Meet the new Cacoo

At Nulab, our mission is to make team collaboration easy, fun, and efficient. Which is why we decided it was time to update our popular diagramming tool Cacoo.

Over the past year, our team has rigorously researched, re-designed, built, and tested a brand new Cacoo. And we are incredibly excited to finally share it with you.

Why a new Cacoo?

Cacoo is beloved by so many companies for a few reasons: it’s simple to learn, easy to use, and affordable for teams of all sizes. As with any technology, though, as time goes by, things change. New approaches to design and technology transform the market; the rise of the gig market puts a greater emphasis on temporary and remote workers; and, of course, we start identifying and learning from our mistakes.

We needed to build a new Cacoo because without it we wouldn’t be delivering on our mission to make collaboration as easy, fun, and efficient as possible.

So we got to work. And now, we’re ready to share a Cacoo that delivers.

What’s new

The feedback we received on the old Cacoo was clear: the look and feel were outdated, people weren’t always sure where to find things, and teams wanted to make giving feedback easier.

Taking these (and many more) insights into account, we were able to redesign Cacoo from the ground up.

Modern look & feel

Cacoo’s dashboard and editor have been given a huge makeover. But more than simply making the interfaces look good, we set out to make sure design and color never distract the user.

As you navigate through Cacoo, our muted use of color and clear iconography will help guide you where you want to go. Icons are simple to read and understand. They highlight when in use and grey out when unavailable.

Most importantly, our app’s design and colors will never compete with your diagrams for attention. When you’re in Cacoo, your work is your focus.

Old Dashboard

Old Editor

New Dashboard

New Editor

Optimized UI

The old editor had features that were too powerful to properly organize in a single top toolbar. That’s why we expanded it all around the canvas.

• Left: On the left-hand side, you’ll find your main menu, where you can select what you want to create (i.e. shapes, text, lines, etc.) as well as options for viewing, sharing, and exporting your diagram.
• Top: Options for customizing your selected object will appear clickable on your top toolbar.
• Right: To your right, you’ll find the sheets of your diagram. You can name and organize them here.
• Bottom: And below, you’ll see viewing and feedback options.

Some things you’ll notice are gone: We got rid of the inspector tool and integrated the shapes library into the editor’s main menu. (No more pesky pop-ups cluttering up your viewing space. Yay!)

The dashboard is better organized for searching and filtering diagrams, and you can now find all of your templates and start a new diagram right from the templates folder.

New & enhanced features for collaboration

Our users love collaborating in Cacoo, but there were a few feature requests we knew we couldn’t ignore.

First was in-app commenting. Now your team can leave comments right on diagrams as well as mark them as resolved once their feedback has been taken into account. All you have to do is click the ‘Comment’ icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the editor and start typing.

You can also present your diagrams in full screen straight from the editor by selecting ‘Play’ to enter presentation mode.

These new features (and more to come!) make it so discussions and meetings can all take place right in Cacoo.

What’s next?

Cacoo’s redesign is just the first step in a more customer-centric approach at Nulab. As our company and our apps continue to transform, we’re excited to bring you more updates designed to fit the modern team’s need for collaboration.

Try out the new Cacoo today! Simply log in to your Cacoo account, or sign up for a free trial here. And let us know your thoughts using the hashtag #newCacoo.