Quick comparison
Onlineboard is an online whiteboard that focuses on real-time collaboration between users who want to draw or sketch. It is best used while having a conference call, as it can help with visual explanation. It tries to replicate the feeling and ease of organizing brainstorming sessions in real-life and bring that to the online space.
Whiteboard FI, on the other hand, is a tool primarily used in classrooms and schools.
Whiteboard Fi provides a wide set of tools for users to draw with. However it's main audience are children and their teachers. The user can join either as teacher or as a student.
Teacher user then sees a collection of whiteboards. Each students has their own whiteboard, and teacher can click on the tile to open the whiteboard of specific student.
The tool that is best suited for your case depends on your requirements. If you want to assign tasks on whiteboard and then check their completion, Whiteboard FI might be perfect for you. It really shines when every participant needs their own whiteboard and one person (the teacher) can check the work of every student.
However, If you need to hold an online brainstorming session or a creative meeting, Onlineboard is the best choice. If you expect to draw a lot, sketch, or move sticky notes will give you with the best experience.
😊 Ease of use
Whiteboard FI is an older website, so it has a more traditional design. This might be a benefit for older people (as they are more used to Win95 design), but younger people may struggle as the concept of UX was more developed in recent year. Its user interface is still easily navigable once you get used to it.
Onlineboard focuses on creating the best virtual whiteboard. We explore the latest UX trends and also measure how user are interacting with the application. We use this information to further improve our user interface so your UX is the best.
🔀 Functionalities
Whiteboard FI has many different tools to draw. You can draw lines, change colors, draw shapes. It also has support for placing tables, backgrounds and even musical sheet paper. This makes it ubiquitous for teaching different subjects in an online school.
The ability to move, pan and zoom the whiteboard is however limited in Whiteboard FI, as it is older generation whiteboard, it was designed with single resolution in mind.
The important difference is that that Onlineboard has support for multiplayer drawing and is interactive whiteboard. Whiteboard FI on the other hand is not multiplayer whiteboard, it is more of a assignment collection tool in a whiteboard style.
Onlineboard is free to use and requires no registration or login for multi-user collaboration. It does not have many different tools, but focuses more on quality and ease of use. The background of the whiteboard is configurable to a set of available colors. You can also paste images to our whiteboard and draw over them.
🌙 Dark mode
Whiteboard FI does not have dark mode.
On the other hand, Onlineboard has native support for dark UI and dark whiteboards. If this is a priority for you, choose Onlineboard straight away!
💨 Optimization and Performance
Whiteboard FI is not slow, however Onlineboard feels much faster, because it is an interactive whiteboard.
The code size difference between Onlineboard and Whiteboard FI is round 10x. While Onlineboard needs to download about 260kb of data when opening a single whiteboard, Whiteboard FI needs about 2500kb of data. It can be a problem with slower internet connections (such as airports, wifi connections, and so on).
❓ Conclusion
Both tools are great but for different purposes.
Choose Whiteboard FI if you:
- are a teacher in elementary or primary school
- want to assign tasks to your students, and collect them later
- do not need to share a common whiteboard with everyone
- can afford pricing
- have the time to learn the application
Whiteboard FI is best for:
- elementary or primary schools
- teaching institutions which target children
Choose Onlineboard if you:
- you need a single shared space with everyone
- want to get one's point across and visually explain stuff
- quickly draw and sketch with few people
- need to closely collaborate in real-time
- do not need to distribute and collect assignments
- you are happy to have your drawing saved on a cloud or exported and stored elsewhere
Onlineboard is best for:
- teams of few people
- visual explanation
- teaching and tutoring in higher education
- colleges, language schools, enterprises which perform teaching or explanation
Notes
Below (or on the right side) you can find a table with a detailed comparison of different functionalities the products provide. You can read about our methodology if you are interested in how we compare products.
Do not forget to check our comparisons with other products such as Microsoft Whiteboard, Whiteboard FI, Explain Everything, and Jamboard.