Mural reviews

During the pandemic, we started using Mural as a way to collaborate with each other. We had in person workshops which were obviously affected. We experimented with using Mural for one our our games/exercises and do it virtually. It was fun to see how far we could push the application outside of it's core design. We use it now for whiteboarding in virtual sessions, brainstorming and mapping.

So far we haven't had much negative feedback on Mural. As we have more users come in and use the software we'll gather feedback and share.

Easy to access, and get everyone onto the platform. Fun animal names were a nice touch. The interface has improved over time but is fundamentally flawed.

Was a glorified whiteboard. For the price we would pay to support the business, Mural would do little more for us than to provide a simple whiteboard to put down ideas and discuss. Although this is nice to get ideas out there - it lacks the ability to create structure and keep things organized over time. Would find ourselves consistently looking for information as it was lost - not sure how we could've implemented the software in a valuable way in the long term.

I find Mural more intuitive to use and less buggy than other whiteboarding tools. The app especially syncs quickly so you can use an ipad and pencil to write on the whiteboard, and have it projected through a desktop to a conference room or virtual meeting. I also like that the white boards are infinite (or at least as far as I can tell). Even though the number of free boards is limited to three, you have tons of space to work with in each one.

I don't love the provided templates; I typically end up using my own for simplicity.

I love that you can create workshops from templates, you can have people vote, you can build out roadmaps, and you can have a ton of people collaborating at the same time. It really makes remote collaboration possible.

The links. It's not clear when stuff is linked because it just shows a small link icon in the bottom of the card.

Gone are are the days when you have to be co-located to run a workshop or collaborate with remote product teams, you can now think and collaborate visually anywhere anytime. I love how it mimics the real world experience of brainstorming, project planning or synthesizing the data, a lot of data. It does it all in real time without the needs of the team to be co-located. If you are new to design thinking, they already have the readily available template which can be used to run a workshop or just brainstorm the ideas. It works better on laptops/desktops but the best on touchscreen​ devices. A dream setup would be giant touch screens in all the locations.

Downloading the date for offline use takes time, It sends download link on registered email id. Time taken for that email to hit your inbox is not consistent, sometimes you get it within seconds and sometimes it takes minutes.

Brainstorming has never been easier. The learning curve is quite simple. Really love how I can customize my workspace according to my preferences, easy set-up, and plus the templates provided really stand out.

As far as I have been using it, I don't recall ever having any problems with Mural. I'd highly recommend it to a lot of people.

I like that Mural allows for collaboration and a great way to visually share ideas. We aren't able to actually whiteboard in person, since my team is all over the country, but Mural lets us work collaboratively pretty easily. We love using stick notes and putting pictures into the document.

I dislike the sketching ability. I find it very hard to even do really simple sketches, like drawing a stick figure is too complicated. It would be nice to be able to easily draw a timeline or something to get ideas across more effectively.

It's a decent tool for digital whiteboarding and collaborating with colleagues.

However, it does not bring much extra to the table compared to the various alternatives available (Miro, FigJam, etc).

We use it for everything, standup, retrospectives, mind mapping, online collaboration and much more. There are a lot of great templates.

It is expensive and some templates are tricky to use.

It's amazing for facilitating remote meetings and enabling equal participation between people all over the world.

User management is the stickiest part. You can deactivate people who become inactive so you aren't being billed for them, but Slack has a nice feature that automatically does that and automatically turns them back on. If you deactivate someone, an admin must manually reactivate them upon request. It's a minor admin slowdown, separate from the actual functionality of the collaboration tools.

The main value of this software is the collaboration aspect. I love that I can bring people together regardless of their tech fluency and with one icebreaker activity, I can get them to use the main functions they will need for the next few hours. The double click for post-its, the "follow me" function, are great. I love that you can paste a URL and it shows a thumbnail of the article.

Unless you have certain permissions, it is difficult to change your name. It was random that some people had Avatar names like "Visiting Sheep" and others "Ryan (Visiting Squid)". People were confused why it was not changeable, even though the UI allows you to write before you enter the room. But then it doesn't reflect.
It is also difficult to zoom into certain post its if they are outside the main board but on the same screen. Zoom functionality is weird.

The free version is great to start playing around with. It allows for up to 5 boards with unlimited members. Moving on to the paid version removes the 5 board limitations but still can collaborate with unlimited members which is a huge relief for a startup that is bootstrapping.

It has features such as templates which is readily available and you can also create your own templates if you find that the current ones are insufficient. Not a steep learning curve but if you want to master it, you'll need to spend a bit more time learning the shortcuts.

More selection of typefaces - currently limited to handful of those, and also no bullets
Integration is richer in Miro - Trello, Drive, etc.

Ultimately this tool is great if you have teams located in different offices and you can’t physically get together

There are so many functions available. I find setting up a Mural board can be time consuming and inevitably I forget to lock something down and a user goes rogue and messes something up or moves something they shouldnt

Mural is similar to many other products but I like it the most because of the simple and clean user interface. Collaboration with team was never that easy and even the shyest people feel free to share ideas.

Sometimes when you write too much text to sticky note, it becomes unreadable

The mural.ly team is constantly garnering feedback in order to improve the product. While mural is a great concept to digitize the whiteboard, the execution is solid with room to improve. Great selection of icons and stickers.

For my peers, I have observed it requires a higher learning curve in order to understand the controls and wayfinding around the board.