Working from home is rapidly becoming the standard across industries. Select companies are allowing their workers to work from home. And during your work from home, brainstorming with your team members could be challenging. Whiteboard is among the tools that couples would find convenient when working together remotely. While Microsoft Whiteboard is the best option, some folks may wish to attempt different alternatives. In this regard, I will share some of the very best Microsoft Whiteboard alternatives in this post.
Microsoft Whiteboard incorporates with Teams, likewise by Microsoft. However, not everyone uses Teams. What about other users who are on Duo, Zoom, Meet, or other platforms? These whiteboard apps will assist you, and most of them are readily available for Windows and other media.
Best Microsoft Whiteboard Alternatives
1. DrawPile
DrawPile is an open-source and totally free whiteboard app that supports Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms. It has no mobile version yet. DrawPile is a sketching tool with teamwork features. Inviting is a different story. You will be required to share your external IP address and password for that. DrawPile provides an awesome guide on how to host a collective session.
It brings a unique ability to record your screen while you are teaming up with others on the whiteboard. That can assist us in understanding the process and functional for reference later. You can also save as a video or a series of images. The app is totally free to use.
2. Draw.Chat
Among the main features of Draw.Chat is the messaging function where you can send text messages to other individuals. You can also send out audio and video messages, which are even cooler than the verbose text explanations. Just recently, the designers of the app included a video conferencing feature.
Draw.Chat includes plenty of drawing tools that can be excessive for Microsoft Whiteboard alternative seekers, but numerous will find these options beneficial. The very best part is that there is no registration required, and you get 10MB cloud storage where you can save whiteboards for as much as one month before downloading them. There are lots of shortcuts to make your life simple.
Two exciting features include the ability to draw/highlight on maps and annotate PDF files. The application is totally free, and you can create multiple whiteboards at the same time.
3. Miro (Earlier RealtimeBoard)
It is a platform-agnostic professional whiteboard app that works on desktops and mobile phones. You can start with a blank whiteboard or pick a design template based on your needs. Miro’s UI is very polished, and there are lots of elements that you can add to a whiteboard.
You can drag and drop every element in any place you want. You can also zoom and pan around the board. Employees can talk with each other using text, audio, and video or just share Miro’s screen. You can likewise link many third-party apps like Slack, Drive, Teams, Trello, and more. There is a Miro Market for all sorts of plugins for extra performance. Business users will be glad to know that there is administrative control for users with permission to control the workflow.
Miro has a totally free plan for up to three whiteboards and some basic stuff to try out. Meanwhile, the paid version at $8/month unlocks several features such as more considerable team support, collaboration, private whiteboards, and so on.
4. Explain Everything
Explain Everything works a little like the whiteboard choice in Zoom or Meet, where you will develop a whiteboard and send an invite code to others. There are no desktop apps; however, it deals with any internet browser and has actually dedicated mobile apps. It was created to assist teachers and others who give presentations to brief how things work. It also supports audio and video recording.
You will produce whiteboards and, after that draw, include shapes and other elements while discussing how things work. You can share the finished video with anybody. That doesn’t imply you can’t invite individuals in real-time and team up with them on a single whiteboard. You can do that too, but those who could not go to the whiteboard sharing session can rather watch the video. The video can be created using a mix of media file formats like audio or video messages, PDF files, and of course, all the elements that you will use on the whiteboard itself.
Apart from the video format, you can likewise save the whiteboard in PDF or the most popular image types. Like Miro, this Microsoft Whiteboard alternative integrates with numerous cloud storage apps. It is totally free for approximately three projects, and rates start at $7 per month.
5. OneNote
Some Reddit users recommend using OneNote as a Microsoft Whiteboard option. OneNote is a popular note-taking app, likewise from the house of Microsoft. You can save notes in different formats like text, audio, and video, share and team up on a single note, and there is a simple toolbar with drawing tools.
While not a standard whiteboard app, there are some advantages of using OneNote. You can produce comprehensive notes, lists, draw, record, share, collaborate, and later on a search that sea of notes to find what you are trying to find quickly utilizing keywords or tags. We have covered OneNote is excellent detail on GT before. Do have a look at our take.
On-Boarding Whiteboard
Did you know that video conferencing applications like Zoom come with a whiteboard feature built-in? Unlike OneNote, which was built mainly for taking notes, Zoom was made for video conferencing and collaborating. That’s another method to utilize a whiteboard apart from what we have actually shared above.
There are lots of other Microsoft Whiteboard alternatives, and the one you use will depend upon your particular requirements and use case. I suggest you attempt a couple of them, preferably the free version, and pick one that works finest for you.
