Markup.io vs Aligno: Which Design Feedback Tool Is Right for You?
A detailed comparison of Markup.io and Aligno. Workflow emphasis, pricing, file support, and client experience, with an honest take on which tool fits which workflow.
I built Aligno, so take this with the grain of salt it deserves. But I also spend a lot of time reading Markup.io's pricing page, their blog, and the threads where people compare the two of us, because I want to know exactly where we lose to them and why. Most comparison posts in this space are written by whoever pays for the ad slot, and they read like it. This one is not going to tell you Aligno wins on every axis, because it does not.
Here is the short version: Markup.io is a collaborative review platform built for large internal teams and a wide range of file types. Aligno is a narrower tool built around one job, getting a client to look at a design and give you an explicit yes or a clear list of changes — though its Pro plan now includes room for a small internal team too. If you already know which of those two problems you have, you can probably skip to the "who should choose which" section near the bottom. If you are not sure, the rest of this post walks through where each tool actually holds up.
The core difference in one sentence
Markup.io is built for review across teams and many file types. Aligno is built for the specific handoff between a designer and a client that ends in sign-off.
That distinction is not a marketing angle. It shapes the pricing model, the feature set, who the client-facing experience is designed for, and where each product feels natural instead of bolted on.
Workflow emphasis: collaboration versus a single approval loop
Markup.io positions itself as a collaborative review platform. Comments on a design can be turned into tasks that sync with Trello, Asana, or Jira, so feedback moves straight into whatever your team already uses to track work. The product supports more than 30 file types, including video, which matters if your review process spans a mix of creative formats rather than just static images.
Aligno does one thing and tries to do it well: upload a design or paste a live URL, share a link with your client, collect pinned comments, and get an explicit approve or request-changes decision. That decision is tied to a specific version of the asset, so there is a record of exactly what was approved and when. This is a deliberately narrow workflow. If your bottleneck is chasing a client for a clear answer instead of another round of vague notes, that narrowness is the point, not a limitation you have to work around.
If your actual bottleneck is internal team review across a wide range of asset types, with feedback that needs to land in a project tracker, Markup.io is the better fit and I would not try to talk you out of it. If your bottleneck is getting external clients to respond with specific feedback and a final decision, that is the problem Aligno was built to solve.
Client experience: where the two products pull apart
This is the section where I have the strongest opinion, so read it knowing that.
With Markup.io, guest reviewers can leave feedback without creating an account on some plans, which is good. The interface itself is built for people who review things for a living: internal designers, producers, project managers. That is fine for a team member. It is a lot for a client who opens the link once, wants to say the logo should move up, and then wants to be done.
Aligno strips the client side down to almost nothing. A client opens a share link in any browser, clicks directly on the design to drop a pinned comment, and presses one button to approve or request changes. No account, no onboarding screen, no feature they need to learn first. For freelancers whose clients are restaurant owners, dentists, or small business founders rather than fellow designers, that simplicity is most of the value. It is not a nice-to-have layered on top of the product. It is closer to the whole reason the product exists.
If your reviewers are other professionals who review creative work regularly, the added surface area in Markup.io will not bother them and the extra tooling might actually help. If your reviewers are clients who review one thing a month and just want an easy way to say yes, Aligno's stripped-down approach removes friction you would otherwise be creating for them.
File type and asset support
Markup.io supports more than 30 file types: images, PDFs, video, websites, and a long tail of more specialized formats. If your projects regularly touch file types outside the common set, that breadth is a real advantage and one Aligno does not try to match.
Aligno supports images (PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF), PDFs, video files up to 100MB (MP4, MOV, WebM) with timestamp-pinned comments, and live webpage URLs. That covers the bulk of what design and web projects actually need, including video proofing where a client can comment on a specific moment in a cut rather than describing it in a timestamp-free email. It does not try to cover the other 25-plus formats Markup.io lists. If your work lives in mockups, PDFs, live sites, or video, Aligno covers it end to end. If you regularly need to review something more niche, a CAD file, an audio file, a format outside that core set, Markup.io's broader support is the more honest answer for you.
Pricing: flat-rate unlimited seats versus a free tier with no clock
Markup.io lists a Pro plan at $79 a month flat, with unlimited users included and a 30-day free trial. That flat-rate structure is genuinely good if you have a large team, because the price does not climb as you add reviewers. Their pricing FAQ describes restricted usage for accounts that do not upgrade once the trial ends, and there is Enterprise pricing for larger organizations that need it.
Aligno has a free plan with no credit card required and no trial clock attached to it. The free tier covers a full client review, enough to actually run a real project through it rather than just poke at a demo. The Pro plan removes the asset cap, adds full approval history with CSV or PDF export of the sign-off record, puts your own logo on the client-facing pages, lets you set review due dates with automatic reminders, and bundles up to 3 team seats at no extra charge, billed monthly or annually. Check the pricing page for current rates, since I would rather you look at the real numbers than trust a stale figure in a blog post.
The honest comparison here depends entirely on team size. A solo freelancer, or a small studio of up to three people, gets more out of Aligno's free or Pro tier, because there is no per-seat charge and no expiration pushing you toward a purchase decision before you are ready. A twelve-person internal team still gets more out of Markup.io's flat $79, because that price does not multiply per seat the way a lot of per-user pricing does, and it covers far more seats than Aligno's bundled allotment. If you are trying to decide which of these two shapes fits your situation, that is really the question to ask yourself before anything else on this page.
Approval workflow: explicit sign-off versus collaborative annotation
This is Aligno's strongest differentiator, and I will say so plainly because it is the actual reason I built the product this way. Every version of every asset carries an explicit state: approved or changes requested. When a client approves, that decision is recorded against the exact version they were looking at. If a scope question comes up two weeks later, the answer lives in the tool instead of somewhere in a forwarded email thread nobody can find.
The newer piece of this workflow is deadline handling. On paid plans you can set a review due date, and Aligno emails the reviewer before the deadline and follows up if the review goes overdue. Chasing sign-off was the part of client work I most wanted to stop doing by hand, so the tool does it now.
Markup.io offers review statuses and sign-off features of its own, but the product's center of gravity is collaborative annotation, not a formal approval record. For internal team review, that is the right emphasis. Teams reviewing each other's work benefit more from open-ended annotation than from a rigid approve/reject gate. For client-facing work where you need a documented handoff point you can point back to, the difference in emphasis matters more than it looks like on a feature list.
Integrations
Markup.io has a clear edge here. Direct integrations with Trello, Asana, Jira, and Slack mean feedback can flow straight into your existing project management setup without someone manually retyping notes into a ticket. If your team already runs on one of those tools, this alone might be worth the subscription.
Aligno has its own integrations now, even though it stays focused on the review step. It posts comment and approval activity to Slack, and imports frames from Figma as review assets. For anything past that, a Zapier connection and a REST API let you push review events into your own tools. What Aligno deliberately doesn't do is route feedback into a project tracker as tickets, and that is exactly where Markup.io's Trello, Asana, and Jira links earn their keep. For solo freelancers and small agencies who are not running work through Jira, that is not a gap you will notice. For a larger team that already lives inside a ticketing system, it is worth weighing.
Who should choose which
Choose Markup.io if: your workflow involves multiple internal reviewers annotating the same asset, you need support for file types beyond images, PDFs, and video, your team already uses Jira, Asana, or Trello and wants feedback routed directly into tickets, or you are a larger team where the flat $79/month unlimited-seat pricing beats paying per person.
Choose Aligno if: your primary workflow is sending designs or live pages to external clients for review and approval, your clients are not designers and you want their side of the process to require zero learning curve, you want an explicit approval record tied to a specific version rather than an open comment thread, you are a freelancer or small team of up to a few people that does not need unlimited seats or PM-tool integrations, or you want to start on a free plan with no trial clock forcing a decision before you are ready.
Neither list is longer because one product is better. They are different lengths because the two tools are solving different problems, and your actual workflow is the only thing that tells you which list you belong on.
Frequently asked questions
Does Markup.io or Aligno cost less? It depends on team size. Markup.io's Pro plan is a flat $79 a month with unlimited users, which gets cheaper per person as a team grows. Aligno has a free plan with no trial clock, so a solo freelancer or small studio can run a full review cycle without paying anything. Check the pricing page for current numbers before deciding.
Can clients leave feedback without creating an account with either tool? On some Markup.io plans, guest reviewers can comment without an account, though the interface is still built for people who review things professionally. Aligno strips the client side down further: no account, no onboarding screen, just a share link and a pinned comment.
Which tool fits freelancers with non-designer clients better? Aligno, because its whole client-facing flow assumes the reviewer only opens the link once and wants a fast yes or no. Markup.io's broader toolset is built for teams reviewing creative work regularly, which matters less if your clients are restaurant owners or small business founders reviewing a handful of times a year.
The bottom line
Neither tool wins across the board, and I would be lying if I told you otherwise. Markup.io is the stronger choice for internal creative teams that need broad file support and tickets flowing into Jira or Asana. Aligno is the stronger choice for the specific moment when you need a client to look at something and give you a real answer.
If you are a freelance designer sending a homepage mockup to a client who has never used a review tool before, Aligno will save you the back-and-forth of explaining how the interface works. If you are coordinating review across a marketing team, an engineering team, and a QA team who all need to weigh in on the same asset, Markup.io's integration depth is going to serve you better.
The only way to actually know which fits is to run one real project through each tool rather than guess from a feature table, this one included. Aligno's free plan has no trial clock, so there is no rush. For a wider look at the field, see the full Markup.io alternative page or the broader roundup of design feedback tools. And if you want to see every option side by side in one place, the alternatives comparison covers the rest of the field too.