Are you looking for the best digital whiteboard software to coordinate and collaborate with your remote team? The following software tools might help…
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind while talking about office collaboration? We bet a whiteboard just crossed your mind!
The ‘OG‘ of employee collaboration, a whiteboard has been used for decades in the office environment.
Even though they became commercially available way back in the 1960s, it wasn’t until the early 1990s that businesses adopted whiteboards in the workplace.
Since then, the physical whiteboard has been the staple of team collaboration.
Witeboards have been helping teams to brainstorm ideas, create design mockups, plan, and clarify information to fellow teammates.
However, for decades, whiteboards haven’t evolved much as they do their job well. Since the idea of remote work started taking wind, the physical whiteboard is slowly becoming an outdated commodity.
Physical whiteboards are quickly being replaced with digital whiteboards, allowing teams to collaborate and ideate no matter where they are located in the world.
The Demise of Physical Whiteboards
The year 2020 saw the world turn upside down, courtesy of the novel Coronavirus or COVID-19.
As businesses started adopting remote work, there was a growing concern of lack of collaboration amongst teammates.
Since employees were working from home, the traditional whiteboard that was used for collaboration started losing its vitality.
Remote work has a ton of benefits to it- less commute time for employees, reducing redundant office meetings, minimizing office rent, stationery costs, electricity bills, water-cooler chats, and more, there are some key drawbacks.
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Not being in the same room means that teams cannot conduct their usual whiteboard sessions to brainstorm together and solve crucial business problems.
Remote teams have to rely on back-and-forth email threads and lengthy Zoom sessions to collaborate with their peers. This often leads to huge productivity loss amongst teammates.
In order to solve this mess, many digital whiteboard software has emerged in the market in recent years.
What is a Digital Whiteboard Software?
A digital whiteboard, also known as an interactive whiteboard, is a digital version of traditional whiteboards that allows users from several locations to communicate visually in real-time.
These software tools are cloud-based, giving a virtual space for teams to collaborate, brainstorm, and organize ideas.
A digital whiteboard is also referred to as an electronic whiteboard, a smartboard, a virtual whiteboard, or an online whiteboard.
Benefits of an Interactive Whiteboard
While a physical whiteboard served the office for decades, its digital counterpart is set to do the same thing for remote work.
According to Grand View Research, the global interactive whiteboard market size was valued at USD 1.6 billion in 2019, growing at a CAGR of 7.6% from 2020 to 2027.
Since more and more businesses are now adopting remote work, an interactive or digital whiteboard provides a space for them to collaborate and ideate.
While a physical whiteboard has many drawbacks- space limitations, dealing with messy dry erase markers, and often misplaced sticky notes- a digital whiteboard has none of these limitations.
Remote teams can simultaneously work on an interactive whiteboard, giving everyone a voice.
Employees can quickly share their feedback, add suggestions, and be on the same page with different projects and roadmaps.
Interactive whiteboards are also popular in the education sector. Interactive whiteboards provide a, well, interactive experience for students, helping them understand concepts visually.
In fact, data suggests that using interactive whiteboards was associated with a 16 percentile point gain in student achievement.
Since teaching has been done online since COVID hit, digital whiteboards have become popular amongst students and teachers alike.
The Best Digital Whiteboard Software for Remote Teams!
A digital whiteboard software enables remote teams to avoid messy email chains and tiring Zoom sessions and get straight to the point.
So without further ado, let’s investigate the world of digital whiteboard software and see which ones stand out.
Software #1: Mural
Kicking off our list of awesome digital whiteboard software for remote teams is Mural.
Dubbed as the “digital workplace for visual collaboration, Mural is great for teams, especially design teams located remotely.
Helping people solve problems visually, Mural is a dynamic whiteboard that expands with your team’s needs.
Users can easily create content, add sticky notes, build diagrams and workflows, freehand draw and sketch, create design mockups, and share them with peers no matter where they are in the world.
You can kickoff your whiteboard session with a blank canvas or choose between 100+ awesome templates to kickstart your brainstorming session.
Mural is focussed around remote teams as the platform allows you to create various “rooms” for your whiteboards, each with varying permissions access.
This way, you can create different rooms for your marketing team, design team, etc, making it a great digital whiteboard for remote teams.
Mural is available on the web, as a windows app, macOS, iOS, and Android
Key Features of Mural include:
- Text or voice call for enhanced collaboration
- Draw shapes, charts, diagrams, and more
- Integrate with Slack, Dropbox, Jira, Github, and more.
Pricing:
- Free trial for 30 days
- Paid plan starts from: Starter ($12 per user/month), Plus ($20 per user/month), Enterprise Network (contact sales).
Software #2: Miro
Next up is Miro, another amazing interactive whiteboard solution for distributed teams.
With over 10 million users and clients like Dell, Salesforce, and Cisco, Miro is one of the leading digital whiteboard software on the market.
Miro provides an infinite canvas for you to brainstorm on. This way, your team can never never run out of space to collaborate.
You can start off with a blank canvas or checkout Miro’s library of awesome templates.
From meeting and planning to decision making and workshops, Miro has a template for every use-case.
Teams use Miro to brainstorm ideas, share notes, and keep an eye on projects. You can even run meetings using Miro with the help of presentation mode along with video conferencing and screen sharing.
Key Features of Miro include:
- Embed documents, images, files, PDFs, and more to your whiteboard
- Integrate with Jira, Asana, Unsplash, Iconfinder, and more.
- Stickies capture feature to convert photos into editable sticky notes, CSV, Jira tasks, etc.
Pricing:
- Free plan with limited features
- Paid plan starts from: Team ($8 per user/month), Business ($16 per user/month), Enterprise (contact sales).
Software #3: Microsoft Whiteboard
Next up is an interactive whiteboard software by the king of office productivity, Microsoft. Microsoft Whiteboard came into existence after its acquisition of Intentional Software, a firm by Charles Simonyi, a former chief software architect at Microsoft.
Acting as a “digital canvas”, Microsoft Whiteboard helps teams collaborate visually, brainstorm quickly, and run meetings effectively- no matter where you are in the world.
Microsoft Whiteboard provides real-time collaboration amongst employees on an infinite canvas.
The ink beautification feature helps make your handwriting more elegant while the ‘ink grab’ feature converts pictures to digital ink.
The app works in the browser while also having a Windows and iOS app. If you have a Microsoft surface stylus, you can use it on the whiteboard for drawing and making diagrams.
Key Features of Microsoft Whiteboard include:
- Insert pictures of Powerpoint, Word, PDFs, and more onto the whiteboard.
- Change the pen size, thickness, and color. You can also customize your board’s background.
- Vote on decisions using sticky note reactions.
Pricing:
- Free trial for 1 month
- Paid plan starts from: Microsoft 365 Business Basic ($5per user/month), Microsoft 365 Business Standard ($12.50 per user/month), Microsoft 365 Business Premium ($20 per user/month).
Software #4: Conceptboard
An infinite canvas for your whole team, Conceptboard is loaded with features to empower team collaboration. Teams can brainstorm ideas with freehand sketches and sticky notes.
With live cursors, you can easily see who’s doing what on the whiteboard. Teammates can also assign tasks, give feedback, share screens, and conduct audio as well as video calls right from the platform.
Made with remote teams in mind, Conceptboard allows users to @mention each other, add comments, mark up files, and send and receive feedback instantly.
Users can add images, files, documents, pin sticky notes, and more inside the Conceptboard and store all their ideas on one page.
Key Features of Conceptboard include:
- Control user access and permissions.
- Live cursors to know who’s doing what.
- Ever-expanding, infinite canvas.
Pricing:
- Free plan with limited features.
- Paid plan starts from: Premium ($6 per user/month), Business ($9.50 per user/month), Enterprise (contact sales).
Software #5: Google Jamboard
A 55-inch 4k display with a touchscreen, Google Jamboard is next on our list of awesome whiteboard software.
Jamboard is Google’s attempt at an interactive whiteboard for the office, allowing teams to brainstorm ideas and collaborate visually, just like they would on a traditional whiteboard.
Teams can co-author in real-time, add images, notes, and pull assets from the internet, including Google Drive, Sheets, and Docs.
With handwriting and shape recognition, Jamboard makes it easy to read your work by your co-workers and remove any confusion.
Jamboard comes with a portable stand and single-cable setup, making it extremely convenient to move around into different meeting rooms.
The Jamboard mobile apps make it effortless to take your work with you, no matter where you are in the world.
Key Features of Google Jamboard include:
- Text or voice call for enhanced collaboration
- Draw shapes, charts, diagrams, and more
- Integrate with Slack, Dropbox, Jira, Github, and more.
Pricing:
- Free trial for 14 days
- Paid plan starts from: Business Starter ($6 per user/month), Business Standard ($12 per user/month), Business Plus ($18 per user/month), Enterprise (contact sales).
Software #6: Witeboard
Looking for something quick and easy? Try out Witeboard, a simple digital whiteboard app that works on the web.
Just go to their website and you will be given a blank canvas you can work on. No software download or sign-up required.
Apart from a whiteboard, there’s an option to switch to a blackboard. As anyone who has used virtual whiteboard software would tell you, using a mouse or a trackpad to draw shapes is difficult, to say the least.
This is why Witeboard offers a shape detection feature that automatically transforms your disordered sketches into perfect circles and rectangles.
You can save your canvas as an image and download it on your computer. There’s a Slack plugin available to quickly hop onto a whiteboard session with your co-workers.
Key Features of Witeboard include:
- Easy to set up and use
- Slack plugin
- Blackboard, shape detection technology, etc.
Pricing:
- Free to use
Software #7: Lucidspark
Lucidspark wants to be your team’s go-to virtual whiteboard. Loaded with collaborative features, Lucidspark gives tough competition to all the other digital whiteboards for remote teams.
Simply create an agenda to bring everyone on board and get to work. You can create a board, share it with peers, create brainstorming to-dos, add sticky notes, free-hand draw, and much more.
Use inbuilt chat to communicate with peers or @mention someone to get their attention.
Moreover, you can follow fellow collaborators to check updates they have made to the whiteboard and react to their work via emojis.
With assisted grouping, teams can gather similar ideas or use tags to organize them into separate containers. This makes it extremely easy to find ideas on your whiteboard and keep everything neat and tidy.
With voting mode, you can decide which ideas to take action on by allowing team members to vote and reach a consensus quickly.
Key Features of Lucidspark include:
- In-editor chat and @mentions
- Highlight ideas and vote on them
- Lock different views of your whiteboard for effective meetings.
Pricing:
- Free plan available
- Paid plan starts from: Individual ($7.95 per user/month), Team ($6.67 per user/month), Enterprise (contact sales).
Software #8: Draw.chat
Another simple digital whiteboard software, Draw.chat is a free tool you can use to collaborate with your remote team.
Apart from providing you with an amazing whiteboard, Draw.chat has amazing collaborative features like text, audio, and video chat.
Simply click on the “start a whiteboard” button, share the board link with your peers, and start brainstorming.
Draw.chat offers a ton of formatting features like adding images, text, changing viewpoints, annotating images, changing color, etc. All of the formatting options come with their respective keyboard shortcuts for quick formatting.
Once you are done with your brainstorming session, you can save your board on your computer or can share it with co-workers. Apart from the whiteboard, you can annotate maps and PDFs using Draw.chat.
Key Features of Draw.chat include:
- Text, audio, and video call for improved collaboration.
- Draw on maps and PDFs.
- Free to use
Pricing:
- Free
Software #9: Ziteboard
A lightweight digital whiteboard for remote teams, Ziteboard works on smartphones, laptops, and tablets, and is optimized for both Chrome and Safari browsers.
Offering an infinite workplace for remote employees, Ziteboard encourages real-time collaboration to boost any meeting, brainstorming, training, or tutoring session.
Apart from a digital whiteboard, Ziteboard also offers audio and video chat options for added functionality and ease of use. Easily drag and drop images, PDFs, design workflow, draw freely, and more.
With line smoothing feature, Ziteboard is a great tool for sketching your next mobile app, website design, posters, and more. There’s also a shape recognition algorithm that can easily recognize circles, rectangles, and lines.
Key Features of Ziteboard include:
- WordPress plugin, Android app, as well as a Chrome extension available.
- Export whiteboard as an image or PDF
- Audio and video chat functionality.
Pricing:
- Free plan with limited features.
- Paid plan starts from: One-week pro ($5 one time payment), Monthly pro ($9/month), Annual pro ($85/month), Enterprise(contact sales).
Software #10: Stormboard
The last tool on our list of digital whiteboards for remote teams is Stormboard. Stormboard’s mission is to help its users capture, organize, discuss, prioritize, and act on ideas.
With Stormboard, remote teams can easily collaborate and brainstorm using digital sticky notes, sketches, notes, images, and more.
Users can group similar ideas together into different boards and remove any duplicates.
A true digital whiteboard for remote teams, Stormboard allows managers to create and assign tasks, set deadlines and goals, and track the progress of different projects.
With 100s of templates, you can kickstart your work with a single click. Instead of clicking messy photos of your whiteboards, Stormboard allows you to export your work as a PDF, Word, Powerpoint, or Excel. Stormboard is available on Android, iOS, Windows, and Surface Hub.
Key Features of Stormboard include:
- Works on any browser or device- no software installation required.
- Hundreds of templates to choose from
- Integrates with Teams, Slack, Pipedrive, Excel, Trello, Google Sheets, and more.
Pricing:
- Free for Educators and Individuals
- Paid plan starts from: Startup ($5 per user/month), Business ($10 per user/month), Enterprise ($16.67 per user/month).
Software #11: Canva
We love Canva at Remoteverse as all our blog headers and social media images are made using their platform. So when they came out with their digital whiteboard, we had to give it a go!
Like many other tools on this list, Canva offers an infinite canvas to brainstorm ideas and create moodboards.
Users can add sticky notes, charts, tables, and all the media elements to your online whiteboard and make it visually stunning.
The thing we liked most about Canva’s digital whiteboard was its template gallery. In typical Canva fashion, there are thousands of beautiful templates to kickstart your whiteboard.
Moreover, the team collaboration features on the platform are great. Users can collaborate on a whiteboard in real time, give feedback via comments, and save assets in team or personal folders.
Key Features of Canva Whiteboard include:
- Thousands of free and visually appealing templates
- Use on any device
- Millions of free images, icons, and graphics
Pricing:
- Free to use
Best Digital Whiteboard Software: Conclusion
With remote work on the rise, teams need to rely on technology to get work done in a distributed environment. Digital whiteboards are great for remote teams as they help them brainstorm ideas and move projects forward without the need to be in the same room.
All the digital whiteboard software for remote teams mentioned above is great at what they do- it all boils down to personal preference and your budget!
So, which digital whiteboard software for remote teams do you like the most? Did we miss out on your favorite? Do let us know in the comments below. Cheers!
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