Mind Mapping: The Best Tool for Creating Mind Maps

This article is not sponsored

A mind map is a schematic representation of a set of thoughts, of concepts that subdivide in order to form a knowledge base with different levels of depth.

It's generally used to organize your ideas, connect them together and stay as close as possible to the mental scheme that our brain can build.

Personally I've always found mind maps extremely practical, but the software tools for creating them didn't meet my expectations, so I was reduced to writing them on paper, or with fairly unsuitable software.

MindMeister

For writing my training courses/masterclasses, I needed to find a go-to tool to support my ideas, and I found this application under the name of MindMeister!

The advantages

Web and mobile applications

This is one of the major strengths of this tool, and a feature too rarely found in other alternatives: the ability to share and keep working on your projects no matter what system you're using.

With the online application, the iOS version and the Android version, I can even edit my mind maps on my phone!

The design

As you could see in my example above, the default style of the maps is nice, simple and modern, and personally that's a big selection criterion for me, especially if I have to share my maps publicly.

But even better, you can build your own custom styles in your own colors and adapt your maps to fit your project!

The templates

In addition to classic maps (deployed in a circle), you can also choose the layout of your maps with different templates, such as an organizational chart (top to bottom) or a left-to-right hierarchy (ideal for creating the outline of a document).

The user experience

The experience is very smooth, and it is possible to navigate through your maps and edit them using the keyboard or the mouse.

Even the mobile user experience has been very well thought out, I never thought I'd one day be able to create mind maps on my phone and actually enjoy doing it!

The drawbacks

The price

I put it under drawbacks, but it's actually not really one. First of all, because you get a free plan that lets you create up to 3 free maps.

Then you can extend it by up to 10 additional maps by inviting your friends, and finally the personal plan costs €6, which is very affordable for a tool you use regularly!

Rendering bugs

This is really the only small bug I've encountered, sometimes the rendering of the bubbles and lines shifts slightly out of alignment with the text, but it's only happened to me once or twice, and collapsing and re-expanding the main bubble fixes the issue instantly.

A negligible problem, then!

In conclusion

If you're a mind map enthusiast, or if you want to discover this concept, go for MindMeister! Personally, it helped me gain productivity and organization when creating my training courses, and I can only recommend it to you!

Try it directly at mindmeister.com

I hope this article was useful to you, and see you soon!