Lottielab vs LottieFiles: Which Animation Tool is Best for Your Needs?

We've noticed something funny happening lately – a bit of mistaken identity in the Lottieverse. It seems like every time someone talks about Lottie animations, they tend to lump Lottielab and LottieFiles together. It's like we're the fraternal twins of the Lottie world – similar but definitely distinct.

Now while we both love Lottie and have built tools to help teams create amazing animations, we are entirely different companies with no affiliations. Furthermore, we have different approaches to how we cater to the needs of designers.

Before we get into differences, let's rewind how Lottie came to be.

• In 2015, Hernan Torrisi created Bodymovin, an After Effects plugin that could export animations as JSON files. This innovation paved the way for Lottie's widespread adoption.

• In 2017, Airbnb engineers embraced this format, creating libraries for iOS, Android, and React Native, giving birth to the Lottie format we know and love today. They christened it "Lottie" after the animation pioneer Lotte Reiniger.

The Lottie animation format changed how we added dynamic and interactive elements to our digital experiences. And as Lottie's popularity grew, so did the demand for tools to streamline the creation and integration process. In 2018, LottieFiles launched, becoming a hub for showcasing, sharing, and testing Lottie animations. They played a huge role in popularising the format, from creating a Marketplace for Lotties to smaller plugins and extensions for tools like After Effects and Figma to make it easier for animators, designers and developers to leverage the power of the format.

By 2021, while Lottie's popularity was skyrocketing, the tools and workflow for it were still archaic and disjointed, proving a challenge for many designers and developers. We at Lottielab saw an opportunity to elevate the Lottie experience even further. We launched our platform, designed specifically for product and design teams who want the easiest way to create exceptional animations together. Designers loved it!

Under The Hood: Lottielab vs LottieFiles

While Lottielab and LottieFiles both cater to designers working with Lottie animations, Lottielab has emerged as a game-changer, offering a more intuitive, powerful, and designer-friendly experience. Our tool is perfect for teams who value collaboration, real-time feedback, and getting things done efficiently. 

Let's dive into why Lottielab is the preferred choice for professionals who demand more from their animation tools.

1. The Editor: 

At the heart of any animation tool is its editor and this is where Lottielab differs significantly in approach, interface and functionality. Lottielab’s interface is designed for the modern designer, regardless of their animation skills— it’s sleek, user-friendly and designed for ease of use and collaboration. Being a tool built from the ground up to be easy for designers and non-animators alike, it has a more approachable Figma-like interface. While LottieFiles, drawing its inspiration from tools like After Effects, may feel difficult to navigate at first, whilst also being limited in feature set, reliability and robustness.

Lottielab’s editor is a far more robust solution for creating Lottie animations. From powerful path editing tools, blend modes, effects and more, Lottielab is the easiest and most powerful Lottie editor out there. We've also packed it with tools for crafting pixel-perfect designs and animations: curve editing, motion paths, easing, layer styles, and a super organized asset management system.

2. Interactivity:

Here's where we get really excited: Lottielab is the world's first and only interactive Lottie design editor!

Lottielab’s Interactivity feature allows designers to create animations and add states and events to make them interactive all in one design editor, no coding required! You can add scrolls, hovers and clicks that respond to user input to your lottie files.

You can even import your Figma designs, SVGs and existing lotties and add interactivity. By integrating interactivity directly within our editor, we have eliminated the need for any coding or third-party tools.

We’ve also introduced our Preview Playground feature, which acts like a staging environment for your animations. It allows you to mirror your animations in their final form and test all the interactions exactly as your users would experience them. You can invite your team to collaborate, test, and share feedback in real time, streamlining the process of identifying issues and making adjustments before going live.

LottieFiles Creator does not have built-in interactivity capabilities. Interactivity is typically handled through external coding and integration with development environments, requiring additional steps and tools to implement.

In contrast, with Lottielab, creating and implementing interactive animations is super easy to do so. Lottielab offers a more streamlined approach to implementing interactive elements directly within its platform leveraging Livelink which means you can simply copy a link to your lottie animation and paste it into your app or website. For more advanced use cases, you can also integrate your interactive Lottie with custom code, making it even more dynamic. This makes it a more convenient choice for designers and developers who want to integrate dynamic features without relying heavily on additional tools and libraries.

3. Figma Plugin

We understand the importance of workflow integration which is why we designed the Lottielab-Figma plugin to facilitate smooth workflow between both editors. Our plugin allows designers to directly import their designs into Lottielab for animation without the need for complex exporting processes. You can import entire Figma files with properties like gradients, masks, vector paths and more directly into Lottielab, maintaining the structure of the design and preserving design integrity.

In addition to the ability to see a preview of your selected layers and frames, Lottielab’s plugin allows you to identify any issues with your assets before exporting, enabling you to fix them in advance and saving you valuable time.

Asides Figma’s own animation limitations which designers are familiar with, Lottiefiles Figma plugin doesn’t do much to help as it doesn’t support certain properties such as path animations, and often has issues with conversions and general reliability. In short, Lottielab has the most comprehensive support for Figma properties.

4. Workflow: Seamless vs Fragmented

Lottielab offers a centralized, all-in-one environment where the entire design-to-animation process is handled within a single platform. This allows individuals and teams to create, edit, animate and add interactivity and handoff without the need for multiple tools, plugins or code. 

LottieFiles, on the other hand, relies on other tools and even code to handle different parts of the animation process. The need to switch between different tools fragments the workflow, making the hand-off process more dependent on effective coordination and communication between team members which as you know, can be a real hassle.

Also, every feature we offer and every file you export is fully compatible across all platforms. Whether you're deploying animations on iOS, Android, the web or any other environment, you will not need a second tool to ensure smooth integration.

5. File sizes and Optimization

Lotties are loved for their tiny file sizes and we aim to keep it that way. Lottielab produces the smallest lottie files in the world—you simply won’t find smaller file sizes in any other lottie design editor. To take things further, we built our Livelink CDN to simplify the delivery and management of Lottie animations. It leverages advanced optimization techniques, to compress animations and reduce file sizes (up to 10x, and in some cases 100x, smaller!) without compromising quality. 

LottieFiles offers an optimizer as well (as a paid feature), focusing on compressing already finished, exported files. This approach results in less effective optimization compared to Lottielab’s integrated technology, which handles compression throughout the entire design process. Additionally, while LottieFiles offers compression into its proprietary dotLottie format, this format—based on .zip—doesn’t achieve the same level of compression. dotLottie also has poorer cross-platform support and requires extra code, libraries, and processing power to read, making it a less efficient solution overall.

6. Collaboration

Lottielab has strong real-time collaboration features making it ideal for teams that need a seamless design-to-animation process and a smooth, direct hand-off to developers or other stakeholders. Multiple team members can work on the same project simultaneously, which enhances the workflow by allowing designers and stakeholders to interact and make decisions together in real-time. This reduces the need for extensive back-and-forth communication and speeds up the iteration process. We are also currently working on more collaboration features such as comments and a surprise feature ( 😃) before the end of 2024.

LottieFiles, on the other hand, only supports asynchronous collaboration, which limits its effectiveness for teams that need to move quickly or work together in real time. While users can leave comments on a file preview, the inability to collaborate simultaneously on an artboard in-editor creates unnecessary delays and hampers the workflow. Team members have to wait for feedback and revisions instead of addressing issues on the spot, which can result in slower iteration cycles and more back-and-forth communication. This lack of real-time collaboration can be a significant drawback, especially for teams working under tight deadlines or with fast-paced projects.

7. Export support

   
   

We're not just about web animations. Lottielab supports a whole universe of formats, including GIFs, MP4s up to 4K resolution and even Telegram stickers. We also have embed instructions for your favourite CMS including Framer, WordPress, Squarespace, and Webflow. Whether you're creating animations for a website, app, social media, creating product launch videos, or any project that requires digital animation, we've got you covered. 

Beyond the initial export process, Lottielab's Livelink CDN offers version control which allows you to update animations that you’ve already deployed live without disrupting the user experience. You can make changes on your lottie directly in Lottielab, click a button to publish and the animation is instantly updated everywhere you've used the link.

In contrast, LottieFiles only allows you to embed downloaded Lottie animations on your website. You can't push changes or improvements to your animations after export on the fly, which limits flexibility and forces you to go through the download and re-upload process for every update.

8. Pricing

We keep things simple with our pricing. Our free tier is perfect for trying out the platform. You can create unlimited files, import from Figma, and even export your animations to see how they look. When you're ready to upgrade, we offer a monthly billing option, so you're not locked into a yearly commitment.

LottieFiles only offers annual billing, which may be a significant commitment for smaller teams or individuals who are just starting out or working on shorter projects.

Lottielab vs LottieFiles? Which Animation Tool is Best For You?

Ultimately, the choice between Lottielab and LottieFiles depends on your specific needs and priorities. Whilst LottieFiles can be a useful source of stock assets, Lottielab represents the next evolution in design-focused animation tools. With an intuitive interface, powerful features, and designer-centric approach, Lottielab is empowering creators to bring their visions to life more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

Our innovative approach has gained us recognition, and just a few months after our beta release, we were being used by world-class product teams such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Monzo, Google, Amazon and more, and was voted a Design Tool of the Year on Product Hunt's Golden Kitty awards (2023) .

We hope this clears up any confusion. If you ever accidentally email us with a LottieFiles support question (it happens!), we'll point you in the right direction. And if you're ready to create, animate and collaborate like never before, we'd love to have you join us at Lottielab!

Ready to elevate your animation game? Try Lottielab today and experience the difference for yourself.