Online whiteboards have become essential tools for teams to collaborate, brainstorm, and visualize ideas in today‘s increasingly remote and digital world. Two of the leading solutions in this space are FigJam by Figma and Miro. Both provide expansive virtual canvases to bring teams together, but they each have their own unique features, strengths, and weaknesses.
In this ultimate showdown, we‘ll pit FigJam against Miro in a head-to-head battle across the criteria that matter most. Our in-depth analysis will help you determine which is the best fit for your team‘s whiteboarding needs. Let‘s dive in!
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Why Your Team Needs an Online Whiteboard
Before we get into the specifics of FigJam vs Miro, let‘s first discuss why online whiteboards are so valuable for modern teams:
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Enhance remote collaboration: Virtual whiteboards provide a shared space for distributed teams to interact visually in real-time, making collaboration feel more engaging and connected.
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Facilitate design thinking and agile: Digital whiteboards are ideal for running remote design sprints, mapping user journeys, sprint planning, retrospectives and other activities core to design thinking and agile methodologies.
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Visualize ideas and complex concepts: Interactive canvases allow teams to diagram flows, wireframe interfaces, mind map, create mood boards and bring ideas to life visually.
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Centralize communication and documentation: Online whiteboards integrate with other tools to become a central hub for project assets, brainstorming notes, and decisions. They provide a unified space to keep everyone aligned.
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Inspire creativity and innovation: The open-ended nature of digital whiteboards sparks creativity by enabling freeform thinking. Teams can explore ideas rapidly to drive innovation.
Now that we‘ve established the importance of online whiteboards, let‘s meet our two contenders: FigJam and Miro.
FigJam: Simple, Friendly Whiteboarding for Teams
FigJam is a collaboration whiteboarding tool from Figma, the popular UI design and prototyping platform. Built with an emphasis on approachability and ease of use, FigJam enables teams to come together and jam on ideas in a freeform yet structured way.
Notable features of FigJam include:
- Extensive library of widgets like sticky notes, shapes, mind maps, diagrams, and drawing tools
- Reactions, emojis and cursor chats for quick, lightweight communication
- Audio conversations via voice chat for talking through ideas in real-time
- Voting and polls to reach consensus
- Basic templates to get started quickly
- Simple sharing and embedding options
- Integration with Figma for handoff from ideation to design
FigJam takes a playful, informal approach with a clean, unintimidating interface. Its cheery visual style featuring doodles, stickers and emojis makes it feel fun and casual to use.
"FigJam has an amazing UX that makes it a joy to whiteboard with teammates," says Casey Sackett, Product Manager at Teem. "The overall experience feels lightweight yet powerful and well-suited for quick creative sessions."
However, some users find FigJam a bit too basic for complex diagramming and technical planning. Its template selection is limited compared to other tools.
Miro: Robust, Full-Featured Whiteboarding for Any Use Case
Miro is a leading visual collaboration platform used by millions worldwide. More than just a whiteboard, Miro provides an expansive toolkit for mapping, diagramming, planning, and designing.
Key features of Miro include:
- Extensive template library for any use case from ideation to agile ceremonies
- Powerful diagramming capabilities with smart drawing, wireframing, and flowcharting
- Built-in video chat, comments and mentions for seamless communication
- Voting, timer, and other workshop facilitation tools
- Huge icon and illustration libraries
- Advanced collaboration features like live cursors and single sign-on
- Over 100 app integrations including Jira, Trello, Asana, Notion, and more
Miro is highly flexible and customizable, making it adaptable for any team and workflow. The depth of its feature set is unmatched.
"Miro acts as our central source of truth," explains Jessie Wu, UX Designer at Conde Nast. "Its vast template gallery and integration with our core tools has made it indispensable for all our design and planning needs."
On the downside, new users can find Miro‘s extensive capabilities overwhelming and face a steeper learning curve compared to simpler tools. Its pricing is also higher than some alternatives.
Head-to-Head Comparison: FigJam vs Miro
Now that we‘ve introduced FigJam and Miro individually, let‘s compare them directly across the key factors to consider when choosing an online whiteboard.
User Interface & Experience
FigJam provides a clean, minimal interface that is intuitive to navigate. With colorful graphics and playful touches, it feels welcoming and pleasant to use. The UI prioritizes simplicity, which is great for those who are less tech-savvy but may feel restrictive to power users.
Miro offers a professional, highly polished and dynamic interface packed with features. While more complex, Miro‘s UI is thoughtfully designed, customizable and efficient once you know your way around. Endless menus and options could just as easily inspire creativity or overwhelm.
Winner: Figma has the edge for casual, non-techie users while Miro will appeal more to those who want maximum control and customization. It comes down to preference.
Ease of Use & Learning Curve
FigJam is undeniably the simpler tool to learn and use. With fewer features and configuration options, you can jump right into FigJam and start jamming without much guidance. FigJam is great for those who prioritize instant accessibility over depth of functionality.
Mastering Miro takes more time with its expansive menus, options, and capabilities to discover. While its UI is logically laid out, the sheer scope can feel overwhelming to new users. However, most find the added effort worthwhile to leverage its extensive tools.
Winner: FigJam wins for ease of use while Miro gets the nod if you‘re willing to put in the time to learn its full feature set. FigJam has a lower floor while Miro offers a much higher ceiling.
Real-Time Collaboration
Both FigJam and Miro shine as powerful collaboration tools. They each enable multiple users to work together seamlessly on a shared canvas with changes instantly synced for all.
FigJam offers solid communication features including voice chat, comments, cursor locations, and friendly emoji reactions that make it feel lively and connected to jam together.
Miro matches FigJam with strong multiplayer functionality and adds native video chat, presence indicators, and smart meeting integrations to maximize real-time collaboration potential. Miro‘s multiplayer mode feels snappy and substantial.
Winner: Miro has the slight edge with a more robust suite of communication and collaboration features. But both tools deliver reliably smooth simultaneous collaboration.
Templates & Customization
FigJam provides a basic selection of templates to cover common use cases like brainstorming, retrospectives, and wire mapping. They give teams a simple starting point but are limited in scope and customization options.
Miro is in another league with its template offerings. Boasting hundreds of attractive, thoughtfully crafted templates for every imaginable business scenario, Miro is unmatched. Its templates are also highly customizable to adapt to your needs.
Winner: Miro by a mile. Its massive, diverse template library and powerful customization options are a key differentiator that make it adaptable to virtually any team and use case.
Integrations & Extensibility
FigJam offers a handful of popular integrations including Slack, Jira, and Figma itself. These allow you to bring FigJam into your existing workflows. However, the selection is limited compared to other tools. FigJam‘s API is also currently in beta.
Miro has an impressive integration library with over 100 apps including major players like Jira, Trello, Zoom, Notion, Asana, Google Workspace and more. This connectivity makes Miro feel like a central hub you can build your tech stack around. The maturity of Miro‘s API and SDKs further boosts extensibility.
Winner: Miro is the clear leader in integrations and extensibility. Its ability to connect with and bring in data from all your key tools is a major advantage in becoming a thorough visual collaboration solution.
Pricing & Value
FigJam offers very competitive pricing. Its free plan supports unlimited users with up to 3 whiteboards while paid plans start at just $3 per user per month. FigJam is one of the most affordable tools relative to features.
Miro is pricier with paid plans starting at $8 per user per month, though it also offers a generous free plan. While more expensive, Miro arguably justifies its price with the depth and breadth of its capabilities that rival far more expensive enterprise software.
Winner: Depends on your specific needs and budget. FigJam is the better value for those with basic whiteboarding needs. Miro‘s higher price delivers more substantial, wide-reaching functionality that can replace other tools.
Final Recommendation
So which should you choose between FigJam vs Miro? The answer depends on your team‘s specific needs and preferences.
FigJam is best for:
- Designers wanting a simple brainstorming and wireframing tool that integrates with Figma
- Business teams needing an unintimidating, easy to learn whiteboarding solution
- Smaller companies or those with constrained budgets
- Short, casual collaboration sessions and lightweight whiteboarding
Miro is best for:
- Teams wanting a highly versatile visual collaboration tool for varied use cases
- Complex diagramming, mapping, or planning that demands specialized templates
- Large organizations looking to standardize around an enterprise-grade solution
- Agile and product teams that want to integrate whiteboarding into structured workflows
- Those willing to invest time into learning a more powerful tool
The Future of Online Whiteboarding
Visual collaboration will only become more critical as remote and hybrid teams become the norm. Thankfully, tools like FigJam and Miro are innovating rapidly to serve this growing demand.
Both FigJam and Miro have robust product roadmaps with exciting updates ahead. FigJam is working on tighter integration into the Figma ecosystem as well as improved collaboration and facilitation features. Miro continues to release valuable templates and refine its experience to be more approachable for all.
The competition between these two tools and other rising challengers will surely lead to more breakthroughs that make the whiteboarding experience more delightful, productive, and intelligent.
One thing is certain – online whiteboards are here to stay as invaluable tools for bringing teams together to create the future. Whether you choose the simplicity of FigJam, the power of Miro, or another contender, your team can‘t afford not to adopt this transformational technology.