Zoom Whiteboard vs. Jamboard for Meeting Collaboration

The short answer

If you are choosing between Jamboard and Zoom Whiteboard today, the choice is already made. Google discontinued Jamboard. It announced the wind-down in 2023, the app moved to read-only mode in October 2024 and shut down at the end of 2024, and the Jamboard hardware was retired with it. Zoom Whiteboard is still an active product, so it is the only one of the two you can adopt for live meeting collaboration.

The comparison still matters in three situations. You may have old jams to recover. You may be replacing a Jamboard display in a meeting room. Or your team may work mainly in Google Workspace and need to know whether a Zoom tool fills the gap.

How each whiteboard works in a meeting

Jamboard was both a Google Workspace app and a dedicated touch display. Jams were saved as files in Google Drive, shared through Drive permissions, and could be opened alongside a Google Meet call. Collaboration depended on everyone having access to the same Drive file.

Zoom Whiteboard is a canvas tied to your Zoom account. You can open it during a meeting so participants can draw, type, and add sticky notes and shapes together. Boards are saved to Zoom's cloud, so you can reopen and keep editing them after the meeting, and share them with specific people much like a document.

Several details are version-dependent and should not be taken from any fixed feature list. These include how many boards you can create or edit, available templates, export formats, and integrations with other apps. They depend on your Zoom plan, your app version and the settings your administrator enables. Check the current plan details and your account settings before you commit.

Key differences at a glance

• Availability: Jamboard is discontinued; Zoom Whiteboard is still maintained.
• Ecosystem: Jamboard lived in Google Drive and Meet; Zoom Whiteboard lives in your Zoom account and meeting app.
• Saved boards: Zoom boards persist in your account; old jams survive only as copies you exported or migrated, so do not assume they are still editable.
• Hardware: Jamboard relied on its own touch display; Zoom Whiteboard runs on computers, tablets and supported Zoom Rooms touch displays.

Choosing a whiteboard for your meetings

If your meetings already run in Zoom, use Zoom Whiteboard. Participants stay in the same app, and there is no separate tool to install or sign in to. Before an important session, confirm that your meeting settings let participants edit the board, not just view it.

If your team runs on Google Workspace and Google Meet, Zoom Whiteboard is not a direct replacement, because it lives in a different account system. When Google retired Jamboard, it pointed users toward third-party whiteboards such as FigJam, Lucidspark and Miro. Compare those options against your existing meeting platform rather than switching meeting tools just to get a whiteboard.

If you are replacing a Jamboard display in a conference room, a Zoom Rooms setup with a touch display is one route. Confirm that the specific display is supported for Zoom Rooms before you buy, because whiteboard support depends on the hardware and software combination.

If you need content from old jams, start with whatever exports you have, such as PDFs or images. Check whether your new whiteboard tool can import those files. Imported pages usually act as a starting reference rather than fully editable notes.

When a physical whiteboard is simpler

Some teams prefer to sketch on a wall board and show it through a camera. Zoom's screen sharing options include sharing content from a second camera, which suits this setup. To keep the board readable:
• Make sure the operating system has granted camera permission to the meeting app.
• Confirm the selected camera is the one pointed at the board.
• Use even lighting that does not cause glare on a glossy surface.
• Choose the highest resolution your camera and connection handle. Sharpness matters more than frame rate for a mostly static board.

Limits and related questions

Is Zoom Whiteboard free? Free Zoom accounts can use it with limits, and paid plans raise them. Limits and plan contents change, so verify the current terms for your account type.

Who can see and keep a board? Zoom boards are stored in Zoom's cloud under the owner's account. Sharing, external access and retention are controlled by account and administrator settings. Treat privacy and deletion behaviour as something to confirm against your organization's policies. Do not assume a board is private or removed when the meeting ends.

Can guests from outside your organization edit? That depends on how the board is shared and on your administrator's settings for external users. Test with a colleague's guest account before relying on it in a client meeting.

Can I still use Jamboard on an older device or through an old link? No. The app has been shut down and the devices are no longer supported, so plan any recovery around files you exported, not around reopening the original jams.