11 Best Online Whiteboard Tools for Any Purpose
Over the last 2 years, with the majority of the global workforce working remote, companies have experienced how extremely important versatility is.
Employees’ productivity and motivation have become matters of concern for businesses, and the demand for tools that assist teamwork has increased.
Under these circumstances, online whiteboard tools came out of the shadows and started being acknowledged by corporate and private users. In this article, we’re going to introduce you to the best online whiteboard tools to start with.
The best online whiteboard tools every team will be excited to try and use
Weje
image source: a snapshot from Weje.io
Think of a workspace that you can access from any place or share with any person.
You can keep all kinds of information, including notes, documents, photos, and videos, impose edits, leave comments, and – download what you’ve produced. Sounds relevant to you? Then try Weje.
This free digital whiteboard is handy, and users can adapt it for many purposes – from handling online meetings to creating design prototypes. Weje has a templates library that saves a lot of your time on preparing reports, plans, and so on.
Manage Agile projects? – Then, pick up Kanban boards or Workflow templates and adjust them as needed. Want to outline ideas? – Use Weje’s mind map-making tool. It’s that easy.
You can organise information into cards with a drag-and-drop action. To invite colleagues, just copy a board’s shareable link or email the invitation. With conferencing and calling options, you can discuss any ideas instantly. Or you can put online sticky notes with comments for teams’ consideration.
Weje allows creating countless whiteboards so that you can have a separate one for every task or project. It’ll best fit remote teams and educators.
Miro
image source: a snapshot from Miro.com
Miro is a recognisable name among online whiteboards and is highly regarded by global teams.
The tool has a library with templates for any purpose – from brainstorming to strategic planning and workflow design. You can choose from various maps, matrices, and charts and customise these as you want.
Miro’s UI pleases the eye. A user starts with a white canvas and fills it with bright sticky notes, markers, connection lines, cards, and frames.
For teamwork, Miro offers comments, voting, and a presentation mode. The latter means users can share their screens during online team meetings or conferences and use a whiteboard as a point of reference.
Ayoa
image source: a snapshot from Ayoa.com
Ayoa is just the right tool to create and share mind maps. Users can build all sorts of them – a radial mind map, a tree-like one, and more.
They can also add different shapes and use multiple colours to distinguish mind map elements even better.
Ayoa has Kanban and Gantt charts templates, so it’s suitable for tasks management and project planning. In particular, it allows sending reminders and viewing tasks by category, priority, start date, or other criteria.
Limnu
image source: a snapshot from Limnu.com
Those who prefer working via tablet will appreciate Limnu’s responsiveness. The tool is much like a drawing board with drawing tools and colour palettes.
Every line you draw can be moved or scaled, so it’s straightforward editing the sketch.
Its simple interface and fast tactile switch make Limnu indispensable during online brainstorming sessions or lessons.
The software also has ready-to-use shapes, e.g. circles, boxes, arrows, etc. After you’ve finished drawing or want to pause, just save the latest outcome and get back to it later.
Microsoft Whiteboard
image source: a snapshot from Microsoft.com
This virtual whiteboarding tool from Microsoft has much to offer creators. First, there are many templates, including common ones, like Kanbans, and unusual ones, like empathy maps.
Also, users can integrate the tool with Microsoft Teams and organise voting during their video calls.
Microsoft Whiteboard tools allow saving sessions and resuming from where the user has stopped, particularly helpful when you have to deal with several tasks simultaneously.
Stormboard
image source: a snapshot from Stormboard.com
Remote teams can use these online whiteboard tools to organise regular meetings, e.g. daily or weekly stand-ups. Making the best of collaborative software, Stormboard offers many pre-designed templates.
Moreover, you can create presentations, tables, and documents right here, with no need to switch to MS Word, Excel, or PowerPoint.
The tool allows assigning tasks, tracking their completion, creating their hierarchy, and designing the workflow.
Perhaps, it’ll best fit corporate workers who want to replace or enhance conventional means of communication, like Zoom or Skype.
Mural
image source: a snapshot from Mural.co
Mural looks very expressive, so it’ll be loved by web and interior designers and other creative people.
Although it still can be applied for task management purposes, we suggest using Mural to conduct workshops, brainstormings, and online team buildings.
Mural offers many templates, including those used in Agile and Design Thinking approaches. For example, you can try its IDEO U toolkit that “boosts problem-solving”, according to its developers.
Or – use the Design Studio or Design Thinking Canvas templates. Both will assist in scoping design works, putting in place resources and challenges, and managing relations with project stakeholders.
Explain Everything
image source: a snapshot from ExplainEverything.com
Although Explain Everything addresses educators and students, we believe corporate users will like it too.
The tool is available on both iOS or Android devices and is highly interactive. First, it offers a voice chat and an option to create video messages and stories.
Collaborators can record their on-screen actions and then share videos through web links, particularly useful when the work halts.
You can integrate Explain Everything with cloud storage, like iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and some others.
Lucidspark
image source: a snapshot from Lucidspark.com
Lucidspark is a nice-looking online whiteboard offering whatever users might need. You start with a blank canvas, and as you fill it in with more elements, the whiteboard expands progressively.
If you need to organise a poll – just write an idea on the online sticky note and ask collaborators to vote with emojis.
For teamwork, the tool has a “Call others to me” option and a built-in timer. And if you need to create several boards from the main one – use a “Breakout Boards” splitting option.
Collaboard
image source: a snapshot from Collaboard.app
This is an advanced digital whiteboard with various fonts, colour palettes, graphic shapes, a colour picker, a smooth digital ink, and a dark mode.
Collaboard allows making mind maps and inserting videos on canvases. It also has a YouTube integration, so users can drag and drop their favourite videos from the media menu right onto their online workspace.
InVision
image source: a snapshot from Invisionapp.com
InVision is great for designers because it has many built-in prototype templates. Its “Inspect” feature automatically transforms objects into developer specs.
Users can spot and reference design patterns and embed links to prototypes in their project management tools, like JIRA. Moreover, its Design System Manager serves as a “single point of control” for teams.
It can be integrated with Sketch so that collaborators can create and sync versions of visual assets.
Digital whiteboards are not that popular as other team collaboration software, like PM tools or communication platforms. Still, there’s one thing that makes online whiteboard tools recognised and praised more and more by teams, and that is – convenience and versatility they provide them with.
