Online Observations

This article will compare two popular online Mind Mapping tools: Mindomo and Mindmeister. But before I begin discussion of these tools let me answer the question: What is a mind map?

Wikipedia says that a Mind Map is

a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central keyword and idea.

I use Mind Maps to organize my notes from meetings or to brainstorm. Which brings me to the topic at hand. While there always have been many desktop tools available for creating Mind Maps, lately we see that these offerings are moving online (largely due to advances in technology available for creating online applications).

Let’s dive right into the comparison. Below I compare the services feature by feature:

User Interface

Mindomo has a completely Office 2007 like UI - complete with the Ribbon, the big round button, and the works. This brings a lot of familiarity to someone who is used to working in Office 2007. The other thing it does is that it makes all the options available to the user very easily and intuitively.

Mindmeister, on the other hand, has a very minimalist user interface which does look very fresh. Being minimalist, it may not be that easy to learn for the first timers, however. It has its controls on a panel which docks on the right side of your page.

Usability

I found Mindomo to be far more usable than Mindmeister. Because it follows the UI conventions from Office 2007, it makes it very easy for the user to do things such as change font or color of the items on the map. It has several preset designs, icons, etc. for use on the maps which it lets you choose by single click from the ribbon. (see screen shots below), while with Mindmeister, you have no such ability.

Both have very easy to learn and intuitive keyboard shortcuts which allow you to create the map without taking your hand off the keyboard.

Other Features

Icons and Images - Both allow you to add icons against nodes on your map. However, Mindomo also allows you to add images against each node (it has its own set of predefined images, or it also allows you to insert external images).

Sharing and Publishing - Both allow you to share your maps with others and also allow you to publish the maps on the Internet. They also allow you to embed the maps in your own website.

Export and Import - Both services allow you to export your mindmap to a variety of formats.

• PDF - Mindmeister exports the entire map as is into a PDF. Which means that your PDF actually contains an image (I find that kind of pointless because there is also the possibility of exporting to Image). Mindomo on the other hand tries to convert your map into text when exporting to PDF and organize it into neat sections. I personally found the resultant document to be very messy (and it doesn’t export the images that you embedded into the map).
• Images - Both allow export to jpg, gif, and png. However, with Mindomo all my efforts at exporting to jpg were going waste because the quality of the jpeg produced was really bad. I had to export to png which was quite acceptable.

Mindomo also allows importing a Freemind or MMAP file (popular formats for Mind maps). Mindmeister didn’t seem to have this feature also has this feature though its not real easy to find on the UI. However, Mindmeister allowed export to Freemind or MMAP in its free version which Mindomo did not (the feature is available in the paid version I believe).

Free vs Paid - both have free versions and paid versions. To see the difference, visit the sites as I only wanted to compare the free versions. I do have to mention that Mindomo shows Google Ads in a pane in the free version while Mindmeister doesn’t show any ads.

A couple of other things - Mindomo is Flash based and requires you to install the Flash plugin on your browser. On the other hand, Mindmeister doesn’t require any Flash  (or other runtime). Finally, Mindmeister allows you to collaborate on the same map in real time (ala Google Docs) - in other words multiple people with whom you have shared the map can work on it at the same time.

Conclusion

While there are many other features to compare, I believe that my conclusion is that Mindomo is a better offering due to its overall user friendliness and larger range of options.

Mindomo Screen shots

Mindomo allows easy choice of styles and other formatting options from its ribbon tool bars.