Online white-boarding tool for diagrams and software design sessions

Question

I used to work with Dabbleboard as a white-boarding tool across teams. It was a great tool, but was taken down for some reason.

Is anyone hosting anything like it? I found Dabbleboard really easy to use for diagrams and software design sessions.

I would like to be able to

• share UML diagrams trough an url
• design diagrams workflows and plain doodles
• it would be nice if you could draw rectangles/shapes easily
• be able to type in the rectangles
• connect them with arrows and lines

Can you recommend a tool with similar capabilities?

Answer 1

You might want to take a look at Lucidchart, it is what I am using for general purpose diagramming.

It supports:

• drag-and-drop manner of putting shapes
• various shapes
• various diagram types
• various arrow types to connect them
• you can put text on both the arrows and shapes
• you can authenticate with your google profile, and have access to all your documents.
• There is an ability to integrate with google drive (I never used this though)
• ability to export the diagram to PDF or image
• diagrams can be shared trough an url

Some disadvantages:

• the tool is free for simpler diagrams, that have less than 60 items on them (counting text, arrows and shapes). If you exceed 60 items in a document/diagram, you will have to make a paid subscription to go on.
• some specific diagrams cannot be drawn easily enough with it. For instance, I've found it not that good for sequence diagrams - they take a lot of components (the 60 limit is quickly reached), and they are a bit cumbersome and time-consuming to create.