Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

draw.io VS Ansible

Compare draw.io VS Ansible and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

draw.io logo draw.io

Online diagramming application

Ansible logo Ansible

Radically simple configuration-management, application deployment, task-execution, and multi-node orchestration engine
  • draw.io Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-20
  • Ansible Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-05

draw.io features and specs

  • Free
    draw.io offers a free version with extensive features, making it accessible to individuals and small teams without requiring financial investment.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    The platform provides an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that is easy to use for both beginners and advanced users.
  • Collaboration
    It supports real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to work on the same diagram simultaneously.
  • Integrations
    It integrates seamlessly with popular cloud storage services like Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox, facilitating easy sharing and saving.
  • Versatility
    Draw.io supports various diagram types including flowcharts, UML diagrams, network diagrams, and more, catering to a wide range of use cases.
  • No Installation Required
    As a web-based tool, draw.io does not require any installation, making it accessible from any device with an internet connection.
  • Customizability
    Users can customize shapes, styles, and templates to fit their specific needs, enhancing the utility of the tool.

Possible disadvantages of draw.io

  • Performance Issues
    Users may experience lag or performance issues, especially when working with very large diagrams or on less powerful hardware.
  • Limited Advanced Features
    While suitable for most general uses, draw.io might lack some advanced features available in premium diagramming tools like Visio.
  • Cloud Dependency
    As a cloud-based tool, draw.io requires a stable internet connection for optimal performance, potentially limiting its use in areas with poor connectivity.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Using a cloud service can raise privacy concerns, especially when dealing with sensitive or proprietary information.
  • Learning Curve
    Although user-friendly, becoming proficient with all features and integrations can take some time for new users.

Ansible features and specs

  • Agentless
    Ansible is agentless, meaning it doesn't require any software to be installed on the remote nodes. This simplifies management and reduces overhead.
  • Ease of Use
    Ansible uses a simple, easy-to-read YAML syntax for its playbooks, reducing the learning curve and making it accessible to those without extensive programming experience.
  • Scalability
    Ansible is designed to handle large-scale deployments, making it suitable for managing numerous machines or services efficiently.
  • Extensive Modules
    Ansible has a rich library of modules that support a wide variety of system tasks, cloud providers, and application deployments, offering great versatility.
  • Strong Community
    There is a large and active Ansible community that contributes to its development and provides support, which can be valuable for troubleshooting and learning best practices.
  • Idempotency
    Tasks in Ansible are idempotent, meaning they can be run multiple times without changing the system beyond the intended final state, ensuring reliable deployments.

Possible disadvantages of Ansible

  • Performance Overhead
    Being agentless, Ansible relies on SSH for communication with nodes, which can add performance overhead, especially when managing a large number of hosts.
  • Limited Windows Support
    Ansible's core is primarily designed for Unix-like systems, and while there is support for Windows, it's not as robust or as seamless as it is for Unix/Linux systems.
  • Lack of Built-in Error Handling
    Ansible's error handling is somewhat rudimentary out-of-the-box. Complex error handling scenarios often require custom solutions, which can complicate playbooks.
  • Learning Curve for Complex Scenarios
    While simple tasks are easy to set up, more complex configurations can become challenging quickly and may require a deep understanding of Ansible's modules and templating.
  • Reliance on YAML
    The use of YAML, while human-readable, can be prone to syntax errors such as incorrect indentation, which can potentially lead to hard-to-track-down bugs.
  • Dependency on Python
    Ansible requires Python to be installed on managed nodes. This could be an issue in environments where it's not feasible or desired to have Python installed.

Analysis of draw.io

Overall verdict

  • Yes, draw.io is widely regarded as a good tool for creating diagrams due to its versatility, ease of use, and comprehensive feature set. It is a reliable choice for both individual users and teams requiring collaborative diagramming capabilities.

Why this product is good

  • Draw.io is considered a good tool because it is user-friendly, offers a wide range of features for creating diagrams, and is available as both a web-based application and a desktop app. It supports multiple platforms and a variety of diagram types, including flowcharts, network diagrams, UML, and more. The tool is often praised for its intuitive interface, easy integration with platforms like Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, and the fact that it offers a free version without significant limitations.

Recommended for

  • Business professionals who need to create process flows and organizational charts.
  • Software developers and engineers designing network architecture, UML diagrams, or system designs.
  • Students and educators preparing educational materials or collaborative projects.
  • Project managers and teams who need to outline project workflows and timelines.

Analysis of Ansible

Overall verdict

  • Ansible is a powerful and versatile tool for automation, suited to a variety of use cases, from configuration management to application deployment. Its simplicity, flexibility, and broad community support make it a popular choice among DevOps professionals.

Why this product is good

  • Ansible is considered good because it is an open-source automation tool that is simple to set up and use. It uses a straightforward language (YAML) for its playbooks, which makes it accessible to both developers and IT operations. Ansible is agentless, meaning it connects to nodes using SSH, which simplifies management and enhances security. It also has strong community support and thorough documentation.

Recommended for

  • System administrators seeking to automate configuration management
  • DevOps teams looking to streamline application deployment processes
  • Organizations aiming to implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
  • IT professionals who prefer an agentless approach to automation
  • Teams interested in a tool with strong community support and extensive integrations

draw.io videos

draw.io - Draw diagrams in the cloud or as an AppImage

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Draw.io Tutorial - Getting Started || How to use Draw.io
  • Review - Creating Entity Relationship Diagrams using Draw.io
  • Review - Using Layers, an advanced draw.io feature
  • Review - Draw.io (aka diagrams.net) Basics
  • Review - Better, faster, stronger; draw.io introduces AI-powered Smart Templates

Ansible videos

What Is Ansible? | How Ansible Works? | Ansible Tutorial For Beginners | DevOps Tools | Simplilearn

More videos:

  • Review - Automation with Ansible Playbooks | Review on Ansible Architecture
  • Review - Book Review : Mastering Ansible (Jesse Keating) by Zareef Ahmed

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to draw.io and Ansible)
Diagrams
100 100%
0% 0
DevOps Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Flowcharts
100 100%
0% 0
Continuous Integration
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare draw.io and Ansible

draw.io Reviews

5 great diagramming tools for enterprise and software architects
Where do you even begin with Diagrams.net, formerly known as Draw.io? Besides being free of charge, it also has a low learning curve, so anyone can quickly start creating diagrams or whiteboards. Many people use Diagrams.net for diagramming business processes, data flows, and networks. You can also modify elements without having to change the entire diagram with this tool.
Source: www.redhat.com
Software Diagrams - Plant UML vs Mermaid
There are many generic diagramming tools that can be used to design software such as diagrams.net (formerly draw.io), Miro, or Lucid Charts. These generic tools do allow a lot of flexibility but end up costing you more time than you intended to align all boxes and arrows and to get the colour schemes just right.
10 Best Visio Alternatives for Cost Effective Diagramming [2022]
Price may vary from time to time as Draw.io does some promotions and might give discounts as well. You should check their website for the latest prices. Also, the pricing depends upon the features you are taking it for. So, it has very distinctive processing. You’ll get all your options in the right column and the drawing and editing options you’ll get in the space provided...
Top 10 Alternatives to Draw.io / Diagrams.net - Flowchart Maker Reviews
Drawio is a free online software for creating flowcharts and process maps. It is an easy way to create professional diagrams and share them with your team, your clients, or the whole world. Drawio's user-friendly interface lets you drag and drop shapes from our library onto the canvas and format them using our comprehensive set of tools. Drawing charts has never been easier!...
Best 8 Free Visual Paradigm Alternatives in 2022
Another cost-efficient option as an alternative to Visual Paradigm is Draw.io. This is an online flowchart maker that you can use for free. Draw.io is absolutely free to use so you won’t have to worry about spending any amount. The only drawback that we saw upon reviewing the tool though, is the lack of templates. It is purely made for flowchart creation so the interface...
Source: gitmind.com

Ansible Reviews

What Are The Best Alternatives To Ansible? | Attune, Jenkins &, etc.
To put it simply, Ansible automates a wide range of IT aspects that includes configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, etc. Plus, while using Ansible, you can patch your application, automate deployments, and run compliances and governance on your application. You can easily manage it by using a web interface known as Ansible Tower. Furthermore,...
Best 8 Ansible Alternatives & equivalent in 2022
Ansible is a simple IT automation tool that is easy to deploy. It connects to your nodes and pushes out small programs called “Ansible modules” to those nodes. Then it executes these models over SSH and removes them when finished. The library of modules will reside on any machine, therefore there is no requirement for any servers and databases.
Source: www.guru99.com
Top 5 Ansible Alternatives in 2022: Server Automation Solutions by Alexander Fashakin on the 19th Aug 2021 facebook Linked In Twitter
Your project connects to Ansible through nodes called Ansible Modules. You can use these modules to manage your project. As an agentless architecture, Ansible allows you to run modules on any system or server. It doesn’t require client/server software or an agent to be installed. With Ansible, you can use Python Paramiko modules or SSH protocols.
Ansible vs Chef: What’s the Difference?
For Ansible, Simplilearn presents the Ansible Foundation Training Course. Ansible 2.0, a simple, popular, agent-free tool in the automation domain, helps increase team productivity and improve business outcomes. Learn with
Chef vs Puppet vs Ansible
Ansible supports considerable ease of learning for the management of configurations due to YAML as the foundation language. YAML (Yet Another Markup Language) is closely similar to English and is human-readable. The server can help in pushing configurations to all the nodes. The applications of Ansible are clearly suitable for real-time execution along with the facility of...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, draw.io seems to be a lot more popular than Ansible. While we know about 716 links to draw.io, we've tracked only 9 mentions of Ansible. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

draw.io mentions (716)

  • Creating Diagrams and Databases with Online Tools
    Draw.io (available at drawio.com) is an online and offline tool that lets you create various types of diagrams, including:. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Random VS Code finds
    During my college days I used to use Drawio to draw wireframes and flowcharts. When I found that there is a VS Code extension that allows me to do it in the IDE it was a no brainer. I have found it is also useful whenever I am screen sharing to use it as a whiteboard during meetings. All you have to do is create a new file with the .drawio extension and you're off to the races. You can then export to .svg and .png... - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Reactor controller
    Glad you like it! :D Feel free to reuse/edit it for the Steam page if you want. Also happy to send you the draw.io file if you'd like :). Source: about 2 years ago
  • Note taking app
    Shraing, LDAP, sync, reminders are all possible. draw.io can be integrated by an app in nextcloud. Also, there is "Deck" which is a Kanban board for Nextcloud. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Diagramming on Note 2 Air+
    I've been using draw.io web to diagram, but I can't find it on android... Is there any good alternatives? Source: about 2 years ago
View more

Ansible mentions (9)

  • Mentorship Group
    We are open to practice using any open-source project, however, we want to set a sharp focus on projects maintained by the Red Hat, and our own projects in the Caravana Cloud organization on github. If there is no reason to do differently, we'll build using technologies such as OpenShift, Quarkus, Ansible and related projects. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Observability Mythbusters: Yes, Observability-Landscape-as-Code is a Thing
    *Codifying the deployment of the OTel Collector *(to Nomad, Kubernetes, or a VM) using tools such as Terraform, Pulumi, or Ansible. The Collector funnels your OTel data to your Observability back-end. ✅. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Maintenance mode - vmware.vmware_rest Ansible collection
    Most of what I've learnt today was purley from this blog and only because it's from ansible.com - dated now I guess ... Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Proactive Kubernetes Monitoring with Alerting
    I installed the helm release using Ansible, but you can install with the following helm commands:. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • Cannot run a playbook in crontab - Python error
    [root@ansible ~]# pip show ansible Name: ansible Version: 2.9.25 Summary: Radically simple IT automation Home-page: https://ansible.com/ Author: Ansible, Inc. Author-email: info@ansible.com License: GPLv3+ Location: /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packagesRequires: jinja2, PyYAML, cryptography Required-by:. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing draw.io and Ansible, you can also consider the following products

LucidChart - LucidChart is the missing link in online productivity suites. LucidChart allows users to create, collaborate on, and publish attractive flowcharts and other diagrams from a web browser.

Chef - Automation for all of your technology. Overcome the complexity and rapidly ship your infrastructure and apps anywhere with automation.

yEd - yEd is a free desktop application to quickly create, import, edit, and automatically arrange diagrams. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix/Linux.

Jenkins - Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server with 300+ plugins to support all kinds of software development

PlantUML - PlantUML is an open-source tool that uses simple textual descriptions to draw UML diagrams.

Codeship - Codeship is a fast and secure hosted Continuous Delivery platform that scales with your needs.