In the early 2020's, an uninvited guest arrived quietly. The COVID-19 epidemic spreads rapidly across the globe, causing mass panic on a global scale. Going out in such an environment was tantamount to challenging one's life; thousands of employees were stuck at home, unable to leave their homes to work, and teams were forced to postpone or cancel meetings and collaborations, resulting in incalculable financial and resource losses. While people are fretting about this, telework and distance education visionaries have moved on, creating and optimizing the online collaboration tools that teams and students need to communicate and collaborate, and Mural and Miro are two well-known online smart whiteboard software with a global reach. In this article, we'll look at the specific features of Mural and Miro, and compare and contrast their differences and usage priorities.
Why is online whiteboard software on the rise?
During an epidemic, remote work and distance learning become more commonplace, and teams and students need an online collaboration tool to facilitate communication and collaboration. Smart Whiteboard software provides real-time collaboration, visual communication and remote collaboration, making it an important tool for teams and students to work and learn in remote environments. It can help remote team members share ideas and information and facilitate teamwork, while also allowing teachers and students to interact and discuss in distance education. As a result, the COVID-19 epidemic has driven the widespread adoption of smart whiteboard software, providing teams and students with a more efficient and convenient remote collaboration experience.
In addition to this, there are many other reasons for the rise of smart whiteboard software that have made it a popular online collaboration tool, providing a more efficient and convenient team collaboration experience.
- Remote Collaboration Needs: With globalization and remote working becoming more popular, more and more teams need remote collaboration tools to facilitate communication and collaboration among team members. Intelligent whiteboard software provides real-time collaboration and remote collaboration features to meet the needs of teams working remotely.
- Visual Communication: Visual communication communicates thoughts and ideas more clearly and helps team members better understand and share information. Intelligent whiteboard software provides a wealth of authoring tools and templates that enable teams to communicate and collaborate graphically.
- Space and Cost: Traditional physical whiteboards take up a lot of space and require the purchase of equipment such as whiteboards and markers. Smart whiteboard software, on the other hand, saves space and costs by running on a computer, tablet or phone without the need for additional physical equipment.
- Real-time collaboration and version control: Smart Whiteboard software supports real-time collaboration, where team members can edit and view the same canvas at the same time. In addition, the smart whiteboard software also provides version control function to track and restore previous editing records, which is convenient for team members to trace and modify.
- Third-party integration and cloud storage: Smart whiteboard software usually supports seamless integration with other tools (e.g., Slack, Trello, etc.), which facilitates teams to collaborate and share information between different tools. At the same time, smart whiteboard software usually provides cloud storage to save and synchronize the team's creative content in real time, ensuring data security and accessibility.
Mural VS Miro
Mural
Mural is an online collaboration tool that can be used for teamwork, brainstorming, project planning and more. It is worth mentioning that Mural has a dedicated crafted and functional stand-alone site, so users can start their collaborative drawing board journey with Mural after getting a full understanding of its features.
Teamwork feels like less work with Mural, the secure, flexible, visual work platform purpose-built for collaboration. Overall, with its flexible canvas, rich set of tools and templates, and real-time collaboration, Mural is a powerful online collaboration tool that helps teams work creatively and collaboratively in an efficient manner.
Miro
Miro is a visual workspace for innovation that enables distributed teams of any size to dream, design, and build the future together. Their mission is to empower these teams to create the next big thing.
Over 60 million people and 99% of the Fortune 100 rely on Miro throughout the innovation lifecycle to clarify complex ideas, center customer needs, and deliver products and services faster — all supported by best-in-class security, compliance, and scalability.
The entire interface is an infinite canvas, the platform provides UX design commonly used chart templates, you can add multiple charts on the same canvas, eliminating the need to switch pages. Chart editing is also very convenient, you can add labels, drag and drop arrows, change the color and so on. Chart templates are visually colorful, except that all the templates almost convey information in the form of text, which is slightly lacking in graphical expression.
Powerful functions in common
Both Mural and Miro offer a tablet version. While providing chart templates, the drawing function has been added so that users who log in to their account on a tablet can draw design inspirations on the fly or draw usage scenarios, storyboards, and so on, allowing for richer and more flexible content and forms of record keeping.
- Multiple Graphs and Diagrams: Both Mural and Miro offer a wide range of graphic and diagramming tools, including mind maps, flowcharts, prototyping, user journey maps, and more, to facilitate all types of creative and collaborative work for teams.
- Flexible Canvas: Flexible and free drag and drop and adjustment of various elements, support for a variety of layouts and typography, so that the team can give free rein to creativity and organize information.
- Real-time collaboration: Team members can edit and view the same canvas at the same time, realizing real-time collaboration and information sharing, which can improve team efficiency and synergy.
- Rich Templates and Tools: Both of them provide a rich set of templates and tools, including brainstorming, SWOT analysis, user journey mapping, and more, to help teams get started quickly and collaborate and create more efficiently.
- Third-party integration and team management features: They support seamless integration with other tools (e.g., Slack, Trello, etc.), facilitating teams to collaborate and share information between different tools. At the same time, they also provide powerful permission management and team management features, suitable for large team collaboration.
- User-friendly: Both focus on the user experience, providing intuitive, easy-to-use user interfaces that enable team members to get started quickly and collaborate and create efficiently.
These commonalities have made both Mural and Miro popular online collaboration tools that meet the diverse needs of teamwork and creative work.
Difference between Mural & Miro
User interface and design
Mural's user interface is more intuitive and easy to use, especially for mind mapping and brainstorming, while Miro is more flexible and versatile, supporting a wider variety of charts and graphs, such as flowcharts, prototyping, user journey maps, and more.
- Mural supports adding round sticky notes
- Mural offers free Timer and Voting functions.
- Mural saves every step in real time and supports restoration of deletion operations.
- Miro provides a wealth of templates and plug-ins that enable users to express their creativity and collaborate more freely.
How it works and what it can do
Mural is better suited for teams that need to focus on designing mind maps and team management, while Miro is better suited for teams that need a wider variety of diagrams and a more flexible approach to collaboration.
Miro is only available in private mode for paid users, but can be used in private mode when experiencing the Business Plan for free, while Mural free users can create 1 private mural file without limiting the functionality of the software, and the files created after that are visible to everyone in the workspace, with no way to ensure that the files are private or secure.
- Mural Built-in private mode, when turned on the whiteboard will only show elements or content that you have created yourself
- Miro supports audio and video meetings
Third-party integration and team management capabilities
Mural offers richer third-party integrations that work seamlessly with other tools (e.g., Slack, Trello, etc.), as well as more robust permission management and team management features for large team collaboration.
Miro’s plug-in ecosystem is more mature, supporting the use of linkage with a variety of applications, such as Google Drive, Notion, Slack, Teams, Jira, Airtable, etc. It can make seamless integration with more team collaboration tools possible, but it is relatively weak in terms of rights management and team management.
Comparation table
We created visual tables labeling the features of each of the two whiteboard software and some of the aspects that users are most concerned about:
These differences dictate that Mural and Miro have their own advantages and applicability in different work scenarios and team needs. The choice depends on the specific needs of the team and the way they work.
Business Plan Comparison
Both Miro and Mural offer various paid plans for different users, and the permissions and features in these versions are much more advanced and complete. Here's a side-by-side comparison of Miro's Starter Plan and Business Plan and Mural's Team+ Plan and Business Plan.
Mural Business Edition and Miro Business Edition are similar in many ways, but there are also some differences.
Similarities:
- Both feature an unlimited number of whiteboards within a single workspace.
- Both support collaboration within and outside the team and offer advanced security and privacy controls.
- Both offer rich graphical shapes and tools for visualizing processes and systems.
- Both offer advanced collaboration and team management tools such as timers, polling, video chat, and more.
Difference
Mural Business Plan focuses on providing features such as premium service credits, in-app chat and email support, monthly bill payment options, Single Sign-On (SSO) (SAML 2.0), and more on advanced integrations and prioritized support.
Miro Business Plan focuses on providing unlimited Talk Tracks to share context and save time, a private whiteboard feature, a private mode sticky note feature, and a higher quality resolution whiteboard export feature.
Taken together, Mural Business Plan focuses more on providing more privacy controls, advanced integrations, and prioritized support, while Miro Business Plan focuses on providing more collaboration features, team management tools, and a richer, more interactive experience. Which one you choose depends on your team's specific needs and preferences.
Prices for Mural’s upgrade plans
Prices for Miro’s upgrade plans
Conclusion
Mural and Miro are both powerful online team collaboration tools, both offering unlimited whiteboard space and rich graphical shapes, tools, and advanced collaboration and team management features. However, they differ in a number of ways, such as Mural's greater focus on providing advanced integrations and prioritized support, while Miro focuses on providing more collaboration features, team management tools, and a richer, more interactive experience.
The choice of which one to use depends on the specific needs and preferences of the team. Whichever tool is chosen, it can provide a powerful platform for teams to facilitate more efficient work and better communication among team members through visual collaboration, creative expression, and project management.
NearHub is an all-in-one solution for meeting rooms and classrooms. NearHub possesses an interactive digital Board with cutting-edge whiteboard software. By combining your favorite programs with mess-free writing canvas and video conferencing, you can improve your interaction and productivity in the online meeting room or classroom. Besides, NearHub also provides MagicPad S13 to improve digital learning and creativity.
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