I came into Axure kicking and screaming from sketch and after 1.5 yrs, I too love Axure…but also am saddened by its slow rate of evolution. (see my other posts on frustrations with Axure).
I think for the most part the crowd effect comes down to these 3 major points.
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Not as trendy as sketch and Figma (current Design darling)…for numerous reasons. But I think for Figma… creator collaboration, web editing (and storage), and of course tonnes of plugins and templates. (which reflects the size of the community). Add to this that “everybody loves…what everybody loves” and it’s not hard to see how we’ve ended up here.
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Pricing… Figma is free to get started… Sketch is paid as is Axure. For most junior designers… that low price has an impact on quality perception. I’m sure many f them also shun Adobe for the same reason.
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The damn steep learning curve. Lets face it… ‘mastering’ Axure, is not too far from Mastering Photoshop. The learning curve is steep especially if you not from the early prototyping world
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Prototyping is only recently entered the mainstream as design tools being to move closer to the space. I admit… Macromedia Fireworks is still my altimeter favorite design & interaction app. But I remember the days on Invision and keynote for interaction prototypes. Many of these tools today still only do the tap and effect interaction. One of the few I do have tool envy for is Protopie. They are innovating in the space at a crazy pace. (one which I wish Axure was closer too)
Plus lets not forget the Figma and Sketches are Design-first tools. Not interaction-first. I do like the vector tools in Axure, but it definitely isn’t the same fidelity as some of the things you can pull off in F&S. And of course not being able to export design assets in the same way, has its limitations.
So for me… Axure is the place to bring to life flow->interactions->content (with majority of design needs covered). The only tool I use more is Keynote for even more rapid layout mocking.
I WISH Axure would create a way to export production code or allow me to use its logic approach to build real apps. I think their approach to interactions is by far one of the best in the industry. (I’ve tried like them all).
So It hurts that I can essentially ‘program’ anything I can dream of…(flow->interactions->design->content). but not actually develop it to life…but that’s just the ‘maker’ in me. Not necessarily Axure’s mandate.
…and…since your title intrigued me…Axure has rarely ever topped F.