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To achieve that which FreeMind offers, you can use variety of tools.
- Free or freeware mind mapping program; for instance,
- Thinkgraph is not open source licenced, and in our view falls back behind FreeMind in terms of ease of use and look-and-feel.
- VYM - View Your Mind is licenced under GNU GPL; comparative evaluation to FreeMind is missing. See also VYM for Microsoft Windows.
- Kdissert is licenced under GNU GPL, and is not available for Windows; evaluation is missing as well.
- Personal Brain is not open source but is available as a free version for non commercial use. Personal Brain offers some unique features with "floating" nodes and flexible focus points. Personal Brain is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
- Commercial mind mapping program, for instance MindManager, Inspiration, MindGenius, Visual Mind, MindMapper or MindVisualizer.
- Note editor / reference manager / PIM - personal information manager, for instance open source Key Note for Windows. In the case of Key Note, you obtain folding, much richer text formatting than in FreeMind, many small notes in one file and it is quite easy to reorganize the structure of your notes. It is not so fast when it comes to changing the color of nodes and not so intuitive when you move things around. It is not possible to set a link to a node, only inside the note, which is sort of equivallent of FreeMind's node without children. Key Note is much faster because it is not written in Java, but it runs on Windows platform only. Definitely worth having a look at. In Linux, the hierarchical rich text note editor TuxCards may be of interest.
- Text editor with Outline mode, e.g. MS Word, LyX or Emacs. Outline mode enables you to fold headings and move complete "nodes" (chapters, sections, subsection) around, as well as changing the levels of the nodes. The convenience and speed of operation in the areas of restructuring, organizing, overviewing and adding items does not reach that of FreeMind, but on the other hand: if you already use one of these editors, you can avoid the extravagance of installing and learning to use a new tool and gain part of what FreeMind offers that way.
- Text editor with Folding mode, e.g. Emacs, Vim or jEdit. Again, you achieve information hiding, but the overheads of using folding mode when compared to FreeMind are considerable.
- Outliner, e.g. cross-platform Java outline editor or Microsoft Windows based Outliner. Compared to FreeMind, these programs are rather rudimentary. Another option is cross-platform Python-based outliner Leo (Python Licence); evaluation is missing.
- A concept map editor, like multiplatform freeware CmapTools, GNU GPL-licenced Conzilla in Java, or freeware Compendium (written in Java, and relying on database). Unlike mind maps, concept maps are general graphs rather than trees. See also Concept mapping at Wikipedia.
- Presentation software, like Microsoft PowerPoint or OpenOffice Impress. It can be used for drawing concept maps using boxes and connectors; compared to specialized software for concept maps, its edge is that it helps you keep low the number of pieces of software you have to learn to use.
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