Scrintal vs Mindmup vs Padlet
Introduction
I love creating whiteboards because they have the ability to display enormous amounts of information in a graphical format. I see a whiteboard as a map of ideas. I also see them (and use them) as light weight versions of my nonfiction books.
For quite a while (a few years), Scrintal was my go-to app to create these whiteboards. At the time, it was in beta and everything went well for time. But then the app became unstable. My boards tended to disappear without warning. Now I see it. Poof. Now I don’t see it. And I couldn’t find it anywhere on the site.
Given this instability, I abandoned Scrintal and searched for other software programs. I found two programs to use. One is Padlet, the other is Mindmup. So, I banged alone using these two for a while.
But recently Scrintal released an all new version that eliminated the instability and made other improvements and it came back into contention. Now my problem was which program should I use for my future whiteboards since using all three didn’t see reasonable.
So I did what I always do in a situation like this. I opened the Freeform app on my iPad and started scribbling notes. My notes looked like this.
If you can’t read my writing, don’t worry about it. Many times, I can’t read my writing either. Let’s take a look at each program.
Padlet
I’ve been using Padlet for about ten years. It has tested my creativity by offering the ability to do just about everything. As you see in this Padlet, https://padlet.com/hanque/creativity-3afb5elqfurdt47q it is visually colorful and attractive. In a card I can add text, video, audio, graphics, even downloadable files. With a bit of pre-planning, the cards can be used to create a slideshow automatically on the site.
Mindmup
I found this app a few moths ago thanks to a mention in a Medium article. It is ideal for creating free form whiteboards like this unfinished one: https://atlas.mindmup.com/hanque/self_publishing_book_marketing_basics/index.html. Like Padlets, it is colorful but it doesn’t have cards. Text, information and links have to be added into a notebook-like attachment. This works but it is a bit awkward. Right now, I can’t add videos or audio clips into Mindmup, a big limitation.
Scrintal
Scrintal isn’t as colorful as the other two, but it is as easy to use as they are and it has cards which Mindmup doesn’t. The cards can also hold links, graphics, videos, audio clips and downloadable files. Like Padlets, cards can be arranged in a free form style or in columns. This link will display a typical Scrintal board: https://app.scrintal.com/b/ecosystem-lecture--r5dds
The winner!
To me, the winner is Scrintal.
The new version eliminates the instability that the beta version had and that was the biggest drawback for me. The disappearing boards was the reason I went looking for an alternative and found Mindmup. With its inability to add videos and audio clips, Mindmup is at a distinct disadvantage versus Scrintal. I’d judge Scrintal and Padlets pretty much even right now. Padlet has a few more capabilities but I’m more comfortable using Scrintal. Padlet is a more mature product than Scrintal at the moment, but Scrintal is growing and more capabilities will be added over time. I plan to stick around to play with the new features as they are added.
I’m already at work on several whiteboards. These include: Book Business Concept Map; Story Creation Concept Map; What’s The Problem.
All my whiteboards show up on my website hankquense.online
Visit there to see how the whiteboards turned out. There are a few on the site currently.