10 Best Mind Mapping Software of 2019 {Free & Paid}

By
Nolan Ryan
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Mind Mapping Software was invented to help the users put down the flashing ideas in their minds into a visual format. When your ideas come alive in the form of an image or diagram, it gets more comfortable for you or your teammates or colleagues to formulate their creative thinking faster, and it also helps in strategizing further plans.

With Mind Mapping Software you can put down all your ideas at one place and work on them individually; this helps your creativity flow freely without worrying about forgetting any points or ideas.

Mind Mapping Software

Mind Mapping Software helps you organize, group, and sort out your ideas in a basic format that can be viewed at any time and developed as pleased. It is a fast and useful tool in the market on the organization and sorts out your passing ideas.

Contents

What’s the Difference between Mind Mapping vs. Brainstorming?

Mind Mapping is often confused with Brainstorming. Although these are both tremendously incredible ways of formulation of ideas during work, these are entirely different from function. They both are used for various purposes and are also represented in different ways.

Mind Mapping

Mind Mapping is the process of making visual diagrams and charts to organize your ideas. A Mind Map is a hierarchical way of showing how different ideas are formed into/from a more significant concept. These several general ideas may be connected directly or indirectly to one or many Central Ideas.

The general structure of a Mind Map has one Central Focal Point that branches out into multiple other points and sub-points, manifesting their connection to the Central Focal Point. Mind Mapping helps you put all your disoriented thoughts and ideas into a systematically organized diagram for better understanding and future use.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a creative technique to find suggestions for a solution to a specific problem or matter. It is not a structural representation of ideas at all rather just a mare group thinking activity to produce new ideas fast.

Mind Mapping your entire thought process in the form of a system diagram on a paper can be an excruciating task. This is why people use Mind Mapping Software because they offer the flexibility that a paper can’t and help you visualize your idea within minutes.

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The 10 Best Mind Mapping Software of 2019

To ease the task, here is a list of Top 10 Mind Mapping Software available on the internet nowadays.

1. MindMeister

MindMeister is a fantastic mind mapping software used by more than 9 million users to plan projects, take notes, and brainstorm on the ideas. It is a heart tool that helps you visualize your ideas and manage them.

Significant Features

1. Share mind maps with the team

2. Can create tasks for teammates or notes

3. Import from other free mapping tools

4. Export mind maps into more than 10 formats

MindMeister lets you customize your mind maps with various styles, images, and icons or add text links, notes, comment to them. You can share your mind maps online or via mail or any other online messaging services.

You can add animation effects to your mind maps in the presentation mode. It offers excellent collaboration tools such as group chat, usage reports, and statistics, etc.

MindMeister also has a very simple and easy to understand interface and overall an excellent Mind Mapping Software.

Pricing

  • Basic – free
  • Personal – $4.99/month
  • Pro -$8.25 per user/month
  • Business – $12.49 per user/month

 Supported on: Web, Android, Windows, iOS, macOS

2. XMind

XMind is a well-praised software in the technical world. And this software keeps up to its reputation. It is user-friendly software with an intuitive interface and powerful tool and features for mind mapping, collaboration, and brainstorming.

Significant Features

1. ZEN mode lets you focus on one chart at a time.

2. Gantt viewing.

3. Brainstorming.

4. Dark UI.

5. Themes.

6. Clip-art library.

7. Built-in templates.

The XMind offers two versions for you to choose from according to your needs- XMind: Zen and XMind 8 Pro. XMind: Zen posses all the necessary tools you need for forming a mind map, and XMind 8 Pro offers the advanced features for collaboration and much more. You can give these both versions a trial for free where you get access to limited features.

Pricing:

1. ZEN Desktop: $4.58/month

2. ZEN Mobile: $1.24/month

3. XMind: ZEN Desktop +Mobile: starting $4.99/month

4. XMind 8 Pro: $129/lifetime license

Supported on: Web, macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS

3. Mindomo

Mindomo is an ideal mind mapping software that possesses all the features and tools that any user looks for in mind mapping tool. Mindomo helps you create concept maps, outlines for diagrams, manages projects and tasks, and also lets you collaborate with other users.

Significant Features

1. Collaborative assignments.

2. 365+ Integration.

3. Real-time collaboration.

4. Custom themes.

5. Can add Audio/Video.

6. 10+ Export formats.

The most unique and fantastic feature of Mindomo lets you integrate with several other applications like educational apps, learning apps, and many more. But most importantly, it enables you to sync with a cloud storage service to keep backup of your work and assignments. You can also get this software for free but with limited features and tools.

Pricing:

1. Free – limited tools and features.

2. Premium – 69.00 Euros for one year.

Supported on: Web, Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS

4. LucidChart

LucidChart is another excellent mind mapping software with over 15million users that is available on the internet; someone might even say it is the greatest. It has all the necessary tools for simple flowcharts or maps to complex mapping diagrams.

Significant Features

1. Keyboard Shortcuts.

2. AWS Import.

3. Enterprise-level security.

4. Group chats.

5. Presentation mode.

7. Custom styling and editing.

It has several built-in templates to get you started quickly. You collaborate with your company or team and share diagrams in groups. LucidChart also provides numerous other features like live data linking, history management, real-time collaboration, team and access management, and several integrations with external applications and devices.

Pricing

1. Basic – $4.95/month

2. Pro – $9.95/month

3. Team – $20/month

4. Enterprise – According to business size, user, etc.

Supported on: Web, Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android

5. Cacoo

Cacoo is a drawing tools available online and is trusted by over 2 million users for creating detailed and straightforward diagrams. This Drawing tools designed by Nulab lets you draw and create framed maps, sitemaps, wireframes, mind maps, and much more.

Cacoo offers several built-in templates for different types of diagrams, such as mind maps, floor plans, network maps, flow charts, wireframes, infographics, etc.

Significant Features

1. Brainstorm.

2. Multi-user option.

3. In-app comments.

4. History Managements.

5. Activity notifications.

6. Variety of templates.

You can integrate with different applications with Cacoo, like Google Drive, Google Dropbox, Confluence, and more.

Pricing

1. Free – extreme limited features

2. Personal – $4.95/month

3. 3 Users – $5/month

Supported on: Web, Google Chrome Extension

6. MindMup

It is a simple mind mapping tool available for personal, group, and business/commercial purposes. MindMup lets you add comments and notes to your mapping designs. It also lets you add attachments, create storyboards, manage designs, etc.

Significant features

1. Create mind maps online

2. Insert icons and images to our maps

3. Attach notes

4. Integrate with Google Drive

The Social sharing feature is the best feature that MindMup has to offer. It lets you share your mind maps and designs on the social platforms. You can add contextual text related to the social sharing automatically to your maps.

Pricing

1. Personal Gold – $2.99/month

2. Team Gold – $50/year

3. Organizational Gold – $100/year

Supported on: Web, Android, iOS

7. Mind Genius

Mind Genius is a mind mapping software explicitly made to fulfill your business needs. It successfully turns your ideas into intricate mapping designs very quickly. It offers built-in mapping templates for quicker results.

Significant features

1. 6 tool-in-one: Gantt charts, Mind maps, Resource management, priority view, status view, categories view

2. Assign work to the team on mind maps

The most significant feature of Mind Genius is that the tools offer on this application are not so powerful, yet they give excellent results. And it has an intuitive interface that makes it easier to use for non-technical persons.

Mind Genius also lets you import your diagrams to any desktop suite and add images to the maps from its image library that makes your maps look more elaborate and exciting.

Pricing

1. Perpetual – $256 Lifetime.

2. Yearly – $160 the first year, $56/year onward.

3. Mind Genius for Education – $91-lifetime license.

Supported on: iOS, Windows

8. Padlet

Padlet is a useful online mind mapping application that let's you turn your ideas into maps using already prepared templates, or you can draw your designs using the tools present. Padlet is like a bulletin board because once you post your design on your exclusive account, you can then share the link of your designs with anyone you desire. This lets unlimited members on your team or groups to access your maps and add notes or make edits if needed at any time.

Significant features

1. Custom access and permission.

2. Idea editing and commenting.

3. Multi-lingual.

4. Simple Sharing options.

5. Native design templates.

6. Auto-saving changes.

You can make sure that you ideas are being shared safely using custom permission, user management, etc. The best feature of Padlet is that it supports several different file types like PowerPoint, Excel, Word Docs, Google Drive, Spotify, etc.

Pricing

1. Backpack for school – $99/year per teacher or $1499/year per school.

2. Briefcase for Business – $12/month per user or $99/year per user.

3. Pro for individuals – $8.25/month.

Supported on: Kindle, Web, Android, iOS.

9. Canva

Canva has proven to be an excellent software, especially for any newbie because of its easy functionality and short learning curve. What makes Canva the ideal mind mapping tool for novices is that all the tools come with built-in templates, so you don’t have to put any effort on your own. And the templates are customizable and can be edited as desired.

Significant features

1. Download and print option.

2. Custom styling and background.

3. Graph editing.

4. Built-in Graphs and diagrams.

5. Presentations, infographics, charts.

6. Complete photo editing suite.

You can create donut charts, Venn diagrams, bar charts, Gantt, and more. You can also make presentations and reports using Canvas.

Pricing

1. Canva Pro – $12.95/month.

2. Canva Enterprise – Custom Plan.

Supported on: Web

10. Mindly

Mindly is a fundamental and straightforward mind mapping software. You can structurize your thoughts and ideas manually into a mapping design. It offers simple features that let you draw a branch, nodes, and sub-branches out of a central idea and keep on adding layers if needed. You can colour, icons, and text to make your maps more meaningful and exciting.

Significant features

1. Easy-to-use Templates.

2. Sync with multiple devices.

3. Share maps with friends.

4. Zoom in.

5. Add text, colour, icon to the maps.

You can zoom in to add small details and notes to your designs. This application is very lightweight yet runs smoothly without any technical glitches.

Pricing

1. For Android and iOS – $6.99 onetime payment.

2. For Mac – $2.99 onetime payment.

Supported on: macOS, Android, iOS.

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Summing Up

Nowadays, mind mapping has become a much-appreciated tool and skill because it is a shorter, faster, and more creative way jostling down ideas in a visualized format. This enables us to share our ideas with others and even edit them later.

The mind mapping diagrams drawn using Mind Mapping Software are meant to trigger our memory to stimulate previous or new ideas related to the old ones. Go through the above list and give this Top 10 pick for Mind Mapping software a try and find out which one triggers your memory.