With so many professionals firmly settled into remote work, the ways people collaborate with coworkers and do their jobs has changed — probably forever. While teammates used to gather around whiteboards with sticky notes and dry-erase markers, many are now confined to their home offices, causing them to rethink their brainstorming processes.
Luckily, companies across the world are tackling the challenges of the remote-work era. And as a result, the number of online whiteboard software applications has increased, offering more teams an alternative to in-person collaboration. These applications act as digital canvases suitable for sprint planning, project management, diagramming, story development and more. Teams can even use digital sticky notes and illustrative tools to log to-do items and pen their most creative ideas.
Online Whiteboards to Know
- Miro
- MURAL
- Monday.com
- InVision
- Airtable
- IPEVO
- Conceptboard
- Milanote
Regardless of the industry, there are plenty of interactive whiteboard applications available.
We rounded up 25 of the top ones helping teams stay connected — and productive — from anywhere in the world.
25 Online Whiteboards to Know
Miro’s digital whiteboard helps remote teams work together in real time. Using the platform, teams can run online meetings and workshops, brainstorm ideas, organize sprints and huddle boards, plan projects and map complex processes. Miro integrates with a wide range of popular applications including Dropbox, Slack and Google Drive.
MURAL’s digital workspace helps teams solve problems and build consensus visually. The company’s platform allows teams to create digital sticky notes, build workflow diagrams, develop stories, drag and drop visuals, organize content and ideas as well as sketch and write digitally. MURAL also enables teams to make voice calls, drive text conversations, add feedback and distribute murals.
Monday.com’s platform is designed to “connect people to workplace processes.” The company’s software allows teams to create customizable workflow templates, keep track of important deadlines, automate tasks and gain valuable insights. Monday.com’s customizable remote work templates boast various features such as employee onboarding, remote equipment checks and COVID-19 risk assessments.
Airtable’s software is designed to feel like a database and spreadsheet wrapped in one. Their platform allows teams to create content calendars and product roadmaps, send notifications, automate tasks, orchestrate work through integrations and collaborate in real time. Airtable integrates with a broad range of applications including Asana, Eventbrite and Box.
InVision helps teams collaborate across geographies in order to build digital products. Using the company’s platform, teams can create interactive prototypes, gather feedback about projects, explore ideas and share designs. InVision’s aim is to drive collaboration in digital product design and development projects.
Lucid offers a digital canvas that allows distributed teams to collaborate creatively together. Its virtual whiteboard, Lucidspark, helps teams brainstorm together, share ideas, swap feedback and create workflows and project documentation. Lucid also enables teams to assign tasks, share meeting agendas, keep track of time and vote on ideas.
Bluescape enables remote teams to visualize and collaborate on multiple pieces of content at once. The platform’s capabilities include video conferencing, documents and data sharing, content organization, live brainstorming and digital notecard creation. Additionally, Bluescape allows teams to view schedules and files as well as project scope and timelines.
Google Jamboard
Google Jamboard acts as an all-in-one virtual workspace. Remote teams can use the system to host virtual meetings, edit documents and presentations in real time, create group calendars, organize files and form group chats. Google Jamboard also enables teams to archive and search data, manage their organization’s devices and gain insight into work patterns.
Explain Everything’s digital whiteboard is designed to facilitate collaboration within the workplace and the classroom. The interactive tool allows users to create animations and video presentations, provide feedback and communicate in real time. Explain Everything features a full palette of colors, pens, highlighters, pencils, images and more.
Stormboard’s digital workspace enables teams to prioritize, organize and refine ideas. Through the company’s platform, teams can hold meetings, brainstorm using digital sticky notes, share feedback, contribute content and create reports. Stormboard integrates with a variety of applications such as Jira Software, Trello and Zapier.
Sketchboard offers an “endless online whiteboard” that helps teams solve problems and collaborate. Its platform allows teams to share ideas and feedback, compose sketches and diagrams, create digital notes and develop roadmaps. Additionally, Sketchboard is designed to help teams find and fix bugs more quickly by use of its visual markdown tools.
IPEVO’s digital teaching tools are designed to empower educators. The company’s whiteboard software lets users display, adjust, and annotate live images, plus create recordings. IPEVO’s other products allow educators to stream live images and project live instructions from a smartphone.
Conceptboard empowers teammates to create, manage and stay connected on projects. The platform allows teams to work on tasks in real time, connect on video calls, collect feedback and create digital sketches and sticky notes. Conceptboard also offers a library of customizable templates to create Gantt Charts, Kanban boards and more.
Gynzy’s interactive whiteboard helps teachers engage with their students remotely. Educators can use the company’s software to create lessons, social emotional learning activities, warm-ups and more. Additionally, Gynzy provides pre-made lesson plans related to topics like social studies, science, math, and grammar.
Hoylu’s virtual workspace is designed to connect distributed teams and their ideas in real time. The platform boasts drawing tools, digital sticky notes, weekly planners, agile retrospectives and customizable templates. Hoylu also offers an interactive wall collaboration and computing solution that allows teams to brainstorm, plan projects and conduct design reviews.
Glasscubes offers an online workspace that lets teams collaborate and communicate remotely. Their software enables users to share files securely, manage projects, broadcast information to large groups of people and form online communities. Glasscubes also allows teams to monitor team engagement and keep track of deadlines, tasks and priorities.
Milanote enables creative teams to organize ideas and projects into visual boards. Using the company’s platform, teams can write notes and lists, upload images and files, manage projects, conduct live brainstorming sessions, gather feedback and send important notifications. Creative professionals can also take advantage of Milanote’s moodboard, which allows users to explore new illustration concepts and styles in a freeform way.
GroupMap’s software serves as a real-time online brainstorming tool. The platform allows teams to customize and organize workflows, capture individual responses, chat in real time and gather feedback through polls. Teams can also use GroupMap to create reports in order to bolster the decision-making process.
Klaxoon allows teams to hold project planning and brainstorming sessions remotely. Their platform enables teams to hold engaging meetings, share ideas, run projects, collect feedback, assess project progression and gauge team satisfaction. Klaxoon’s templates are suitable for training programs, sprint planning, user story mapping, market analysis and more.
Consolve helps distributed teams streamline the decision-making process. Using the company’s platform, teams can search for decisions by name or date, view decision statuses and set a timeline for when a decision needs to be made. Consolve integrates with a variety of applications including Zoom, Slack and Atlassian.
Draw.Chat offers a collaborative drawing board solution for online meetings. Their platform allows users to draw, chat and communicate during an audio or video conference. Draw.Chat also boasts a real-time graphic image editor and a variety of storage and file-sharing options.
Ayoa is an AI-powered work management platform for professionals and students, with focus on visual orientation and neurodiverse inclusion. The platform lets users choose to create from seven different project views, ranging from whiteboards to mind maps and Gantt timelines. With each project, users can add files, apply visual task indicators and customize display options to collaborate accordingly across different working styles.
Ideal for UI and UX designers, Moqups is an application used to collaboratively create and edit diagrams, mockups, prototypes and wireframes in real time. The Moqups hub provides users with pre-made interface templates, icons and data visualization tools, all with the ability to apply visual feedback annotations and task delegation.
NoteBookCast is a free instant whiteboard application for working, teaching and other collaborative projects. Each whiteboard session can be created without an account and host up to 20 simultaneous users for accessible large-scale note usage. In addition, the software provides automatic handwriting smoothing, virtual sticky note attachment and unlimited audio call services for two-user sessions.
Ziteboard is a low-storage online whiteboard where users can collaboratively sketch, jot down notes or create workflows. Each whiteboard allows file import and export, unlimited simultaneous users and external embedment as a WordPress plugin or its own API. Under Pro subscriptions, users can access private boards, anonymous collaboration as well as audio and video call services.
