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Build a Bigger Audience for Your Content

 

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More people today prefer to listen rather than read. So, if you offer only a written blog, you’re just not reaching as many people as you could.

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With BuildBubbles, you can create compelling podcasts in minutes. No microphone or expensive studio equipment required. All will be created from your intro to your outro.

MindMaster

 

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A great solution for students, teams, and decision-makers to work together, share ideas, and break down complex topics.

The free web version is great for users who want to quickly create a mind map with minimum installs, although you have to register online before you can create your first map. The paid individual subscriptions are feature-rich and not very expensive. As such, they are perfect for freelancers and marketing professionals who regularly need to present their work or ideas.

You can save on your MindMaster subscription by bundling additional products from Edrawsoft, such as Edraw Max and Edraw Infographic. These are advanced tools for drawing visuals and creating presentations. MindMaster offers a special student plan as well, in the form of a perpetual plan that never expires. It comes with two years of free upgrades.

Features

With MindMaster, you can create thousands of different visuals. Whether you are planning a wedding, brainstorming new ideas, or breaking down a complex topic, you can use MindMaster to visually show your audience your thought process. The software also makes it easier to identify potential problems or pitfalls with your project or proposed action plans down the line.

Here are some of the key features of the tool.

Build the Maps You Want

You can customize your shapes, styles, themes, and colors to express your ideas and tailor your maps to your exact preferences. There are a dozen pre-installed structures from which to choose, such as circle maps and fishbone diagrams, that make creating, customizing, and sharing your mind map quick and easy. Over two dozen themes and decorative clip-art images also help create rich, visually attractive maps.

Brainstorming

A special brainstorming tool makes it easy to hold meetings and gather feedback and ideas from your team. All you have to do is launch MindMaster’s brainstorming mode, record input from everyone in different colors on one side of the map, and drag them to the other side to automatically generate a mind map of everyone’s ideas and suggestions.

Project and Task Management

Software tools are only as good as their ease of use. With MindMaster, you can seamlessly switch from one mode to another without having to re-learn or redo everything from scratch. For example, if you create a mind map using the brainstorming feature outlined above, you can create a project management mind map from it, complete with Gantt charts, progress tracking, and resource requirements, all in one click.

Presentation Mode

The same goes for creating stunning presentation decks from your mind maps. With just a few clicks, you can convert your mind map into an MS PowerPoint file for quick and easy presentation to the rest of your team.

Interface and In use

MindMaster comes with a sleek and functional UI, both on desktop/laptop and mobile. In five easy steps, anyone can create a detailed mind map. All you have to do is select a template that you like and populate it with symbols from the library. You can then add text to the symbols and customize other map details using a number of shape and color editors. Once your map is ready, you can export and share it with others.

The layout of your mind map canvas has a tool ribbon that runs at the top of your screen, very similar to MS Word. A menu for additional functionality (such as rotating images or dragging shapes around) can be found at the left of your screen.

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The mobile apps place your tools and options at the bottom of your screen, within easy reach of your thumb for on-the-fly creation and editing. You can add shapes and text, change colors and connections, and customize other details sequentially within a single view. Once you are done, your updated map appears on your screen, with additional features and options again within easy reach.

The competition

We compared MindMaster with MindManager and Miro, two other popular mind map tools on the market. Here is how they stack up against each other.

Budget

Like MindMaster, Miro has a free plan, and its paid plans start at $8 per user per month, up to $16 per person per month for business plans. This is slightly higher than the annual costs of MindMaster’s plans.

MindManager does not have a free plan, and its entry-level plans cost several hundred dollars ($179 for Mac and $349 for Windows).

Ease of Use

MindMaster has the edge over MindManager and Miro in this category. Miro is easy to set up and use, but it can take some time to learn all of its features. As for MindManager, some users have called it clunky in terms of how the application runs. The drag-and-drop functionality of MindMaster and the ease with which mind maps can be created make it the best application of the three in terms of user-friendliness.

Features

MindMaster has brainstorming and project management modes, so it is very easy to switch functionality from within the app to suit different requirements. However, while Miro has a unique whiteboard feature that is custom-designed for use by teams, MindManager has no such unique offerings. This makes it a straightforward mind mapping tool.

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That said, of the three, MindManager is the solution that is perhaps best suited to enterprise needs. It is priced as one and has a very extensive list of features and capabilities. It does not offer lower-level subscription tiers, and this may indicate that the company wants to focus on catering to businesses and corporations, not individuals.