Online sticky notes apps
Last reviewed by The thinkdrop facilitation team
For team sticky-note sessions the practical options are the infinite canvases (Miro, Mural, FigJam), structured card boards (thinkdrop.io, Stormboard), free boards (IdeaBoardz, Padlet) and, if no new tool can be added, a shared document. The differences that matter are whether guests need accounts and whether the notes turn into anything afterwards.
Prices are described in shape rather than quoted, because vendor pricing changes often; every tool links to its own live pricing page. thinkdrop.io is our product and is marked as such.
The options
Miro
Teams who want one infinite canvas for diagrams, workshops and everything visual.
Pricing: Free plan with a limited number of editable boards; paid plans are per user per month. Current pricing
Strengths
- The most complete infinite canvas: diagrams, frames, drawing, embeds
- Very large template library and a mature integration marketplace
- Widely known, so most participants have used it before
Limitations
- Per-user pricing gets expensive once occasional participants need edit access
- The blank canvas is a lot of surface area for a 30-minute session
- Heavy in the browser on older machines and on mobile
FigJam
Product and design teams already living inside Figma.
Pricing: Free tier with limits; paid FigJam seats priced per editor per month. Current pricing
Strengths
- Sits next to your design files, so design handoff is seamless
- Fast, light and pleasant to use compared with heavier canvases
- Good sticky-note and voting basics out of the box
Limitations
- Most valuable if your team is already on Figma; otherwise it is another account
- Editor seats are counted, so wide participation costs money
- No structured written summary of the session
Mural
Facilitation-led workshops inside larger organisations.
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans are per member per month, with enterprise tiers. Current pricing
Strengths
- Strong facilitation features — timers, summon, private mode voting
- Enterprise administration and compliance depth
- Method-led templates aimed at trained facilitators
Limitations
- Aimed at facilitators who already have a method; more to learn than a card board
- Per-member pricing, same escalation problem as other canvas tools
- Overkill for a recurring 20-minute team retro
thinkdrop.io (our product)
Structured, timeboxed idea sessions where you want a written summary at the end.
Pricing: 7-day free trial (card required to start), then one flat monthly price — no per-seat charge for participants. Current pricing
Strengths
- Participants join from a link without creating an account
- Cards are entered individually, so the loudest voice does not anchor the room
- AI suggests angles the group has missed while the session is still running
- Closing the board produces a structured written summary instead of a screenshot
- One price for the facilitator; guests are not billed
Limitations
- It is a card board, not a freeform canvas — no drawing, diagramming or infinite zoom
- No native video conferencing; you run it alongside your call
- Fewer third-party integrations than the large whiteboard suites
Stormboard
Sticky-note sessions that need to end in a document or report.
Pricing: Free personal tier; paid business tiers per user. Current pricing
Strengths
- Index-card model rather than an infinite canvas, so sessions stay structured
- Report and document export from the session content
- Sub-sticky detail lets an idea carry its own discussion
Limitations
- Interface feels dated next to newer tools
- Report generation is template-driven rather than written prose
Padlet
Classrooms and lightweight collections of contributions.
Pricing: Free tier with a small number of padlets; paid personal and school plans. Current pricing
Strengths
- Very easy for non-technical participants
- Contributors need no account and can post text, images and links
- Attractive out of the box
Limitations
- Built for collecting, not for running a timeboxed session
- No facilitation tooling — no phases, no timer-led flow
IdeaBoardz
A free, zero-friction retro board when you need one in the next 60 seconds.
Pricing: Free. Current pricing
Strengths
- No account required for anyone, including the person creating the board
- Loads instantly and does one thing
- Boards are shareable by URL
Limitations
- No access control — anyone with the link can edit or delete anything
- No AI, no summary, no export beyond basic downloads
- Boards are public by URL, which rules it out for sensitive material
Notion / Confluence table
Async idea collection where nothing has to happen live.
Pricing: Free personal tiers; paid team plans per member. Current pricing
Strengths
- The ideas end up where the rest of your documentation already is
- Perfect for slow, async contribution over days
Limitations
- No real-time session feel, no voting, no anonymity
- People edit each other's rows by accident
Digital sticky notes solve the wrong problem by default
Physical sticky notes are good because they are small, movable and disposable. Digital versions keep the movability and lose the discipline: nothing forces brevity, nothing forces you to throw notes away, and the board persists forever. Whichever tool you pick, cap the character count in your own head and delete aggressively during grouping.
Grouping is where sessions die
Affinity grouping eats the clock in almost every session that overruns. Timebox it to ten minutes, group roughly rather than perfectly, and accept a miscellaneous pile. A tool that clusters automatically helps, but only if you treat its output as a first draft rather than the answer.
Pick by the session you actually run
The useful question is not which tool is best but which shape of session you run most often. Freeform visual work — architecture sketches, journey maps, anything you would draw on a wall — wants an infinite canvas. A recurring 20-to-45-minute session that ends in decisions wants a structured card board with a timer and a summary. Most teams pick a canvas because it is famous, then use one per cent of it for a fortnightly retro.
- Drawing, diagramming, spatial layout → an infinite canvas tool.
- Timeboxed idea generation and voting → a structured card board.
- Agile ceremonies specifically → a retrospective-native tool.
- Async collection over days → a document or table, not a live board.
How this comparison is put together
Everything on this page is taken from each vendor's own public pages, linked on every entry. We deliberately do not quote competitor prices: they change several times a year and a stale number is worse than none, so pricing is described in shape (free tier, per-seat, per-team) and the link takes you to the live figure. We do not publish ratings, review counts or benchmark scores, because we have no defensible way to produce them.
- Every claim is checkable on the linked vendor page.
- No prices are quoted, because prices go stale — the links do not.
- Where a tool beats us, we say so plainly.
- thinkdrop.io is our own product and is marked as such wherever it appears.
Frequently asked questions
What replaced Google Jamboard?
Google retired Jamboard, and teams generally moved to FigJam, Miro or a lighter card board depending on whether they needed a canvas or a structured session.
Is there a sticky notes app with no login for participants?
Yes — IdeaBoardz, Padlet and thinkdrop.io all let participants contribute from a link without creating an account.
How many sticky notes is too many?
Beyond roughly 60 cards a group stops reading and starts skimming, which is the point to stop generating and start grouping.