Padlet is a digital collaboration tool that allows users to create virtual boards for posting and sharing content in a visually engaging, interactive way.
It’s commonly used in classrooms, offices, and remote environments for brainstorming, organizing ideas, sharing resources, and facilitating group activities.
Though Padlet is a great tool, it fails to impress some users, especially due to its free plan that is limited to just three boards.
Some users find it cluttered for complex projects, and there are occasional concerns about privacy and data handling.
It also lacks advanced formatting options and depends heavily on a stable internet connection.
These factors make other free, flexible tools more appealing for certain classroom needs. In this post, we will find out some of the best free alternatives to Padlet, especially for teachers and teams.
Read on.
Best Free Alternatives To Padlet For Teachers & Teams
1. Wakelet
Wakelet is a user-friendly content curation platform that allows you to collect, organize, and share multimedia resources into visually appealing collections.
Teachers can save links, PDFs, videos, tweets, and images, all in one place, and present them in an organized format.
The interface is simple, making it suitable for all grade levels, and it integrates well with Microsoft tools, Flip, and Google services.
Educators can create thematic boards to support lessons, homework, reading lists, or collaborative student work.
Students can also create their own collections to showcase digital portfolios or reflect on learning. Wakelet supports embedding content and allows control over privacy settings, which is important for safe classroom use.
Teachers can invite students to collaborate on boards without requiring email sign-ups, simplifying use for younger learners.
It’s commonly used for flipped classrooms, digital storytelling, and even professional development documentation.
Wakelet has an active educator community, and its training resources are robust and accessible.
Wakelet’s free plan gives you more features than Padlet.
Explore: Wakelet vs Padlet
2. Stormboard
Stormboard is a collaborative whiteboard and sticky-note platform built for group ideation and planning.
It allows teachers and students to post notes, photos, drawings, and documents on a shared canvas in real time.
One unique feature is its ability to turn brainstorming sessions into structured reports or visual summaries, which is great for lesson debriefs or project conclusions.
Stormboard offers templates for educational activities like SWOT analysis, mind mapping, and problem-solving charts. Teachers can use it for class-wide brainstorming, feedback collection, or structured debates with clearly defined categories.
The interface supports commenting, voting on ideas, and organizing content into sections, making it highly interactive.
Stormboard can be accessed on any device and works well in hybrid and remote learning environments. The free version allows up to five users per board, which is fine for small groups or breakout sessions.
3. Miro
Miro is a powerful visual collaboration platform often used by professionals and educators alike for brainstorming, planning, and team coordination.
It features an infinite whiteboard space where users can add sticky notes, flowcharts, diagrams, tables, text, images, and even embed videos or live documents.
For teachers, Miro can support lesson planning, mind mapping, visual note-taking, and real-time group projects. It offers a wide variety of templates tailored for educational use such as storyboards, Venn diagrams, and agile boards.
The real-time collaboration tools allow students to co-create content synchronously or asynchronously, making it suitable for both live and self-paced learning environments.
Miro boards can be organized neatly with frames and sections, and comments or reactions can be added to any item to encourage feedback.
The free version includes three editable boards and core collaboration tools, which is usually sufficient for classroom needs.
Miro also offers an Education Plan for verified teachers and students, with expanded access.
Explore more tools like Miro here.
4. Ideaboardz
Ideaboardz is a free, no-frills digital board for collecting feedback, ideas, or reflections through sticky-note style input.
It’s commonly used for retrospectives in business but is highly effective in educational contexts.
Teachers can create columns like “What Went Well,” “What Needs Improvement,” “Questions,” or any custom categories, and invite students to add their responses anonymously or with names.
Students can upvote or comment on others’ notes, enabling peer interaction and reflection.
The interface is minimal and easy to use even on low bandwidth connections.
No account is required to use it. Ideaboardz is completely free.
Explore: Padlet vs Jamboard
5. Microsoft Whiteboard
Microsoft Whiteboard is a freeform digital canvas designed for collaboration and ideation.
Teachers can draw, write, type, add sticky notes, insert images, and organize content visually to support student engagement.
It’s a perfect tool for brainstorming sessions, diagramming science concepts, mapping out story structures, or solving math problems together.
Whiteboard integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams, OneNote, and Office 365, making it ideal for schools using the Microsoft ecosystem.
Students can collaborate in real time, and teachers can guide discussions or group work through live annotations and comments.
The infinite canvas allows for continuous expansion of content, which works well for extended projects or deep dives into topics.
You can also export boards as images or PDFs for reference after class. Microsoft Whiteboard is device-agnostic, functioning on desktops, tablets, or smartphones, and supports stylus input for more natural handwriting.
The tool is free to use with a Microsoft account and free for education use through Microsoft 365 for Education.
6. Conceptboard
Conceptboard is a visual collaboration platform designed to support brainstorming, planning, and teaching through interactive whiteboards.
It offers an infinite canvas where users can add sticky notes, images, text, drawings, files, and even live embeds.
Conceptboard is especially useful for visual learners, supporting activities like mind maps, flowcharts, timelines, and design thinking processes.
It features real-time collaboration, commenting, and cursor tracking, making it perfect for online group work, virtual discussions, or peer feedback.
The interface is user-friendly and supports live video and audio chat, enabling a more integrated virtual classroom experience.
Teachers can create different sections on the board for breakout activities or stages of a lesson. Boards are cloud-based and autosaved, and can be exported as PDFs or images for later reference.
Conceptboard also offers ready-to-use templates for educators and facilitates structured thinking in a creative, digital space.
Conceptboard can be used for free. See all plans here.
7. Boardmix
Boardmix is an AI-powered online whiteboard platform designed for real-time collaboration, making it useful for both teachers and teams.
It supports visual activities like mind maps, sticky notes, flowcharts, and presentations, and allows multiple users to contribute simultaneously.
Teachers can use it for lesson planning, group brainstorming, and interactive learning, while teams can manage projects and ideas efficiently.
The platform also includes AI tools to help generate content and streamline work.
Boardmix offers a free plan with up to 3 boards, 1 GB of storage, and limited AI usage, which is suitable for individual educators or small groups.
Paid plans provide unlimited boards, more storage, and full access to AI features.
Explore: Miro vs Jamboard
8. Ziteboard
Ziteboard is a lightweight, browser-based whiteboard platform ideal for real-time collaboration on any device, no app installation needed.
It’s particularly popular with tutors and educators for its simplicity and ease of access: sharing a link is all it takes for students to join without logging in.
The interface supports freehand drawing, text, shape recognition (lines, circles, rectangles), sticky notes, image and PDF imports, a formula editor, and a graph plotter, making it useful for math and science instruction.
Teachers can also use built-in voice/video chat, drag-and-drop visuals, and export boards as high-quality PNG, SVG, or PDF for sharing or recordkeeping.
Its minimalist design makes it especially effective for quick sketch-based explanations.
It offers unlimited free boards with basic features. The Pro plans unlock advanced options like math tools, anonymous participants, and larger board capacity.
Check Out: Best Free Tools For Virtual Learning Environments
9. Explain Everything
Explain Everything is a feature-rich, interactive whiteboard platform designed specifically for education, widely used by teachers and students around the world.
It enables creation of interactive lessons, animated presentations, and short whiteboard screencasts. Teachers can record their voice, draw and annotate in real time, and turn it all into video tutorials.
It’s excellent for blended learning, flipped classrooms, and self-paced instruction. The tool supports cloud saving, multiple slide canvases, templates, and real-time collaboration.
Students can also create presentations, work in groups, or complete interactive assignments within the platform. Explain Everything integrates with tools like Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams, making it easy to share and manage projects.
The free plan allows for 3 projects (with 1 slide each), recordings up to 3 minutes, 15 minutes of collaboration with one person, and 500 MB of storage.
Upgrading unlocks unlimited projects and slides, longer videos, greater storage, and multi-user collaboration, ideal for schools and educational institutions.
Explore: Free Tools To Make Digital Vision Boards
10. Lino
Lino (or Linoit) is a web-based virtual bulletin board that mimics the feel of a real corkboard filled with colorful sticky notes, images, and file attachments.
It allows users to post multimedia notes and organize them spatially, which can enhance visual thinking and idea mapping.
For teachers, Lino is an excellent tool to facilitate brainstorming sessions, gather student responses, post weekly announcements, or have students share research.
Each board can be set as public or private, and teachers can generate a URL to share with students for easy access.
The interface is intuitive, requiring minimal training, and it’s suitable even for younger students.
You can categorize notes with colors and tags, and move them freely around the board. Lino works in browsers without requiring software installation and also has mobile apps.
For lightweight needs like idea collection or student check-ins, it’s a solid choice.
Lino has a free fully functional basic version and optional upgrades.
Wrap
While Padlet is a popular tool for collaboration and classroom engagement, it may not suit every teacher or team.
Fortunately, there are a number of free alternatives like Wakelet, Miro, and Ziteboard that offer unique strengths, from visual brainstorming and sticky-note boards to real-time collaboration and lesson planning.
Try a few to see which one best fits your teaching and collaboration style.
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