Best Doodly Alternative for L&D Teams
Doodly builds every scene by hand. For L&D teams that already have SOPs and lesson plans, openCanviz drafts the narrated video from the document instead.
By openCanviz • August 22, 2026
9 min read
For a corporate learning and development team, the best Doodly alternative is a tool that turns your existing training documents into videos rather than making you build each scene by hand. openCanviz does that: paste an SOP, a lesson plan, or a policy doc, and it drafts the whole narrated whiteboard video, with narration already written to match each scene. You then edit scene by scene. For an L&D team producing modules on a schedule, that is the difference between authoring and assembling.
Doodly is a solid manual doodle editor. You get a library of hand-drawn images and a canvas, and you place assets, set the draw order, and add audio yourself. It is approachable and the output looks friendly. The catch for L&D is volume: when you have a backlog of courses to turn into video, hand-building every scene does not scale well, and that is exactly where a document-first draft helps.
Doodly vs openCanviz for L&D
| Doodly | openCanviz | |
| Starting point | Blank canvas, place assets by hand | Paste an SOP, lesson plan, or policy doc |
| First draft | You build every scene | Drafted from your document automatically |
| Narration | Record or import audio separately | Written per scene to match, then editable |
| Visual styles | Doodle whiteboard style | Whiteboard, doodle, painted, cutout, poster |
| Learning curve | Low, but every video is manual | Low, and you start from a draft |
| Best for | One-off friendly doodle videos | Turning a training backlog into modules |
| Price to start | Paid subscription | Free to start |
The real difference in workflow
Doodly is a canvas-first editor. The training content lives in your head or in a separate script, and you translate it into a scene at a time: drag this image, draw this text, time this hand. The knowledge you already documented does not do any of the work for you.
openCanviz is document-first, which fits how L&D actually operates. Your team already writes SOPs, facilitator guides, and course outlines. openCanviz reads that writing, splits it into scenes, drafts narration for each, and proposes visuals. The author then edits: tighten narration, reorder a scene, swap a style. The documents you maintain become the source of the video instead of reference material you copy from by hand.
Who should pick which
Pick Doodly if you make occasional standalone doodle videos, you like the specific look, and you want full manual control over a small number of pieces. It is friendly and the learning curve is gentle.
Pick openCanviz if you are an L&D team with real throughput needs and a library of written material. The document-first draft turns your existing SOPs and lesson plans directly into narrated video, so producing the fifth or the fiftieth module is far less work than doing it by hand each time. Consistent narration and switchable styles also make it easier to keep a whole course library on-brand.
What you give up
The initial scene composition is drafted for you, so you are editing choices rather than making every one from a blank canvas. That is a fair trade for a team optimizing for output and consistency. If your priority is bespoke, hand-placed doodle art on a few flagship videos, Doodly's manual approach may suit you better.
Standardize your intake
Have authors paste the finished SOP or lesson plan, not a rough outline. The cleaner the source document, the closer the first draft lands to a shippable module.
Common questions
Can openCanviz keep the friendly hand-drawn feel of Doodly? Yes. Whiteboard and doodle are both built-in styles, so you can keep an approachable drawn look or move to painted or poster per scene.
Does it fit team review workflows? The drafted video is fully editable scene by scene, so a reviewer can request a narration change or a reorder and an author can make it directly, without rebuilding the scene.
Is it free to start for a team? Yes, openCanviz is free to start, so you can trial it with one real course before committing.
Turn one SOP into a module
Pick one SOP your team would have rebuilt in Doodly and paste it into openCanviz to see the drafted module. For a head-to-head on training specifically, read /blog/opencanviz-vs-doodly.
Turn any concept into an animated explainer
Type an outline, get a narrated, animated whiteboard video in minutes. No design skills, no timeline scrubbing. Free to start.
Keep reading
A revenue report is a table; a team needs the story behind it. How to pick the three numbers that matter, build a revenue bridge from last quarter to this one, script it at 150 words a minute, and check every figure before a five minute video goes out.
A safety training video works when it shows how the injury actually happens, then the control that stops it. A five-part structure per hazard, a worked electrical safety script with scene list, the mistakes that make safety videos ignorable, and what video cannot replace.
Which AI video generator actually fits teaching? A practical 2026 comparison of the drawn-explainer, avatar, stock-footage, and auto-summary approaches, matched to lessons, training, and concept explainers.
How to use explainer videos for compliance training that people actually watch and remember, without rushing the steps a regulator will check. Turn your policy docs into clear, drawn lessons.