Frequently Asked Questions

General and Products
How do I?
Payments and Accounts
Collaboration
Security
Technical Troubleshooting

General and Products

What is Gliffy?
Gliffy is an online application that makes it easy for you to create, share, and collaborate with diagrams. It looks and feels like a desktop application, but it works through your web browser, so there is nothing to install or maintain.

What is a web-based service?
A web-based service provides software over the Internet. You get the performance and functionality of desktop software without having to install or maintain anything. You can access the latest version of the software every time you launch Gliffy in your web browser. We also store and back up your documents securely on our servers, so you don't have to.

What can I do with Gliffy?
Create an endless variety of professional-looking diagrams, drawings, process flows, interfaces, and designs. Check out these examples to stir your creativity.

How much does Gliffy cost?
Gliffy offers free Basic Accounts and Premium Accounts that deliver full features and collaboration capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional products. View the Product Comparison, Gliffy Basic, and Gliffy Premium pages for more information.

Large groups, academic institutions, and enterprises, can get volume pricing.

Do you offer a Gliffy API?
A standards-based Gliffy API is on our product roadmap. If you are interested in developing with Gliffy, also check out our Partner Programs.

What do I need to run Gliffy?
You need a web browser with Macromedia Flash 7 or better. According to Macromedia, 99% of U.S. web browsers are configured with Flash 7, so you probably already have what you need.

I love your icons. Where can I get them?
Many of our icons were designed in house. Some were free, courtesy of FamFamFam.

What is a Gliffy Basic Account?
See the Gliffy Basic page or Product Comparison.

What is a Gliffy Premium Account?
See the Gliffy Premium page or Product Comparison.

What are public/private documents?
A public document is a read-only version of the diagram that anyone on the Internet can access.

A private document can only be viewed through the Gliffy Online editor by the document owner and those you specifically invite.

If you need to protect sensitive information, you need to create private documents. Gliffy Basic Accounts can only produce public documents. Purchase a Premium Account if you need private documents.

How do I ?

...import Gliffy drawings into illustration programs like Microsoft Visio or Adobe Illustrator?
From the Gliffy menu, Click File > Export as .SVG. After you save the file, you can open it with any illustration program that supports SVG, an open standard.

...import Gliffy drawings into word, presentation, or spreadsheet documents?
From the Gliffy menu, Click Flie > Export as JPEG or Export as PNG. Save the file to your hard drive.

...remove collaborators?
Open the document from which you'd like to remove a collaborator. From the Properties menu in the right column, click Collaborate Diagram. Click the minus sign next to the individual's name that you'd like to remove.

...publish a document?
Open the document you want to share. Click Share on the upper left portion of the screen. Select Publish info.

...print documents in "Landscape", i.e. with the long-side of the paper horizontal?
1. In Gliffy Online, from the File menu, select Print Setup. Click landscape. Click OK.
2. When you click Print in Gliffy, a dialog box will appear. Select Printer Preferences and set your printer to "landscape".

...make sure my computer is set up for optimal performance with Gliffy?
Install the latest version of Flash from Macromedia, currently Flash Player 9. Mac users should consider using Safari which generally performs better with Gliffy than Firefox does.

Payments and Accounts

How do I purchase or upgrade to an Gliffy Premium Account?
New Accounts: You can purchase a new account from the Product Comparison and Pricing page.

Existing Accounts: Login to your Gliffy account and click on any Upgrade Now or Why Upgrade buttons located in Gliffy. These will take you to our product comparison page where you can choose to upgrade your basic account to a premium account, or you can sign up an account for your organization.

How do I set up multiple users to have Gliffy Premium Accounts?
We now allow you to sign up your business or organization as a multi-user account. Visit the Product Comparison page and see business and academic pricing. An administrator of these accounts can easily add users to the account up to the account license user pack limit. Users of an account automatically have access to all diagrams created for that account.

How do add users to my organizational account?
It's easy. Login as an administrator of the account. Once the document manager dialog comes up, click the Manage Account button located on the right side of the document manager. Within the Manage Account dialog, you will see an entry for adding users to the organization. Use emails that are comma delimited to add a batch of users. Once you are done adding users, click the OK button to save your updates. You can also set certain users to be administrators of the account. Administrators have the power to add or remove users from an account, and set the administrator priveleges fors other users.

What if I want to cancel my Premium subscription?
Please contact us if you'd like to cancel your subscription. You will not be billed further for our service.

Organizational Accounts: Only an account administrator can cancel an account. Please provide your account name and number when cancelling. This is located from the Manage Account dialog.

What is your refund policy?
If you are not happy with our service for any reason, we will be happy to refund 100% of your current subscription period and cancel your account.

How do I change my personal account information, like my password?
Login to Gliffy. On the right side of the top navigation bar, click Profile. In the dialog box that opens, you can change your account information, including your email address, password, and whether or not you want to opt-in to promotional emails.

How do I upgrade the user pack license for my organizational account?
If you are an administrator of the account, login to Gliffy Online as the administrator. Once logged in, click on the Manage Account button from the document manager. When the Manage Account dialog appears, click the Upgrade link next to your total user count. This will take you to the purchase upgrade page where you can select the plan you would like to upgrade to. You will then continue to be billed based on the amount of the upgraded plan.

How do I change the credit card or billing information for my Premium account?
Please contact us if you need to update your credit card or billing information. We will get back to you shortly to get your new account information.

I am an administrator of an organization, and notice that my total user count is more than the amount of users I see in the Manage Account dialog. Why is this?
Any individuals that users of your account decide to collaborate with outside of the organization, go against your total user count. You can always easily upgrade to accomodate more users.

We have sigend up for a free trial organizational account that is now expired. Have we lost all of the information related to our account?
No, the account information will not be lost. Once you pay for a subscription, all information that the account had during the trial (diagrams, users, etc.) will be accessable.

Are payments I make on your site secure?
Yes. We do not store credit card information. We also send all credit card information over a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).

Collaboration

What is Collaboration?
When you collaborate with Gliffy, you invite others to view and edit your document. They can save their revisions to your document.

What if I don't like a collaborator's revisions?
Gliffy stores a copy of your file every time it is saved. You can instantly see previous versions to track changes or revert to an earlier version.

Can my collaborators share my document with others?
Yes, anyone you invite to collaborate can share your document with others.

Can I collaborate with anyone?
Yes, as long as the user has an email address, web browser, and internet connection. When you invite them to collaborate, they will automatically receive an email notifying them that you have invited them. The email will include
1) a link that will create a free Basic Account for them and
2) a temporary password they can use to login and see the diagram.

How will my collaborators know to look at Gliffy online?
When you invite them to collaborate, they will automatically receive an email notifying them that you have invited them. The email will include
1) a link that will create a free Basic Account for them and
2) a temporary password they can use to login and see the diagram.

Can I remove collaborators?
Yes, you can remove collaborators at any time. To remove collaborators: Open the document from which you’d like to remove a collaborator. From the Properties menu in the right column, click Collaborate Diagram. Click the minus sign next to the individual’s name that you’d like to remove.

Can I share in a way that prevents others from editing my document?
Yes, you can share without allowing viewers to edit the file. You can publish the document publicly using the Share>Publish feature. Or, you can save the document as a .PNG or .JPG and import it into a private document.

Can I collaborate documents from my organizational account to individuals outside of the organization?
Yes, you can. However, any users that are collaborated with outside of your organization, are counted as users in your overall user count.

Security

Are my documents secure?
Gliffy stores your documents on secure servers that are backed up, so your data will not be lost. However, Gliffy Basic users can only have public documents. Gliffy Premium users can have public or private documents.

Is it safe for me to make my document public?
When you publish a public document, anyone on the Internet can see the information. If you need to protect sensitive information, you should create private documents with a Gliffy Premium Account.

Technical Troubleshooting

I'm using Safari and I can't enter my username/password at the login screen.
A bug in Safari or Flash prevents the keyboard input from working sometimes. Restart Safari. This usually corrects the problem.

I see a warning message saying, "A script in this movie is causing Macromedia FlashPlayer to run slowly. Do you want to abort the script?"
Click No. Gliffy should continue to operate normally. If the warning continues to appear during the same operation, please contact our support team.