Favorite whiteboard app across iOS AND macOS?

In my role as a data visualization consultant who often works with clients remotely (mostly via Zoom and WebEx), I’m constantly in situations where we need to whiteboard IT environments and visualization concepts.

What’s your favorite virtual app, preferably with clients for both macOS and iOS?

PS Mine is currently Limnu mainly for the Pin feature to navigate the infinite whiteboard, but always looking for suggestions! Thanks!

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I use MindNode 5 and love how flexible it’s uses are.

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Explain Everything on iOS is great for presentations and as a white board app. You just have to export your presentation to PDF and then import it into EE.

MindNode is such a great app. So useful and flexible!

MindNode: Huge fan for mindmaps but it is a little inflexible for laying out workflows that need to branch and it doesn’t have collaborators.

Explain Everything: I did the 30-day trial but it was a little overkill (price & UI) and seemed to focus on annotating and video recording more than real-time collaboration.

Comparison Notes

The following are my quick notes as I tried various services/apps but double-check! I’ll probably stick with Limnu for now. I love their UI, navigation and whiteboard marker effects. My biggest feature request is the ability to sync collaborators’s viewports. Its easy to get lost when someone is talking about a part of the board they are working on and no one else has scrolled over to see it yet. Hope its helpful to someone! Let me know if you have any other suggestions!

LiveBoard

  • Free
  • Very simple UI
  • Page thumbnail browser, no page titles

RealtimeBoard

  • Pricing
    • Free: 3 boards, 3 members
    • $40/mo for 5 users billed annually
  • No pages or other nav, cumbersome to change between projects
  • iOS & macOS apps

Ziteboard

  • Free & paid
    • Free plan: 3 boards ‘owned by me’, unlimited shared boards
    • $9/user/mo ($85/yr) - don’t think collabs need a license?
  • No pages, cumbersome to change b/w boards
  • Very smooth and easy to use
  • Web only (Android app)

Limnu

  • Pricing
    • $5/mo - unlimited boards and collabs
  • Pins for different areas of the board, useful for navi
  • iOS app

Twiddla

  • Pricing
    • Free: 10 max participants; 20 min time limit
    • Pro: $14/mo/user; unlimited participants
  • Clunky UI
  • Web only

Sketchboard.io

  • Pricing
    • Free: 3 boards, 5 users
    • Paid: $14/mo, 3 users
  • Allows freehand but also great at shapes, connections
  • Cumbersome to change between boards; no pins or other navigation of board
  • Web only

Explain Everything

  • Pricing
    • No free tier
    • $24.99/mo/user billed annually
  • Free Udemy course: Explain Everything Academy (1 hr vid, 5 articles)
  • Can record videos, bring in pdfs, slides, videos, web pages
  • iOS app, Chrome web “app”
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