FigJam is an online interactive whiteboard from Figma headquartered in San Francisco, presently in beta (2021) but available to the public in a free trial. The vendor states that in 2022, FigJam will have plans for $0, $8, and $15 per editor, per month.
$36
per year per editor
Whiteboard.chat
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Whiteboard.chat – an interactive online whiteboard platform designed to support teaching and learning experiences, offering a free tier. Available to educators and students across the USA, the online whiteboard fosters collaborative, immersive learning environments and includes tools for real-time interaction, teachers engage, annotate, and instruct while students actively participate and learn.
$0
supported by ads (teacher boards only, 10 class boards)
Pricing
FigJam
Whiteboard.chat
Editions & Modules
FigJam Professional
$36
per year per editor
FigJam Organization
$60
per year per editor
Educator Free
$0
supported by ads (teacher boards only, 10 class boards)
FigJam is perfect for the early stages of a project, where every member from cross-functional teams can participate, because it’s intuitive and has a very low entry barrier.
Whenever the engineers & architects of my team require a brainstorming session, we normally use a whiteboard, as the enterprise does provide Miro licenses with associated. Hence, a whiteboard comes in handy when troubleshooting or discussing the requirements surrounding an application or technical infrastructure for a project. As it removes the dependency on requesting an additional Miro license, we use it. The board also loads faster than a Miro board.
I don't use it often, because the organization I work in uses a different environment on a commo basis. This is rather used between the designers, who prototype the solutions in Figma - they just have it as a workbook/notebook for their ideas. However, if those need to be shared with stakeholders or other organization members, the designers are expected to use a different environment.
The application, although it loads faster even at slower internet connections, and is a good alternative to Miro boards, still requires some more room for improvement. During live sessions, when multiple users contribute to the board, the updates are openly visible to all. Perhaps a privacy feature that hides text, available to the board admin, would allow me to give a rating. Being from an ersecurity background, I think the app also requires a secure sign-up process with MFA.
It is similar, but it provides more usable solutions for brainstorming sessions and presentation purposes. Now empowered with AI and some new cool stuff, it may be the most dangerous competitor to FigJam. However, it will win the race if FigJam is more responsive and gets more attached to Figma, where the prototyping takes place.
I'd rate it lower than Miro but higher than draw.io and Lucidchart. The other two do not have a real-time collaborator feature for users; they have limited tools for designing and no provision for syncing with third-party apps. While whiteboard. Chat does provide a provision for the creation of JIRA or Azure DevOps tickets directly from a sticky note, like Miro.