SmartDraw is a diagramming and flow chart building tool from SmartDraw Software in San Diego, California.
$131.40
per year (for a single user on an individual plan)
Whiteboard.chat
Score 7.9 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
Free for educators, with ads.
Pricing
SmartDraw
Whiteboard.chat
Editions & Modules
Team
$119.40
per year per user (3 minimum)
Individual
$131.40
per year single user
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Educator Free
$0
supported by ads (teacher boards only, 10 class boards)
I believe SmartDraw is a great tool for small- to mid-sized organizations for simplifying the production and management of org charts. We've also had the PMO experiment with the use of some of their flow charts as well. If an organization has an HCM with the capability of producing (good!) org charts, that is likely the best option... but many that I have used in my 30-year HR career don't. So there is definitely a need for SmartDraw in the market!
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 rated 8 because its simple to use and easy to create network topologies quickly. I liked the drag and drop option which makes designing the network topology and flow chart easier. In general its does what it needs to.
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.
They are always very helpful, we get computers every two years and I have to call them to move the license from one computer to another and they do it with a smile in their voice!
We have used Corel Draw and Adobe Acrobat. Both of those tools were good when they came out but the abilities of SmartDraw far outweigh both those tools. Corel Draw was also more complex to operate and do tasks, as was Adobe Acrobat in which some basic tasks took additional steps to complete.
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.
SmartDraw has provided good return for our internal purposes. Using it to understand an organization's structure and inner workings has been valuable. On the client side, creating steps and businesses processes has also been a big plus. It has helped decrease confusing reporting structures and has provided a detailed map for individuals to understand where they fit within their organization.
Unfortunately, SmartDraw has been somewhat inefficient with some of the more complex projects on our plate and has really deterred certain employees from even wanting to use it.