We started working on Whimsical in the summer of 2017 with a simple conviction: product teams were becoming increasingly distributed, but the tools for collaboration hadn’t caught up.

Our dream was to offer a unified team hub — a suite of tools that would let teams collaborate effectively, whether everyone was in the same room or spread across time zones.

We began with two core assumptions:

1. Most customers only need a small subset of features. If we focused on building fewer, higher-quality features, we could deliver a better experience.
2. To create an ideal experience, we’d eventually need to cover collaboration end-to-end. Stitching together many different 3rd party tools would always introduce friction.

Years later, we’ve learned we got this about half right.

Building fewer but better features

Whimsical’s first product was Flowcharts. It had a very limited set of features, but we obsessed over making those features as great as we could imagine them.

It caught on.

So we kept going with the same principle of polished simplicity, adding pieces to the team hub puzzle. Over time, Whimsical grew to include Wireframes, Mind Maps, and Docs.

Becoming (too) generalist

Earlier this year we released Projects and Posts — a major milestone that felt like the completion of our original “all-in-one hub” vision.

Yet, this time, it didn’t quite pick up.

We spent a lot of time trying to understand why. We looked at the data, talked to customers, and paid close attention to how it felt to use Whimsical every day.

What became increasingly clear was that we had overestimated the value of a fully unified, all-in-one collaboration experience. Our users weren’t asking us to do everything. They were asking us to go deeper on the things they already loved.

The growing product surface area was also stretching us thin and starting to risk the one thing we’ve always cared about most: overall product quality.

Choosing depth over breadth

The lesson was painful, but it brought new clarity.

Whimsical is still great at one thing: being the place where ideas take shape. That’s why customers come to Whimsical. That’s where we can offer strong opinions, thoughtful defaults, and surprising details that keep raising the bar.

So we’re refocusing Whimsical on what we do best: the whiteboard. Instead of chasing breadth, we’re choosing depth.

That also means making some hard calls about what we say no to.

Starting January 15, 2026, we’ll be sunsetting Projects, Tasks, and Posts. We’ll also use this moment to retire a few very lightly used features such as My tasks and Split view.

Going forward, Boards and Docs will be the heart of Whimsical.

This wasn’t a quick or easy decision. It came from listening, observing, and asking ourselves what kind of product we want to build — and where we believe we can make a meaningful difference in how product work actually happens.

The future of whiteboarding (and where AI fits in)

AI is reshaping almost every aspect of work. At the same time, everyone is still figuring out not just what’s possible, but what’s actually useful.

At Whimsical, our guiding principle is that AI should amplify human creativity, not replace it. We’re combining that principle with what we’ve learned from customers to keep making Whimsical the best whiteboard for thinking and planning.

We’ve also discovered a new kind of job for whiteboarding that only AI really unlocks: not just shaping ideas, but making them real.

That job felt distinct enough that, to do it justice, we chose to build it as a standalone product. We call it Applet, and it’s available in public alpha today.

At the same time, we want the Whimsical you already use every day to simply feel better - fixing bugs, improving performance, reducing crashes, smoothing out interactions, and polishing details - in short, raising the quality bar across the board (pun intended).

What happens next

We know changes like this can be disruptive, especially if you’ve been relying on Projects, Tasks, or Posts. Thank you for trusting us with your work and for pushing us to be better — even when the feedback was hard to hear. To help you through the transition, we’ve put together a practical guide with timelines and export options, which you can find here.

Our focus now is simple: make Whimsical the best place to think, plan, and bring ideas to life. We’re grateful to have you with us.

-Kaspars, Co-founder & CEO, Whimsical & Applet