Introduction
In today's fast-paced digital landscape, effective document management is essential for organizations of all sizes. Users now expect accessibility, effortless content contribution, and a seamless reading experience across devices—needs that static PDFs have never offered.
The below compares four leading approaches to document management: BoardBlocs by Sopris Apps, Boardable, BoardDocs by Diligent and Symbaloo. Each is evaluated across key criteria: branding, calendars & events, committees, privacy, discussions, mobile user experience, ADA compliance, and search functionality.
Branding & Visual Customization
Whether a board operates primarily in private or serves as a visible representative of the organization, the quality and consistency of its presentation play a central role in earning the trust of its members and the wider community. Clear, polished, and intentional communication signals competence and integrity, helping stakeholders understand the value of the board’s work and the care with which decisions are made. Just as an organization invests in a beautiful, well-structured website to reflect its mission and professionalism, a board should take equal pride in how it presents itself—embracing branding, transparency, and thoughtful design to reinforce confidence and strengthen its connection with those it serves.
Provides a standardized, professional dashboard. Customization is more limited than newer platforms, focusing on a clean, "no-nonsense" governance appearance for public-sector boards.
Uses drag-and-drop "blocks" and templates to create a polished, branded site. Each block automatically formats content to stay cohesive and ADA-compliant without design expertise.
Boardable - Clean & Modern
Designed specifically for boards with a consistent, professional layout. While less of a "website builder" than BoardBlocs, it ensures all board packets and portals are well-organized and on-brand.
Symbaloo - Highly Visual
Uses a grid of customizable "tiles" and "webmixes." While easy to add logos and colors, its user experience feels more like a bookmarking dashboard than a formal, professionally branded board website.
Calendars & Events
Modern efficiency requires that event management and document access live in the same ecosystem. Rather than forcing users to check a standalone platform, a superior system integrates directly with Google, Apple, and Microsoft calendars, ensuring that meeting dates and deadlines are always synchronized. Crucially, these calendar events must serve as a gateway to the event's digital documents, allowing board members to jump directly from a calendar invite to an accessible, mobile-friendly agenda or report without searching through static PDF attachments.
BoardBlocs - Seamless Sync
Offers real-time API synchronization with Google and Microsoft. Calendar invites link directly to document webpages (agendas/minutes), replacing static PDFs with mobile-friendly web pages.
Boardable - Active Gateway
Sends automated invites that sync with Google, Outlook, and Apple. The calendar event acts as a one-click gateway to a unified meeting workspace containing all relevant documentation.
BoardDocs - Centralized Dashboard
Relies on a member portal rather than deep API syncing with personal calendars. Users typically log into the system to see schedules, though they can export events via manual .ics files.
Symbaloo - Static Shortcuts
Does not offer two-way API sync. It can display a Google Calendar widget or link to a web calendar, but it lacks an integrated workflow connecting events directly to managed documents..
Committees
While sub-committees are the heart of a board’s meaningful work, their operations are often hindered by haphazard group texting and fragmented meeting management. A modern platform centralizes committee activities by providing dedicated digital workspaces where agendas, working drafts, and minutes are organized and accessible only to relevant members. By moving away from informal communication toward a structured document environment, boards ensure that committee progress is securely tracked and easily integrated into the broader organizational record.
BoardBlocs - Dedicated Hubs
Utilizes "Microsites" to create secure, branded workspaces for committees. Documents are partitioned via Google/Microsoft permissions, keeping sub-committee drafts separate from the main board record.
Boardable - Secure “Groups”
Features a dedicated "Groups" tool for committees. These provide partitioned areas for private discussions, file sharing, and polling, moving sub-committee work out of haphazard group texts.
BoardDocs - Partitioned Portals
The "Plus" tier allows for separate committee portals with their own "single source of truth." It uses role-based access to keep sensitive sub-committee drafts private from the public or full board.
Symbaloo - Manual Creation
Committees are managed by creating separate webmixes (link grids). It lacks native committee features like private threads or automated workflows, requiring manual updates to keep resources organized.
Privacy
A board management platform must provide flexible privacy controls that support public transparency and private governance simultaneously. The ideal solution enables a "hybrid" visibility model, where organizations can selectively publish documents to the public while maintaining secure, encrypted workspaces for sensitive board and committee work that requires strict confidentiality.
BoardBlocs - Excellent Hybrid Control
Offers "1st-class" integration with Google/Microsoft for internal security while providing a public-facing transparency portal. You can toggle specific document "versions" between Public and Private with one click.
Boardable - Robust Public/Private Split
Features a dedicated "Public Sites" tool. This allows admins to choose exactly which meetings or materials are published to the community while keeping the core platform restricted to authenticated board members.
BoardDocs - Traditional Public Sector Strength
Specifically built for public/elected boards with automated "release" settings. You can schedule parts of an agenda to go public a set number of days before a meeting while keeping supporting attachments private.
Symbaloo - Limited Granularity
Offers "Webspace" privacy (requiring a login for the whole page) or IP blocking, but lacks the ability to easily toggle individual document privacy within a single view. It is generally "all or nothing" for a specific grid.
Discussions
Meaningful board decisions should not live in the chaos of group texts or "reply-all" email chains. These informal methods offer no version control for documents and, more importantly, no protection for members to express candid opinions without fear of public scrutiny. Moving discussions into a unified, permissioned workspace provides a safe "system of record" that preserves institutional knowledge and maintains a clear audit trail for every decision made between meetings.
BoardBlocs - Uses an innovative Moderator AI to create a safe, toxic-free environment for discussions, protecting members from public blowback while ensuring a respectful "meritocracy" of ideas. Its structured sentiment reports and topic-based feeds replace haphazard group texts with an organized, searchable system of record that highlights meaningful community input.
Boardable - Integrated chat with "mentions" and emoji reactions; captures email replies back into the secure portal. Detailed logs of all user activity, votes, and decisions; CSV exports available for audit readiness.
BoardDocs - Uses formal "chains" for feedback rather than a chat interface, ideal for strictly regulated public bodies. Specifically built for public-sector compliance; maintains immutable records of every action and revision.
Symbaloo - Requires linking to outside tools like Slack or Teams, which keeps discussions siloed away from the documents. No native tracking of board deliberation or decision-making history; lacks a formal governance audit trail.
Mobile User Experience
Board members are often busy executives who need to review critical materials while traveling or between meetings. A modern platform must provide a mobile-first or native app experience, ensuring that agendas are scannable, documents flow naturally for easy reading, and key actions like voting or signing can be completed with a single thumb-tap.
BoardBlocs - Excellent & Responsive
Uses a "mobile-first" web design rather than a standalone app. BoardBlocs technology specifically ensures that long board packets and agendas "reflow" to fit any screen size. This replaces the "pinch-and-zoom" struggle of PDFs with a clean, vertical reading experience perfect for phones.
Boardable - Best for Action
Offers a dedicated, downloadable app for both iOS and Android. The app is built for "on-the-go" governance. It features push notifications for meeting updates, biometric login (FaceID), and a tailored interface for quick voting and electronic signatures directly from a mobile device.
BoardDocs - Standard Experience
Primarily accessed via a mobile browser; no native "BoardDocs" app for members. While the site is responsive and functional on tablets, the interface can feel "dense" on smaller smartphone screens. It is highly reliable for viewing documents but lacks the tactile, "app-like" feel of newer competitors.
Symbaloo - Visual but Limited
The "Webmix" grid adjusts to fit mobile screens. While the visual tiles are easy to tap, the experience becomes fragmented once you click a link. Users are often kicked out of Symbaloo and into a mobile browser to view PDFs or external sites, which may not be mobile-optimized.
ADA Compliance
For modern boards, ADA compliance is no longer a "nice-to-have" feature—it is a legal mandate. This is particularly critical for the transition away from static PDFs, which are notorious for being inaccessible to screen readers and difficult to navigate for users with disabilities.
BoardBlocs - WCAG 2.2 AA (Gold Standard)
Purpose-built for the latest standards. With BoardBlocs technology, you share your documents and they convert them in accessible HTML for your website. Every static PDF is converted into a web experience that is designed to meet current accessibility standards. BoardBlocs content is structured so screen readers can announce headings, navigate by landmark, and help users understand document structure—just like sighted users.
Boardable - WCAG 2.1 AA Compliant
Offers a dedicated accessibility suite. Features an "Accessibility Menu" (Shortcut: CTRL+U) that allows users to instantly toggle dyslexia-friendly fonts, high-contrast modes, and screen reader speeds. Preferences are saved to the user's profile across all sessions.
BoardDocs - Industry Standard
Well-established in the public sector. The "Diligent Community" update includes accessibility checkers within its Policy Publisher tool. It also pioneered AI-driven closed captioning for meeting livestreams to assist stakeholders who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Symbaloo - Basic/General
Relies on the accessibility of linked tools. While the main dashboard is generally navigable, Symbaloo does not remediate the accessibility of the documents it links to. If a board member links a non-compliant PDF, Symbaloo cannot fix it, potentially leaving the organization at risk.
Search Functionality
The final piece of the modern document management puzzle is Search. In a world where board members must recall decisions from years prior, a search tool that only looks at "file titles" is insufficient. True efficiency requires a system that can "read" inside documents to find specific keywords, policy numbers, or discussion points instantly.
BoardBlocs - High Accuracy Search
BoardBlocs indexes every word of your policies and handbooks. It provides "AI-powered answers" that can synthesize information across multiple related documents, ensuring that a search for one policy also surfaces relevant procedures and sub-sections.
Boardable - Built for extensive historical research
Specifically designed for public bodies to search across decades of content. Its "MetaSearch" tool allows users to search not only their own board's history but also those of other organizations in the BoardDocs network for procurement and policy research.
BoardDocs - Centralized Global Search
Allows members to narrow down results by category—meetings, tasks, or discussions. It searches inside document content, meeting descriptions, and even comments within discussion threads, making it easy to track the lifecycle of a decision.
Symbaloo - Primarily a "Search Engine" launchpad
Symbaloo relies on "tiles" that must be manually named or tagged by the user. While it has a built-in search bar to find tiles on your own board, it cannot "read" into the PDFs or external links you have saved, making deep research impossible within the platform.
Conclusion
Choosing the right platform depends on organizational priorities:
Administrative Efficiency, Mobile Experience, and Modern Engagement
BoardBlocs excels in transparency and efficiency. Its seamless integration with Microsoft and Google tools, built-in structural ADA compliance, and dynamic publishing make it the ideal choice for organizations that manage evolving public content.
Highly Interactive
Boardable’s native app and collaborative tools (like polls and signatures) makes it the best for “working boards” that need to make quick decisions on the go.
Formal Governance, Policy Management, and Secure Board Workflow
BoardDocs remains the established leader for structured governance workflows requiring strict compliance and record control. Its rigid workflows and historical archiving are the industry standard for formal public record-keeping.Internal Resource Management or Educational Use
Symbaloo serves best as a lightweight tool for organizing links and resources but lacks the compliance, workflow feature, security and document management of a true board portal.
BoardBloc’s focus on contributor experience, mobile presentation, and accessible design positions it as the optimal solution for modern public boards.