Miro

What Is Miro?

When DataMesh, a 45-person Berlin fintech, went fully remote in 2020, they lost something they did not expect to miss: the whiteboard. Not the object itself — the practice. The spontaneous clustering of sticky notes during sprint planning. The customer journey maps that sprawled across meeting room walls. The messy, visual, collaborative thinking that happens when people stand together and draw.

They tried shared documents. They tried video calls with screen sharing. Nothing replicated the spatial, non-linear quality of thinking on a wall. Then their design lead introduced Miro, and the whiteboard came back — not as a physical object, but as an infinite digital canvas that the entire team could work on simultaneously from Berlin, Lisbon, and Warsaw.

DataMesh's experience mirrors the trajectory of Miro itself. Founded in 2011 in Perm, Russia as RealtimeBoard, the company relocated its headquarters to Amsterdam and rebranded to Miro in 2019. The timing was fortunate. When the pandemic forced millions of knowledge workers to collaborate remotely, Miro was already a mature platform ready for the moment. The company grew from 5 million users in 2020 to over 60 million by 2025, becoming the default visual collaboration tool for distributed teams worldwide.

Miro's headquarters in Amsterdam places it under EU jurisdiction and GDPR. For European organisations that need a collaboration platform with compliant data handling, this is a structural advantage over US-headquartered alternatives. Enterprise customers can opt for EU data residency, ensuring that board content, user data, and collaboration artifacts remain within European data centres.

The platform itself is deceptively simple at first glance — an infinite white canvas with sticky notes, shapes, and drawing tools. But that simplicity is the foundation for a remarkably flexible tool that teams use for brainstorming, user story mapping, sprint retrospectives, wireframing, technical architecture diagrams, workshop facilitation, and strategic planning. Miro is not a design tool in the traditional sense; it is a thinking tool that happens to be visual.

Key Features

The Infinite Canvas

Miro's core metaphor is an infinite, zoomable canvas. Unlike slide-based tools or fixed-dimension documents, a Miro board has no edges. You can zoom out to see the entire landscape of a project — strategy maps, user flows, sprint boards, and research synthesis all on a single board — then zoom in to work on a specific detail. This spatial freedom changes how teams organise information. Instead of navigating between files and tabs, everything exists in a single navigable space. The learning curve is minimal: if you can use a whiteboard, you can use Miro. The sophistication comes from what you build on the canvas, not the tool itself.

Real-Time Collaboration

Multiple team members can work on the same board simultaneously, with cursors visible and changes appearing in real time. Miro supports comments, @mentions, voting (for prioritisation exercises), and a built-in timer for workshops. The collaboration feels immediate and natural — closer to working on a physical whiteboard together than most digital alternatives. Video conferencing integrations (Zoom, Microsoft Teams) let teams share boards during calls, and Miro's own Talk Track feature enables asynchronous video walkthroughs where you record yourself narrating a board for teammates in different time zones.

Templates and Frameworks

Miro provides over 300 pre-built templates covering agile methodologies (sprint planning, retrospectives, daily standups), design thinking (empathy maps, customer journey maps, personas), strategy (SWOT analysis, business model canvas, OKR planning), and education. Templates are not just blank frameworks — many include guidance text and facilitation instructions. The Miroverse community marketplace adds thousands more user-created templates. For teams adopting new methodologies, the templates reduce the friction of starting from scratch and establish consistent formats across projects.

Integrations Ecosystem

Miro integrates with over 200 tools. The Jira integration is particularly strong — importing issues, syncing statuses, and enabling teams to plan sprints visually while keeping Jira as the system of record. Slack integration enables sharing boards and receiving notifications. Figma integration lets design teams embed design files directly into Miro boards for design review sessions. Confluence, Asana, Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams, and Notion integrations mean Miro can serve as the visual layer on top of a team's existing tool stack rather than replacing it.

AI Features

Miro has introduced AI-powered features including content clustering (automatically grouping related sticky notes), content generation (expanding ideas from prompts), and summarisation (distilling board content into key themes). These features are useful but early — the clustering works well for brainstorming sessions with dozens of sticky notes, while the generation features are better suited for expanding on existing ideas than creating original content. The AI features are most valuable as a facilitation accelerator, reducing the manual work of organising and synthesising workshop outputs.

Pricing

Miro's free tier is genuinely useful: unlimited team members can collaborate on up to 3 editable boards with access to all 300+ templates and core features. For small teams running occasional workshops or personal projects, the free tier may be sufficient indefinitely.

The pricing gap between free and paid is where Miro's model creates friction. The Starter plan at USD 8/member/month (annual billing) unlocks unlimited boards, private boards, voting and timer features, and basic integrations. For a team of 10, that is USD 80/month — a meaningful jump from free. The Business plan at USD 16/member/month adds smart diagramming, guest access, SSO, and advanced integrations. At this tier, a 50-person company pays USD 800/month for a collaboration tool.

The Enterprise plan is custom-priced and adds EU data residency, advanced security controls (data governance, domain management), a dedicated customer success manager, and enterprise-grade SLA. For organisations with strict compliance requirements, the Enterprise tier is effectively mandatory.

The per-seat pricing model means Miro becomes expensive for large organisations. Unlike tools priced by usage or by board, Miro charges for every user — including those who may only use it occasionally. For organisations with variable collaboration needs, this creates a cost optimisation challenge.

EU Compliance & Data Privacy

Miro is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, placing it under Dutch and EU jurisdiction. The company is GDPR compliant and provides data processing agreements, data export tools, and consent management features. Miro holds SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certifications, providing third-party validation of its security practices.

For Enterprise customers, Miro offers EU data residency — ensuring that all board content, user data, and collaboration artifacts are stored and processed within European data centres. This is a meaningful differentiator for organisations in regulated industries (finance, healthcare, government) or those subject to strict data sovereignty requirements.

Miro's Enterprise plan also includes data governance controls: admins can manage board sharing permissions, control external guest access, configure data retention policies, and restrict content from being copied outside the organisation. These controls address the practical challenge of using a collaboration tool across teams while maintaining information security boundaries.

Who It's Best For

Distributed product and engineering teams that need a visual planning tool for sprint ceremonies, user story mapping, and technical architecture — especially teams already using Jira, which benefits from Miro's deep integration.

Design and UX teams running workshops, research synthesis, and design critiques who need a collaborative space that integrates with Figma and other design tools without replacing them.

Consultants and facilitators who run workshops, strategy sessions, and training programmes for clients and need a professional, template-rich platform that works across organisations.

European enterprises requiring a collaboration platform with EU data residency, SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications, and a headquarters under EU jurisdiction — avoiding the data transfer concerns of US-headquartered alternatives.

The Verdict

Miro earned its place as the default visual collaboration platform by being better at replicating the spontaneity and spatial freedom of physical whiteboards than anything else on the market. The infinite canvas, real-time collaboration, and deep integration ecosystem create a tool that adapts to how teams actually think and work. The EU headquarters and data residency options provide genuine compliance advantages for European organisations. The weaknesses are real: per-seat pricing scales aggressively, performance can suffer on dense boards, and without team discipline, boards become digital landfills. But for teams that need to think visually together across locations and time zones, Miro remains the standard others are measured against.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Miro headquartered in the EU?

Yes. Miro's headquarters are in Amsterdam, Netherlands, an EU member state. The company was originally founded in Perm, Russia in 2011 as RealtimeBoard, but relocated its headquarters to Amsterdam. Miro offers EU data residency for enterprise customers, storing data in European data centres.

Is Miro free to use?

Miro offers a free tier that includes unlimited team members with up to 3 editable boards, access to 300+ templates, and core collaboration features. For teams needing more boards, advanced features like voting, timer, and private boards, paid plans start at USD 8 per member per month.

How does Miro compare to FigJam?

Miro is a broader collaboration platform supporting agile workflows, diagramming, strategy planning, and workshops. FigJam is more focused on quick brainstorming and is tightly integrated with Figma's design tool. Miro has a larger template library and more structured workflow features. FigJam is simpler and better for design teams already using Figma.

Does Miro offer EU data residency?

Yes. Miro offers EU data residency for Enterprise plan customers, allowing organisations to store their data in European data centres. This is in addition to Miro's Amsterdam headquarters and GDPR compliance. Enterprise customers can specify their data region during onboarding.

What can you use Miro for?

Miro is used for brainstorming and ideation, user story mapping, sprint planning and agile retrospectives, customer journey mapping, wireframing, technical architecture diagrams, workshop facilitation, and strategic planning. Its infinite canvas adapts to nearly any visual collaboration use case.