Best 22 Idea Board Software For 2024

Dispel the myth that brilliant ideas just happen. They result from the conscious and constant pursuit of ideation, of making insightful connections.

Creativity is not a mystical talent. It’s a skill that you cultivate and hone.

Yet where do you put all those ideas that come in swarms when you least expect them?

There are a plethora of options for idea board software that you and your team can use for idea management.

What is an idea board?

As the originator of the Getting Things Done® method, David Allen, put it, “your mind is about having ideas, not holding them.”

So, consider putting them on a blank page or a whiteboard instead of stashing them in your mind. During a meeting or a brainstorming session, your team may contribute ideas, concepts, experiences, visuals, or fleeting thoughts.

These are hard to flesh out, let alone be displayed in a methodical manner that makes sense to everyone.

Instead, we recommend keeping track of them by creating mind maps, flow charts, mood boards, spider diagrams – any visualization method for your ideas.

To take it to the next level, use a digital idea board. What’s great about digital idea boards is that the ideational capabilities stretch beyond traditional idea boards.

You might take audio notes or attach links, which would not be possible on a physical board.

You can create boards within boards and link content across multiple projects. Templates, libraries, and integrations have made idea boarding fun and easy.

I have scoured the web in search of the best idea board software for 2023, so you don’t have to do it yourself. Let’s take a look at some of best idea board software organized by ideational style:

• Template banks
• Whiteboards
• Mind maps
• Outliners

Idea board software

Template banks

1. Lucidchart

Idea management in Lucidchart

Designed for entrepreneurs, salespeople, engineers, developers, educators.

Pros: Collaboration

Cons: Sharing options could be improved

Best features: Mind-mapping, storyboarding, diagramming, flowcharts, organizational charts, wireframing, integrations

• Cloud insights
• Various integrations
• Vast template gallery

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + Windows, Mac, Linux + iOS, Android

Pricing:

• Starting at $7.95/user/mo
• Free plan available

2. Creately

Idea management in Creately

Designed for businesses, marketing teams, engineering teams, creatives, educators

Pros: Collaboration

Cons: No mobile platforms

Best features: Mind-mapping, storyboarding, diagramming, flowcharts, organizational charts, wireframing, integrations

• Business and technical diagramming
• 1000+ template library
• Creately for Scholarship and Education

Cloud: yes

Platforms: Web + Windows, Mac

Pricing:

• Starting at $4.95/user/mo
• Free plan available

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Whiteboarding

3. Miro

Whiteboarding in Miro

Designed for startups, businesses, enterprises, consultants, creatives, and education:

Pros: Collaboration, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: No newsfeed

Best features: Timer, mind-mapping, Kanban, outliner, templates, integrations

• Attention management
• Miro Live Embed for customers
• Works with Microsoft Surface Hub

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + Windows, Mac + iOS, Android + Surface Hub

Pricing:

• Starting at $8/user/mo
• Free plan available

4. Mural

Whiteboarding in Mural

Best for consultants, creatives, nonprofits, enterprises, and educators.

If you have experience in the project planning department and need to organize your work more granularly, opt for project management tools for creatives.

Pros: Collaboration, shareability, sync, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: No newsfeed

Best features: Timer, outliner, templates, integrations

• Private mode: hiding contributions of individual collaborators to prevent groupthink
• Super Lock: items may be moved only by facilitators
• Attention management

Cloud-based: Yes

Platforms:  Web, Windows + iOS + Surface Hub

Pricing:

• Starts at $12/user/mo depending on the team size
• Special plan for educators and students

5. Milanote

Whiteboarding in Milanote

Designed for creative professionals, designers, and product teams:

Pros: Collaboration, shareability, sync, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: No newsfeed

Best features: Kanban, outliner, mind-mapping, templates

• Templates for creative pursuits
• Timer
• Milanote Web Clipper for Chrome: clips images, videos, and links from websites

Cloud:  Yes

Platforms: Web, Windows, Mac + Android, iOS

Pricing:

• Starts at $9.99/user/mo
• Free plan available

6. Stormboard

Whiteboarding in Stormboard

Designed for businesses, enterprises, managers:

Pros: Newsfeed, collaboration, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: Complex to navigate

Best features: Timer, mind-mapping, outliner, templates, integrations

• Business-oriented templates
• Works with Microsoft Surface Hub

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + Windows, Mac + iOS, Android + Surface Hub

Pricing:

• Starting at $10/user/mo
• Special plan for startups $5/user/mo
• Free plan available for individuals and educators

7. ConceptBoard

Whiteboarding in ConceptBoard

Designed for startups, businesses, enterprises, and agencies

Pros: Collaboration, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: Web only

Best features: Whiteboarding, brainstorming, Kanban, integrations,

• Real-time communication, video conferencing
• Centralized content
• Board access management

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web only

Pricing:

• Starting at $6/user/mo
• Free plan available

8. Ideabuddy

Whiteboarding in Ideabuddy

Designed for startups, businesses, enterprises, universities, business schools, consultants:

Pros: Progress status

Cons: Web only

Best features: Kanban, outliner, templates

• Documents financial & business plans
• Financial projections
• Good for business incubation programs

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web

Pricing: Starting at $9/user/mo

9. Ideanote

Whiteboarding in Ideanote

Designed for businesses, enterprises, agencies, creative teams

Pros: Collaboration, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: Lack of integration

Best features: Kanban, brainstorming, templates

• 100+ idea-collection templates
• Real-time analytics, custom rating
• Gamification: missions

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + iOS, Android

Pricing: Starting at $249/admin/mo

10. GroupMap

Whiteboarding in GroupMap

Designed for teams, businesses, NGOs, educators, creatives:

Pros: Collaboration, idea review

Cons: Lack of integrations

Best features: Timer, Kanban, custom workspace

• Real-time online brainstorming tool for meetings
• Polling + time limit for news feedback sessions
• Breakout sessions for smaller brainstorming groups

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web

Pricing: Starting at $20/facilitator + 10 participants/mo

11. IdeaDrop

Whiteboarding in IdeaDrop

Designed for business, enterprises, engineering companies

Pros: Newsfeed, collaboration, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: Complex to navigate

Best features: Kanban, integrations

• Idea cloaking – anonymous contribution
• Intelligent duplicate check – pattern recognition to prevent duplication/plagiarism
• Gamification – rewards, innovation scores, idea score (idea evaluation metrics)

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + Windows, Mac + iOS, Android

Pricing: Provided upon request

12. Sampleboard

Whiteboarding in Sampleboard

Designed for agencies, studios, creatives, freelancers, designers

Pros: Collaboration, idea review

Cons: No progress status, workflow, uses Adobe Flash

Best features: Integrations

• Web clipper
• 50,000+ extensive library available
• Image editing tools

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + Windows, Mac

Pricing: Starting at $12/user/mo

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Mind-mapping

13. XMind

Mind-mapping in XMind

Designed for businesses, enterprises, managers, education:

Pros: Newsfeed, collaboration, progress tracking, workflow

Cons: No idea review

Best features: Outlining, templates, diagramming, organization chart, logic charts

• Combination of different ideational structures
• User-generated mind-map gallery
• Zen Mode for better focus

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux + iOS, Android

Pricing:

• XMind 8 Pro: one-time purchase for 2 devices: $129.
• XMind 2020 & Mobile: $59.99/year or $34.99 for academia

14. Mindomo

Mind-mapping in Mindomo

Designed for K-12 and universities, enterprises, NGOs, creative teams:

Pros: Collaboration, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: No newsfeed

Best features: Outliner, integrations, assignment feedback, templates

• Collaborative Gantt charts
• Good for educators: students can enroll without email or access code
• Record and assessment of student work

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Cloud + Windows, Mac, Linux + iOS, Android

Pricing:

• Starting at $6.5/user/mo
• Free plan available

15. MindMeister

Mind-mapping in MindMeister

Designed for businesses, enterprises, universities, education, creatives:

Pros: Newsfeed, collaboration, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: Web and mobile only

Best features: Outliner, planner, Kanban, integrations

• Presentation creation
• Meeting management
• Knowledge management

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + iOS, Android

Pricing:

• Starting at $5.92/user/mo
• Education & NGO plans available
• Free plan available

16. Ayoa

Mind-mapping in Ayoa

Designed for businesses, enterprises, NGOs, creative teams:

Pros: Collaboration, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: No offline use

Best features: Task management, Gantt timeline, calendar management, integrations

• Real-time communication, video chat
• Radial maps
• Gantt charts

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + Windows, Mac + iOS, Android

Pricing:

• Starting at $10.87/user/mo
• Free plan available

17. Thortspace

Mind-mapping in Thortspace

Designed for businesses, individual use, education

Pros: Newsfeed, collaboration, idea review

Cons: No progress status, no workflow

Best features:

• 3D mind mapping
• Crowd-thinking platform
• User-generated content

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + Windows, Mac, Linux + iOS, Android

Pricing:

• Starting at $9.17/user/mo
• Free plan available

18. MindVector

Mind-mapping in MindVector

Designed for businesses, managers, educators:

Pros: Idea ranking

Cons: Runs on Flash, no workflow, no progress tracking

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + Mac + iOS, Android

Pricing:

• $9.99 one-time purchase/user
• Free and business plan available

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Outliners

19. Nectir

Outline management in Nectir

Designed for business, enterprises:

Pros: News feed, collaboration, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: Web only

Best features: Integrations

• Employee engagement
• Group challenges
• Gamification & incentivization

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web

Pricing: Starting at $7/user/mo;

20. Retrium

Outline management in Retrium

Designed for startups, businesses, enterprises, scrum teams:

Pros: Collaboration, idea review, workflow

Cons: Web only

Best features: Kanban, retrospectives, action plans

• Team radars
• Solutions by role/topic
• Actions plans

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web only

Pricing:

• Starting at $29/team
• Enterprise plan available

21. Ideawake

Outline management in Ideawake

Designed for businesses, enterprises, managers:

Pros: Newsfeed, collaboration, idea review, progress status, workflow

Cons: Less intuitive UX/UI

Best features: Idea selection, prototyping, piloting

• Gamification – user points
• Customizable workflow
• Anonymous posting

Cloud: Yes

Platforms: Web + iOS, Android

Pricing: Provided upon request

22. xTiles

Personal management, small teams, design teams, creative teams, and marketing teams

Pros: Easy to use, minimal learning curve, Cross-platform, Real-time collaboration.

Cons: No offline mode.

Best features: Task, Embed, Kanban, Linked Tabs, Outliner, Templates.

• Personal dashboard: Easy to use and flexible canvas based on blocks, tiles, and tabs.
• Organize digital content: combine images, links, and text in one space
• Simple, Flexible, Customizable space: combines canvas and database

Cloud: yes

Platforms: Web, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android

Pricing: Free plan available, $10 per month, $96 per year, $300 lifetime.

What to look for when using idea board software

There’s something romantic about movies often portraying police officers or genius inventors puzzling over their idea boards, setting colored pins on maps, photos, and newspaper articles. They keep staring at apparently disparate clues only to find a connection and finally have a break in their case.

This movie trope is called “the detective’s crazy wall.” Every respectable procedural TV series uses it because it has become so deeply ingrained in our culture as we have been rewired to consume and process information visually.

Looking at a wall chock full of information put together in a somewhat organized mess is our way of peeping into someone’s mind and understanding one’s thinking patterns—oopsie, I’m guilty of having made one during college to better sort my fleeting thoughts and essay ideas.

Yet there’s something peculiarly apt about an idea board that serves a different purpose for a team or business – be it designing a product or coming up with solutions.

Suddenly, the crazy wall is not only impractical; it’s confusing and mind-cluttering. Handwritten sticky notes or doodles on the whiteboard take up a lot of time. You need technology to streamline your ideation process. Plus, it’s 2023, and pretty much everyone is (still) working remotely.

How would you get your team together in the same room to collaborate on your next big idea?

Thanks to online collaborative apps, the answer is you don’t really have to. Here are criteria worth considering when looking for idea board software:

1. Time tracking module

There are contradictory accounts of whether deadlines or time constraints stifle or boost creativity. Setting a deadline for coming up with the next big idea might put extra pressure on your team because they can’t deeply engage with the problem or think of new ideas.

However, tracking your time during the ideation process is actually beneficial. Brainstorming sessions should consist of short creative bursts, no longer than an hour, so you won’t waste your collaborators’ creative efforts.

After all, studies show workers are productive for only about three hours of the eight they put in. All the more reason to log those creative bursts for future reference.

It also allows you to switch focus so you don’t stay fixated on the problem for too long. Try using a Pomodoro app during your creative sessions.

2. Collaboration

Debunk the lone creator myth, which hardly ever happens. The truth is that successful creative work is almost always collaborative. You need the tools to help your team collaborate on a project or the idea board in question. One that tracks people’s input, it allows tags, comments, etc. People need to be able to discuss and debate ideas and speak their minds.

Creativity needs an incubation period, so people can focus on some aspects while allowing other points to rest until the team is ready to re-engage with those ideas.

How many people should collaborate? The smaller the team, the more focused the idea board is since all the collaborators will feel engaged and responsible for coming up with good ideas.

3. Synchronization

Your idea board will be constantly updated, so the sync feature is one crucial criterion for good idea board software. If the team is updated in real-time, they may contribute from the same office space or work remotely from across the globe.

You won’t have to worry about updating the status to “final version,” “edited final version,” “real final version,” or whatnot.

4. Shareability

This feature is beneficial when you want to share the digital idea board with anyone in the department or even send it as a presentation. Other people may join in, share their contributions, review the board and leave feedback.

There are idea board services that allow sharing content with clients and external collaborators.

5. Cloud

These days, cloud computing has such a competitive edge since it is so convenient, reliable, and cost-saving, which is why most—if not all—idea board services now run on platforms. You wouldn’t have to worry about misplacing files or losing flash drives.

Storing your documents, pictures, and audio for your idea board not only makes it easier for you and your collaborators to have all the files in one ideation workspace but they can be accessed on any device.

6. Intuitive design

For sure, this is the heart of the software because it should be as intuitive as a physical board: drag and drop items, group and link them, attach pictures, and jot down ideas. Granted, a digital idea board allows you to create legible content, so you won’t have to worry about anyone’s messy handwriting.

As for the interface, you wouldn’t want your team members frustrated with the user experience, unnecessary complexity, or slow-loading and buggy software.

Caveat: this kind of software is not technical design in either engineering or architecture. Here’s a list of project management software for architecture experts or this list of collaborative software conceived for engineering professionals and many a construction business.

Ideation techniques

Find the right idea board software for you and your team and give it a run. Then, try at least one of the following ideation techniques to get your team on board with the creative process:

1. Brainstorming

This is perhaps the most popular ideation technique to generate as many ideas as you can in a short period of time. Although the name “brainstorming” implies a chaotic brain dump, the system is orderly and clear. One needs some sort of constraint to come up with creative solutions. Online brainstorming is called “brain-netting,” which is not a surprise due to teleworking. You may have brain-netting sessions over a Zoom meeting, on Slack, or through a dedicated idea board app. You won’t even have to come together in person since it is a great method for remote teams nowadays.

2. Prototyping

Prototyping is a great ideation technique to make decisions and explore possible directions. It is especially useful during wireframing. Even the simplest sketching, diagramming, and doodling can lead to great products. Use the idea board for the initial phases of the prototyping process.

3. Mind mapping

Mind mapping is a visual ideation technique that focuses on idea relationships. You start with a topic or keyword and build it from there. It’s simple and extremely visual, which is why it is a preferred brainstorming tool. Similar techniques are spider mapping and clustering.

4. Mood boarding

A type of idea boarding, mood boarding is a visual representation technique that focuses on sampling or collaging existing images and text to express or explain a particular feel or direction. It is best used in fashion and graphic design, cinematography, and other creative fields.

5. Storyboarding

Storyboarding is a blend of idea boarding and narration, a graphic representation technique that focuses on telling a story through simple sketches. It is great for pre-production. It’s also a great exercise for the flow of your ideas as you develop a visual story.

6. Freewriting

A great pre-writing technique, free writing involves writing continuously in a stream-of-consciousness style for a set amount of time, disregarding syntax, spelling, and punctuation. The goal is to break through writer’s block and write something so you can edit later.

Freewriting is good for overcoming writer’s block. It’s one of the solutions I tried that actually worked when I wanted to figure out how to stop procrastinating.

7. Collaborative brainwriting

Brainwriting is a mix of brainstorming and freewriting, which involves writing down a topic, a statement, or a question and publishing it so that others contribute to your input. The team members can pass it along or work simultaneously on it.

8. Lateral thinking exercises

Worst Possible Idea

It is burdensome to think of the next big idea – the pressure to perform might be too much – especially for your extremely creative collaborators. This is a good warmup exercise that is effective and fun as it forces people to consciously come up with flops or terrible ideas. Think of it as comic relief, as it reduces anxiety and job performance pressure. It will also brighten up the mood and allow people to relax.

Analogies and similes

An analogy is a literary device that compares two seemingly different concepts that share a core feature when providing the right context and explanations. A simile is a figure of speech that compares two stark concepts to highlight their commonality. These two are especially helpful for writers, artists, and storytellers.

Cheatstorming

Cheatstorming is an ideation technique that involves reusing ideas from earlier brainstorming sessions as a stimulus for generating new ideas. This technique involves deliberately salvaging discarded ideas from previous brainstorming sessions and generating something based on them. In a sense, it promotes cognitive sustainability by reusing previously ideated material. Much like idea recycling, it is similar to not letting ideas go to waste.

Rephrasing

Take an idea or come up with words, metaphors, and expressions, along with related words, synonyms, antonyms, and metonyms. Redefine basic meanings. For example, instead of saying, “a restaurant is a place where customers consume food and drinks,” fill in the following, “a restaurant is NOT a place where…”. Have your team be as wild as they can.

Empathy card

Using flashcards, write different scenarios, pass them around or send them to each of your collaborators online. For instance, “How would you feel if you were a 5-year-old going to a sushi bar?”, “what if that 5-year-old were a picky eater,” etc. It doesn’t need to be accurate. Just make some plausible assumptions, so you understand different perspectives and think out of the box.

Detective’s reasoning

Based on the topic or a statement, come up with answers to the following function words: why, who, which, what, where, when, and how. If you probe for an interesting solution, keep digging deeper.

All these techniques and exercises help your team to collaborate remotely. These are especially useful for you to turn ideas into actions – the possibilities are countless:

• sprint retrospectives
• postmortems
• mock-ups
• scrum boards
• Kanban boards
• wireframes
• user flows
• visual design
• project strategy
• plot lines

How to start idea-boarding

Before you start the idea board creative process, make sure you have a specific goal in mind and that your team understands the end goal/product. If it’s a meeting in real-time, make sure they are available and well-rested. If it’s an asynchronous endeavor, let them know a tentative deadline or a rough timeline.

Step 1. Idea collection

First, create a new project on your digital idea board. Invite team members to add sticky notes, ideas, and images to the idea board. If possible, try to have them contribute at the same time so that they feel engaged and connected.

Some may write, others may attach files, a few might incorporate their visuals, etc. At this stage, focus on quantity, not quality. Refinement will come later.

If this approach is too hectic for everyone, assign a “scribe” to take notes on your team’s conversations and debates. The scribe can organize those ideas later and add them to the board.

If you prefer the round table approach, make sure it is not a screaming contest involving obnoxious team members raising their voices while pleading their case. Also, beware that the convo doesn’t get too heated and everyone gets to share their ideas.

Have a strict time limit for these kinds of creative sessions.

Step 2. Idea refinement

After you have collected all the ideas, you may want to focus on their quality.

Make a shortlist of feasible ideas. Discard the useless, set aside some intriguing ones, and polish the potentially brilliant ideas.

Keep updating the idea board to match the stage you are at. Switch angles and keep refining the idea.

Revise it critically – if you won’t do it, your competitors or critics will.

Step 3. Idea review

Depending on your company’s organizational culture, your team members may comment upon or vote on the idea which works best. You might send it to your superiors for veto or post it on the company’s Slack channel to get some more feedback. Make sure you get as much unbiased analysis as possible.

If you have more than one feasible idea, submit them anonymously for peer review. If your budget and scope allow it, do some market research.

Step 4. Idea implementation

Together with your team, you’ve come up with a potentially brilliant idea, you’ve polished it, put it on display for others to validate it, and now you must implement it. The idea board has been a successful endeavor; you may archive it for future reference.

Takeaway

What makes people brilliant is how they draw their inspiration from personal or collective experience but how they bring together dissimilar concepts seen through the lens of their own subjective self.

The ideation process will help your team grow in knowledge and technical skills. This, in return, leads to greater enthusiasm for work and a strong, dedicated team.

Whether you want to implement simple work management tools into your daily activity, make sure you always keep ideating.

Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. – Teresa Amabile

Your creative breakthrough results from the conscious and constant pursuit of ideation.

Choose at least one of the idea board software mentioned above and get your team on board.

Start connecting those dots. We’re all waiting for your creative input into the world.