Altium Develop

What do you like best about the product?

High potential for PCB design to ensure production without issues.

What do you dislike about the product?

The option to purchase perpetual licenses no longer exists.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Altium Develop allows for optimal management of BOMs with the ability to connect suppliers.

What do you like best about the product?

Easy to use. Pricing is also pretty good. It´s pretty easy to use. Works well for smaller projects.

What do you dislike about the product?

Forcing users to subscription model. Part libraries could also have more components.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

We need to create PCB´s to our customers.

What do you like best about the product?

I like that the price per seat is cheaper than a regular Altium license but still has all the features we need. It works pretty well. Tried to incorporate CoDesigner but it seemed more difficult than it was worth, especially since I manage both the MCAD and the ECAD design of the PCBAs.

What do you dislike about the product?

Managing the seat/license is cumbersome. Sometimes it will randomly assign the seat to me even though I am not using it.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Transitioning the license to a remote server is beneficial for us, especially because our private servers are going momentarily going offline later this month.

What do you like best about the product?

UI/UX, simplicity, universality, visual aspect

What do you dislike about the product?

The obligation to switch to a subscription tool, whereas we had a perpetual license. The new way of managing the license with the browser that works poorly. The lack of performance (not utilizing all the computer's cores). The new evolutions that are often not features that standard users need. Poor management of evolutions (rules vs constrained design)....

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Altium allows for effective management of variants and production files

What do you like best about the product?

That the library and project management is no longer a paid subscription add on. There is also a large amount of high speed design features + wire harness features which would otherwise be a paid addition. Gives reason to choose altium over expedition for example.

What do you dislike about the product?

Everything is unfortunately obfuscated by tables. Having a better hotkey and navigation system would be nice. Additionally the layout should be drag and drop from schematic instead of just dropping it all in.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Wire harness design is the most useful immediate thing. We also have older boards which need to be updated and the bom management is nice for longevity purposes.

What do you like best about the product?

It makes collaborative PCB development much more streamlined by bringing design, collaboration, project management, and version control into one connected workflow. The ability to work with shared design data, review changes, and collaborate with other engineers helps reduce communication gaps and keeps everyone aligned throughout the hardware development process.

What do you dislike about the product?

It has a learning curve, especially for teams moving from traditional desktop-based PCB workflows. Some of the more advanced collaboration and project management features can also take time to configure properly, and I’d like more granular controls for customizing workflows and permissions.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

This helps eliminate fragmented PCB development workflows by centralizing design collaboration, project data, and version management. It reduces the risk of engineers working from outdated designs, makes design reviews more efficient, and improves traceability across the project.

What do you like best about the product?

There are many intelligent features that make the artwork process easy.

What do you dislike about the product?

Unlike Kicad, the process of adding commonly used general-purpose components (e.g., 0603, 0402 capacitors, etc.) is complicated. For the way I currently use Altium, most of what I need could honestly be done in KiCad as well. That makes the price harder to justify — the tool is capable, but I'm not using enough of its advanced feature set to feel like I'm getting full value at this cost. A 20–30% lower price point would feel much more proportionate to my actual usage. Alternatively, bringing back a perpetual license option would help a lot, since paying indefinitely for a subscription is a bigger concern for me than the absolute price itself.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

It's generally useful for designing PCBs with small package components and for building impedance-matching circuits, where precise trace and footprint control matter.

What do you like best about the product?

We moved from Altium Standard to Altium Develop license and all looks the same with cost reduction.

What do you dislike about the product?

Sometimes takes forever to launch the tool and requires signing in very often.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

PCBAs are designed using templates and the BOM management is good

What do you like best about the product?

With Altium Develop, I can collaborate closely with my clients. They can share comments directly on the boards as we’re developing them, which makes the whole process smoother.

What do you dislike about the product?

It would be much better if it could connect to external task management systems.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Because my clients can view and collaborate during the design phase, we avoid long meetings. The same applies to internal use.

What do you like best about the product?

Altium 365 Component library management. Having many components footprints and symbols readily available without needing to import them. Lots of hotkeys to make schematic capture and PCB layout easier. Being able to send my colleagues files through MCAD Codesigner. Altium Develop is now cheaper for my small team size. I have not used any AI features yet. Rendering and automated changes happen quickly.

What do you dislike about the product?

Small glitches or crashing. The Altium support team does not respond quickly. There are no MCP plugins to use Claude or ChatGPT directly in Altium.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Quick and easy PCB development with every feature imaginable.