There's a certain kind of email every video producer has received at least once in their life. It goes something like: "Hi, looks great! Can we just move scene 4 to after scene 7, and can the girl in frame 2 look a bit more… happy? Also, which version is this again?"
That email usually lands after you've already sent five different PDFs to three different people, and nobody can remember which "Final_v2_APPROVED_USE_THIS.pdf" is the actual final one.
That's the exact problem Boords was built to solve — and after 11 years on the market, it's become the storyboard tool that studios and agencies quietly swear by. Here's the honest rundown.
Boords is a browser-based storyboarding platform for video production teams. You create storyboards in it, share them with clients via a simple link, collect frame-by-frame feedback, track approval status, and export everything when you're done.
No PowerPoint. No PDF shuffling. No "wait, which version are we on?"
It's been around since 2015, was built by the co-founders of Animade — a well-regarded London animation studio — and is used by teams at Framestore, Partizan, Digital Brew, and a whole lot of smaller agencies who just want the pre-production process to not be a complete disaster.
👉 Try Boords free — no credit card required
The core thing Boords does really well is the client review flow. You make your boards, hit share, send a link, and the client can leave comments on specific frames — not in a separate email thread, not in a Slack channel, not on a Post-it note that gets lost. Right on the frame.
Clients don't need to create an account. They just click the link and start commenting. That alone has probably saved thousands of creative teams from the slow death-by-email feedback loop.
You can also password-protect the link, track approval status per frame, and always know exactly who has and hasn't signed off.
This is newer, but it's good. Boords has an AI image generator built right into the storyboard editor. You can describe a scene in plain language — "woman at kitchen sink, morning light, filling a water bottle" — and get a storyboard frame back in seconds.
There's also a Character Guidelines feature that tries to keep characters visually consistent across frames, which is genuinely one of the harder problems with AI-generated storyboards. It doesn't always nail it perfectly, but it's miles better than trying to prompt your way to consistency manually.
The Standard plan comes with 1,000 AI images per month. The Workflow plan gives you unlimited.
You can write (or paste) your script directly in Boords, right alongside your frames. The script and the storyboard panels stay in sync as you work. It also auto-generates a shot list from your storyboard — camera angle, shot type, notes — all structured and ready to take to set.
For anyone who's ever maintained a storyboard in one tab and a shot list in another and quietly suffered, this is a relief.
Drop your frames onto a timeline, set timing, add audio, and you've got an animatic — a rough animated preview of your storyboard that you can share with clients or use internally to check pacing before committing to a full cut.
Export it as an MP4. Done. No After Effects required.
Every revision is tracked. You can see what changed between drafts and share specific versions with clients. No more mystery about which version got approved.
The sweet spot is small-to-midsize creative agencies, video production studios, and freelance producers who work with clients and need a clean, professional way to present and iterate on storyboards.
It's also genuinely useful for:
- Advertising agencies running multiple concurrent campaigns
- Animation studios doing pre-production visualization
- YouTubers and independent filmmakers who want to look more put-together in client calls
- Marketing teams commissioning video content and wanting to approve it before it goes into production
If you're a lone creator who only does the occasional personal project, the free plan might honestly be enough for you. But if client approval and team collaboration are part of your workflow, the paid plans are where Boords earns its keep.
Boords has two paid plans. Both start with 1 user — you add more for $15/month each. Annual billing saves you up to 20%.
| Plan | Monthly Price | AI Images | Key Features | Get Started |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $44/month | 1,000/month | Unlimited storyboards, all export formats, client review & approval, animatics, AI generator, version management, password protection, live chat support | Start Standard |
| Workflow | $89/month | Unlimited | Everything in Standard + client-hidden comments, project-level permissions, customizable templates, activity trail | Start Workflow |
Additional users: $15/month each on any plan Annual billing: Save up to 20% vs. monthly Free trial: Yes — no credit card needed
The main difference between Standard and Workflow comes down to team management and privacy controls. If you need to keep internal notes hidden from clients, control who sees which projects, or work with customizable templates across multiple team members, Workflow is the right call. For smaller teams just getting client approval on boards, Standard handles it well.
👉 Compare plans and start free
The reviews are pretty consistent. Boords rates 4.9/5 from video professionals on its own site and holds strong ratings on G2.
A few things that come up repeatedly in reviews:
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The workflow transformation: Producers who used to juggle Photoshop, Google Slides, and endless email threads consistently say Boords simplified everything into one place. One team mentioned they went from dealing with storyboards in different formats from different contractors to having everything centralized.
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Client communication: Several studios specifically called out how much easier client communication became. When feedback lives on the actual frame, revision cycles get shorter.
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The time savings: One team said it used to take them significant time creating storyboards they'd be happy to show clients; with Boords, the whole team could create polished boards, not just the experienced designers.
The one consistent critique? Some solo creators find the pricing a bit steep for occasional use. And power users sometimes wish for more fine-grained control over storyboard layouts and camera movement notation. Fair feedback — it's positioned as a collaboration tool first, not a pro animation software.
If you're planning to use Boords for any ongoing work — which, if you're a studio or agency, you will be — the annual billing is worth doing the math on. Up to 20% savings compared to monthly means at $44/month for Standard, you're potentially saving close to $100/year just by paying annually.
The platform also doesn't lock you into long contracts. You can start monthly, see if it fits your workflow, and switch to annual when you're convinced.
👉 Start with a free account and upgrade when you're ready
Boords doesn't try to be everything. It's not a full production management suite, it's not a professional animation tool, and it won't replace After Effects for anyone doing complex frame-by-frame work.
What it is, is the best purpose-built solution for the specific, painful problem of: how do we create storyboards, get client feedback on them, and move into production without losing our minds?
That problem is genuinely underserved by generic tools like Google Slides or Figma. Boords has been solving it for over a decade, and the product shows it.
If pre-production is part of your job and you're still doing it across PDFs, email threads, and crossed fingers — it's worth spending 10 minutes on the free plan to see how different it can feel.