simplewires.com

What It Is

Simple Wires is an engineering-focused online design canvas that runs in modern browsers. It is mainly used to create conceptual block diagrams, detailed wiring/interconnect diagrams, and rack layouts. Rather than being a general-purpose visual design tool, it structures the workflow around equipment, connectors, cables, racks, and materials data in engineering projects, making it suitable for engineers and designers who need to extract bill-of-materials-style data from their drawings.

Core Capabilities

Its core value is “drawings + data.” Users can create conceptual diagrams, connector-level interconnect diagrams, and rack layouts, then export Equipment Lists, Bills of Materials, and Cable Lists. Drawings can be printed and exported as PDF, DWG, PNG, and SVG, while data lists can be exported to Excel. The Master Library includes more than 100,000 community-contributed product blocks, reducing the work required to model everything from scratch. The system also offers automatic cable numbering, device creation from prototypes, autosave, archives of the last 64 saves, rollback, and project archiving.

Pricing and Collaboration

The free plan can be used long term, but it only supports 1 project and 1 drawing, and some print/export options are watermarked. Lite costs $29.99/user/month. Individual costs $60/user/month or $648/user/year. The team plan costs $240/plan/month or $2592/plan/year; the official site also lists discounted annual-equivalent prices such as $54/user/month and $216/plan/month. Team can be tried for 10 days with no credit card required. For collaboration, Individual and above support collaborative projects, real-time collaborative drawing, share invitations, permission settings, and project ownership transfer. Team further adds member, viewer, project permission, and notification management.

Pros and Cons

The main advantage is its clear focus on professional engineering scenarios: it connects design drawings with cable, equipment, and BOM data, while export formats cover common engineering deliverables such as DWG, PDF, and Excel. Browser-based access and Azure cloud storage also reduce deployment overhead. The downsides are that the free plan is very limited, and paid pricing may feel expensive for individuals or small teams. Canceling a subscription deletes data unless you switch to Free to retain it. PayPal is not supported, and some export and collaboration features require higher-tier plans.

Who It’s For and Access from China

Simple Wires is suitable for teams working in low-voltage systems, AV, data centers/server rooms, system integration, and engineering design who need to deliver wiring diagrams, rack diagrams, and related lists. Access from China is not specified in the available text. The service is hosted on Azure in the Central US, so actual speed and stability should be tested. Payments support Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express, and PO invoicing is also available, but these options may not be convenient for users in mainland China. Alternatives include diagrams.net, Lucidchart, Visio, Miro, and AutoCAD.