Ayoa is presented as a collaborative whiteboard software where users can brainstorm ideas, work together & get things done, from OpenGenius in Wales. Ayoa is available free, and paid plans add task assignment, Gantt view, file storage, and integrations with Zoom and Google Calendar.
$120
per year per user
MindManager
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
MindManager is a mind mapping and project management tool that aims to boost users’ productivity. It is designed to facilitate a wide range of project types, and includes cross-platform functionality and 3rd party integrations.
It's great for small to medium business where you need to have tracked communication and conversations that can have milestones, deadlines, supporting files, and the ability to pass the task around to multiple individuals for completion. It's not exactly useful but with some work and maintenance can be used for issue tracking and work delegation
Convert meeting notes rapidly and move them around to create a good sequence of ideas. Then add documentation: tables, notes, hyperlinks to website. Playing around with concepts helps with better defining the problems. Once the parameters are found, solution is easier to figure.
Allows me to open my laptop any time and immediately facilitate ad-hoc brainstorming , collect user and stakeholder requests, and attach documentation to the event.
Provides all the templates a project or program manager needs to manage end to end detail with the flexibility to add or change them on the fly
I feel the main issues of the old Mindjet seem to be gone with the Corel purchase. With the huge advance of sharing via browser HTML even 1 user can affect many. And, actually, using MM kind of forced my rigid brain to rethink how I categorize and classify information/projects.
The idea of paying $69USD for an annual cost is more than fair and a great model for Corel/Mindjet to keep rolling out improvements!
MindManager is very intuitive. The user interface is not cluttered and the ribbon icons are easy to understand. Several excellent "how-to" videos are available on the MindManager site as well as on YouTube. MindManager starts quickly and the user interface is very responsive. Launching other programs from MindManager such as Excel is very fast and issue free. The browsing feature is lightning fast. The drag-and-drop capability is also very fast and reliable.
The application is quick and responsive. We are able to produce mindmaps and reports with ease. The program is not complicated at all and integrates well with software and programs like Microsoft Outlook and Teams, which we truly appreciate.
I have called technical support a few times. During the COVID Crisis, I called a few times repeatedly due to a rush request. The technical support guy called me back in minutes. He somehow knew that I had called repeatedly and wanted to make sure my issue was resolved immediately
The videos are not well categorized...I had to do a bit of digging to get what I wanted and many videos on older versions. If Mindjet was to improve the titles used that would help.
I've just started evaluating Planner with out recent upgrade to Business Premium but I'm finding that it could easily be used to replace Ayoa and would help offset the cost from the MS365 Business Premium upgrade by replacing another SaaS cost. It does almost all the same things, integrates in our already existing MS365 ecosystem, and is backed by Microsoft... it's just not as 'pretty' as the bubble boards
As an individual author, I don't have a need for many of the team and other functions of MM. For my use, as much as I love it, the cost has become prohibitive. I plan to research cheaper alternatives if MM no longer supports my version (MM 2020).
Communication and follow-up has gone way up since we started using Ayoa.
Accountability has also improved considerably since we started with Ayoa.
It has unfortunately caused some burn out on some users because it had made it much easier to 'punt' work over to someone else without any prior communication.
When scope planning before I was introduced to this tool, I needed to make one master Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for the entire project and move on. With MindMapper, I typically generate about 20 WBS-like charts throughout the project, which encouraged conversation with staff members. The major key in such ease of use has been some well thought out and very intuitive keystroke planning that allows me to keep up with the free flow of ideas.
This software's cross-functional capability allowed 10 engineers to create their projects directly within their own environment without use of a virtual machine.