BoardBreeze vs Fireflies.ai: Meeting Notes Tool vs Board Minutes Software

Fireflies.ai is a popular AI meeting assistant used by sales teams, project managers, and businesses that want automated notes from their calls. It integrates with Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, and dozens of CRM and project management tools.

But Fireflies.ai and BoardBreeze serve completely different purposes.

Fireflies is designed to capture business conversations — sales calls, team standups, client meetings. BoardBreeze is designed to produce official board meeting minutes that meet legal and compliance standards.

I'm Grace Esteban, founder of BoardBreeze. Here's how the two compare.

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Quick Comparison

Feature	BoardBreeze	Fireflies.ai
Starting Price	$29.99/month	Free (basic) / $18/month (Pro)
Built For	Board meeting minutes	Business meeting notes, sales calls
Output	Formatted board minutes	Meeting notes, summaries, action items
Motion/Second/Vote Tracking	Automatic	No
Parliamentary Procedure	Robert's Rules aware	No
Brown Act Compliance	Yes	No
Board Minutes Templates	Yes	No (generic templates)
Minutes Assistant Chatbot	Yes	AskFred AI assistant
CRM Integration	No	Yes (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.)
Audio Upload	Yes	Yes
Live Recording	Yes (in-browser)	Yes (joins video calls)
Max Meeting Duration	12 hours	Varies by plan
Integrations	Upload-based workflow	50+ business tool integrations
Free Trial	30 days, no credit card	Free tier available

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Different Tools for Different Jobs

Fireflies.ai is built for the business meeting workflow:

1. Bot joins your Zoom/Teams/Meet call
2. Records and transcribes the conversation
3. Generates meeting notes with action items
4. Pushes data to your CRM, project management tool, or Slack
5. Team searches across past meetings with AskFred AI

This workflow makes sense for sales teams tracking customer conversations, project managers who need action items in Asana, and executives who skip meetings and read the summary later.

BoardBreeze is built for the board meeting workflow:

1. Upload your recording (or record live in-browser)
2. AI transcribes and identifies parliamentary procedure
3. Minutes are formatted with motions, seconds, votes, attendance, and action items
4. Review and edit the AI draft
5. Query the meeting with the Minutes Assistant chatbot
6. Export the official record

These are fundamentally different outputs for fundamentally different audiences.

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What Fireflies.ai Does Well

CRM and tool integrations. Fireflies connects to Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, Asana, Notion, Trello, Monday.com, and more. If your workflow requires meeting data flowing into other business tools, Fireflies does this well.

AskFred AI assistant. You can ask questions across all your recorded meetings. "What did the client say about pricing in our last three calls?" This cross-meeting search is powerful for sales and customer success teams.

Conversation intelligence. Fireflies analyzes talk-to-listen ratios, sentiment, and topics. For sales coaching and team performance, this data is valuable.

Free tier. Fireflies offers a limited free plan for basic transcription.

Team collaboration. Meeting notes are shared across the team with comments, highlights, and soundbites. Good for distributed teams.

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Where Fireflies.ai Falls Short for Board Meetings

No understanding of parliamentary procedure. Fireflies doesn't distinguish between a casual suggestion and a formal motion. It can't identify seconds, roll call votes, or quorum. These are fundamental requirements for board minutes.

No board minutes formatting. Fireflies produces meeting notes — bullet points, summaries, and action items. Board minutes require a specific legal format: call to order, attendance, quorum, agenda items, motions with exact wording, vote results, adjournment time, and signatures.

No compliance awareness. Fireflies doesn't know about Brown Act, Robert's Rules, FOIA, or open meeting laws. Your minutes need to demonstrate compliance with these frameworks — Fireflies can't help with that.

CRM-oriented features aren't useful for governance. Salesforce integration, sentiment analysis, and talk-to-listen ratios are irrelevant to a board clerk producing official minutes. You'd be paying for features you'll never use.

The output still needs complete reformatting. Even with Fireflies' AI-generated notes, a board clerk would need to:

• Restructure the output into minutes format
• Add formal headers (call to order, attendance, quorum)
• Identify and reword motions formally
• Add vote tallies and roll call details
• Remove discussion that doesn't belong in the record
• Add adjournment and authentication sections

This reformatting can take 1-2+ hours depending on meeting length — which defeats the purpose of using an AI tool.

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A Real-World Example

Consider a 3-hour school board meeting where the board discusses a facilities bond, hears public comment, and votes on three motions.

Fireflies.ai output:

Meeting Notes - School Board Meeting

Key Topics: Facilities bond discussion, public comment period, budget allocation

Action Items:

• Review bond proposal details (assigned: Superintendent)
• Schedule community forum (assigned: Communications Director)
• Update budget projections (assigned: CFO)

Summary: The board discussed the facilities bond proposal extensively. Multiple community members provided input during public comment. Three votes were taken on budget-related items.

BoardBreeze output:

REGULAR MEETING OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES [School District Name] March 15, 2026 — 6:00 PM

CALL TO ORDER: President Williams called the meeting to order at 6:02 PM.

ROLL CALL: Directors Williams, Garcia, Thompson, Lee, Park, Kim, and Alvarez present. Quorum established (7 of 7 members present).

ITEM 4.1 — Facilities Bond Proposal

CFO Martinez presented the $45M facilities bond proposal...

Motion: Director Garcia moved to approve the facilities bond proposal for placement on the November 2026 ballot in the amount of $45,000,000. Second: Director Thompson Discussion: Board members discussed the timeline and community engagement plan... Vote: Roll call vote — Williams: Aye, Garcia: Aye, Thompson: Aye, Lee: Aye, Park: Nay, Kim: Aye, Alvarez: Aye. Motion carried, 6-1.

[...]

ADJOURNMENT: President Williams adjourned the meeting at 9:47 PM.

One of these is ready for board approval. The other requires hours of reformatting.

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When Fireflies.ai Is the Right Choice

Choose Fireflies.ai if:

• Your meetings are sales calls, team standups, or client meetings — not formal board meetings
• You need meeting data pushed to CRM or project management tools
• You want conversation intelligence (sentiment, talk ratios) for coaching
• You need to search across hundreds of past meetings for business insights
• Your team needs collaborative meeting notes with comments and highlights
• You don't have compliance or parliamentary procedure requirements

Fireflies.ai is a strong product for business teams. It's just not built for governance.

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When BoardBreeze Is the Right Choice

Choose BoardBreeze if:

• You produce official board meeting minutes for a governing body
• You need motions, seconds, and votes automatically identified and formatted
• Your minutes must meet legal compliance standards
• Your meetings regularly run 4-7+ hours
• You need board-specific output — not business meeting notes
• You're a board clerk, executive assistant, or secretary responsible for the official record
• You need a tool that understands parliamentary procedure, not sales conversations

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The Bottom Line

Fireflies.ai is a meeting assistant for business teams. BoardBreeze is a minutes tool for board clerks.

Using Fireflies for board minutes is like using a general-purpose calculator when you need accounting software. It can do some of the math, but it doesn't understand the structure, compliance requirements, or output format you actually need.

Try BoardBreeze free for 30 days. Upload a board meeting recording and compare the output to what any general transcription tool gives you. The difference will be clear.

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Questions? Email me at grace@appboardbreeze.com — I personally respond to every message.

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