draw.io is an online diagramming tool with integrations with Jira, Google, and Confluence available free online or at cost depending on integration chosen.
$5
per month
Mural
Score 7.3 out of 10
N/A
MURAL (formerly Mural.ly) from Tactivos (DBA MURAL) in San Francisco is described by the vendor as a digital workspace and visual collaboration tool, designed for creative teams to make the process of design more efficient for distributed teams, working remotely.
draw.io can be more suitable for technical documentation for architectures, flow diagrams/charts, and conceptual images of an application infrastructure. However, this tool is not made for business intelligence work nor for dashboarding to monitor the technical components. From the administrative standpoint, this is not well suited for agile ceremony structures like retrospective boards or planning or even quarterly planning boards. The strength of draw.io lies strongly in being a lightweight diagramming tool.
I've recommended MURAL to a lot of people in a lot of fields. This is a great tool for any group of people that might stand around a white board if they were in person. Even if they are in person, I still recommend it pretty often because, unlike a white board, MURAL is virtual, so it can go offline with you. I've recommended it to other Software Teams, individual software developers, engineering teams, Sales Managers, Office Staff, Manufacturing teams, and more.
Draw.io offers a lot of shapes and customizability of how the diagrams are laid out. We've been able to create a lot of different things with it, and have barely scratched the surface of the sorts of things that we could do.
Draw.io is fairly intuitive in the way that you draw shapes and connect shapes together, I was able to figure it out without a tutorial.
Draw.io is fast and performant for me compared with some of the alternatives.
enables easy for all collaboration especially in the hybrid environment
makes brainstorming better as users can create digital sticky notes, draw diagrams, and add images to visually represent concepts and ideas
it helps to visualize data effectively - users can create charts, graphs, and diagrams to present data-driven insights to team members and stakeholders
The UI is intuitive. It allows a new user to start diagramming almost instantly. Manipulating elements, linking them together, etc. are all easy to do. Draw.io nevertheless a broad variety of diagram templates to help get started and also of shapes to use in diagrams. Some situations can make it a bit tricky to use, such as when having multiple shapes on top of each other (e.g. shapes placed within swimlanes) but that's a minor issue.
Overall, MURAL is really easy to use, but there are a couple downsides. It's really easy to make areas of the board consistent because double clicking adds stickies that match those around the current one. It's really easy to connect the elements. And it's really easy to organize elements. Inconsistent controls, Panning, Line Connections, and latency are the only issues I had. My biggest issue is that the MURAL mouse buttons are very different from most similar software. This always causes me problems switching to a graphics software or 3D modelling software. Because MURAL uses the same button to pan and move elements, it's really easy to move things when panning around. The lines can also be a (sometimes huge) problem because thew will occasionally disappear or connect to things incorrectly. I think this is tied to latency issues which, in addition to causing phantom lines, can sometimes cause confusion to your team.
The support for draw.io is pretty decent, considering it is a free website. I had a question one time when I was trying to do something, so I sent an email to their support email and got a response fairly quickly with an answer to my question. They also have some excellent support tools on their support website for helping you get more familiar with their program, and I found that very helpful.
draw.io is open-source and free for many uses, which means minimal upfront cost and good value.It works in the browser, also has a desktop version (so you can use offline) which helps teams that may not always be online or want local backups. Useful when you want a diagram tool that “just works” without huge ecosystem lock-in.For organisations that value control, less vendor-dependency, this is a plus.
Mural was easier to use and share compared with Whiteboard. Whiteboard's functionality is limited. It is also integrated into Teams in an odd way that makes it difficult for team members to refer to old whiteboards. Mural as a stand alone web app is better.