Free online mind mapping tools are getting popular with people who are interested in the idea of brainstorming. The term “mindmap” is often used to describe a diagram of words, pictures or ideas that are commonly used by individuals to organize their thoughts.
In this review, I will be taking you on the journey to know the right tools for you.
Coggle
An intuitive online tool for gathering your thoughts through creative mind maps. I enables you to give a picture to your random ideas in the process of planning or brainstorming. What’s more is that you can invite your team or collaborators to work on the mind maps online.
Cogule offers many features including floating text and images, adding multiple starting points, unlimited image uploads, and option to save your private diagrams even when you unsubscribe from their service. Not being available for mobile or desktop however, takes some of the lustre away from the app. But if you’re looking for an entirely online ming mapping solution, then this may be the best tool for you.
- Desktop Compatibility: Browser
- Mobile Compatibility: No
- Coggle Price: Free
- Premium app/subscriptions?: Yes (Check pricing)
Milanote
One of the most easy-to-use mind mapping apps you’ll find, Milanote helps you give a face to your thought process through text, images, graphics, and even videos. There are many pre-made templates to get you start with and the simple drag and drop interface makes it simple enough for anyone to use.
On the aspect of collaboration, you can work with any number of team members on a single board and it’s totally up to you to let your team edit, comment or only view the mind maps. Also, Milanote being a multi-platform app, you can sync it between different devices. There is, however, no option for having a free trial.
- Desktop Compatibility: Browser, Windows, MacOS
- Mobile Compatibility: iOS, Android
- Milanote Price: Free
- Premium app/subscriptions?: Yes (Check pricing)
Miro
Miro is an online whiteboard that brings different team members together for sharing ideas from anywhere. You can brainstorm ideas, do visual mapping, plan and discuss, collaborate in real-time, and even arrange webinars and remote workshops.
Ease-of-use is perhaps one of Miro’s most prominent feature. You don’t need to learn too much to get started and even the collaboration takes only a few minutes. There are a few minor hiccups in the functioning of the app but the developers are working on its improvement so we can look forward to a more prefect tool with time.
- Desktop Compatibility: Windows, MacOS
- Mobile Compatibility: iOS, Android
- Miro Price: Free
- Premium app/subscriptions?: Yes (Check pricing)
SketchBoard
An intuitive virtual whiteboard, Sketchboard gives you the ability to develop and share your ideas and discussions though visual and textual mind mapping. It’s a great tool to work individually or with a team online. You can choose from over 400 freehand drawings with connections appearing automatically and add text where necessary.
Sketchboard gives you an infinite drawing broad so you can drag the canvas and add as many ideas as you want. Though you can do all kinds of mind mapping through this tool, but being based on coding and modeling theme, I think it would be ideal for technical projects like mobile app development.
- Desktop Compatibility: Browser
- Mobile Compatibility: No
- SketchBoard Price: Free
- Premium app/subscriptions?: Yes (Check pricing)
StormBoard
Stromboard allows you to discuss and streamline your ideas in real-time. It’s more like an online shared workspace on which you can assign tasks and monitor your team’s progress on the project in hand.
The app offers professional templates, live sessions and webinars, and many dynamic reporting options. As an online whiteboard, it does miss out on a few features like diagramming and screen recording etc. but is an ideal tool for collaborative online mind mapping.
- Desktop Compatibility: Browser, Windows, MacOS
- Mobile Compatibility: iOS, Android
- StormBoard Price: Free
- Premium app/subscriptions?: Yes (Check pricing)
Ayoa
Ayoa combines robust task management with an efficient mind mapping solution. It features an easy-to-use interface with many collaborative features, customizable templates, agile project management, and time tracking.
One drawback of Ayoa is that it’s not available offline which makes it difficult to access your data on the go. Apart from that, the app is available cross-platform and gives you a lot of fluidity to capture and grow your great ideas with your team.
- Desktop Compatibility: Browser, Windows, MacOS
- Mobile Compatibility: iOS, Android
- Ayoa Price: Free
- Premium app/subscriptions?: Yes (Check pricing)
Diagrams.net
Diagrams.net is basically a professional diagramming tool that you can use to visualize your ideas and create mind maps out of your thought process. You can use it offline through the desktop app and the tool works perfectly with some of your most-used tools like Google Drive, Share Point, OneDrive, and many cloud storage services.
The tool allows you to export your diagrams in a number of formats, however exporting files from other tools needs some improvement. Other than that, it’s a simple and efficient tool for online collaborative brainstorming.
- Desktop Compatibility: Windows, MacOS, Linux
- Mobile Compatibility: No
- Diagrams.net Price: Free
- Premium app/subscriptions?: No
Lucidchart
An intuitive and easy to use app, Lucidchart brings you and your team on the same page of collective thought process. You can avail the pre-made professional templates, keyboard shortcuts, multi-edit a document with other collaborators in real time – all this with amazing and customizable graphics.
As Lucidchart features a whole gamut of features, for some users they may seem a bit overwhelming at first. However, with helpful guides and a smooth learning curve you get a hold of things soon and start an efficient collaboration on your ideas on the tool.
- Desktop Compatibility: Browser
- Mobile Compatibility: iOS, Android
- Lucidchart Price: Free
- Premium app/subscriptions?: Yes (Check pricing)
MindMeister – Best mind map presentation mode
SaaS Business Strategy mind map created with MindMeister.
MindMeister is a beautifully designed, cloud-based mind mapping tool that lets you visually capture, develop, and share ideas. Used alone or with a team, MindMeister allows you to easily collaborate, share, and present from anywhere in the world.
MindMeister has an easy-to-use interface so you can quickly add ideas, attach images, videos, files, links, or quickly sketch out a concept using the drawing feature. There are some useful collaboration features to help you share ideas with your team, vote, comment, and chat in real-time and in-app, so it’s more than just a mapping tool. It’s also quite easy to turn your map into a presentation with the auto-create or drag and select presentation feature. You can share your maps privately with a unique share link, publish to Meister’s public map universe, or generate embed code.
I’d definitely recommend this for newbies, as it only takes a few minutes to sign up and start mapping. Something I appreciate is that
the app isn’t overloaded with choices. What you get is a thoughtfully designed interface, and a curated selection of templates, themes, and styles to create ready-to-share mind maps. The basic set up is quick and easy. If you’re stuck, MindMeister offers an extensive online help center with tutorial videos and fast email support.
MindMeister integrates with the task management app MeisterTask where you can turn your mind map into a project, assigning tasks using the built-in integration. MindMeister also comes integrated with popular tools such as Microsoft Teams, GSuite, Confluence, and Dropbox.
MindMeister costs from $4.99/user/month. They also offer a free plan with three free maps.
Pros
- Simple controls with attractive output
- Comes with lots of templates
- Easy to use and adopt
Cons
- Sub-par user experience on touchscreen
- Integrations are lacking
- Could use more in depth text editor features
- Free version
- From $9.99/user/month
Milanote – Best multimedia mind mapping software
Milanote’s mind maps are clean, and nodes can accomodate a variety of content types, including text, video, and images.
Milanote is an easy-to-use concept map maker to organize your ideas and projects into visual boards. Far from a basic mind map maker, Milanote allows you to add rich media to your boards when you create a conceptual map (images, videos, links), and create as many levels of hierarchy as you wish to go deeper into topics.
This drag and drop interface on this diagram designer lets you put your work side by side on an infinite virtual pinboard. It handles notes, links, images and files. It also has a library of templates to make it easier to start new projects faster.
You can also collaborate in real-time, making it perfect for brainstorming workshops with remote teams.
Overall, it’s an easy-to-use diagram maker that helps you collaborate and brainstorm new ideas.
Milanote’s free version lets you add 100 notes, images or links (with no time limit). Milanote PRO gives you unlimited storage from $9.99/month per person.
Pros
- Easy to save links and make notes
- Ability to link boards to one another
- Good combination of notes, boards, images
- Lean, lightweight, and fast UI
Cons
- No live sharing without sign-up
- Only 100 elements on the free plan
- No way to hide comments without deleting
- Free trial
- From $6.40/user/month
Microsoft Visio – Best mind mapping software for Microsoft users
Microsoft Visio allows users to plot out processes and denote which departments are involved at which points.
From Microsoft Visio is visual diagramming tool that works well for mind mapping as well as creating many other graphical representations. If you’re already using Office 365, Visio is a top choice because it can pull data from Office 365 and let you visualize it in real-time with the charts you’ve set up in Visio. This functionality sets it apart from other tools, as Visio enables you to bring you data to life in dashboards that display data-linked diagrams. It does more than simply help you illustrate your ideas on a screen.
Much more than a simple brainstorming app, Visio provides ready-made templates to create block diagrams, flowcharts, timelines, flowcharts, floorplans, engineering designs, and Specification and Description Language (SDL) diagrams (and it also supports AutoCAD drawings). Users can share their diagrams as a link, attachment, image, or PDF and can collaborate through the comments and annotations features. Additionally, unlike a lot of the other mindmap software, Visio allows multiple users to collaborate simultaneously on the same mindmap.
Overall, this is one of the more robust mind mapping tools out there. Keep in mind, it does have a steeper learning curve than many other tools, and it definitely offers more than you need if you’re just looking for a simple interface to make an idea map. However, for technical teams, engineers, architects, and business intelligence use cases, Visio is a top choice—as long as you’re willing to stay within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Microsoft offers Visio through a one-time purchase (Visio Standard and Visio Profession) or as a SaaS (Visio Online).
Visio costs from $6.40/user/month. A one-time license costs from $459.
Pros
- Robust library of templates
- Best for writing UML diagrams
- Over 250,000 shapes to choose from
- Ready-made blocks and flow diagrams
Cons
- Lags on older PCs
- Complicated UX and features list
- No customization of predefined shapes
- 14 day free trial
- First year $160, year two onwards $56
MindGenius – Best simple mind mapping software
MindGenius offers simple mind maps with a built-in explorer for easy mind map navigation.
MindGenius is a combination of a concept map creator and a project planning tool. It’s designed for use in educational settings as well as for freelancers, small businesses, and agencies.
MindGenius’ suite includes drag-and-drop mind map creation, along with project planning features like Gantt charts, kanban task views, and some basic project reporting tools. They include several features for making mind maps more useful, with filtering, highlighting, and labelling tools to help you organize and present your mind maps effectively. MindGenius also integrates with Microsoft Office, so you can easily export project data and mind maps to Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint and Microsoft Project.
Overall, MindGenius is a useful brainstorming tool that helps you convert your mind maps from simple brainstorming documents into tools for managing your projects and business. They consistently roll out cool new features; most recently, their MindGenius 2019 version offers ways to share information with others with integration to MindGenius Online, Twitter, Facebook and Dropbox, One Drive and Google.
MindGenius offers two pricing models – Perpetual and Subscription. Perpetual is $256, Subscription is $160 in year one followed by $56 annually from year 2 onwards. A subscription includes upgrades to all future revisions of MindGenius.
Pros
- Easily move MindView maps into MS Project
- Easily switch from MindMap to Gantt chart or timeline
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- RTF editor for notes can be awkward to manage
- Templates with embedded graphics can be finicky
- Slight learning curve compared to other apps
Conclusion
I wanted to create a mind map because I needed to gather my thoughts, organize them, and make sure I had all the information I needed clearly laid out for me, now that’s why you would want to create a mind map. The fact that there are now several free mind-mapping tools available on the internet, makes this task even easier to accomplish.