How do you create your wireframes?

Balsamiq

I like to think in terms of low fidelity to high fidelity tools. At the start you want things to be quick and dirty, so you can make many itterations, and toss things that don't work. As you get further along in the process, you want the fidelity to increase as you get closer to reality.

Here is how I generally like to work:

1. Low Fidelity: An 8 x 4 foot Whiteboard with fresh markers of different colors and sizes, and a good eraser. Alternately a legal pad, pen, and stickies can work very well if you don't have the space or need to work anywhere. On a sidenote I'm currently reading a book called "Pencil me in" to improve my whiteboard/paper sketching skills.

2. Medium Fidelity: Balsamiq Desktop is great for laying things out, creating links, and clicking around your wireframes. It gives you a feeling how things will actually work, much more so than whiteboard/paper. It keeps things looking like a sketch, so you don't get too caught up in appearance. ($89 for the Desktop version)

3. High Fidelity: Sketch is where I design the finished & polished screens. I can get very caught up in colors, fonts, pixel perfect spacing, etc. so I try to leave this for last. I've also hated Photoshop for interface design, loved Adobe Fireworks, and when Sketch came out it became my favorite tool.

Also if you want to create clickable prototypes you can export your screens to something like Invision.

I hope this helps!

I really like Whimsical which is built by a couple indie hackers. It's great for quick wireframe mockups that look better than your traditional pencil sketch style ones do. It's also super versatile for doing other diagrams you will need along the development journey. https://whimsical.com

As mentioned Adobe XD and Figma are the main Sketch competitors that are free. InVision Studio is another good option if you're looking to create interactive prototypes.

However, those are all probably more than you need if you're really only looking to do wireframes. I'd recommend Whimsical (https://whimsical.com/). It does a great job at keeping the focus on high-level layout and structure decisions, rather than getting distracted by colors, shadows, fonts, etc.

I use Adobe XD which is amazing and I absolutely love. It is also currently free, although given that it is Adobe, they may change that in the future. https://www.adobe.com/products/xd.html

I've had a good experience with Moqups--you can get a good feel for it in their freemium plan, and then it bumps up to $19/month which I think is reasonable. In my opinion, as a non designer, I think that it's robust yet very easy to use.

If you are looking for a digital solution, take a look at Figma https://www.figma.com/
I like to use old fashion tools for wireframes :) https://twitter.com/feriforgacs/status/1143434056513871875