Choosing an Online Tutoring Platform — A Practical Q&A

The best Zoom alternatives for online tutoring in 2026 are purpose-built virtual classrooms that bake teaching tools into the platform itself, rather than asking you to bolt them on after a generic video call. Six worth shortlisting: Koala Go (best for independent K-12 tutors who teach younger kids), Lessonspace (best for STEM tutors and tutoring organizations), LearnCube (best for ESL and language teaching with a built-in curriculum), Vedamo (best for group classes and traditional classroom-style live tutoring), Whereby (best for clean 1-on-1 video calls with adult learners), and Google Meet (best as a free fallback when you don't need teaching-specific tooling). Every option runs in the browser, so students don't install anything. Paid tiers start at roughly $10-$30/month.

The 6 best Zoom alternatives for online tutors

None of these tools is right for every tutor. Each replaces a specific weak spot of Zoom — the missing whiteboard, the painful screen share on tablets, the lack of built-in scheduling or rewards, the self-serve support that goes silent when something breaks mid-lesson. Pick the one whose strengths match how you actually teach.

1. Koala Go — best for independent K-12 tutors and engagement-driven lessons

What it is: A browser-based virtual classroom built specifically for online tutors. Includes an interactive whiteboard that takes PDF, PowerPoint, and image uploads; a cobrowser (you and the student interact with the same live webpage together); a 3D Playground used as a brain break or full lesson environment with student avatars; built-in scheduling and worldwide invoicing (parents pay in local currency, including via WeChat in China); 24/7 in-app support; and lesson recording on the Pro plan.

Strengths: Strong engagement for younger learners — kids actively want to come to class because they want to be in the Playground. Cobrowser is genuinely unusual; nothing on Zoom or most alternatives lets you share a live website where both of you can click and type. Everything in one tool, so you stop juggling video + whiteboard + scheduler + invoicer + rewards system.

Tradeoffs: Koala Free caps group sessions at 4 students. Koala Pro is $25.99/month ($21.99/month billed annually); some tutors find that higher than a generic video tool — though it tends to replace several other paid tools. The Playground is actively developed and still adding requested features like timers and group-select.

Best for: Independent tutors teaching K-12, especially under-10s; ESL teachers of kids; reading and Orton-Gillingham practitioners; anyone whose retention problem is "the student is bored on Zoom."

2. Lessonspace — best for STEM and subject-specific tutoring

What it is: A virtual classroom built around a powerful collaborative whiteboard with subject-specific tools (equation editor, graph editor, code editor), document upload and annotation, session recording, and a resource library. Students join via a Space link with no signup.

Strengths: Whiteboard is widely considered one of the strongest in the category, especially for math, physics, and coding. Tutor-side controls let you lock what students can edit and unlock when it's their turn. Available in 10+ languages. APIs for tutoring companies to embed.

Tradeoffs: More whiteboard-first than engagement-first — less optimized for very young learners who need movement and rewards. Some reviewers report audio/video hiccups on weaker connections.

Best for: Math, science, and coding tutors; tutoring companies that need a polished whiteboard and developer APIs.

3. LearnCube — best for ESL and language teaching with a ready curriculum

What it is: A virtual classroom focused on language teaching. Includes an online whiteboard with multiple tabs, an integrated ESL content library (CEFR A1-C2 and Business English), an AI teacher assistant in beta, white-label branding, lesson recording, and reload-past-class features.

Strengths: Subject-specific for language teachers — if you teach standard CEFR content, the built-in curriculum cuts prep time meaningfully. White-label option for tutors building a branded school. Used by some of the larger language tutoring companies.

Tradeoffs: Optimized for language teaching; if you teach math, piano, or non-language subjects, the content library doesn't help and you're paying for a feature you won't use. Pricing splits between the standalone Virtual Classroom and a higher tier that includes the ESL content library.

Best for: ESL or other language teachers, especially those who'd rather use a ready-made CEFR curriculum than build their own; small language schools.

4. Vedamo — best for group classes and classroom-style live tutoring

What it is: A browser-based virtual classroom with interactive whiteboard, breakout rooms, screen sharing, reusable lesson templates, gamification options, and support for up to 50 active participants per session. Around $25/month for the Virtual Classroom plan, with a 30-day free trial.

Strengths: Genuine support for small group classes (up to 50 participants) and breakout rooms make this stronger than most for language schools and group-tutoring organizations. Reusable lesson templates save prep time across recurring lessons. Integrates with Moodle, Canvas, and other LMSes via LTI.

Tradeoffs: Interface feels more traditional and meeting-like than engagement-driven. Younger students don't necessarily love it the way they love an avatar environment.

Best for: Group classes (3-50 students), tutoring organizations, or solo tutors who want a classroom-style experience at a low monthly price.

5. Whereby — best for clean 1-on-1 video calls with adult learners

What it is: A browser-based video conferencing tool from Norway, designed around a simple proposition: persistent custom room URLs, no downloads, no logins for guests. Includes screen sharing, recording (on Pro), live captions, and integrations with Miro and Google Docs. Pro starts at $10.99/month; the free plan caps group calls at 45 minutes.

Strengths: The smoothest "click a link, you're in the call" experience on this list. Permanent custom room URL parents and students can memorize. Reliable on mobile browsers. Strong on privacy — stated policy is not to store or train on call content.

Tradeoffs: It is a video tool, not a virtual classroom. No whiteboard built for teaching, no rewards system, no scheduling or invoicing for tutors. You'll bring your own teaching content (slides, docs) and share via screen share or by linking to a separate tool.

Best for: Adult 1-on-1 conversation practice, business English, IELTS/TOEFL prep with mature students, or any context where you mostly need a clean video call.

6. Google Meet — best free fallback when you don't need teaching tools

What it is: Google's video conferencing product. Free with a Google account, browser-based, ubiquitous. Parents and kids already know how to use it.

Strengths: Free, reliable, no learning curve for parents on any device. Trusted brand reduces the "is this a real thing?" conversation with new families.

Tradeoffs: A meeting tool, not a teaching tool. Google retired Jamboard (the whiteboard companion most tutors used with Meet) at the end of 2024, so the standard Meet + Jamboard tutoring setup no longer exists out of the box. You'll bolt on a separate whiteboard, a separate scheduler, a separate invoicing tool, a separate rewards system — exactly the stack-juggling that drove tutors off Zoom in the first place.

Best for: Tutors where cost is a hard constraint and the lesson format genuinely doesn't need more than video + screen share.

Feature comparison at a glance

Approximate as of mid-2026; vendor pricing and features drift, so check the source pages before committing.

Feature	Koala Go	Lessonspace	LearnCube	Vedamo	Whereby	Google Meet
Built specifically for online tutoring	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Interactive whiteboard with PDF/PowerPoint upload	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No (Miro embed only)	No (since Jamboard retired)
Live shared web browsing (cobrowser)	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
3D playground / avatars for younger students	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
Built-in scheduling for tutors	Yes	Partial (via APIs/integrations)	Yes (in Online School tier)	Partial	No	Via Google Calendar
Built-in invoicing / payment collection	Yes (worldwide, including WeChat)	No	Yes (in Online School tier)	No	No	No
Lesson recording	Yes (Pro)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes (Pro)	Yes (paid Workspace)
Built-in rewards / gamification	Yes	Limited	Limited	Some	No	No
Group session limit (one host)	4 on Free, more on Pro	~10 in group classes	Up to ~25	Up to 50	Up to 100-200 (by plan)	100+
Starting paid price (per month, approx)	$25.99 (Pro)	From ~$9	From ~$9	~$25	From $10.99	Free / part of Workspace
Has a free tier	Yes	Trial	14-day trial	30-day trial	Yes (45 min cap on groups)	Yes

How to choose between Zoom alternatives

Four questions, in order, narrow the field fast:

1. How old are your students? Under 10, engagement is your real problem — favor platforms with rewards, avatars, and interaction baked in (Koala Go). Teenagers and adults, a clean whiteboard and reliable video is usually enough (Lessonspace, LearnCube, Vedamo, Whereby).
2. What subject? Language teaching with a ready curriculum: LearnCube. Math/science with strong subject tools: Lessonspace. General K-12 across subjects: Koala Go. Adult conversation: Whereby.
3. Solo tutor or organization? Solo tutors care about all-in-one (video + scheduling + invoicing) so they don't run five subscriptions: Koala Go. Tutoring organizations care about white-labeling, APIs, and team management: LearnCube's Online School or Lessonspace.
4. Group size? 1-on-1 and small groups: any of the above. Classes of 10+: Vedamo or LearnCube; Whereby for adult workshops up to ~100.

A practical shortcut: run a real lesson on each shortlist option during its free trial. The platform that feels right after a single full lesson is almost always the right answer; the one you have to talk yourself into is almost always wrong.

Free Zoom alternatives for online teaching

If "free" is the constraint — you're piloting an idea, you only run a handful of paid lessons a week, or your students' families are paying you in a market where every dollar of overhead matters — three of the platforms above have free tiers genuinely usable for teaching, not just trials that expire in a couple of weeks: Koala Go, Whereby, and Google Meet. Each has a real cap somewhere — that's what makes it free. The right pick depends on which cap you can live with: Koala Free caps group size at 4 students, Whereby Free caps group calls at 45 minutes, and Google Meet's free tier caps group meeting length. None caps 1-on-1 tutoring lessons in a way that gets in the way of teaching.

Koala Go (Free) — best for free 1-on-1 and small-group K-12 tutoring

The Free plan is a real virtual classroom, not a stripped-down teaser: you get the interactive whiteboard with PDF and PowerPoint upload, the 3D Playground with student avatars, the cobrowser for shared live web browsing, drawing and sticky notes, and built-in scheduling. A few things are capped to keep it free — group size is the main one (Koala Free is capped at 4 students per session, enough for 1-on-1 and most small-group tutoring but not a 20-student class), PDF and PowerPoint uploads are limited on Free and unlimited on Pro, and the cobrowser is time-limited per session on the free tier. What it doesn't cap is lesson length — there's no time limit on lessons the way there is on free Whereby or Meet. Use it free as long as you want; upgrade to Koala Pro ($25.99/month, or $21.99/month billed annually) when you need lesson recording, unlimited PPT and PDF uploads, full-length cobrowser sessions, or larger group sizes.

Best when: you teach K-12 1-on-1 or small groups, want a real teaching platform rather than a generic meeting tool, and can live with the 4-student cap.

Whereby (Free) — best for short adult 1-on-1 calls with no install

The free plan gives you a persistent custom room URL with no downloads and no logins required for guests, fully browser-based, with screen sharing built in. The main cap is time — free group calls are limited to 45 minutes per session, which is tight for back-to-back small-group teaching. 1-on-1 calls don't run into the group cap. Whereby is a video tool rather than a virtual classroom, so there's no whiteboard for teaching built in; you'd add a separate tool (Miro, a shared Google Doc, or similar) for shared work.

Best when: you teach adults 1-on-1, value zero-friction join above teaching tools, and don't need a shared canvas inside the call itself.

Google Meet (Free) — best free fallback with maximum parent familiarity

Free with any Google account, browser-based, instantly recognizable to almost every parent. The free tier caps group meeting length, but 1-on-1 calls aren't affected by the same cap. The catch is the missing teaching layer: since Google retired Jamboard at the end of 2024 there's no built-in whiteboard for shared work, no scheduling for paying clients, no invoicing, no rewards system. To run a real tutoring practice on free Meet you'll stack a separate whiteboard, a separate scheduler, a separate invoicing tool, and probably a separate rewards or engagement system — exactly the stack-juggling that pushed many tutors off Zoom in the first place.

Best when: cost is a hard constraint, parents already use Meet for work or school, and your lesson genuinely doesn't need more than video plus a screen share.

What about Lessonspace, LearnCube, and Vedamo?

These three are paid platforms with free trials, not free tiers — Lessonspace varies by plan, LearnCube is a 14-day trial, Vedamo is a 30-day trial. They're worth running a real lesson on during the trial window (especially Lessonspace if you teach STEM, or LearnCube if you teach standard CEFR language curriculum), but they aren't a long-term free option once the trial ends. The honest move with any of these is to set a calendar reminder for the last day of the trial, decide whether the platform earned the subscription, and either pay or fall back to one of the genuinely free tools above.

A note on free open-source video tools

There's a separate category of free open-source community video projects (Jitsi Meet and BigBlueButton are the two most commonly cited) that some teachers use as free Zoom alternatives, either via public instances or by self-hosting. We don't try to cover them in depth here because they aren't purpose-built for tutoring — they're general-purpose conferencing tools that you'd configure or set up yourself. If you have the technical comfort to run your own instance or audit a public one, they're worth knowing about; if you don't, one of the three free options above will get you teaching faster.

Tradeoffs of going free for online teaching

Free tiers exist for a reason — they let you try a platform without commitment. They are not always the right long-term choice for a tutoring practice that's earning real money.

• Time and group caps interrupt teaching. A typical free-tier group call cap (Whereby's is 45 minutes) is fine for a single private lesson but bad for back-to-back small-group teaching, and a 4-student group cap is fine for tutoring but not for whole-class delivery.
• Lesson recording is usually a paid feature. If parents want to review what was covered, or you want to review your own teaching, recording typically requires upgrading.
• Support is slower on free plans. When something breaks mid-lesson and you need a human inside five minutes, paid plans get you there faster than free ones do.
• You'll end up stacking other paid tools anyway. A "free" video tool plus a paid whiteboard plus a paid scheduler plus a paid invoicer often costs more in total — and more juggling time per week — than a single paid all-in-one virtual classroom.

If your tutoring practice is generating consistent income, a paid all-in-one virtual classroom usually pays for itself by replacing two or three separate subscriptions and reclaiming the half-hour-plus per week you'd otherwise spend gluing tools together.

When sticking with Zoom is still the right call

We won't pretend leaving Zoom is always the right move. Stay on Zoom if:

• Your students and their parents already use Zoom for work and school, and the "familiar tool" win matters more than the missing teaching features.
• You teach almost entirely through one-way explanation (lectures, exam prep walkthroughs) where a webcam + screen share is genuinely enough.
• You teach in a region where the alternatives have weaker connectivity than Zoom and your students are sensitive to that. (Notably, mainland China connectivity varies platform to platform — always test before committing.)
• You're billing through an agency or marketplace that requires Zoom as the delivery tool.

If none of those apply, the question stops being "should I leave Zoom" and starts being "which of the alternatives above fits how I actually teach."

Questions to ask any platform before you commit

• Does it work in the browser on iPad, Android tablets, and Chromebooks — without an app install? Most of your students are not on MacBooks.
• Can you upload PDFs, PowerPoint slides, and worksheets and annotate them with the student in real time?
• What happens when something breaks mid-lesson — is there a human you can reach in under 5 minutes, or a help center and a ticket queue?
• Is there a free tier or trial long enough to run at least 3 real lessons?
• Where are the servers, and how does it perform in your students' regions? (China, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa are common pain points.)
• Does the platform record lessons, and where are the recordings stored?
• Can you collect payment through the platform, or will you still need a separate invoicing tool?
• If you ever scale to a small team of tutors, does the platform support multiple teachers under one brand?

If you'd like to talk through which of these matters most for your practice — or just want to ask whether Koala Go is a fit for the kind of students you teach — write to us at koala@teachwithkoala.com. We're a small team and we read everything.

The best online whiteboard for tutoring depends on what you teach and whether you want a whiteboard-only tool or a whiteboard inside a full virtual classroom. Six worth shortlisting in 2026: BitPaper (best for general 1-on-1 tutoring with handwriting), Ziteboard (best for math tutors who want a vector canvas), Lessonspace (best for STEM tutors who need equation, graph, and code editors), Koala Go (best when you want one tool that bundles a whiteboard with a cobrowser, scheduling, and a 3D playground for younger students), Miro (best for adult learners and design or business teaching), and Microsoft Whiteboard (best as a free option for tutors already on Teams or Microsoft 365). All six run in the browser, so students don't install anything. Paid tiers cost roughly $9–$25 per month, with free tiers available on most.

The 6 best online whiteboards for online tutors

None of these tools is right for every tutor. Each replaces a different weak spot of a shared screen or a generic video tool — the missing pen pressure for handwriting, the cramped canvas for long algebra problems, the awkward PDF workflow, the lack of multi-page lesson saving. Pick the one whose strengths match the subject you actually teach and the age of your students.

1. BitPaper — best for general 1-on-1 tutoring with handwriting

What it is: A browser-based whiteboard built specifically for tutors, originally by working tutors in the UK. Auto-saved multi-page "papers" you share with each student via a permanent link, with a built-in audio/video call, document upload (PDF, images), and a pen-friendly drawing canvas that's smooth on a stylus or trackpad.

Strengths: Tutor-specific from day one. Each student gets their own paper that persists across lessons, so you and the student can scroll back through last week's work without re-uploading anything. The handwriting feel is one of the best in the category — important if you teach maths, handwriting, or a script-heavy language. Reasonable pricing for solo tutors.

Tradeoffs: It is a whiteboard plus a basic call — not a full virtual classroom. No scheduling, no invoicing, no rewards system, no built-in marketplace of activities. If you want one tool to run your whole tutoring practice, BitPaper isn't it.

Best for: Solo tutors doing 1-on-1 lessons in any subject who want a clean shared workspace and don't need scheduling or invoicing baked in.

2. Ziteboard — best for math tutors on a vector canvas

What it is: A vector-based infinite canvas whiteboard with shape recognition, equation-friendly drawing tools, PDF import, and real-time collaboration. Stylus-friendly on iPad and graphics tablets.

Strengths: The infinite vector canvas matters more than it sounds — you can zoom in to neaten a fraction or pan across to a different worked example without the lines pixelating. Strong with a stylus, which is the realistic way most math tutors actually write equations on screen. Free tier is genuinely usable for occasional lessons.

Tradeoffs: Interface is utilitarian rather than warm — fine for adult learners or older teens, less engaging for young kids. No real "lesson" or "student" model; it's a canvas, not a classroom. No audio/video call built in (you pair it with Zoom, Meet, or similar).

Best for: Math, physics, and engineering tutors working with older students or adults; anyone who teaches primarily with a stylus.

3. Lessonspace — best for STEM tutors who need equation, graph, and code editors

What it is: A full virtual classroom built around a powerful collaborative whiteboard with subject-specific tools — an equation editor, a graph editor, a code editor with syntax highlighting, document annotation, and session recording. Students join via a "Space" link with no signup.

Strengths: The whiteboard is widely considered one of the strongest in the category, especially for technical subjects. Tutor-side controls let you lock what students can edit and unlock when it's their turn. Available in 10+ languages and used by larger tutoring organizations via embeddable APIs.

Tradeoffs: More whiteboard-first than engagement-first — less optimized for very young learners who need movement and rewards. Some reviewers report audio/video hiccups on weaker connections. Premium tiers can get expensive for solo tutors compared to whiteboard-only tools.

Best for: Math, science, and coding tutors with older students; tutoring companies that need a polished whiteboard and APIs.

4. Koala Go — best whiteboard inside a full virtual classroom for kid-focused tutors

What it is: A browser-based virtual classroom for online tutors with an interactive whiteboard at the centre of every lesson. The whiteboard takes PDF and PowerPoint uploads (unlimited on the Pro plan), runs as a Fabric.js canvas with drawing, sticky notes, text, images, stamps, and embedded video, and sits alongside two features no standalone whiteboard offers: a cobrowser (you and the student interact with the same live webpage together), and a 3D Playground used as a brain break or full lesson environment with student avatars. Built-in scheduling, worldwide invoicing (including WeChat in China), and 24/7 in-app support round out the package.

Strengths: One tool replaces the stack-juggling that most tutors fall into — video + whiteboard + scheduler + invoicer + rewards system collapsed into one browser tab. Strong engagement for younger learners because the whiteboard sits next to the Playground rather than in a separate window. PDFs and PowerPoints come straight in and become annotatable slides, so existing materials work without re-creation.

Tradeoffs: Koala Go's whiteboard is good but not the most flexible one on this list — Lessonspace's subject-specific editors and BitPaper's handwriting feel each win on a narrow axis. If your tutoring is whiteboard-only and you have no use for the cobrowser or Playground, you're paying for capabilities you won't use. Koala Pro is $25.99/month ($21.99/month billed annually); free tier exists with a cap on group size and on PPT/PDF uploads. The Playground is actively developed and still adding requested features like timers and group-select.

Best for: Independent tutors teaching K–12, especially under-10s; ESL teachers of kids; reading and Orton-Gillingham practitioners; any tutor whose retention problem is "the student is bored on Zoom."

5. Miro — best for adult learners and design or business teaching

What it is: A general-purpose collaborative whiteboard from Miro Inc., used by product, design, and consulting teams. Infinite canvas, templates, sticky notes, drawing, comments, frames, plus a large library of integrations (Google Docs, Figma, Jira, and many more).

Strengths: Extremely capable canvas with the deepest template library on this list — anything from mind maps and Kanban boards to flowcharts and SWOT frames. Strong on mobile and tablet. Great fit for adult learners who are already comfortable in business tools.

Tradeoffs: Not designed for tutoring. No "lesson" concept, no student-management view, no scheduling, no audio/video call built in. Free tier limits you to three editable boards, which is fine for one or two students but tight for a full practice. Interface assumes desktop-class comfort — wrong for young kids on tablets.

Best for: Adult-learner tutoring (business English, IELTS prep with mature students, executive coaching), design teaching, or any context where the template library and integrations matter more than tutor-specific features.

6. Microsoft Whiteboard — best free option for tutors already on Teams or Microsoft 365

What it is: Microsoft's collaborative whiteboard, free with any Microsoft account and integrated into Microsoft Teams. Infinite canvas, ink and shape tools, sticky notes, image and document insertion, and live collaboration.

Strengths: Genuinely free for personal Microsoft accounts. If you (and your students) already live in Teams or Microsoft 365 for school, the whiteboard is one click away and works without onboarding. Reliable, well-maintained, with strong stylus support on Surface devices and iPad.

Tradeoffs: A general-purpose whiteboard, not a tutoring tool — no lesson structure, no student dashboard, no scheduling or invoicing. The strongest "Teams + whiteboard" workflow assumes both you and the student are on Microsoft accounts, which is true in school settings but rarely true for independent K–12 tutoring with families.

Best for: Tutors whose students are already on Microsoft 365 (common in schools and some districts); cost-constrained tutors who want a real whiteboard without a subscription.

Feature comparison at a glance

Approximate as of mid-2026. Vendor pricing and features drift, so check the source pages before committing.

Feature	BitPaper	Ziteboard	Lessonspace	Koala Go	Miro	MS Whiteboard
Built specifically for tutoring	Yes	Partial (popular with tutors)	Yes	Yes	No	No
PDF / PowerPoint upload onto the canvas	Yes (PDF, images)	Yes (PDF)	Yes	Yes (Pro: unlimited)	Yes (PDF, images)	Yes (PDF, images)
Subject-specific editors (equation, graph, code)	No	Equation-friendly drawing	Yes	No	No (templates only)	No
Infinite / multi-page canvas	Multi-page papers	Infinite	Multi-page	Multi-slide	Infinite	Infinite
Built-in audio / video call	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	Via Teams
Live shared web browsing (cobrowser)	No	No	No	Yes	No	No
3D playground / avatars for younger students	No	No	No	Yes	No	No
Built-in scheduling and invoicing	No	No	Partial (via integrations)	Yes (worldwide, incl. WeChat)	No	No
Lesson recording	Yes (paid)	Limited	Yes	Yes (Pro)	Limited	Yes (via Teams)
Has a free tier	Yes (limited)	Yes	Trial	Yes (group + upload caps)	Yes (3 editable boards)	Yes
Starting paid price (per month, approx)	From ~$10	From ~$9	From ~$9	$25.99 (Pro)	From ~$8 / editor	Free / part of M365

How to choose between online whiteboards for tutoring

Four questions, in order, narrow the field fast:

1. What subject and what age? Math, physics, and coding tutors with older students get the most out of Lessonspace and Ziteboard. ESL, reading, and any K–4 tutoring is better served by a tool with built-in engagement (Koala Go). General handwriting-led tutoring works well on BitPaper. Business English and adult learners pair naturally with Miro or Microsoft Whiteboard.
2. Whiteboard-only or full classroom? If you already have a scheduling tool, an invoicing tool, and a video tool you like, a whiteboard-only product (BitPaper, Ziteboard, Miro, Microsoft Whiteboard) lets you keep the rest of your stack. If you want one platform to handle scheduling, payments, and the lesson itself, a full virtual classroom (Koala Go, Lessonspace) replaces several subscriptions at once.
3. What devices do your students actually use? Many young students join from iPads or Chromebooks borrowed from school. Pen pressure, pinch-to-zoom behaviour, and touch responsiveness vary widely between whiteboards on those devices. Run a trial with a student on the device they'll actually use before committing.
4. How important is support? Whiteboard-only tools are largely self-serve. Full classrooms vary — Koala Go offers in-app support that replies in under two minutes around the clock; some competitors are email-only. If a parent can't connect mid-lesson, the answer to "how do I reach a human in 30 seconds?" matters more than the third tier of whiteboard polish.

The honest version of the decision: for pure whiteboard quality, the standalone whiteboards on this list — BitPaper for handwriting, Ziteboard for vector math, Lessonspace for subject-specific editors — each beat a whiteboard that's bundled into a larger product. For everything around the whiteboard (engagement, scheduling, invoicing, support, parent experience), a full virtual classroom like Koala Go pulls ahead. Most independent tutors care more about the second list than the first; some specialist tutors care more about the first. Pick accordingly.

A note on Google Jamboard

If you used to teach with Google Jamboard, that product was retired at the end of 2024 and the companion Jamboard devices reached end-of-life at the same time. Google's recommended successor is FigJam (via a partnership with Figma), though it isn't tutor-specific. Most former Jamboard users we've spoken to have moved to one of the tools above — usually Microsoft Whiteboard if they wanted the closest free equivalent, or a tutor-built tool (BitPaper, Lessonspace, or Koala Go) if they wanted features Jamboard never had.

What makes a whiteboard good for tutoring, specifically?

Generic collaboration whiteboards (Miro, Microsoft Whiteboard, Figma's FigJam) are powerful tools designed for adult professionals running design or strategy sessions. Tutoring puts different demands on a whiteboard:

• Handwriting smoothness. Most tutoring still involves writing — letters, numbers, equations. Whiteboards optimised for clean ink with a stylus (BitPaper, Ziteboard, Lessonspace) feel meaningfully better than office-collaboration tools for this.
• Live document annotation. Tutors don't usually draw from scratch — they mark up a worksheet, a textbook page, or a screenshot. Drop-in PDF / PowerPoint upload with annotation on top is the single most-used whiteboard workflow in tutoring.
• Persistence across lessons. A student who returns next week should be able to see what you did last week. Whiteboards that save per-student "papers" or per-class history beat one-shot canvases.
• Control over student edits. Tutors need to lock and unlock what students can change at different points in a lesson. Office whiteboards assume peers; tutoring assumes one driver and one passenger most of the time.
• Engagement scaffolding. For young students, stickers, stars, drag-and-drop activities, and a sense of progress on the same canvas you're teaching from outperforms a sterile drawing surface, even if the drawing surface is more capable.

The whiteboards that win in tutoring tend to score highly on the last three of these; the office whiteboards that get used by tutors tend to score highly on the first two but miss the others entirely.

Related answers

• What are the best Zoom alternatives for online tutoring?
• What's the best online platform for teaching English to kids?
• What teaching materials work best for online ESL lessons?
• How do I keep young ESL students engaged in a virtual lesson?

If you'd like to try a whiteboard inside a full virtual classroom — built specifically for tutors of younger learners, with the cobrowser and Playground next to the whiteboard rather than in a separate tool — you can start a free Koala Go room. We're also happy to help you weigh the tradeoffs against the standalone whiteboards above; write to koala@teachwithkoala.com with a sketch of the kind of tutoring you do and we'll give you our honest read.

A cobrowser is a live shared browser window: a tool that lets a teacher and a student open the same webpage on the same screen at the same time, and both interact with it. The difference from screen sharing is participation. On a Zoom-style screen share, only the host's mouse and keyboard touch the page; the student sees a video of what you're doing and can comment, but can't click. On a cobrowser, both people share control of a real, running browser — the student can click buttons, type into forms, drag and drop, scroll, and respond on the same page you're teaching from. For online tutoring, that single difference turns watch-the-teacher minutes into do-the-thing minutes, which is what actually moves a lesson.

The word "cobrowser" comes from customer support and sales tools (Surfly, LiveAgent, Salesforce co-browsing), where a support agent and a customer look at the same form together. Online tutoring borrowed the same idea: Koala Go (the platform we work on) and a handful of other virtual classrooms now offer cobrowsing as a first-class teaching surface, with different design choices for how control of the shared page is handed around between teacher and student.

What a cobrowser actually is, under the hood

A cobrowser is not a screenshot, a video, or a recording. It is a real browser that runs in the cloud and streams its rendered output to both participants, with input (clicks, typing, scrolling) flowing back to the same shared instance. From the teacher's side and the student's side, it looks and behaves like a browser tab — because it is one. Both participants share the same live page, each with their own cursor: there's a single underlying webpage, so at any given instant one person is acting on a given element, but control flows naturally — one person finishes dragging something into place, the other clicks the next button — instead of everyone wrestling over a single shared cursor.

Three things follow from that design:

• The session is shared, not your password. When you open a workbook, a curriculum site, or a worksheet platform inside the cobrowser, the student can work in that same session with you — without you ever handing over credentials or screensharing a login screen. Use it with sites your own plan or teacher license covers; the point is that the student gets to interact with the material in real time, not that you skip a seat you're meant to buy.
• The page is real, not a picture. Forms work. Drag-and-drop works. Audio in the page works. Videos play. Sites that require interaction (Wordwall, Boom Learning, Quizlet Live, Khan Academy, YouTube embeds, Google Docs) all behave like they would in a normal tab.
• Devices barely matter. Because the heavy lifting happens in the cloud, what each participant needs locally is a modern browser and a network connection. iPads, Android tablets, Chromebooks, and older Windows laptops all participate equally — the student is not running the site on their device, they're streaming it.

How screen sharing fails for tutoring (the do-the-thing-yourself problem)

Screen share is fine for showing slides to a board of adults. It struggles in tutoring for a specific, repeated reason: the student can't act on what they're seeing. A few concrete failure modes we hear from working tutors every week:

• Interactive lesson sites become "watch me click." You open Wordwall, drag the correct answer to the box, and the student watches your cursor. The whole point of the activity was for the student to drag. The lesson reverts to passive consumption — exactly what Wordwall (or Boom Learning, or Quizlet) was built to avoid.
• iPads break screen share comprehension. Zoom and Google Meet's screen share on a 9-inch iPad shrinks every text size down to unreadable. Pinch-to-zoom fights the host's scrolling. Most parents put their 7-year-old on the iPad they already own. The screen share that works on your 27-inch monitor doesn't survive that journey.
• Remote control is fiddly and tab-specific. Zoom offers "Request Remote Control," which can hand a single application's cursor to a guest. It requires the guest to install Zoom (not the browser version), takes 4-5 clicks to set up, hands control of your whole desktop (not just one tab), and breaks every time you switch applications. A handful of tutors get it working; most give up and just narrate.
• The student can't type. Asking "type your answer in the box" is the most natural ESL prompt in the world. On a screen share, the student types into chat and you copy it over. The friction is enough that most tutors stop bothering.

None of these are unfixable; tutors who use screen share solve them with workarounds (sending the student a direct Wordwall link to a parallel tab, narrating instead of asking, switching to verbal-only activities). But the workarounds compound: a 30-minute lesson with a young learner loses 3-5 minutes to "let me share my screen again" / "can you see this?" / "type it in chat" — minutes that aren't going to vocabulary.

What changes when you teach on a cobrowser instead

The student stops watching and starts acting. Practically, that means:

• Interactive lesson sites become interactive again. You open the Wordwall set, the student drags the answer themselves. Boom Learning cards: the student taps the picture. Khan Academy practice problems: the student types into the answer box. Whatever the page was designed to do, the student does it.
• Real curriculum websites become teachable. ESL tutors on Koala Go teach directly inside the published curricula they already use — Abridge Academy, Crystal Clear ESL, Flip the Classroom, Reading A-Z, Oxford Owl — with the student doing the activities in real time instead of watching the teacher click. Tutors of older students do the same with Khan Academy, Brilliant, Duolingo, or a standard homework portal. (Teach from sites your own plan or teacher license covers, and within each site's terms — the cobrowser changes who can interact with the page, not what you're licensed to use.)
• Worksheets, PDFs, and live websites stop being three different workflows. Anything that lives on a web page — a YouTube clip, a Google Doc, an embedded form, a Padlet, a Jamboard replacement, a Wordwall, a parent-facing report you're filling in together — goes through the same surface.
• Tablets become first-class. The student is not screen-sharing your desktop into their iPad; they're touching their own browser. Pinch-to-zoom does what pinch-to-zoom should. Tapping a button taps the button. Reading is readable.

The honest summary, from tutors who switched from Zoom: a cobrowser doesn't make a new kind of lesson possible — it makes the kind of lesson everyone already wanted to teach actually happen. Less narrating what you're doing, more "you try it."

Where screen sharing is still the right tool

We aren't going to pretend a cobrowser replaces screen sharing for everything. Stay on screen share if:

• You're sharing a desktop app, not a website. A cobrowser only shares a browser. If you're teaching with a desktop installation of GarageBand, Final Cut, AutoCAD, or any locally-installed software, a regular screen share is the only option.
• You only need a one-way display. A lecture-style explanation where the student is genuinely meant to watch, then ask questions — a screen share with a webcam overlay is the simpler tool. Cobrowsing is for activities, not lectures.
• You're teaching adult learners who already have their own logins. If your IELTS student has their own paid Brilliant account, a parallel-tabs workflow plus screen share for shared moments is often enough.
• You're walking through your own dashboard. Showing a parent their child's progress in your tutoring CRM is a one-way display problem. Screen share is fine.

Which online tutoring platforms have a cobrowser, and how they differ

"Cobrowser" here means: a shared browser where both participants can act on the same running page — not a screenshot, not a one-way remote control, not a static image embedded in a whiteboard. A handful of tutoring platforms ship one; they differ mostly in how control of the shared page is handed around. Descriptions below are written to what each vendor's own marketing page says at the time of writing — vendors do ship and remove features, so re-check their pages if a specific behavior matters to your evaluation.

• Koala Go. Cobrowser is a built-in feature, available on every paid lesson and (with a 10-minute per-session limit) on the free tier. Every participant has their own cursor on the shared page — unlike a Zoom screen-share, where a single remote-control cursor gets passed around and people end up fighting over it. The teacher can give control to one student or to several, or take it back at any point. The session routes through regional infrastructure (North America / Europe / Asia, with separate routing for mainland China) for latency, and the cobrowser lives inside the same classroom as the whiteboard, 3D Playground, scheduling, and worldwide invoicing. There's a section below with more of the Koala-specific behavior.
• Lessonspace. Ships a feature called Cobrowser (in beta as of mid-2026, per Lessonspace's own marketing). Multi-tab support, the session leader can lock the browser to keep students view-only, and otherwise everyone in the space can click, scroll, and open tabs in the shared window.
• Vedamo. Ships Co-browser (Vedamo calls it "collaborative browsing") — an embedded browser that hosts and participants navigate together in real time. Vedamo's tutorial states the cobrowser can be used by one user at a time; the host can hand the controller role to a chosen participant rather than having multiple participants act simultaneously.
• LearnCube, BitPaper, Ziteboard, Whereby. Purpose-built classrooms / whiteboards for tutoring, all with a whiteboard or "board sharing" feature, but no shared-browser feature we could find on their docs at the time of writing. Teachers on these platforms typically share a browser the same way they would on Zoom: a screen share, or a document-upload workflow that flattens the page into the whiteboard.
• Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams. General videoconferencing. Screen share with optional remote control on Zoom; no shared-browser primitive on any of the three.

If you're trying to tell whether a "cobrowser" feature is a real shared browser or a fancier screen-share, two checks usually settle it: (1) can the student type into a form on the page and submit it, not just point a cursor; (2) is the student genuinely inside your live session — acting on the same running page — rather than watching a relayed picture of your screen. If both answers are yes, it's a real cobrowser. If either is no, it's a remote-control or relay setup.

What a cobrowser is not

• Not a clone of your local browser. The cobrowser is a separate, cloud-hosted browser. Your bookmarks, your password manager, and your local extensions don't come with it. (For most tutoring workflows this is a feature, not a bug — you don't accidentally share personal logins.)
• Not unlimited compute. Heavy 3D web games or sites that pin a CPU to 100% will be sluggish in any cobrowser, the same way they're sluggish in a low-end local browser.
• Not a substitute for the whiteboard. For drawing, annotating worksheets, modeling letter formation, or working through an algebra problem, the whiteboard is the right tool. Cobrowsing is for sites; the whiteboard is for ink. Most full-classroom platforms (Koala Go included) put them side by side and you flip between them inside the same lesson.
• Not a security or licensing shortcut. If you log in to an account inside a cobrowser, the student is in that session — so use a dedicated tutoring login rather than your personal one, and only on sites whose terms let you teach from your account this way. The cobrowser is for interacting with content together, not for stretching one seat across people a license doesn't cover.

Real classroom workflows tutors use a cobrowser for

From working tutors on Koala Go, the most common day-to-day uses:

• Teaching inside a published curriculum. Open Abridge Academy, Crystal Clear ESL, or Flip the Classroom; the student does the activities directly. No "share your screen, can you see my cursor" loop.
• Wordwall, Boom Learning, Quizlet, Blooket, Gimkit. Drag-and-drop and tap-to-answer activities that depend on the student physically acting on the page.
• Reading practice on leveled reader sites. Oxford Owl, Reading A-Z, Epic. The teacher opens the book; the student reads aloud and uses the audio controls.
• Math practice with worked examples. Khan Academy, IXL, ALEKS. The student attempts the problem; the teacher sees the same screen and can intervene on the same input boxes.
• YouTube and video clips. Open a short Super Simple Songs clip or a TED-Ed; the student gets clean audio and can pause and rewind themselves.
• Filling in shared documents together. A Google Doc, a worksheet, a parent intake form. Both people type into the same fields in real time.
• Real-world tasks for older students. A business-English student practicing a job application; a teenager being walked through enrolling in a university course site; an adult learner navigating a real government form in English. The cobrowser turns "in real life" tasks into things you can rehearse inside a lesson.

Cobrowser support in Koala Go specifically

A few facts about how Koala Go's cobrowser behaves in practice, in case you're evaluating it:

• Browser-only. Nothing to install for you or your student. The teacher opens the cobrowser from inside the classroom; the student joins by clicking the same room link they use for the rest of the lesson.
• Region routing. The cobrowser session is routed through North America, Europe, or Asia, with separate handling for mainland China. As a tutor, you set your default region in settings once; for one-off sessions in another region, you can switch it in the lesson.
• Per-student control, individual cursors. Each participant has their own cursor on the page, rather than fighting over one shared remote-control cursor the way a Zoom screen-share works. The teacher chooses whether each student starts with control or has to be handed it (a default you set in settings, overridable per student), and can grant or revoke it during the lesson — to more than one student at once. There's one underlying webpage, so at any given moment a single person is acting on a given element; in practice it flows turn by turn (one student finishes dragging a card into place, another clicks the next button), which feels far more natural than wrestling for one cursor.
• Audio is piped through the lesson's audio device. A YouTube video playing in the cobrowser comes out of the same speaker setup you and the student are already using, with no separate routing.
• The whiteboard sits next to it, not on top of it. When you want to annotate (circle a paragraph, draw an arrow, model a letter), the lesson canvas opens over the cobrowser. When you're done, both views go back to normal. You're not flipping between two windows.
• Free vs. Pro. Koala Free includes cobrowser sessions with a 10-minute cap per session so you can try it; Koala Pro ($25.99/month monthly, $21.99/month billed annually) lifts the cap and includes the cobrowser as a standard feature with the rest of the classroom.

How to decide whether you need a cobrowser

A 30-second decision rule that holds up in practice:

1. Do you teach activities, or do you lecture? If your lessons are mostly you talking and the student listening, you don't need a cobrowser; a clean screen share is enough. If the student is supposed to do things during the lesson — drag, type, click, drop, drill — and they currently can't because the activity lives on a website only you can interact with, a cobrowser is the missing piece.
2. Do your students learn on tablets? If most of them are on iPads, Android tablets, or Chromebooks, screen share is the wrong primitive and you'll feel the friction every lesson. Cobrowsers are device-agnostic in a way screen shares aren't.
3. Do you depend on published or interactive web content? Wordwall, Boom Learning, Khan Academy, leveled reader sites, ESL curriculum portals — if any of those are core to your teaching, you'll get value out of a cobrowser within the first lesson.

If you answered "yes" to any of those, the right move is to run a real lesson on a cobrowser-equipped classroom and see what changes. You can open a free Koala Go room at classroom.teachwithkoala.com — no install, no card — and try it with a real student on the device they actually use. Questions about how it'd work for your specific subject, age range, or region: write to koala@teachwithkoala.com with a sentence about the kind of tutoring you do and we'll give you our honest read.

Related answers

• What are the best Zoom alternatives for online tutoring?
• What's the best online whiteboard for online tutoring?
• What's the best interactive online teaching platform?
• How do I keep young ESL students engaged in a virtual lesson?

Yes — recording online tutoring lessons is straightforward, useful, and worth doing for the right reasons; the part most tutors get wrong is consent and storage, not the recording itself. The shortest working setup: get explicit written consent from the parent (and, for older students, from the student) before you press Record the first time, use a virtual classroom that records to cloud storage so the file survives a crashed browser, store the recording behind a login rather than in a public folder, share it through a private link rather than as an email attachment, and delete it when it's no longer serving a purpose. The technical side is solved in any purpose-built tutoring platform — including Koala Go on the Pro plan, where recording is a single button inside the classroom and the file uploads automatically while the lesson runs. The judgment calls are who, when, where it lives, and how long you keep it.

Should I record my online tutoring lessons at all?

Not every lesson. Recording is genuinely useful for four specific situations, and unhelpful or counterproductive in most others. Decide on a default first, then exception in either direction.

Record on purpose when:

• The parent has asked to see how lessons go. Especially common with parents of young children who don't sit in on lessons. A short clip — not the whole hour — answers the parent's question without intruding on the lesson.
• The student or family wants to review later. Adult learners and exam-prep students often value a recording of a complex explanation (a tricky grammar pattern, a worked math problem, a vocabulary set) so they can rewatch instead of re-asking.
• You're reviewing your own teaching. Watching yourself on video is the single best free professional-development tool an indie tutor has. Most tutors never do it. It's worth recording one lesson a month and watching the first 10 minutes.
• You expect you may need evidence of what happened. A disputed cancellation, a payment chargeback, or any safeguarding concern. Rare, but the recording is the only objective record.

Don't default to recording when:

• The student is visibly less natural on camera once recording starts. Some kids (and some adults) freeze. If recording changes the lesson, the lesson is worth more than the recording.
• The parent hasn't agreed. "I'll just record in case" without explicit consent is the single most common compliance mistake we see tutors make.
• You don't have a plan for what to do with the file. A recording you'll never watch, never share, and never delete is a privacy liability sitting in a folder.

Get consent before you press Record

Recording a minor in an online lesson is governed by the same baseline as recording any other private conversation, plus an extra layer because the subject is a child. The specifics depend on your jurisdiction — and the parent's — but the working principles hold almost everywhere:

• Ask the parent in writing before the first recording, not after. A two-sentence email is enough: what you plan to record, why, where it'll be stored, and that they can ask you to delete it at any time. Save the reply.
• Tell the student that recording is starting. A short verbal "I'm going to record this lesson so your parent can see how we did with the vowel sounds today, okay?" is good practice and matches what a reasonable parent would expect to hear. Most teaching platforms (Koala Go included) also show the student a visible "recording" indicator on their screen the whole time, but the verbal heads-up matters more.
• Know whether your jurisdiction is one-party or two-party consent. In most of the US, federal law and many states allow recording with only one party's consent (the tutor's); a minority of states ("two-party" or "all-party" consent states — California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington, and a handful of others) require everyone in the call to agree. The US Department of Education's COPPA rules apply if you're collecting information about a child under 13. Most of Europe, the UK, and Australia operate under data-protection regimes (GDPR, UK GDPR, the Australian Privacy Principles) that treat lesson recordings of identifiable children as personal data, with parental consent and a clear purpose required. Check your own situation; this Q&A is not legal advice.
• Put it in your terms. If you have a one-page lesson agreement parents sign before lesson 1, add a line: "I may record lessons for [these purposes]; recordings are stored at [where] and deleted at [when]; you can opt out or ask for deletion at any time by writing to [email]." If you don't yet have an agreement, this is a good reason to start one.

What to record (and what not to record)

The single safest default: record the lesson itself — the shared learning canvas, the teacher and student video tiles, and the audio — and don't record what happens before and after. A few specific things to keep out of the recording:

• The pre-lesson chat with the parent. If the parent appears on camera before the lesson to hand the device over to the child, start recording after that conversation, not during it.
• Anything inside a logged-in account that isn't the student's. If you've signed in to your own Google account, a curriculum portal, or a tutor CRM in another tab, don't record over to it. Stay inside the classroom you've set up for the lesson.
• Other students. If you teach back-to-back students from the same room, stop the recording fully between lessons. Different student, different consent, different file.
• Family members in the background. Especially with younger students at home, siblings or parents may wander into frame. Either ask them to stay out, frame the camera tighter, or stop recording for those minutes.
• Sensitive personal information. If a parent shares an address, a school name, or a medical detail during the lesson, that's exactly the kind of thing a recording shouldn't capture.

Where the recording is actually stored

You broadly have three choices, with very different implications:

1. Cloud recording inside your teaching platform. The recording is captured in the browser and uploaded to the platform's cloud storage as the lesson runs. If your browser crashes mid-lesson, the chunks that have already uploaded are safe. This is what most purpose-built tutoring classrooms do (Koala Go included — see below). Pros: the file survives a crash, you don't manage local files, and the platform usually puts the recording behind your account login. Cons: the file lives on the platform's storage, so deleting it from your end depends on the platform's controls.
2. Local browser recording. The browser writes the recording to your machine while the lesson runs and you save it at the end. Pros: full control, no third party. Cons: a crashed browser or accidental tab close before you save can lose the whole recording (Koala Go warns about this for its local-recording mode — "Make sure to stop recording before refreshing"), and you're then responsible for storing the file safely yourself.
3. An external screen recorder (OBS, QuickTime, Loom, an OS-level recorder). Pros: works regardless of what platform you teach on. Cons: you're recording your whole screen, including any notifications, browser tabs, or chat windows that pop up; you're storing the file locally; and it's the easiest of the three setups to fumble the consent / retention side of.

For independent online tutors, cloud recording inside the teaching platform is almost always the right default. The one case the other options win is when the platform you're forced to use simply doesn't record lessons — in which case a local browser recorder or OBS is the fallback.

How to share a recording with a parent

Three rules that hold up across almost every setup:

• Share by private link, not by email attachment. Email attachments get forwarded; private links can be revoked. If your platform exposes a per-recording sharing link tied to your account, use that. If you're sharing through your own cloud drive, use the per-file "anyone with the link" or, better, "only people I invite by email" setting.
• Don't post recordings to a public URL. No public YouTube uploads, no open Google Drive folder. Both are easy mistakes — both are searchable for as long as they exist.
• Share a clip when a clip is enough. If the parent asked "how is she doing with reading aloud?", a 90-second clip of the read-aloud is more useful than a 50-minute file no one has time to watch. Most platforms let you trim or share a segment; if not, a quick edit before sending is usually worth the five minutes.

How long should I keep recordings?

Default to short, not long. A reasonable working rule for an indie tutor: keep a recording as long as it's serving a specific purpose, and delete it once that purpose is done. Concrete versions of that rule:

• Parent-comms recordings: delete within a few weeks of sharing. The parent saw it; you've made your point.
• Student-review recordings: follow what the family asks for — some want each lesson for a month, some want only specific ones kept indefinitely.
• Your own self-review recordings: watch within a month or delete unwatched.
• Dispute/safeguarding recordings: keep until the matter is closed, then delete. If it goes to a serious safeguarding process, follow your jurisdiction's guidance on what to retain and for how long.

A standing "auto-delete after 90 days unless I mark this one to keep" mental policy is enough for most tutors. The point is that recordings don't accumulate without a reason.

How recording works in Koala Go specifically

If you're using Koala Go (the platform we build), recording is a Pro-plan feature that lives inside the classroom. A few practical facts:

• One button inside the lesson. The Record button is in the classroom toolbar. The first time you record, the browser will ask for screen-share permission so it can capture the lesson canvas alongside the camera and audio. After that, it's one click to start, one click to stop.
• Recording is gated on student presence. Recording only starts (and stays running) while at least one student is in the room. If the student leaves and you're alone in the classroom, recording is disabled until they re-join. This makes "I accidentally recorded myself prepping for an hour" close to impossible.
• Students see a visible recording indicator. Once you start recording, the student sees a notice on their side of the classroom that the lesson is being recorded — which we treat as a baseline, not a substitute for the verbal heads-up and the parent's written consent.
• The file uploads as the lesson runs. Recording is captured in 3-second chunks in the browser and uploaded continuously to our cloud storage (AWS S3). If your laptop closes the tab partway through, the chunks already uploaded are safe; you lose at most the last few seconds.
• Recordings are private to your account by default. They're stored behind your login, not in a public folder. If you want to share with a parent, that's a deliberate action you take per recording.
• Pro plan, $25.99/month (monthly) or $21.99/month (annual). Recording is one of the features the Pro plan unlocks above Koala Free; you can run free lessons indefinitely on Koala Free and only upgrade when you actually need recording, larger group sizes, unlimited PDF/PPT uploads, or full-length cobrowser sessions.

For white-label / B2B setups (a tutoring company on its own branded domain), recording is also available on Koala for Business and is billed as an optional usage-based add-on rather than a per-tutor feature — write to koala@teachwithkoala.com if that's the shape you're running.

A quick pre-record checklist

• Written parental consent on file covering recording, storage, and retention.
• A line in your lesson agreement describing what you record, where it's stored, and when it's deleted.
• A verbal heads-up to the student at the start of the first recorded lesson.
• Cloud storage tied to your account login (not a public folder, not your personal Google Drive root).
• A retention default — even just "delete after 90 days unless I mark it to keep".
• A sharing default — private link only, never an unlisted public URL.
• A test recording with yourself before lesson 1, so you know exactly what the student sees and what ends up in the file.

Related answers

• What are the best Zoom alternatives for online tutoring?
• What is a cobrowser, and how is it different from screen sharing for online tutoring?
• What's the best online whiteboard for online tutoring?
• How do I handle no-shows and last-minute cancellations as an online tutor?
• How do I keep parents renewing month after month?

The most affordable online whiteboarding solutions for educational institutions in 2026 depend on which constraint matters most. For a school or district already on Microsoft 365 for Education or Google Workspace for Education, the answer is the whiteboard bundled with what you've already paid for: Microsoft Whiteboard (free with Microsoft 365 A1 for qualifying K-12 institutions, integrated into Teams) is currently the strongest free-at-scale option. For a standalone whiteboard a tutoring company or language school can roll out per-tutor, BitPaper and Ziteboard start from roughly $9-$10 per tutor per month. For a virtual classroom that includes whiteboarding alongside live video, Vedamo (~$25/mo per teacher, with LMS integrations) and Lessonspace (subject-specific editors and embeddable APIs) are the value picks. For institutions that want a white-labeled classroom on their own brand — whiteboard included — Koala for Business uses usage-based pricing ($1.10/hr per student, $120/mo minimum) so cost scales with active student hours rather than per-seat licenses, which can be the cheapest option for organizations whose teaching hours fluctuate seasonally.

What "affordable" actually means at institutional scale

"Affordable" looks very different on an institutional procurement spreadsheet than it does to a solo tutor comparing $9 and $25 a month. At the institutional level, the real cost of a whiteboarding tool has four components, only one of which is the sticker price:

1. License cost across your real teacher headcount. A $10/month tool for one tutor is $1,200/year for ten tutors and $24,000/year for two hundred. Per-seat math compounds fast at scale, and most education organizations have more teachers on the roster than they have teaching at any given hour.
2. Onboarding cost. If every new teacher needs an hour of training plus a week of "where's the button?" support tickets, the tool's free tier saved you nothing. The cheapest whiteboard for an institution is usually one your teachers already know — which is why "is it built into Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace?" matters more than a $5/month price difference.
3. Stack cost. A whiteboard-only tool doesn't replace your video platform, your scheduling, your invoicing, your parent comms, your recording pipeline, or your admin oversight. Adding a $15/month whiteboard on top of five other subscriptions for every teacher is rarely the cheapest path; sometimes one slightly-more-expensive classroom replaces three other line items.
4. Hours actually used. Most education organizations don't teach 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. They teach in school terms, around exams, around national holidays, across summer dips and back-to-school spikes. Per-seat licensing is paying full rate during the slow weeks; usage-based licensing isn't. The cheaper model depends on which way your hours actually run.

Hold every option below up against all four — not just the sticker.

The 6 most affordable institutional whiteboarding options in 2026

Listed roughly cheapest-first within each tier. All run in the browser, so students don't install anything. Pricing drifts — re-check each vendor's pricing page before procurement, especially for institutional-volume quotes.

1. Microsoft Whiteboard — free at institutional scale via Microsoft 365 for Education

What it is: Microsoft's collaborative whiteboard, included in Microsoft 365 (consumer and Education tiers) and integrated into Microsoft Teams. Infinite canvas, ink and shape tools, sticky notes, image and document insertion, and live collaboration. Reliable stylus support on Surface and iPad.

How it's affordable at scale: Microsoft 365 A1 is offered free to qualifying K-12 institutions and includes Whiteboard alongside the core Office apps. If your district is already on Microsoft 365 for Education — most US K-12 districts are on either Microsoft or Google — the whiteboard is a zero-marginal-cost rollout.

What it's not: a tutoring platform. There's no lesson structure, no student dashboard, no scheduling or invoicing, no engagement system for younger learners. It's a whiteboard inside the video/comms suite you already run, which is fine if a whiteboard is all you need.

Best for: K-12 schools and districts already standardized on Microsoft 365 / Teams; higher-ed institutions where Microsoft is the default identity provider.

2. Google Workspace for Education + FigJam — free Workspace tier, FigJam as the canvas successor to Jamboard

What it is: Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals is free to qualifying institutions and includes Google Meet, Classroom, Drive, and Calendar. Jamboard — Google's previous whiteboard — was retired at the end of 2024; Google's recommended successor for the canvas use case is FigJam, via a partnership with Figma.

How it's affordable at scale: The Workspace tier itself is free for qualifying schools, which makes the Meet / Classroom / Drive backbone a zero-cost rollout. FigJam has a free starter tier and education pricing; for institutions, that turns into a per-editor license rather than free-at-scale.

What it's not: a single integrated whiteboard the way Jamboard was. If you used to teach with Jamboard at the institution level, FigJam isn't a 1:1 replacement and isn't designed for K-12 tutoring specifically. Many former Jamboard users have moved to Microsoft Whiteboard if they wanted the closest free equivalent or to a tutor-built tool if they wanted features Jamboard never had.

Best for: K-12 schools and districts already on Google Workspace for Education whose primary use is general classroom collaboration rather than 1-on-1 tutoring.

3. BitPaper — from ~$10/mo per tutor, multi-page papers with built-in audio/video

What it is: A browser-based whiteboard built specifically for tutors, originally by working tutors in the UK. Auto-saved multi-page "papers" you share with each student via a permanent link, with a built-in audio/video call, document upload (PDF, images), and a pen-friendly drawing canvas.

How it's affordable at scale: Solo-tutor licensing starts from around $10/month per tutor. For a tutoring company with twenty tutors that's $200/month — workable, but per-seat math means it climbs linearly with headcount whether or not those tutors are actively teaching.

What it's not: a full institutional classroom. There's no admin dashboard for oversight across a tutor team, no shared activity library teachers can copy between accounts, and no white-label option to put your tutoring company's brand on the experience. Each tutor has their own BitPaper account.

Best for: Small tutoring practices (1-10 tutors) where each tutor manages their own students directly and the org doesn't need centralized oversight.

4. Vedamo — ~$25/mo per teacher, with LMS integrations and up to 50 students per session

What it is: A browser-based virtual classroom with interactive whiteboard, breakout rooms, screen sharing, reusable lesson templates, and support for up to 50 active participants per session. Integrates with Moodle, Canvas, and other LMSes via LTI. About $25/month for the Virtual Classroom plan, with a 30-day free trial.

How it's affordable at scale: Reasonable per-teacher pricing combined with genuine support for group classes (up to 50 students), so a language school or group-tutoring organization can run small classes without paying for an enterprise tier. The LTI integrations mean institutions already running Moodle or Canvas can drop Vedamo into their existing LMS rather than running two parallel systems.

What it's not: the most engagement-driven option for very young students — the interface is more meeting-like than play-like. Per-seat math still applies; a hundred-teacher organization is looking at roughly $2,500/month base before any LMS- or volume-tier negotiation.

Best for: Group-class organizations (3-50 students per session), language schools, and institutions already running Moodle or Canvas that want a whiteboard-equipped live classroom alongside their LMS.

5. Lessonspace — embeddable subject-specific whiteboards for organizations

What it is: A virtual classroom built around a powerful collaborative whiteboard with subject-specific tools — an equation editor, a graph editor, a code editor with syntax highlighting, document annotation, and session recording. Students join via a "Space" link with no signup. Available in 10+ languages. Embeddable APIs for tutoring organizations.

How it's affordable at scale: Lessonspace's institutional model is the API: rather than paying per teacher seat, larger tutoring organizations can embed the whiteboard inside their own product and pay for usage. For a tech-capable tutoring company that already runs its own front-end and wants the whiteboard as one component, this is typically the cheapest path because you stop paying for everything else in a virtual-classroom product you weren't going to use.

What it's not: a turnkey institutional product. The API path assumes you have engineering capacity to integrate it. Pricing for the embedded-API option isn't published; speak with their sales team for a quote at your usage profile.

Best for: STEM-heavy tutoring companies, math/science tutoring organizations, and EdTech businesses that want a whiteboard as an embedded component inside their own classroom product.

6. Koala for Business — usage-based pricing, white-labeled classroom with the whiteboard included

What it is: A white-labeled version of Koala Go for tutoring organizations, schools, and language schools. Includes the interactive whiteboard with PDF and PowerPoint upload, a cobrowser (you and the student interact with the same live webpage together), a 3D Playground for younger learners, scheduling, worldwide invoicing (including WeChat Pay for families in mainland China), session recording, and 24/7 live support for every tutor and every family. Hosted on your own domain or on a Koala subdomain you choose — your logo, your colors, your name on the login page.

How it's affordable at scale: Pricing is $1.10 per hour per student for the classroom and all features, plus $0.10 per hour per student if you want session recordings, with a $120 monthly minimum covering your first 100 active hours each month. Only active hours are billed — hours where a student is actually in the classroom with a tutor. A tutor in the classroom alone (prepping, testing, or waiting for a no-show) is not billed.

What that means in practice for a few institutional shapes:

• A small tutoring practice running 200 active student-hours/month pays $220/month, regardless of how many tutors are on the roster.
• A growing organization running 1,000 active hours/month pays $1,100/month — no extra seat fees as tutors are added.
• An organization that fluctuates seasonally — 1,500 hours/month in school terms, 400 hours/month in breaks — pays accordingly each month, rather than full per-seat rates while students are on holiday.

What it's not the cheapest at: very small operations or orgs already deeply embedded in Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace whose existing whiteboard is "good enough." The $120/month minimum is a tax on a 50-hour/month operation; below ~110 active hours/month, the per-hour math is worse than the headline rate.

What's bundled that other options usually aren't: the white-label experience (your brand on the login page, your domain, your customer-facing emails), an admin dashboard with filterable, searchable, CSV-exportable lesson and session data, a 30-day contractual go-live from signature, a Customer Success Manager available via Slack, and a Copy Activities tool in the business portal that lets an admin clone activities from one teacher's library into others' — useful for onboarding new tutors with a vetted starter set or distributing a curriculum update across the team. Used in production by Tutor Doctor franchises, Nao Now, The Literacy Corner, Nihaoma Mandarin, Ladder Learning Services, Learning Success Academy, and Imerica Education.

Best for: Tutoring companies with 5+ tutors who want one platform replacing video + whiteboard + scheduling + invoicing + recordings + parent comms; reading-intervention and learning-difference practices; language schools teaching young learners; cross-border tutoring organizations (especially mainland China — the Hong Kong proxy infrastructure is documented at /answers/teach-english-online/teach-students-in-mainland-china).

Per-seat vs. usage-based pricing — which is cheaper for your institution

This is the single biggest cost decision and it doesn't have a universal answer — it depends on the ratio of teacher headcount to actually-taught hours. A simplified rule of thumb:

• Per-seat is cheaper when teaching hours are high and steady. Twenty tutors who each teach 25 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, on a $25/month classroom = $6,000/year for 24,000 student-hours = $0.25/hr. That's hard to beat on usage rates.
• Usage-based is cheaper when teaching hours fluctuate, when teachers are part-time, or when the roster has high turnover. The same twenty tutors averaging 8 hours/week each across the year (160 hours/week × 48 weeks = 7,680 student-hours) at $1.10/hr/student = $8,448/year — but compare that to per-seat licensing across a more realistic roster (where roughly half of "active" tutors stop teaching mid-year), and the picture changes again. Per-seat licensing pays full rate for a tutor whether they taught 30 hours or 3 hours in a given month; usage-based pays nothing for the 27-hour gap.
• Free institutional tiers win for general-classroom use. A K-12 school whose students are using a whiteboard for in-class collaboration (not 1-on-1 tutoring) is almost always best off on the whiteboard bundled with their existing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for Education tier — the marginal cost is zero and the workflow doesn't need anything more than that.

Build a small spreadsheet of your actual taught hours over the last 12 months (or your projection) before talking to a vendor. The conversation goes much better when you can say "we taught 9,400 student-hours last year, here's the seasonal distribution" than when you're guessing.

What institutional buyers should evaluate beyond price

Once a tool clears the price bar, the boring operational questions become the deciding ones. In rough order of how often they trip up institutional rollouts:

1. How does a parent or a student reach a human when something breaks mid-lesson? If the answer is "email, two business days", your operations team becomes tier-1 support by default — and that operational cost dwarfs any whiteboard license fee. Koala for Business includes 24/7 live support for tutors and families; some standalone whiteboards are email-only.
2. What does your operations team see? An admin dashboard that shows every lesson, every tutor, every session — filterable, CSV-exportable, with per-session revenue and device compatibility flagged — is operational infrastructure, not a nice-to-have. Without it, your finance and ops teams are reconciling spreadsheets manually.
3. How do new tutors get up to speed? A whiteboard that's part of Microsoft Teams trains itself; a whiteboard with custom tutoring tooling needs onboarding. Tools with a shared activity/curriculum library (so you can clone a starter set into a new tutor's account) cut onboarding time materially compared to "every tutor builds their own materials from scratch."
4. Where are your students physically? If you teach a meaningful number of students in mainland China — common for ESL and Mandarin schools — most general-purpose tools struggle with the Great Firewall. Confirm the routing situation before you commit a cohort. Koala for Business runs its mainland-China classroom traffic through a Hong Kong proxy and has serving B2B customers (Nihaoma Mandarin among them) with that setup as standard.
5. Is the experience on your brand or theirs? Parents recommend brands they remember. A whiteboard at vendor.com/your-org teaches families that the vendor is the school. A whiteboard at classroom.your-org.com teaches families that your school is the school. White-label availability — and whether it's a logo swap or genuine domain-level branding — is a real business consideration, not vanity.
6. What's the exit clause? Multi-year lock-ins should make you nervous. A 90-day either-side termination clause (which is standard in Koala for Business agreements) lets you re-evaluate annually without renewal pressure. Ask for it explicitly.

A note on Google Jamboard for institutions that used to standardize on it

If your district or organization used to teach with Google Jamboard, that product was retired at the end of 2024 and the companion Jamboard devices reached end-of-life at the same time. Most institutions we've spoken to moved one of three ways: to Microsoft Whiteboard if they were dual-running Workspace and Microsoft 365 and wanted the closest free equivalent; to FigJam if they wanted a richer canvas and could absorb the per-editor cost; or to a tutor-built tool (BitPaper, Lessonspace, Koala for Business) if their primary use case was 1-on-1 / small-group tutoring rather than whole-class collaboration. There isn't a like-for-like Jamboard successor inside Google Workspace; pick the option that maps to how your teachers actually used it.

Where Koala for Business fits — and where it doesn't

Koala for Business is built for tutoring organizations, language schools, reading-intervention practices, and small online schools that want one branded platform handling the live lesson, the whiteboard, the scheduling, the invoicing, the recordings, and the parent support. The usage-based pricing is designed to make that work for organizations whose teaching hours vary — by season, by student cohort, by tutor turnover — and to remove the per-seat-license trap where you're paying full rate for tutors who only teach part-time.

It is not the cheapest option for every institutional shape. If you're a K-12 school district whose whiteboarding need is general in-class collaboration, Microsoft Whiteboard (free with Microsoft 365 A1) or FigJam (with Google Workspace) will be cheaper and adequate. If you're a small practice with two tutors and 80 student-hours per month, the $120/month Koala for Business minimum is a tax — the indie tier of Koala Go (Koala Pro at $25.99/month per tutor) is the right price-point at that scale. If your tutoring is whiteboard-only with no need for video, cobrowser, scheduling, or invoicing, a standalone whiteboard saves you what you'd pay for capabilities you won't use.

Where it does fit, the math typically works out cheaper than per-seat alternatives once you cross ~5 active tutors with variable teaching loads. If you'd like a numbers comparison against your actual taught hours, write to koala@teachwithkoala.com with a rough hours-per-month figure and a sketch of your team, and we'll work through it with you. Applications for Koala for Business go to business.teachwithkoala.com/apply; we read every application and respond within one business day. The standard go-live is 30 days from signature, written into the agreement.

Related answers

• What's the best online whiteboard for online tutoring? — the indie-tutor cut of this question.
• What are the best Zoom alternatives for online tutoring?
• What is a cobrowser, and how is it different from screen sharing for online tutoring?
• How do I teach English online to students in mainland China? — relevant if your organization teaches a meaningful number of students in mainland China.
• Koala for Business — white-label online classroom software — the institutional landing page with pricing, customer logos, and the application form.