Looking at Mural alternatives?
Mural built its name on facilitation. Over the last couple of years it has been building for enterprise AI workflows, Salesforce integrations and admin tooling. If you are a facilitator or a program team wondering where you sit in that, here is the most useful thing we can offer you. Not a demo. Not a trial you have to figure out alone.
Send us a session you actually have to run. We'll build it in Kolab for you.
Pick something real from your calendar. A workshop, a cohort kickoff, a strategy day, a retro. Send us the agenda and whatever boards you already have. We will build the whole thing in Kolab, walk you through it on video, and hand it over. You run it. There is no charge for the first one and no card required.
Here's exactly what happens: you send the agenda, we reply within one business day with any questions, and within about a week you get a built Kolab space plus a short video walking you through it. Then you run it, or you don't. Either way the space is yours to keep.
Where Mural is today
The facts, without the spin
Mural is a good product. What has changed is who it is being built for. Here is what is on the public record as of October 2026.
3 murals
The cap on the free plan. Enough to try it, not enough to run a practice on. Paid plans run from $9.99 to $17.99 per member per month on annual billing.
Annual only
The Business tier, which is where unlimited guests and SSO live, has no monthly option. For a facilitator whose client work comes in waves, that is a year of seats paid up front.
2024
New CEO, following a 2021 valuation of $2B and a round of layoffs in 2023. The 2026 release notes are mostly Salesforce integration, workspace consolidation and company admin controls. Useful if you are an enterprise. Less so if you are one person running workshops.
See the difference
Fifty people into breakout groups, without clicking a thing
This is the part that is hard to explain in a comparison table. In Kolab the canvas, the video and the breakouts are the same room, so people move themselves instead of waiting to be assigned. Two minutes will tell you more than the rest of this page.
Real Kolab spaces. Participants join by link in the browser, with no account and nothing to install.
Read this part before you switch
Kolab is not a drop-in replacement for Mural
We would rather tell you this now than have you find out three weeks in. Mural is a canvas with facilitation features bolted on. Kolab is a room with a canvas in it. Those are different products, and which one you need depends on what you actually do.
Stay on Mural if this is you
- Most of your board work happens asynchronously between meetings
- You rely on the LUMA methodology library and design thinking templates
- You depend on Salesforce, Jira or Microsoft integrations
- Your org has standardized on Mural across hundreds of non-facilitator seats
- Your sessions run inside Teams or Zoom and that is not negotiable
Look hard at Kolab if this is you
- You facilitate live, and the session is the product
- You are paying for Zoom plus Mural plus Mentimeter plus a breakout workaround
- You are paying per member for people who only touch the board during live sessions
- You run cohorts, fellowships, or programs that repeat on a cycle
- Participants get lost switching tabs, and energy drops every time they do
- You want the space to still be there between sessions, not rebuilt each time
Why people move
One room instead of four tabs
The reason facilitators end up on Kolab is rarely a feature. It is that the stack they have been holding together stops needing to be held together. Most people running live sessions are paying for a video tool, a board, a polling tool, and some workaround for breakouts, then spending the first ten minutes of every session getting forty people into the right places.
In Kolab those are one thing. The canvas is in the room with the video. Breakouts are places on a map that people walk into rather than assignments you administer. Spatial audio means a group of five can talk without anyone being muted or moved. Your agenda, timers and templates sit in the facilitator's view, not in a second window you are alt-tabbing to.
The compounding part is that spaces persist. A cohort that meets for twelve weeks comes back to the same room with last week's boards still on the wall, instead of a fresh empty link every Tuesday. If you run programs rather than one-off workshops, that is the difference that shows up in how people behave by week four.
And the prep gets shorter. 200+ templates designed to be run live, plus Kola, an AI co-facilitator that can see your canvas and help you build and adapt the session while it is happening.
Side by side
Where each one is stronger
Written as honestly as we can manage. If you spot something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
| Kolab | Mural | |
|---|---|---|
| Infinite canvas | Yes, built for live use | Mature and capable |
| Async work between sessions | Lighter. Boards persist, but Kolab is built around the live session | Strong. Comments, outlines, integrations with Jira, Salesforce and Microsoft |
| Video and presence | Video is the room. Everyone is visible on the canvas and presence drives how the session moves | No native video. The call runs in Zoom or Teams alongside the mural |
| Spatial audio and mingling | Yes. Participants move and conversations happen naturally | No |
| Breakouts | Native. Facilitators can walk between groups | Handled by your video tool, separate from the board |
| Facilitator controls | Agenda, timers, presence signals and pulling everyone to a board, in a dedicated facilitator view | Good. Timers, voting, private mode, summon, bulk locking and follow-the-facilitator, all on the canvas |
| AI in the room | Kola, an AI co-facilitator that sees the canvas and helps you run the session | Mural AI on the canvas, on paid plans |
| Facilitation templates | 200+ curated, designed to be run live rather than filled in | Large library, including LUMA design thinking methods |
| Pricing model | $499 per session, or from $5,000 per year per program. Participants are never a seat | $9.99 to $17.99 per member per month, annual billing. Visitors free, Business tier annual only |
| Ownership | Independent and founder owned | Venture backed, $2B valuation in 2021, new CEO in 2024 |
Bringing your work across
Getting your boards across, honestly
Copy and paste from Mural into Kolab works for the simple things. It is not magic yet, and we would rather set that expectation now than have you hit it mid-migration.
Export your work now
Whatever you decide about Kolab, get your boards out of any tool you do not own. Good practice regardless, and worth doing this week.
Paste handles the simple stuff
Sticky notes and text copy across well. Areas, connectors and heavily designed layouts do not come over cleanly yet. We are actively working on it.
We rebuild the complicated ones by hand
For anything involved, we do not rely on paste. We rebuild the board with you, and that is included in the free session build rather than being an extra.
Testimonials
What our users say
For organizations, not just individual facilitators
Reviewing a Mural renewal for your whole organization?
Different conversation, and worth having properly. Mural bills per member, annually. If you run cohorts, fellowships, accelerators or training programs, most of those members only touch a mural during live sessions. Fifty members on the Business tier is roughly $11,000 a year. A Kolab program with unlimited participants starts at $5,000. That is the part worth looking at before you re-sign.
Priced per program, not per seat
Grant and program funded teams budget by program. Our organizational pricing is built to match how the money actually arrives.
Security review, handled
We have a data protection and privacy overview written for IT and procurement, ready to send the day you ask for it.
We build your first program with you
Not a sandbox login. We design and build one real program cycle alongside your team so you are evaluating the actual thing.
Trusted by teams worldwide
Got it. We're on this.
Someone from our team will reply within one business day to ask any questions we need, then we'll get building. In the meantime, the easiest way to feel how a Kolab session actually runs is to sit in on one: see what's coming up.
Not ready to hand over a session yet?
Fair enough. Come sit in on a live one instead. We run open sessions for facilitators most weeks, you join as a participant, and you get to feel how a Kolab room actually works with no sales conversation attached. It is the lowest commitment way to answer the only question that matters.
Questions we get from people making this decision
Also comparing: Miro · Butter · Zoom breakouts
What does Kolab cost?
A single standalone session is $499 for up to 50 participants, no subscription. Programs and cohorts start at $5,000 a year on our founding rate, with unlimited participants. Full details on the pricing page. Participants are never a seat, which is the main difference from per member pricing.
Do I have to leave Mural to try this?
No. Run one session in Kolab alongside whatever you use now, then decide. Switching tools is a decision worth making after you have felt the difference, not before.
Do my participants need accounts?
No. They join by link, in the browser, with nothing to install. That matters when you are facilitating for an org whose IT team blocks new software.
Is Mural going somewhere? Should I be worried?
We have no reason to think so, and we are not going to imply it. Mural is a well funded company that is choosing to build for enterprises. The question is not whether it survives but whether it keeps building for you. Kolab is independent and founder owned, and your boards, transcripts and session content are exportable at any time, which is the protection that holds regardless.
I came from Butter. Is this the same thing?
Not the same, but you will recognize the DNA. Several of the facilitators in our network ran their practices on Butter and now help shape Kolab. If you want to talk to one of them before you talk to us, say so in the form and we will connect you.
What about security and data protection?
We have a security and privacy overview you can send to your IT or procurement team. Ask for it in the form, or read the summary at getkolab.ai/security.