FigJam vs. Mural vs. Twist: Team Messaging

If you're working in small product teams, like triads, and already using Figma, this is a no brainer for white boarding, quick/fast sketches, wireframing, collaborative doodling ... it gets less appropriate with large teams, infrequent. IMO, due to the way in which they price, it's better to keep the inner circle small-ish.

Incentivized

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.

If you have no existing messaging solution, Twist is a viable option. I can't find any reason to recommend it ahead of Slack, Spaces, Teams, Discord, etc. This is one more solution with team messaging functionality, and file sharing, and message archiving/searching. If budget is an issue, Twist can be replaced with a free solution like Discord.

Incentivized

• One file, auto updated, no need to get latest
• Easy to preview
• Lack of client is benefit to some (not me)

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• Messaging
• Team communication
• Email updates

Incentivized

• It misses easy-to-use pre sets of diagrams. The ones presented seem to be not native and hard to use. Miro is a good benchmark.
• Navegating throught projects in the main page is confusing, specially when people are not admin users.
• It should suggest ways of organizing the pages designers do, specially when the project is big and have many pages and sections.
• It could have, for example, a draft version for every page, so that one can hide it when they finish the work, but can open it whenever something needs to be modified, versioning the job.

• It'd be nice that the zoom regulation could be easier to manage
• The advanced features are a little bit easy to adopt. Why not adding some agile trainings, or some other tools to facilitate their adoption
• A faster and easier way to Integrate with ms office

Incentivized

• Does nothing to stand out from other messaging apps
• Boring
• Feature parity with everything else on the market

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Chat support tends to get back to you within a few hours and are always helpful.

FigJam works best in pair with Figma, as it allows you to keep track of your project in one place, supporting all phases of the process. The functionality is more intuitive, quick, and efficient. Visually, I also prefer it more —it’s more enjoyable and playful, making the experience much more engaging.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Does not stand out at all. I can't think of any reason to select Twist over more popular choices like Slack, Teams, Discord, or Spaces. We use Twist because it forced on us by a specific scenario. Otherwise, we would just use an existing platform (ex: Slack) to handle this communication

Incentivized

• FigJam saves a lot of time ... it's nice to have all my visual notes/sketches within Figma itself where a lot of design work lives
• The project organization and other features contribute to the ease of answering that age old question ... "where can I find that mockup?"
• Dev Mode is pretty cool. Not many use it, so some designers may spend unnecessary time spec'ing out things that no one will appreciate, let alone look at.

Incentivized

• Mural allows us to draft communications for clients that aim to increase the NPS of the organization
• Mural allows us to keep up with the agile framework, which reduces Time to Market of our products and initiatives
• Mural allows us to identify blockers in our day to day tasks, which reduces the Cicle Time of our Kanban cards

Incentivized

• None that can be directly tied to Twist
• We were forced to use Twist in a certain environment, but no change to our ROI
• Provides one more place to look, one more place to try and find messages.

Incentivized