Explain Everything

Explain Everything suits teachers, tutors, and facilitators who want to build explanations on a shared canvas and turn them into videos. Its flexible, media-rich workflow is a clear strength, but the free plan’s small project and storage allowances make it better for occasional use than a sustained teaching library.

Overview

Explain Everything brings an open-ended whiteboard, lesson recording, and collaboration into one service. Users can place documents, presentations, images, audio, and video on an infinite canvas, then record narration and canvas activity, edit the recording, and render it in Explain Drive. That makes it a more natural fit for visual teaching and guided demonstrations than for a basic notes board.

Collaboration works synchronously or asynchronously. People can join by link or access code, and built-in voice chat supports live sessions. Presentation mode, diagramming, guest collaboration, and voting tools broaden its use for structured lessons and group work. The tradeoff is a three-board limit, even as the canvas itself is infinite.

Key features

Canvas and recording

The canvas can bring varied teaching materials into one explanation instead of separating them across files. Recording both narration and canvas activity gives a teacher a route from a live explanation to a tutorial; editing and cloud rendering help complete that workflow. The free plan sharply limits how far this can go: one slide per project and videos no longer than three minutes.

Collaboration and integrations

Link- or code-based access and asynchronous collaboration can accommodate people who are not available at the same time, while voice chat serves live work. External cloud integrations include Dropbox, Google Drive, YouTube, OneDrive, and Schoolwork. LMS assignment integrations cover Canvas, Schoology, Moodle, and Blackboard, a practical advantage for institutions already using those systems.

Schools can provision licenses through Google Admin, and students can sign in with Google EDU accounts. On iPad, Split View drag and drop, Sketchfab 3D objects, FaceTime SharePlay, and screen mirroring extend the lesson workflow. These are platform-specific strengths rather than reasons to choose the service for every device.

Pricing

The free plan costs nothing and allows three projects, one slide per project, videos up to three minutes, one collaborator, 15-minute collaboration sessions, and 500 MB of cloud storage. That is enough to try a small teaching workflow, but not much room for a growing set of lessons or longer recordings.

Pro costs $9.99 a month, billed monthly. It removes project, slide, and video-length limits, adds 20 GB of storage, permits up to eight collaborators without a time limit, and includes email support. It fits individual tutors, creatives, facilitators, and consultants who need regular use beyond the free caps.

Team also costs $9.99 a month, per user, billed monthly. It adds team settings and management, shared folders, 20 GB of pooled cloud storage per person, and a choice of data residency region. Teams above 50 people receive an account manager and onboarding. The per-user term matters for growing groups; compared with Pro, its case is shared administration and team storage rather than an individual’s expanded workspace.

Advanced has custom pricing and includes 7.5 GB storage, one collaborator, and 30-minute collaboration sessions. School has custom pricing and provides 100 student licenses per teacher license. Custom Pricing for Schools also has custom pricing, with custom features and volume pricing, LMS integrations, flexible license deployment, expanded collaboration, and professional development. These school-oriented plans may suit institutions needing deployment and licensing arrangements, while their price depends on a custom quote.

All plans include an online Help Center; Pro adds email support, and school custom plans add priority email support. The maker says data is stored in an AWS SOC2-certified data center in North Virginia and that Promethean complies with GDPR for personal information from EU member countries. The service is not certified by an FTC-approved COPPA safe harbor program, a point schools serving children should weigh.

Platforms

Explain Everything is available on Android, iOS, and the web. Its iPad-specific features are especially relevant to educators who rely on Apple tablets; the broad web and mobile availability gives teams more than one way to access the whiteboard.

Who it's for

Teachers and tutors are the clearest fit: they can combine media, explain material on a canvas, and make a recording from that work. Facilitators and business consultants may value the same mix for group explanations, while schools and universities can use the education-oriented provisioning and LMS connections. It is less compelling for someone who only needs a large collection of free projects or long free videos, or for a team that wants predictable per-seat costs without weighing the monthly per-user charge.

Pros and cons

• Pro: An infinite canvas accepts documents, presentations, images, audio, and video, supporting mixed-media explanations in one workspace.
• Pro: Recording narration and canvas activity, then editing and rendering, connects lesson creation with tutorial production.
• Pro: Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration, guest access, and LMS integrations serve both live teaching and course assignment workflows.
• Con: Free users are limited to three projects, one slide per project, three-minute videos, one collaborator, 15-minute sessions, and 500 MB of storage.
• Con: The three-board limit can constrain users who want multiple persistent workspaces.
• Con: Team pricing is per user, while school plans use custom pricing, so broader institutional use requires budget planning beyond the individual Pro price.

Alternatives

For a different emphasis, Explainer Video Software, Presentation Recording Software, Collaborative Whiteboard Software, and Online Whiteboard Tools collect options by category.

Choose Animaker instead if animation production is the priority: its free plan includes basic animation tools and limited premium assets, with watermarked exports. Powtoon is another option for short screen-recorded presentations; its free plan supports 720p videos up to three minutes, but exports carry a watermark. Doratoon may suit someone seeking a free-forever animation plan with 150+ templates and 10 downloads per month, accepting a watermark and 720p output.

Explideo is worth considering for browser-based exports: its free plan allows unlimited browser exports, but server exports are limited to one per month and watermarked, with five-minute videos and 150 MB storage. Mango Animation Maker is a Windows- and macOS-based alternative whose free plan limits resolution to 576P and includes a watermark. Renderforest Slideshow Maker offers a free HD video plan with a watermark and basic features, making it a simpler slideshow-oriented alternative. Scribe Animator and Steve AI are additional alternatives to compare.

Verdict

Explain Everything is a strong choice for educators and tutors who need one place to assemble mixed media, explain it on a canvas, collaborate, and produce a video. Its breadth is the main reason to choose it; the strict free caps, three-board ceiling, and per-user Team pricing are reasons to look elsewhere if you need a large ongoing workspace or low-cost institutional rollout.