Top SmartDraw Alternatives for Creating Timelines

By Matt Mazur · Last updated April 15, 2022

If you’re in the market for timeline software, you may have stumbled across SmartDraw — or maybe you’re already using it. Whatever the case, you might not be aware of how SmartDraw’s competitors compare.

This guide will give you an overview of the best SmartDraw alternatives, looking at their key features, unique selling points, pricing, and best use cases.

Comparison Chart

Let’s take a quick look at the 10 best SmartDraw alternatives on the market, all of which you'll find more details on further down in this article.

Tool Price Key features
1. Preceden Preceden is free to try with paid plans starting at $12/month.
  • Layers to organize events
  • Variety of customization options
  • Privacy settings to control who can see your timeline
  • Multiple ways to share, collaborate, and export
2. Timeline Maker Pro One-time purchases ranging from $49 for students to $535 for enterprise teams.
  • Offline editing
  • Multiple layouts
3. Tiki-Toki Tiki-Toki's free plan is limited to 1 timeline with paid plans starting at $9.50/month that support multiple timelines and additional features.
  • Background images
  • Embed multimedia
4. Aeon Timeline Free 14-day trial, then a one-time purchase of $64.99.
  • Compare timelines
  • Support for unknown dates
  • Data sync
5. Timeline 3D Timeline 3D is free to use.
  • Create multimedia timelines
  • See connections between events
6. Timeline JS TimelineJS is free to use.
  • Editable code
  • Google Sheets integration
  • Multimedia support
7. Venngage Plans range from free to $49/month depending on desired features, with quarterly and annual plans at a discount.
8. Creately Creately has a free plan that is limited to 3 documents with paid plans starting at $4/month.
  • Graphical timelines
  • Multiple visualization tools
9. Timestream Timesteam offers a free 30-day trial. A one year license costs $995.
10. Edraw Timeline Edraw timeline is free to download and try. A 3 year license costs $179, a lifetime license costs $245, and subscription license (yearly) costs $99 for the first year and $69 per year to renew thereafter.
  • Drag and drop interface
  • Templates & symbols
  • Multiple diagram types

Choosing a SmartDraw Alternative

Knowing your options is a good place to start when looking for an alternative to SmartDraw. Before you decide whether to use SmartDraw or something else though, it’s helpful to dive a little deeper.

To start, ask yourself these 3 questions:

  1. What can I afford? Most timeline tools provide a free option which may be more than enough for you. If not though, you'll want to make sure to choose a tool in your budget, which may be drastically different depending on whether you're a student or a project manager at a Fortune 100 company.
  2. What features are non-negotiable? For example, some tools support collaboration whereas others don't. Some tools let you create interactive timelines, some only graphical ones. Some are web-based and can be used from any device, some only work on Windows or Macs.
  3. What style would I prefer? Every tool creates a different style of timeline. A cartoon-looking timelines might be fine if you're working on a homework assignment but may not work well if you'll be presenting the timeline to your Board of Directors.

After answering these questions, narrow your list down to a few tools and try them out. Having this hands-on experience can help get a feel for how easy they are to use and whether they’ll satisfy your requirements.

Beyond the features and timeline style, be sure to check out other aspects of each offering. Some may not have been worked on for years and have poor support (you can send an email to their support team to see how quickly they respond). If you like multiple tools, the strength of their support docs and quality of their response could be a deciding factor.

Top 10 SmartDraw Alternatives

1. Preceden

Best SmartDraw alternative for creating timelines quickly.

Tags:
Professional Use Personal Use Educational Use Web App

Preceden is a web-based timeline maker that lets you quickly create, customize, and share professional-looking timelines. It offers a variety of templates to help you get started and makes it easy to adjust your timeline's style with its variety of appearance settings. It's actively developed and provides fast customer support.

As an alternative to SmartDraw, you’ll find that Preceden is easier to use, has more customization options, and gives you more ways to share your timeline. It strives to have all features you need (and nothing you don't) including:

  • Layers to organize events
  • Variety of customization options
  • Privacy settings to control who can see your timeline
  • Multiple ways to share, collaborate, and export

Pricing: Preceden is free to try with paid plans starting at $12/month.

2. Timeline Maker Pro

Best SmartDraw alternative for private investigators.

Tags:
Professional Use Personal Use Educational Use Windows App

Timeline Maker Pro is a Windows program helps private investigators, researchers, and planners create timelines in a variety of formats. It's one of the oldest timeline makers (it launched in 1995), but does not appear to be under active development.

Unlike SmartDraw, it is Windows software so you'll need a PC in order to use it.

Pricing: One-time purchases ranging from $49 for students to $535 for enterprise teams.

3. Tiki-Toki

Best SmartDraw alternative for multimedia heavy timelines.

Tags:
Professional Use Personal Use Educational Use Web App Mac App Chromebook

Tiki-Toki is a cloud-based timeline generator that lets you create timelines with a distinctive stylish graphical background. Unlike most other tools, Tiki-Toki lets users embed videos (YouTube, Vimeo, or MP4) directly in timelines.

Pricing: Tiki-Toki's free plan is limited to 1 timeline with paid plans starting at $9.50/month that support multiple timelines and additional features.

4. Aeon Timeline

Best SmartDraw alternative for writers.

Tags:
Professional Use Personal Use Windows App Mac App

Aeon Timeline is a Mac and Windows app that helps users create data-rich timelines. Unlike SmartDraw, it lets users sync their timelines with Scrivener and Ulysses to avoid copy-pasting data between applications.

Pricing: Free 14-day trial, then a one-time purchase of $64.99.

5. Timeline 3D

Tags:
Professional Use Personal Use Mac App

Timeline 3D is a Mac app for creating beautiful multimedia timelines.

Pricing: Timeline 3D is free to use.

6. Timeline JS

Best SmartDraw alternative for open source enthusiasts.

Tags:
Professional Use Personal Use Programmers Use Web App

Timeline JS is one of the few open source timeline creators, meaning you can view and even customize its source code if you'd like. It's somewhat limited in features and customization options, but might be a good option if you like the style as-is or want to support an open source project.

Unlike SmartDraw, Timeline JS has you enter your data in a Google Sheet which is then read by your timeline.

Pricing: TimelineJS is free to use.

7. Venngage

Best SmartDraw alternative for creating infographic timelines.

Tags:
Professional Use Web App

Venngage is a tool for marketers looking to create compelling visual content online. Its drag-and-drop design editor is easy to use, beginners will be up and running and no time. They also have a large collection of 100+ professionally designed & beginner-friendly timeline templates (many of which cost nothing to use) that can be customized in just a few clicks.

Pricing: Plans range from free to $49/month depending on desired features, with quarterly and annual plans at a discount.

8. Creately

Best SmartDraw alternative for teams needing a variety of visualization capabilities.

Tags:
Professional Use Personal Use Educational Use Web App

Creately is a suite of visualization tools that includes a timeline maker product. Unlike dedicated timeline maker tools, Unlike SmartDraw, Creately's timelines are purely graphical and therefore non-interactive.

Pricing: Creately has a free plan that is limited to 3 documents with paid plans starting at $4/month.

9. Timestream

Tags:
Professional Use Windows App Mac App

Timestream is a interactive timeline maker software for organizing factual material electronically. It's a platform for creating an organized timeline of key case events and linking electronic evidence to these events. Timesteam allows you to build complex storylines on an interactive timeline. You can collect compelling case evidence and simply drag it into Timestream.

Pricing: Timesteam offers a free 30-day trial. A one year license costs $995.

10. Edraw Timeline

Tags:
Professional Use Windows App Mac App

Edraw Max can be applied as an easy vector timeline software with rich examples and timeline templates. It has the tools to make it easy to create a professional-looking timeline infographic, history, schedules, timetables and PERT diagram.

Free Timeline is simple yet very powerful - it allows entry of both events and time periods; it scales automatically; it color-codes collapsible timeline groups; it also supports links and images. It can export to PDF, PowerPoint, Word and Graphics.

If you're looking for a great vertical timeline maker, this is the one for you.

Pricing: Edraw timeline is free to download and try. A 3 year license costs $179, a lifetime license costs $245, and subscription license (yearly) costs $99 for the first year and $69 per year to renew thereafter.