Vim vs System Designer
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Vim
A highly configurable text editor with a long history, designed for efficient editing from both command lines and graphical interfaces. It offers extensive customization options for programmers and writers alike.
- Text editing
- Command-line interface support
- Graphical user interface support
- Highly configurable
- Free and open source
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Vim is a text editor first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface. Vim is free and open source software and is released under a license which includes some charityware clauses, encouraging users who enjoy the software to consider donating to children in Uganda. https://vim.sourceforge.io/about.php
System Designer
Design complex systems using a low-code platform that leverages UML standards. Generate code skeletons and manage components graphically. Run and test your system with dynamic type checking.
- UML-based system modeling
- Code skeleton generation
- Graphical component creation
- MSON format for model definition
- Dynamic type checking
- Cross-device synchronization via GitHub
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System Designer is a low-code development platform for creating systems. No matter the frameworks you use and the code you write, the most important is the model that you define to create your system. System Designer helps you to design this model and to generate the classes and components to build your system. DESIGN YOUR SYSTEM WITH EASE If you look at the different JavaScript frameworks on the market, you will notice that they all have their own way to define a model, generally only with code. System Designer uses UML, a standard, to define your model. So you probably already know how to design in System Designer even if you have never run it. The definition of the model is stored on a JSON format called MSON. With MSON you can define types, classes, one to one / one to many relationships and multi inheritance between classes. CODE THE BEHAVIOR OF YOUR SYSTEM Once you have created your model, System Designer generates the skeletons of all your methods. You only have then to add your code to implement them. System Designer provides you helpers to manage your components. You can easily navigate threw your components to create your application. CREATE COMPONENTS GRAPHICALLY There is no need to code to instantiate a component. Create a component in System Designer is like creating a document in a NoSQL Database. In fact, System Designer acts as an ODM (Object-Document Mapper) to manage your components as NoSQL Documents. RUN YOUR SYSTEM You can run your system directly from System Designer. Because you have defined a model for your application, a Dynamic Type Check is done on every action of your system. All warnings are send and shown in System Designer. DESIGN ON THE GO System Designer can be used on macOS, iPad or any browsers. System Designer has a Github module to synchronize your work between all these apps. You can begin your design on your Mac and then continue it on your iPad.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: System Designer at 4.4 against Vim's 2.9. System Designer also leads on review sentiment (78% vs 46%) and update cadence (monthly vs every 9 months). Vim's advantage is iOS requirement (9.0 vs 15.6). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
System Designer holds the better App Store score, 4.4 against 2.9. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 21 and 17 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 46% of Vim's written reviews are positive against 78% of System Designer's.
Vim ships an update every 9 months, System Designer monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 4, 2026 and October 6, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Vim | System Designer |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 2.9 (21 ratings) | 4.4 (17 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 46.2% of reviews | 77.8% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 21 — better | 17 |
| Update frequency | Every 9 months | Monthly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 15.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 37 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Applidium | Erwan Carriou |
Customer experience
Vim
System Designer
Bugs and requests
Vim
Reported bugs
13 issues- Escape key not recognized on external keyboards
- Space bar non-functional with external keyboards
- Font illegible on Retina and newer displays
- Significant input lag between keystrokes and display
- Window focus not maintained in multitasking
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- Keyboard recognition delays
- Graphics scrambled on iPhone 6 and newer
- Character rendering issues (missing 'f' character)
- Command line errors with certain commands (:ls, :echo)
- Syntax highlighting broken
- App crashes on older iOS versions
- 32-bit app incompatibility with iOS 11+
- Slow response to Bluetooth keyboard input
Requested features
15 requests- Custom keyboard row with Esc, Tab, Ctrl, and common symbols
- Dropbox and cloud service integration
- iOS copy/paste and clipboard integration
- File browser and file management system
- Better font rendering and scaling options
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- Swipe gestures for common operations (Esc, Tab)
- Plugin support
- SSH/FTP connectivity
- Customizable color schemes and themes
- Better Bluetooth keyboard support and detection
- MacVim-style tabs
- iCloud synchronization
- Open source project status
- Support for external shell integration
- Email attachment opening support
System Designer
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Vim
No in-app purchases
System Designer
No in-app purchases









