10 Best Mind Mapping Software For Visual Collaboration In 2024

Ayoa is a mind mapping tool developed by Chris Griffiths, the world’s leading mind mapping expert, who worked with Tony Buzan for over 20 years, the inventor of the Mind Map.

Why I picked Ayoa: This software mimics the natural thinking process through organic mind mapping. It has built-in artificial intelligence features as well as freehand mind mapping capabilities. It provides a blend of whiteboard, task management, and mind mapping tools. 

The whiteboard features let you add various types of media to your mind map, including free-form text, documents, notes, images, and lists. You can also draw diagrams, flowcharts, and even embed other boards.

Ayoa Standout Features and Integrations

Features include organic maps, radial maps, speed and capture maps, freehand drawing to produce hand-drawn digital mind maps, unlimited sharing and collaboration, and extensive image libraries.

Integrations include Google Calendar, Evernote, and Zoom.

Miro is a collaborative online whiteboard with over 1,000 templates including mind maps, Kanban boards, Gantt charts, product wireframes, research boards, and flowcharts.

Why I picked Miro: This visual platform provides a fast, intuitive way for teams to capture, organize, and structure ideas. Communication tools are included in the platform such as chat, comments, and the ability to auto-organize and add content to your map. It's built for hybrid work, and empowers in-person, remote, and hybrid teams to brainstorm, plan projects, map out information architecture, create org charts, and develop sales strategies.

Miro Standout Features and Integrations

Features include a template library, clustering, voting, timer, mind maps, freeform drawing, access controls, and GDPR and CCPA compliance.

Integrations include Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Workspace, Asana, monday.com, Jira, Dropbox, OneDrive, Notion, Airtable, ClickUp, and Unito, among others.

MindMeister is an award-winning mind-mapping tool built for brainstorming and ideation in business teams and educational settings. It allows each team member to capture, develop, and share ideas from anywhere, which makes it perfect for remote and hybrid collaboration.

Why I picked MindMeister: This platform's map editor is a blank canvas with tons of customization options. The styling toolbar helps you connect ideas, add comments, notes, media, and attachments, customize fonts, topics, borders, and connecting lines, and add emojis and tintable icons. Meanwhile, version history lets you revert back to a previous iteration of your board.

Additional customization includes formatting topics as mind maps, org charts or lists (even on the same map), free topic positioning, and switching to Outline Mode to view your mind map as a bulleted list. Finally, Focus Mode is available for distraction-free mapping. This feature is especially good when you have a looming deadline or need to present your ideas to coworkers or external stakeholders.

MindMeister Standout Features and Integrations

Features include an outline mode to display your information differently, icons and emojis so you can complement your visual representation of concepts, comments and real-time collaboration with notifications included.

Integrations include all Meister Suite products like Meister Task, and Meister Note, as well as Google Workspace and Microsoft Teams.

InVision Freehand is a free online whiteboard that can be used for collaborative mind mapping, note taking, and wireframing.

Why I picked InVision: From product managers and marketers to recruiters and engineers, this tool's simplicity makes everyone feel at ease. Whether you’re brainstorming, planning, or facilitating a meeting, the platform allows you to spend more time contributing than figuring out how to contribute.

You can draw a variety of shapes quickly and easily with intuitive tooling and connect shapes with snapping line connectors. Then, add sticky notes and collaborate with others in real-time on a shared canvas. Integration with Microsoft Teams allows you to co-create during a live meeting or asynchronously through chat.

InVision Freehand Standout Features and Integrations

Features include pre-made templates from leading companies; facilitation features like voting, present mode, and sticky notes; Advanced controls like locking and version history. Enterprises plans can access custom templates, SSO, SCIM integrations, audit logging, and a dedicated customer success team

Integrations include Atlassian products (Jira, Trello), Asana, Adobe XD, Figma, Google Workspace, Microsoft Suite, Zoom, and Slack.

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.

Creately is an online visual workspace with advanced capabilities to make drawing mind maps online quick and easy. It's suitable for both individual and team use, and can be used in any industry, from marketing to education.

It has an infinite canvas, simple drag-and-drop functionality, and the ability to create shortcuts to visualize and organize information and ideas. With its context toolbar, you can also easily color code and format mind maps. The tool has an extensive library of mind map templates apt for all kinds of scenarios including brainstorming, design thinking, problem-solving, documenting research, and more.

Creately allows you to copy and paste or drag and drop images and graphics from your device, or browse and add more elements with its built-in Google image search option. You can also add hyperlinks which can be displayed right within the app with an iFrame, to make your mind maps more resourceful.

You can also collaborate with others on your team, or with your clients in real-time using in-app video conferencing or in-line comments which also serve as an in-app chat function.

You can track changes other teammates make on the canvas with real-time change previews and live mouse tracking. Additionally, you can export your mind map in SVGs, PNGs, JPEGs, or PDFs for printing or publishing, or you can embed them as images in a web page or document with a secure link.

Creately also has plugins for Slack, Google Drive, Google Docs, and Confluence, and a desktop version. However, Creately’s free version only allows 3 collaborators; if you have a larger team, you will have to consider switching to a paid version.

Whimsical is a mind mapping software that's built for real-time (or asynchronous) team ideation. Users can comment on individual connections and follow another teammate's cursor around the map. Your mind maps can be integrated with other Whimsical files so you can switch between mind maps, wireframes, projects, and docs.

Whimsical also gives you the ability to create mind maps without over-complicated styling options. Keyboard shortcuts help with organizing your ideas, which you can add in the form of text, images, links, and even icons from Whimsical’s library.

You don't have to download any additional apps or browser extensions to use Whimsical mind maps as all functionality is available within your browser.

Whimsical has a direct integration with Github and can be embedded in Notion docs. It also supports two-factor authentication with any authenticator app.

Whimsical costs from $10/user/month. You can create up to 1,000 items in Whimsical for free

Mindomo is an easy-to-learn concept map generator geared towards teachers and students, but it’s useful for small businesses and corporate agencies. It offers a suite of mindmapper tools with an emphasis on collaboration, providing users with the ability to easily co-create, share, and present their mind maps.

Some of Mindomo’s most useful mind mapping tools include real-time collaboration, a template library, the ability to add links, video, and audio to mind maps, and the ability to easily search for web images directly within the app. You can quickly turn mind maps into presentations with their Presentation Mode feature, or you can export in various formats (pdf, .docx, .pptx, .txt, .opml, .mpx, .html, .zip, .png.)

Overall, Mindomo is a practical, user-friendly mind mapping software that focuses on doing one thing and doing well. Their native mobile apps make it all the more convenient to use this tool, enabling users to create and edit mind maps while offline from any mobile device (Android, iPad, iPhone, etc). Additionally, Mindomo integrations are more numerous than most other mind mapping software, including Google Apps, Office365, and LTI integrations with education apps like Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, Desire2Learn, itslearning, Schoology, and others.

Mindomo pricing works out to $6/user/month, and they also offer a free mind map software supporting up to 3 mind maps.

MindView is a powerful mind mapping tool for capturing, developing and presenting ideas and information. MindView is one of the leading mind mapping software for project management and has several layouts including timeline and Gantt chart. MindView’s MS Office integration has been awarded multiple times as the industry leader.

MindView allows you to brainstorm sessions and present ideas visually. Users have the ability to customize mind maps, collaborate in real-time, attach files and utilize presentation mode. Project Managers can also create baselines and effort driven tasks. You can brainstorm your project plan in a mind map, apply task information and resources, then transfer the plan to the built-in Gantt chart and project timeline or export to Microsoft Project.

MindView adopts the latest Microsoft Office interface and has built-in tutorial videos to guide you. The use of the ribbon system makes the software familiar and intuitive to use and learn. You can also use the latest MS Office keyboard shortcuts.

MindView imports and exports to the entire MS Office suite (Excel, PP, Word, Outlook) including MS Project. MindView also exports to .pdf, HTML, project reports, XML, rtf and picture.

MindView starts at $379 for a single user license. They also offer a free trial and free webinars to get you set up.

Slickplan is marketed as a diagram designer for web planning teams. It functions well as a concept map maker, but it does much more than help you create a conceptual map. It provides features tailored to website design (UX designers, content teams, app designers and developers, website marketers) and has multiple pricing plans tailored to individuals, freelancers, small teams, and agencies.

Slickplans’s diagram maker includes a symbology library, automated design functions, and integration with Slickplan’s sitemap builder. It enables simultaneous editing, live chat, commenting, easy export of your projects into various formats (HTML, DOCX, PDF, XML, etc) as well as export directly into integrated CMS platforms (Wordpress, Joomla!, concrete5, Drupal, and Expression Engine). It also has integrations with Google Analytics, Slack, Basecamp, and Teamwork.

Overall, Slickplan is a top choice for use cases like web design or mobile app development agencies. The diagram maker functions well as a stand-alone mind map maker but is part of their general website planning suite, which also includes a sitemap builder and a content planner. The entire suite offers visual collaboration features for conceptualizing and designing a website, from site map to content marketing flows.

Slickplan costs from $8.99/user/month. They also offer a “free forever” version with limited features as well as a free 30-day trial of paid versions.