Online/offline
Do you need an internet connection to run it?
Google Drawings is available only as an online application, in the sense that it runs in your browser. Conversely,
Inkscape and Libreoffice Draw are only available to run locally on your PC. There is an application called Libreoffice
Online, but this is provided only as software and not as an online hosted service. Gravit and Vectr, on the other hand, can be run either online or offline. Strictly speaking Gravit Designer, as reviewed here, is for offline use only, but the same publishers also provide Gravit Cloud, which provides the same features, but which runs in the cloud.
Both approaches have their supporters, but rather than automatically being drawn to the one solution, it would be appropriate to consider the pros and cons of having just an online or just an offline solution. Clearly if you only have online drawing software, you can’t use it if you’re without an internet connection – perhaps when you’re on a plane, or don’t want to have to pay for Wi-fi.
You might think that the offline option is therefore preferable, but this is only true if you have a PC on which it’s installed to hand. With online software, so long as there’s an internet connection you could work from any PC, running under any operating system for that matter. The dual approach, therefore, seems to offer a win-win solution. This might seem to favour
Gravit and Vectr, but things aren’t quite that simple with the latter because, even if you have it installed locally on your PC, you will only be able to use it if you log in via an online connection – one of those ‘features’ than benefit the publisher rather than the user.