IdeaBoardz
3.1Free shared brainstorming boards
IdeaBoardz is a long-standing free brainstorming and retrospective board: pick one of five presets (Retrospective, Star Fish, Six Thinking Hats, Pros and Cons, Todos) or name your own 1-10 sections, share the URL, add ideas anonymously, upvote, and export to PDF or Excel. The app still works and is still in daily use, but development stopped years ago — the public source repository's last feature commits date to April 2020 and the Terms have not been revised since.
Full review →
Mural
6.6Visual collaboration whiteboard with a mature facilitation toolkit and AI-assisted sessions
Mural is a long-established visual collaboration platform — an infinite canvas with sticky notes, anonymous voting, timers, Private Mode, 250+ workshop templates (eight of them retro-specific), Mural AI (cluster, summarise, mind-map, Classify by emotional tone), and a Facilitation Superpowers toolkit (Outline, Timer, Voting, Private Mode, Summon, Celebrate) refined for over a decade. Best-in-class enterprise posture: SSO/SAML with multi-IdP support, SCIM, SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and NA/EU/APAC data residency.
Full review →Summary
IdeaBoardz scores 3.1 overall and is best for throwaway retros and quick distributed brainstorms when nobody wants to sign up. It offers a free tier.
Mural scores 6.6 overall and is best for workshop-heavy teams (design, product, agile coaching) that want a polished facilitation canvas with strong retro templates and enterprise-grade controls. It offers a free tier.
IdeaBoardz leads on value. Mural leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Mural edges ahead with an overall score of 6.6. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | Mural |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Whiteboard |
| Team size | Small | Mid-market |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | Unlimited murals but only the 3 most recently created stay editable (older go view-only); unlimited members and visitors; no Mural AI |
| Starting price | Free | $9.99/user/mo |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | $240/mo billed annually |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2010 | 2011 |
| HQ | Pune, India | San Francisco, US |
| Data residency | — | United States · European Union · Asia-Pacific |
| Languages | English only | 9 (English, Spanish, German, …) |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | Image · PDF · PowerPoint · HTML · CSV |
| Features | 10 | 40 |
| Integrations | 0 | 8 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | Mural |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | — |
| Action tracking | — | ✓note |
| Async mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Whiteboard | — | ✓ |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Polling | — | ✓note |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | ✓note |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | ✓ |
| AI action items | — | — |
| AI Summaries | — | ✓ |
| Team Insights | — | — |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | ✓ |
| Action dashboard | — | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | ✓note |
| Azure DevOps | — | ✓note |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | ✓ |
| GitHub | — | ✓note |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | — | ✓note |
| Linear | — | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | ✓ |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | ✓note |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | ✓ |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | ✓ |
| GDPR | — | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | ✓note |
| ISO 27001 | — | ✓ |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓note | ✓ |
| Webhooks | — | — |
| MCP server | — | ✓note |
IdeaBoardz — pros
- + Genuinely free — no paywall, no paid tier, no trial clock
- + No signup required to participate — just share the URL
- + Five one-click presets (Retrospective, Star Fish, Six Thinking Hats, Pros and Cons, Todos), or type your own 1-10 section titles
- + Drag one sticky onto another to merge them; the votes are added together
- + PDF and Excel export on every board, plus a working phone view
IdeaBoardz — cons
- − The presets only pre-fill column titles — there is no timer, no phases and no facilitator flow behind them
- − No action-item tracking, no owners, no due dates, no carry-over between boards
- − Unlimited anonymous upvotes with no per-person vote budget
- − Zero integrations, no SSO, no SOC 2 and no published privacy policy — the URL is the only access control
- − No product work since April 2020; support is a Gmail address and a Twitter handle
Mural — pros
- + Mature facilitation toolkit — Outline, Timer, Voting, Private Mode, Summon, Celebrate — refined over 10+ years
- + Anonymous where it counts: votes hide who voted, and Private Mode can keep sticky authors hidden even after reveal
- + Best-in-class enterprise posture: SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, SSO/SAML (multi-IdP), SCIM, NA/EU/APAC residency
- + Jira and Azure DevOps work-item cards now carry configurable and custom fields and can be edited inside the mural
- + Five export formats (PDF, PNG, PPT, HTML bundle, CSV of stickies) — unusually broad for a canvas tool
Mural — cons
- − Per-seat pricing: a 24-person org pays ~$240/mo on the Team+ tier (annual), well above retro-native tools at that headcount
- − No native health checks, mood tracking or longitudinal team-pulse
- − No recurring retros, action carryover or cross-team rollup — facilitators rebuild structure each sprint
- − AI (clustering, summary, tone Classify) helps inside a session but doesn't track trends across retros
- − SSO/SAML needs the $17.99/user/mo Business tier; SCIM, audit logs and data residency are Enterprise-only
- − Public API has no webhooks, and the MCP server is still early-access beta
Keep comparing
Other IdeaBoardz comparisons
Other Mural comparisons
See alternatives
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.