Top 25 brainstorming tools to bring innovative ideas to life

Introduction

Brainstorming tools are in vogue. Gone are the days when someone talked about brainstorming, our minds usually conjure up a picture of a good old pen and paper, whiteboards, and notepads and that long walk to the meeting hall or conference rooms.

With a large number of professionals working remotely from different locations, it’s not possible to use old-fashioned tools for brainstorming sessions. This is why virtual brainstorming tools have become a staple for every business.

Not to forget that in order to get the best results, you need to have the best tools for brainstorming – to create, accumulate, and organize ideas in a single platform.

In this article, we will discuss some top brainstorming tools available in the market that you ought to try. However, before we move to that let’s first take a look at how teams and managers can benefit from using these tools.

How brainstorming tools can benefit managers and their teams 

In today’s highly competitive, often cut-throat, business environment, you need to be dynamic. Using tools for brainstorming can help managers to create and record ideas virtually, without having to conduct an in-person team meeting.

There are many ways in which these specialized tools benefit managers. Let’s take a look at them.

1. Brainstorming On-Demand

One of the biggest benefits of using a brainstorming tool is that these are easily accessible to you, wherever you are; even on your mobile phone (since most of the modern tools have mobile apps). The minute you or your team members think of a striking idea, you can create, save, and share it among yourselves. Your team members can access and collaborate on these ideas on their devices. Brainstorming tools allow you to be creative not just in your office but outside it too!

2. Promotes Employee Engagement 

Brainstorming tools promote employee engagement as all team members actively participate in a brainstorming session. Holding such sessions regularly helps in creating a positive work environment where you let everyone in the company have a voice. Employees feel valued and listened to, and want to contribute to achieving shared goals. This is one of the best things about having top brainstorming tools for your team.

3. Keeps Widely Dispersed Team On The Same Page 

You know what makes these brainstorming tools so effective – they bring your teams on the same page. By sharing a common collaboration platform, all team members stay in the loop and are connected with others through different communication channels, like chat, online discussions, and so on. Swift communication and a common collaboration platform help to add efficiency to your brainstorming sessions.

4. Help You Think Divergently 

Brainstorming tools enable you to frequently get together with like-minded people and start discussing ideas without any bottlenecks. Brainstorming with others makes you receptive to others’ ideas and you learn how to go beyond normal thinking and think outside the box. You can consider a broad range of possibilities that you would not think of when brainstorming alone.

5. Help Get The Recognition You Deserve

Brainstorming tools can help you add value to your work and make your ideas easily visible to others, from lower to top hierarchy. You can keep your managers and other senior officials in the loop during the brainstorming session so your ideas have a better chance of getting recognized for your efforts by senior management. Your efforts will be noted, which further improves your chances of getting promoted to a senior role in the future.

25 Best tools that will help your team with brainstorming

Now, that you have got a clear idea of the role of brainstorming, you may be thinking of implementing it. But, before you go, take a look at the most valuable brainstorming tools that will aid you not just answer the question ‘how to manage a task’, but also in sharing, collecting, organizing, and analyzing ideas all from a single interface, which include both paid as well as free project management software.

So, here goes the list of tools that we’ve picked exclusively for helping you out with your brainstorming sessions in the office:

1. ProofHub

ProofHub is basically an all-in-one project management and team collaboration software that is well-suited to make brainstorming successful. It comes loaded with a wide range of features that will help you and your team bring all the ideas to a single place where it’s easier to sort and analyze them.

Whether you want to put forward some ideas for a particular task or need some innovative ideas for your business’s product, ProofHub offers you a secure environment to empower team discussions, and brainstorming and helps with resource management as well.

Features

• Create discussion topics and collect ideas from your team 

For a brainstorming session, the first thing that you need to do is to bring all the participants to a single place. ProofHub allows you to do that virtually with its discussion topics feature. You can start a discussion topic that focuses on a particular matter and get input from the participants.

You and your team can also share files and documents to support your ideas and thoughts. Above everything else, none of your team members have to leave their office desks to participate in any discussion and they can put forward their ideas at any time.

• Streamline work processes using Kanban Boards

Kanban boards are great when it comes to streamlining work and seeing how tasks are moving through different stages of a project. However, with ProofHub’s Kanban boards, you can add comments to a task card.

Instead of arranging a meeting, you can simply add comments to discuss your issue or idea with other assignees of the task or with anyone from your team by mentioning them.

• Stay connected using the integrated chat interface

ProoHub comes with an integrated chat interface that allows you to bring your team together to discuss and share ideas. You can either collect ideas individually from your team members using one-on-one chat or bring them all together for brainstorming in a group chat. 

• Make notes and keep all the important information secured

When you are taking part in a brainstorming session, you need to jot down all the information and key takeaways in a secure and easily accessible space. With ProofHub, you can note down all the valuable information and access it later.

Pricing Plans

ProofHub offers two fixed-rate pricing plans.

• Essential plan – $45/month for unlimited users (billed annually).
• Ultimate control plan – $89/month for unlimited users/features/projects (billed annually).

2. Scapple

Scapple rates among one of the best brainstorming tools available today. It’s a virtual sheet of paper that enables you to make notes anywhere and connect them using lines or arrows. This writer-centric tool has an open-ended format. With Scapple, creating notes is as easy as double-clicking anywhere on the page, and users can connect notes using drag and drop. 

Features

• Write notes anywhere.
• Completely freeform.
• Create background shapes to group notes.
• Customize the appearance of notes.
• Full-screen mode.
• Export or print ideas.
• Drag notes into Scrivener.

Pricing

• Free plan: 30-day free trial
• Standard License: $20.99
• Educational License: $16.79 

3. Miro 

Another efficient brainstorming tool, Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform that helps managers to bring their teams together, on the same page, anytime, anywhere.

Whether your teams are widely dispersed or colocated, Miro provides an intuitive, engaging, and in-person collaboration experience with multiple options for real-time or asynchronous teamwork on an online whiteboard. Miro integrates with today’s most popular tools like Google Suite, Jira, Slack, etc, to seamlessly gel with your workflow within a scalable online whiteboard. 

Features

• Templates & Frameworks.
• Infinite Canvas.
• Widgets.
• Easy Screen Sharing.
• Embedded Video, Chat, and Commenting.

Pricing

• Free: For up to 3 editable boards.
• Starter: $8/user/month (billed annually).
• Business: $16/user/month (billed annually).
• Enterprise: custom pricing.

4. Slack

While Slack is often viewed as a communication application, it also acts as a great tool for gathering ideas from team members and keeping a record of them. With this tool, you can access all the conversations, ideas, and even files that the people on your team have shared with each other. Additionally, the communication tool lets you create channels where you can add specific members with whom you want to brainstorm, making it the best tool for brainstorming.

Features

• Start discussions with a team over chats, voice calls, or video calls.
• Easily search conversations to retrieve messages, files, etc.
• Quickly switch across multiple channels.

Pricing

• Free: The free plan offers limited access to the message history of the most recent 90 days only.
• Pro: $7.25 per active user per month.
• Business+: $12.50 per active user per month.
• Enterprise Grid: Contact the sales team for pricing.

5. Cacoo

Cacoo by Nulab is a dynamic diagramming tool that allows teams to brainstorm, plan, refine, and implement their best ideas together in real time, no matter where they are.

From mind maps to flowcharts to wireframes, Cacoo provides a diverse range of templates and frameworks, ensuring that users can easily kickstart their projects with professional-looking visuals.

The tool’s cloud-based nature allows for effortless real-time collaboration, ensuring that every team member can actively contribute to the brainstorming session. Cacoo also integrates seamlessly with popular tools like Confluence and Google Drive, enhancing its compatibility with existing workflows. With features such as version history, comments, and real-time editing, Cacoo empowers teams to work together efficiently and visually map out their ideas, making it an excellent tool for team building.

Features

• Templates & shapes.
• Dynamic charts.
• AWS Importer.
• Easy integrations.
• Multi-user editing.
• Embedded video, chat, and commenting.
• Activity notifications.
• Revision history.

Pricing

• Free plan: Starts at $0 per month (For small projects)
• Pro plan: Starts at $6 per month (For individuals)
• Team plan: Starts at $6 per user/month (For growing teams)

6. ClickUp

ClickUp is another project management software that you can use for brainstorming with your team. It offers several team collaboration features that come in handy when your team needs to share and discuss ideas as well as plans. It offers a chat view that allows you to bring specific members of your team together and start a conversation. You can even share files with others to present your ideas or work in an interactive way.

Features

• Share doc files and edit them in real time.
• Add comments to tasks as suggestions.
• Decide access level for each team member to ensure confidentiality of information and ideas.

Pricing

Apart from ClickUp’s Free Forever Plan, three more plans are available to make a choice from

• Unlimited– $7 per user/month (billed annually).
• Business – $12 per user/month (billed annually).
• Enterprise – Custom pricing (billed annually).

7. MindMeister

Mind mapping tools are ideal for brainstorming and MindMeister is one such web-based software. It lets you create mind maps that are picture-perfect for creating and sharing ideas visually. You can invite people to collaborate on mind maps by adding comments on topics and voting on ideas.

Features

• Two different mind map layouts – Classic and Org Chart Mode.
• Wide customization options are available for mind maps.
• See the contributions of each member on a mind map.

Pricing

• Basic: Free forever up to 3 mind maps
• Personal: $3 50 per user per month
• Pro: $5 50 per user per month
• Business: $8 50 per user per month

8. Stormboard

Stormboard makes real-time brainstorming and collaboration possible for your team. It offers you whiteboards where you can share ideas, files, etc. Moreover, the sticky notes make it quite easy for you to note everything important that comes to your mind. Stormboard will help to make your meeting and brainstorming sessions more effective.  

Features

• Create tasks inspired by ideas and delegate them to your team.
• Group similar ideas and delete duplicate ones instantly.
• Supports third-party app integrations.

Pricing

Personal: Free forever
Business: Starts at $8.33 per user per month (Billed annually)
Enterprise: Contact sales for custom pricing

9. Freemind

Written in Java and available as an open-source mind mapping software, Freemind is a good option, which is available for free but has limited functionality. Nonetheless, you can use Freemind to plot the ideas visually that have emerged from a brainstorming session. The smart drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to do several tasks, including copying nodes, changing the position of nodes, etc.

Features

• You can make notes and note down every important piece of information.
• Add icons, and change the font style and colors of a mind map according to your preferences.
• Export maps into HTML.

Pricing

Free

10. IdeaBoardz

IdeaBoardz is a simple tool that allows you to set up virtual boards where your team can come together for brainstorming. You can share ideas with the help of several sticky notes that can be grouped together into different categories. The minimalist design of this tool ensures that you start using it right away without wasting time figuring out how it works. 

Features

• Contributors can give a thumbs-up to the ideas they like.
• You can export boards as PDFs or Excel files.

Pricing

Free

11. Evernote

Evernote is one of the best note-taking apps and a top-rated brainstorming tool available today. With Evernote, you can add text, images, audio, scans, documents, and PDFs to your notes. Formatting tools allow you to express your thoughts exactly the way you want to. PDF and DOC search options help you find things fast. The app works brilliantly,  keeping everything in sync between your computer, smartphone, or tablet. 

Features

• Sync and Organize.
• Web Clipper.
• Templates.
• App Integrations.
• Handwriting Search.
• Document Scanning.

Pricing

Evernote offers four plans:

• Free: Up to three users.
• Personal: $14.99 per user per month.
• Professional: $17.99 per user per month.
• Teams: $24.99 per user per month.

12. MindGenius

The next brainstorming tool featured in this list is MindGenius. You can use it to capture and organize all your team’s ideas visually. MindGenius comes with several features that promote clear thinking and better communication within your team. Collect all the ideas on a mind map and easily identify the best ones among them. 

Features

• Simple user interface.
• Map Explorer allows you to add and see fine details of a mind map.
• Add tags to branches within a mind map to highlight them.

Pricing

• Free Trial: Free for 14 Days
• Subscription: £10 per seat /month (Billed annually)
• Enterprise: Contact for pricing

13. Popplet

If you want to make your brainstorming sessions more fun and effective, then Popplet is a great tool for you. Generate ideas make plans for your projects and share them with other members of your team. Add images, links, and text to Popplets that hold the information on Popplets’s mind map.

Features

• Use tags and categories to organize all your projects on Popplet.
• Make notes and save all important information on the go.

Pricing

• Solo: $1.99 per month
• Group and schools: Contact for pricing

14. Microsoft Teams

With Microsoft Teams you will not be able to make use of mind maps, but still, you will find this tool helpful when it comes to brainstorming. Its powerful chat feature lets all the participants share their ideas in a common space. Moreover, you can switch to audio and video conferencing to make your team discussions more productive.

Features

• Robust performance makes it perfect for large teams.
• Fairly easy to use.
• Third-party app integrations.

Pricing

• Microsoft Teams Essentials: $4 per user per month.
• Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $6 per user per month.
• Microsoft 365 Business Standard: $12.50 per user per month.

15. The Brain

The Brain is a tool that enables intelligent note-taking and allows you to visualize the ideas of your teammates. Connect all your thoughts and ideas using interactive mind maps. See if there’s some kind of relationship between different ideas and identify duplicate ideas with ease.

Features

• Comes with a powerful note editor.
• Add documents, images, and web pages to ensure every piece of information is in sight.

Pricing

• Pro License: Starts at $219
• Pro Service: Starts at $180 per year
• Pro Combo: Costs $299 for the first year and $159 for the subsequent years
• TeamBrain: $299 per year/person

16. WiseMapping

WiseMapping is an open-source web-based mind-mapping tool that you can use to make your team’s brainstorming meetings more productive. Mapping your ideas becomes fun and at the same time becomes effective with custom mind maps. You can customize the font and color of your mind map and also add icons to make them look as you want.   

Features

• Share mind maps with your team members.
• Suitable for individuals and small groups.

Pricing

Free

17. GroupMap

GroupMap offers you an effective way to plan, brainstorm, and discuss ideas with your team. It eliminates the problem of certain people within a team dominating a group discussion or a brainstorming meeting, and the thoughts of other members go unnoticed. GroupMap gives equal opportunity to each member of a team to put forth their ideas during brainstorming.

Features

• Brainstorming templates for a quick start.
• Collect the thoughts of each team member individually and then combine them as a whole.

Pricing

• Trial: Free for 14 days.
• Basic: $20 per user per month (10 participants per map)
• Professional: $60 per user per month (50 participants per map)
• Need more?: Contact for pricing

18. Coggle

Coggle is among the best mind-mapping tools that are perfect for teams of any size to use for their brainstorming sessions. Create diagrams and flowcharts to share complex algorithms and information with others. You can add loops and join branches of diagrams to make the flow of the process easy to understand.

Features

• Invite people to collaborate in real-time.
• Add an unlimited number of images to diagrams.
• Use floating text and images to highlight information outside the diagrams.

Pricing

• Free Forever: Free for up to ⁨3⁩ private diagrams
• Awesome: Costs $5 per month
• Organization: Costs $8 per member per month

19. Freeplane

Freeplane is one of the best free mind-mapping tools that is reliable for brainstorming. It is open-source software and you need to install it on your device for use (no web app available). You can use Freeplane’s mind maps to arrange your ideas systematically using different shapes, colors, etc. 

Features

• Minimalist user interface design.
• A variety of customization options.

Pricing

Free

20. Lucidchart

Lucidchart is an online diagram software that you can use to capture all the ideas coming out from a brainstorming session. It comes with virtual whiteboards where you can jot down all your ideas in a hurry. Moreover, Lucidchart is also equipped with advanced diagramming and flowcharting abilities to make the mind-mapping process effective. 

Features

• Eye-pleasing interface design with good user experience.
• Supports software and systems designing.
• Works for most businesses and teams of all sizes.

Pricing

• Individual: Starts at $9 per user per month
• Team: Starts at $10 per user per month (minimum 3 users)
• Enterprise: Contact sales for pricing

21. Google Documents

Google Documents have become extremely popular for creating, editing, sharing files, and version control. However, very few know that Google Docs can be a trustworthy tool for not just file management but brainstorming as well. You can invite your team members to edit, comment, and chat in real time to collaborate and share ideas with one another.

Features

• Supports various file types, including PDF, DOCX, TXT, and HTML.
• The access level granted by you decides whether one can only view, just add comments, or edit the doc file.
• Track changes made to the docs and restore previous file versions.

Pricing

• Business Starter: $6 per user per month
• Business Standard: $12 per user per month
• Business Plus: $18 per user per month

22. Mindomo

Mindomo is a mind mapping and collaboration tool capable of assisting you with your team’s brainstorming sessions. You can use its intuitive mind maps to get all the ideas and plans of your team boiled down to a single place and organize them visually. Mindomo will assist your team in developing ideas and boost the effectiveness of your brainstorming sessions.

Features

• The presentation feature allows you to make your mind more understandable to others.
• Control who can access your mind maps by making them public or private.
• Partially filled mind map templates give a head start to beginners.

Pricing

Apart from the free plan, Mindomo offers three paid plans.

• Premium: Costs  €5.5 per user per month.
• Professional: Costs €13.5 per user per month.
• Team: Costs €16.5 per month (3 team users).

23. Bubbl.us

Bubbl.us is a browser-based application (web app) that will make a great companion when you need to extract fresh and innovative ideas from your team. Its mind maps are simple in appearance but powerful when it comes to making the most out of the brainstorming process.

Features

• Share mind maps with others using a link and give them permission to edit.
• You can export mind maps in JPG, PNG, and text format.

Pricing

• Basic: Free up to 3 mind maps.
• Premium: $4.91 per user/ month (Billed annually).
• Team: $59 per user per year (minimum 3 users).

24. Mapul

If you want your team to share creative ideas and bring them to life, Mapul will be a software that you can trust. You can create classic-style mind maps to capture ideas visually in the form of beautiful diagrams. Also, the simplicity of this software ensures that you develop impactful mind maps without investing a lot of time.

Features

• Customize mind maps to make them look unique and appealing.
• Branches and clouds make it convenient to highlight the relationship between different ideas.
• Export mind maps to PowerPoint, PNG, or SVG.

Pricing

Free

25. SimpleMind

SimpleMind is another brainstorming tool that teams of any size can use to collect, organize, and share ideas. This tool also allows you to map all the ideas that your team has come up with while brainstorming. One of the best things about SimpleMind is that you can create and visualize multiple mind maps on a single page. 

Features

• You can add an unlimited number of elements to a mind map.
• Use images, video recordings, and voice memos to strengthen the impact of a mind map.

Pricing

• Free: This plan offers limited functionality.
• Pro: Contact for pricing.
• Trial: 30-day trial with full functionality.

Conclusion

Your collaboration efforts become a lot more effective when you use one of the best brainstorming tools. This is the reason why I have carefully compiled this list of tools that you and your team can use to discuss and share ideas without the need to be in the same room. 

So, what are you waiting for? Pick up any one of these brainstorming tools, and see how they can transform the way you and your team work, for good!

Good luck!

Also read:

• Use These 5 Brainstorming Techniques to Produce Powerful Ideas!
• 21 Best task management tools & software for 2024