active BOM has solver a lot of paperwork. Moreover, lately we have been using simulation lately and the results are looking good ### 38. It is the best soluction to work sharing projects with different partner **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Transportation/Trucking/Railroad | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 06, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Working diferent partner sharing same project **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** We are concerned about security issues, information in cloud is sensible, important for us. The corporate security team is concerned about that. All is in cloud. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Working different partners in the same project. **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > We're glad to hear that Altium Designer is helping you work with different partners on shared projects. We understand your concerns about data security, and we want to assure you that Altium takes security seriously. Our cloud platform is equipped with strong security measures to safeguard sensitive information. If you have specific security concerns or requirements, please reach out to our support team for personalized assistance https://www.altium.com/support. ### 39. Altium is cool, though I still dream of KiCAD **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 13, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Is Altium 365 different from Altium designer? AD just works, especially the robustness of the version control system is nice. The rules system is very strong and with a bit of fiddling I can express anything I want. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** However, it is heavy and not as flexible as I would like. When a usecase not forseen by your software developers arises there is often no way to handle it. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Component Design and Revision. PCB Design and Revision. Production Documentation Generation. ### 40. Excellent engineeringtool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Devices | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I've used PADS, DxDesigner, OrCAD, etc. But Altium is my go to ECAD tool. Its ease of use, easy design rule creation, OutJob files, MCAD integration, and quick 3D viewing tools make developing electromechanical systems super easy. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** There are on occasion small bugs that cause the program to crash. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Fast schematic capture and PCB design. Easy MCAD rule creation and collaboration. ### 41. Easy to learn usign concepts from other ECAD tools **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lawrence C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 29, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Easy to use and you can quickly pick up from experiences that you have from other ECAD tools. Linked to online websites such digikey and mouser for components search. Lots of training material can be found on youtube to ease the use. Allow multi user to share and review design files. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Higher cost when comparing to other ECAD tools in the market, such as Cadence, which is frequently used in multinational company. Unable to convert Cadence files without Cadence to export. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allow multiple users collaborate such as share and review the design files ### 42. Altium 365 is a great platform for collaborations. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Moien M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 04, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium 365 allows me and my other team members to collaborate on electronic design projects in real-time, especially now, that most of us work from home and far from each other. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Users transitioning to Altium 365 may face a learning curve, particularly if they are new to cloud-based design collaboration platforms or Altium's ecosystem. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps me and my other team members collaborate more conveniently when we are out of office. ### 43. Easy to use even for a beginner **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Melanie C. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Good support & useful online guide updated after each version. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Some intuitive features are lacking or not easy to figure out, for ex. moving around parallel wires that are connected on both side to component in SCH whitout having them collide and merge together. The auto-routing of tracks in layouts can also be very inefficient. Having the possibility to enlarge pictures of parts in the manufacturer part search panel would be helpful. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium is my only tool to design PCB. ### 44. Altium 365 Streamlining Electrical and Mechanical Design **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chris M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 05, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium 365 lets me view designs easily online. It allows me to implement changes from electrical design quickly into mechanical designs. The ease at which it allows me to view, and make changes is also very welcome. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Altium 365 is a little slow for export of large assemblies. But other than that it is a great tool. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Alitum 365 allows for eas collobartion between disciplines of engineers and designers. ### 45. I have been using and enjoying Altium designer for nearly 10 years. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Semiconductors | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The all in one schematic capture, library, PCB suite is very nice. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** The move to a cloud based subscription structure has had a negative impact on the usability in my opinion. It seems like updates and "feature enhancements" are just pushed so the users don't feel like their money is being wasted, however they don't really provide much value, or in my case the exact opposite of value. Also the documentation is now really bad. 2017 and prior had awesome docs. 2018 and on the doc's seem to be written by software engineers, not actual hardware engineers that use and truly understand the features. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** schematic capture and PCB design. ### 46. Good Schematic/PCB tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anton V. | Senior Radio Board Designer, Telecommunications, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** It is simple to make a schematic and layout in Altium. In Altium 365, handling components on the server's library is easier. Usage of the same symbol for many RLC components gave needed uniformity. Short Help videos are good. Versioning and release comments in 365 improve development process. Templates in 365 are convenient. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** If you touch a Variant in a project just to look at the schematic, then your project is "changed", and it is impossible to undo the non-existing change. It is quite disturbing. Re-Use block functionality is not developed properly. Making a mistake during the Import from the Schematic to PCB creates future problems. Getting rid of the "imaginary nets or connections" is a challenge. Cross Probe or Zoom-In on potential changes during the Import to PCB does not normally work for the PCB side. Strange focus on having the 1st pin of a component at the exact position still affects older projects - the shifts should be corrected manually (after implementing uniform symbols). Otherwise, a physical shift in the schematic as well as variants misalignment forces engineers to spend time on the fixes. In general, Help is not always fruitful. It is not obvious where to find a needed feature. Sometimes it is a quest. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creation of components, schematic, layout and output job files for Production cover most needs for radio board design. ### 47. My experience with Altium 365 in the workplace and for formula SAE **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John F. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 22, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Altium 365 provides really useful tools for syncing components between engineers. Having managed access to all components through the company is great instead of having to share a library back and forth. Also putting projects on the server helps team collaboration for our formula student team. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** One downside of altium 365 is its integration with MCAD co-designer. Projects must be uploaded to the workspace which can cause the workspace to get cluttered. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Altium 365 solves my biggest problem of having to pass a component library between the team. Its integration with codesigner helps although co designer can be clunky in some applications. ### 48. Altium356 review - An excellent PCB hardware designer tool. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Hardware | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** I have been using this pcb design tool. I would say it's one of the most advance tool I have ever used for hardware designing for electronics product. You have amazing integration that I personally like such as ECAD. Library management has everything that you need for pcb elements. CoDesigning one of the great feature for mechanical engineering. **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Complexity of using it if your new to this tool. But don't worry User technical documentation is there to help you. It's fully guided documentation I have ever seen for pcb designing tool. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Benefiting us in a way of product hardware designing. Like pcb, mcad. Fast hardware production. ### 49. Experienced Altium user **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Aviation & Aerospace | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 05, 2024 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** Integrated environment for both SCH and PCB **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** Simulation. Would be better to include more built in parts librarry for Sim **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** Board design Ver well **Official Response from Alanna Jordan:** > Thank you for sharing your experience with Altium Designer. We're pleased to hear that it's solving your board design needs effectively. We appreciate your feedback about the simulation and parts library, and we'll keep that in mind for future enhancements. ### 50. It is really a wonderful package ! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kamal V. | Doctoral Student, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 12, 2023 **What do you like best about Altium Develop?** The things that one can do in Altium. If one is able to think it one can do it. Integration with manufacturers and suppliers to have that ease developed in terms of schematics symbols and footprint integration is worh accolade! **What do you dislike about Altium Develop?** At times it becomes really complex for a new comer. Extensive tutorial for begineers and intermdiataries and experts and professional ... should really help give a boost start or help cope with latest tech and trends in the domain. **What problems is Altium Develop solving and how is that benefiting you?** As mentioned the integration that it has with suppliers like Digikey et. al makes it really easy to get things done in the Altium nowadays. Similar such features would help. ## Altium Develop Discussions - [How to import and convert the OrCAD (allegro) GERBER to Altium PCB file? (reverse OrCAD GERBER to Altium PCB )?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-to-import-and-convert-the-orcad-allegro-gerber-to-altium-pcb-file-reverse-orcad-gerber-to-altium-pcb) - 2 comments, 1 upvote - [How do I format symbol parameters from a database library?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-do-i-format-symbol-parameters-from-a-database-library) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Is there a way to modelize in 3D the Pcb designs?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/36429-is-there-a-way-to-modelize-in-3d-the-pcb-designs) - 3 comments, 1 upvote - [How do I write scripts for example.. transform a jpeg to a logo on a silk layer.](https://www.g2.com/discussions/13888-how-do-i-write-scripts-for-example-transform-a-jpeg-to-a-logo-on-a-silk-layer) - 2 comments, 1 upvote - [What is Altium 365 used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-altium-365-used-for) - 2 comments - [View Altium Develop pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/altium-develop/reviews?page=9§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-04+02%3A00%3A19+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=8cfe8129-52f7-49b5-8d60-033b217b195f&secure%5Btoken%5D=495ba3682db0a116f8a9913db13cdccb57d838041799a834398a7ccb25aabcfa&format=llm_user) ## Altium Develop Integrations - [Google Drive & Docs for Confluence](https://www.g2.com/products/google-drive-docs-for-confluence/reviews) - [Jira](https://www.g2.com/products/jira/reviews) - [Know Your Customer](https://www.g2.com/products/know-your-customer/reviews) - [Microsoft Access](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-access/reviews) - [Onshape](https://www.g2.com/products/onshape/reviews) - [Oracle Database](https://www.g2.com/products/oracle-database/reviews) - [Power Analyzer](https://www.g2.com/products/power-analyzer/reviews) - [SAS/OR](https://www.g2.com/products/sas-or/reviews) ## Altium Develop Features **Design** - Drawing - Modeling - Visualize - Rendering **Metadata** - Repository **Design** - PCB layout editing - Schematic editor **Tools - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - 3D/solid modeling Tools - Rendering Tools - Drawing Tools - Editing Tools - Text Editing Tools **Requirements Authoring and Structure - Requirements Management** - Structured Requirements Authoring - Hierarchical Requirements Organization **Compliance and Governance - Requirement Management** - Regulated Industry Standards Support **Edit** - File Import - Push/Pull - Views - Grips **Data Management** - Version Control **Tools** - 3D modeling tools - Component placement **Administration** - Requirements Listing - Centralized Information - Traceability **File Options - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Export Files - Import Files - File Interoperability - Backwards compatibility - File size **Collaboration and Review - Requirements Management** - Review and Approval Workflows - Role-Based Access Control **Collaboration** - Annotate - Documentation - Data Extract **Library** - Component libraries **Communication** - Stakeholder Communication - Internal Communication Enablement **Customization - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Custom Scripts - Custom Menus - Custom Interface **Role-Based Access Co - Requirements Management** - Baselining **Platform** - Board size - Layers **Procedural** - Automated Creation & Testing **Environment - Mechanical Computer-aided Design (MCAD)** - Hardware support - Task-based interfaces - Manage Multiple Profiles - Command Clarity **Traceability - Requirements Management** - Bidirectional Traceability - Impact Analysis - Traceability Matrix Generation **Customization** - Custom interface **AI Traceability - Requirements Management** - Suspect Link Detection **Integration - Requirements Management** - ALM and Project Management Tool Integration **Change Management and Version Control - Requirements Management** - Complete Audit Trail ## Top Altium Develop Alternatives - [Autodesk Fusion](https://www.g2.com/products/autodesk-fusion/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (510 reviews) - [AutoCAD](https://www.g2.com/products/autocad/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (1,836 reviews) - [Onshape](https://www.g2.com/products/onshape/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (683 reviews)