Setting up both tools for the first time
When I first opened Whimsical, everything loaded instantly and there was no nonsense login wall — I could sketch a quick flowchart in under a minute. FigJam, on the other hand, decided to auto-add me to some random workspace I didn’t remember creating… which meant I had to back out, fix account settings, then finally get to a blank canvas. For beginners, this is a big deal because that first five minutes decides whether you’ll stick with a tool or just abandon it. In Whimsical, creating a content planning diagram felt a bit like opening Google Docs: no drama, just a cursor blinking at me waiting for ideas. FigJam’s onboarding was slightly more visual, with templates right in my face, but I actually ignored them because I wanted to start from scratch.
One odd real experience — I tried to import my old brainstorming notes into FigJam by pasting them directly, and the text pasted huge, like billboard size, while Whimsical quietly resized pasted text to match the rest. The FigJam approach might be nice if I wanted a big title, but it made me spend extra seconds resizing everything. Not a dealbreaker, but these moments add friction when you’re capturing ideas fast.
Collaborating in real time without losing control
I’ve had messy collaboration disasters in both tools. The worst was in FigJam during a team retro — someone accidentally dragged the entire board off-centre, and suddenly half the team chat blew up with “where did it go.” In Whimsical, the board grid feels more locked, so you’re less likely to lose the whole canvas unless you intentionally zoom somewhere ridiculous. That’s nice when you’re mapping out a content calendar and somebody joins late from their phone. I noticed Whimsical’s comment mode is tucked away so people can’t instantly spam sticky notes on top of your main diagram. FigJam embraces chaos — which is great when energy is high, but not when you’re desperately trying to keep the timeline from turning into a wall of unrelated doodles 🙂
Pro tip from my own mishaps: in FigJam, hit Shift and 2 to recenter on the selection — it’s the fastest way to say “this is where we are” without voice-narrating for confused teammates. In Whimsical, you can spotlight by clicking the name of the collaborator and following their view, which is… calm. Calm is underrated in content planning.
Templates that actually help planning
Whimsical’s templates tend to feel opinionated — when you pick “content calendar” you get columns, rows, filled text boxes, and color coding ready to go. This can be amazing if you like being nudged into one style. But if your brain is stubborn like mine, you end up deleting half the template to free up space for your own layout. FigJam’s templates, at least in my last few uses, are more decorative. They include a lot of playful icons and placeholder text that feels very Miro-like. These can jumpstart visual inspiration, but for planning actual content timelines, I’ve had to strip out the cuteness and rebuild sections for deadlines and dependencies.
I kept a running tally and noticed it takes me about twice as long to customize a FigJam template into a practical piece of documentation versus Whimsical. But FigJam wins when you want moodboards and ideation spaces in the same file — you can drop images, hand-draw arrows, and keep it messy without guilt.
Organizing large multi month projects
Here’s where I personally hit the limit of FigJam for structured stuff. Once my board went past about three visible screens worth of space, finding things meant scrolling like a lost tourist. Whimsical’s sidebar document organization saved me more than once — you can split different diagrams for different months, then tab between them like slides. In FigJam, jumping around meant relying on custom navigation areas I made manually, like putting a large Start Here post-it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I ran into a tiny but annoying bug in Whimsical once where tab-switching lagged by several seconds after I duplicated a diagram about four times. Refresh fixed it, but only after losing the unsaved comments. In FigJam, the auto-save is ultra-fast, but I once had it save the wrong version of an asset — literally replaced my updated draft with something from fifteen minutes ago. Still not sure why.
Sharing boards with clients or stakeholders
Non-technical people panic the moment they see too many toolbars. That’s why I lean toward Whimsical for client shares — the view-only mode is stripped down, so they can’t accidentally drag a block halfway across the board. FigJam does have a nice share experience because you can invite with just an email and let them edit instantly. But that’s a double-edged sword when the stakeholder starts “helpfully” rearranging deadlines to dates that make no sense. In Whimsical, the permission screens break down into simple toggles, and I can set comment-only access before sending the link.
Also worth mentioning — I tried sending a Whimsical board link over Slack to a client, and the Slack preview looked clean and clickable. With FigJam, the preview just showed a generic logo, so we had to explain “yes, this is safe to click.” Tiny stuff, but it changes how smooth that first experience is for them.
Integrating with other workflow tools
If you want Google Drive integration, both do it, but Whimsical treats your diagrams almost like Google Docs files — you can put them in shared folders and control access with the same settings. FigJam syncs with Figma projects, which is better if your team is already designing there. I tested Zapier automations for both — I could trigger an action when a new Whimsical doc was created, like emailing the team. FigJam’s triggers were trickier because it’s really tied into the Figma ecosystem. I had to run an API call rather than use a neat prebuilt event, which felt overkill just to log board creation in Trello.
Another odd difference — Whimsical exports to a clean PDF by default, while FigJam pushes you toward PNG and SVG unless you dig for the print option. In my content planning flow, PDFs are easier to attach to Asana or Notion pages since they keep text selectable.
Choosing the right one for your workflow
If your content planning mostly lives in structured timelines and clearly divided responsibilities, Whimsical will likely feel “ready out of the box.” You get immediate clarity, fast file navigation, and calmer collaboration. If your content planning sessions double as brainstorming jams where half the value is in the jokes and scribbles, FigJam will feel more alive, even if it means spending extra cleanup time later. I still switch between the two depending on the vibe, because sometimes you need strict order and sometimes you just need a giant canvas to throw stickies until something makes sense 🙂
You can try both for free — Whimsical at whimsical.com and FigJam at figma.com — but don’t expect the decision to be clean-cut. The real answer might be ending up with both open in separate tabs, while your brain pretends you’ll consolidate them later… and then never does.