PRODUCTBOARD: Features, Pricing, Review & Alternatives

Productboard is a digital tool for managing products that help teams get the most out of the process of making new products. Productboard is more about product roadmapping and has a difficult user interface with a lot of features. This makes it a less-than-ideal way for many people to get product feedback. This article contains reviews of Productboard and its pricing. We also added a list of Productboard competitors you can opt for if you feel Productboard is not suiting your needs.

Let’s dig in!

What Is Product Management Software?

Product management software aids groups in handling specific stages of the product’s life cycle. Examples of such things could be:

Strategic Preparation for a New Product Introduction
Management of Software Development Projects
Analytics for Products
Prototyping
To advertise a product

For instance, with the use of a product roadmap tool, you may plan out your product’s future by outlining its features.

On the other hand, a centralized platform for all aspects of product development and management can be provided by certain product manager software tools, such as an all-encompassing project management tool.

It’s also crucial for a distributed product team to have access to a unified, virtual product management system with all the capabilities they need.

When Choosing Product Management Software, What Features Are Essential?

Key characteristics of a good product management system include:

#1. Skills in Creative Problem-Solving

It takes creative thinking beyond the box to make a new product. Furthermore, the management tool should allow you to make sense of any notion, no matter how outlandish it may seem.

#2. Organization of Work

All aspects of task management, such as kanban boards and automatic prioritization, should be present in the app.

#3. Templates

You should be able to quickly get started with your management tool’s configurable templates for things like invoices, price lists, and more.

#4. Integrations

Unfortunately, there aren’t many options for product managers to choose from. For this reason, it is essential that your management solution is compatible with other widely used programs in the office.

What Is a Productboard?

Productboard is a cloud-based product management and roadmap tool that aids product teams in gathering user feedback, prioritizing feature ideas, tracking development, and communicating with stakeholders. By compiling data from user surveys and feature requests, productboard helps businesses determine the features and capabilities of a product that will appeal to their target audience and generate revenue. To prioritize selections and see how features might help with critical products and business goals, users can also specify strategic criteria.

The market value of each feature can also be revealed to users. As the launch date of the product draws near, the productboard can be used to monitor the progress of tasks that are shared across multiple aspects, such as designs, marketing, documentation, etc. Users of Productboard can also keep using their existing product workflows thanks to a number of available connections.

How Does it Work?

In order to better serve their consumers, product managers can use Productboard, a project management tool that helps them learn about their wants and needs, set priorities for future development, and unite their teams under a common road map. It compiles user input into a ranked road map based on concrete evidence.

What is Productboard Used For?

The following are things you can use Productboard for:

Idea Management
Ideal for planning and directing projects.
Product Roadmaps
Task Prioritization
Custom Workflows
Kanban Board
Release Management
Bug Tracking
Workflow Management
Feedback Management
Strategic Planning
Dashboard
Resource Management
Requirement Management
Milestone Tracking
Collaboration

Productboard Features

The following are the features of Productboard:

Insights: Put all of your customers’ comments in one convenient location.
Prioritization: Data-driven, consistent prioritization might help you choose which features to build first.
Roadmaps: Build customer-focused, team-aligned road maps in real time.
Engagement: Create a public Portal to discuss goals, check assumptions, and celebrate successes.
Integrations: Utilize top-tier APIs and connectors to facilitate productive processes.
Security: Designed with the highest levels of security and management in the market.

Pros and Cons of Productboard

Check out the pros and cons:

Pros of Productboard

As a project management tool, Productboard combines a voting board and an inbox for product feedback with prioritization techniques and roadmaps.
Some of the most important functions include an email-based feedback collection system, feature prioritization frameworks, a library of customizable product roadmap templates, and much more.
Slack, Zapier, and Salesforce are just some of the many supported connectors for managing projects and customer comments.

Cons of Productboard

Productboard doesn’t feel like a feature tracking tool so much as a complicated project management tool. It’s fantastic with all the options you can choose, but it’s a pain to find the proper configuration for handling user comments.
It’s a hefty sum. In comparison to similar customer feedback management software, the basic plan costs only $20 per month but only allows for one administrator and five contributors.

Productboard Pricing

The pricing of Productboard will vary depending on how many makers you have and which plan you choose. There are four distinct monthly Productboard pricing tiers to choose from:

Essentials: Monthly fees of $20 per manufacturer
Pro: Each monthly maker fee is $50.
Scale: $100 a month for each contributor
Enterprise: Custom

Productboard Competitors

We have gathered a list of Productboard competitors, should you be seeking an updated and more approachable replacement. The following are the Productboard competitors you can opt for:

#1. Airfocus

Airfocus is the first modular product management tool that facilitates the easy development of strategic and dynamic lean roadmaps. The user is able to see the big picture and set collective objectives that will aid in addressing the right problems. By setting priorities that are directly linked to your goals and objectives, Airfocus allows you to turn decision-making into a transparent, collaborative process. You can also design and implement your preferred prioritization method using straightforward data inputs, and you can pool the opinions of different people and groups to gain insight. The inputs can be organized and noise can be reduced as they come in. Each and every bit of data transferred between Airfocus servers and user browsers is encrypted using Transport Layer Security.

The connection between Airfocus and the client is encrypted using the strongest encryption methods available, and only the highest level of TLS is accepted. It is one of the best Productboard competitors you can opt for. Users can also integrate their preferred tools to streamline their workflow and keep everyone in the loop.

#2. Aha

Aha, supposedly one of the greatest road mapping programs. Strategic goals and key performance indicators can be established, and ideas and features can be crowdsourced and managed using a kanban board and Gantt charts. Aha equips product managers with the why, when, and what they need to develop product portfolios complete with timelines, objectives, release plans, and more. It may take some time to become familiar with all Aha can accomplish and the most efficient workflow patterns because it is a smart application that is highly adaptable and configurable.

Strategy and roadmap features are prioritized in Aha, rather than detailed project and task planning, and feature adoption may be monitored using a variety of reports that can be tailored to the user’s needs.

#3. Jira

Jira is a powerful tool for agile project management. It aids programmers in real-time planning, monitoring, and releasing genuine software. The particular’s in-depth reporting functions also make it possible for groups to effectively raise their game. Teams can maintain their focus and efficiently create incremental and iterative value with the help of in-built, personalized Scrum boards. Users can also define automation rules, acquire end-to-end visibility, and monitor code repositories in Jira. Confluence, Trello, Bitbucket, Zoom, Microsoft, Slack, and many more are just some of the services that can be seamlessly integrated with this program. The particular also employs enterprise-grade technologies such as automatic user provisioning, SAML SSO, 2-step verification, and more to ensure the utmost safety of the data kept within it.

Jira is more than just another issue/bug tracker thanks to its many features, including granular filtering, extensive APIs, developer tool integration, workflow personalization, and more. It is also one of the best Productboard competitors you can opt for. Jira is very adaptable, with support for more than 3,000 apps that may be added by users.

#4. ProdPad

The ProdPad product team feedback and road-mapping tool allows product teams to collaborate with other teams and customers to discuss and vote on new features. Also, it aids in the creation of a well-organized roadmap for a number of products, complete with a timeline view that highlights the most recent product announcements.

#5. ProductPlan

ProductPlan is a tool that helps businesses easily develop product plans and roadmaps. Users may create or modify a roadmap in a matter of minutes and see the results visually in real time thanks to the software’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Colorful milestones for key dates can also be added to the road map with the use of the drag-and-drop tool. Bars and containers can be used together to demonstrate useful relationships. Once the roadmap has been developed, it may be analyzed from several angles.

Viewers can toggle between several different views to learn more about the product roadmap, including timeline, list, and Gantt chart layouts. Team members and other divisions of the company can all benefit from seeing the strategy. The planning chief can also, in a matter of minutes, make several variants of the same road map, each tailored to a specific audience. Images, PDFs, and spreadsheets are all formats that can also be used to export the roadmaps to a local drive. ProductPlan also provides a strong security mechanism to ensure that all data is kept secure, even when accessed by several users.

#6. Monday.com

Monday is a bug-tracking and project management solution that keeps track of issues in one central location and gives users an easy-to-understand snapshot of problem progress at any given time. It also has tools to help you sort through bugs, prioritize them, and set up an efficient process for your team. Project management, task management, and group communication are just some of the capabilities it provides.

Monday is also compatible with mind-mapping templates, which can show how team members’ contributions complement one another. It is also one of the best Productboard competitors you can opt for.

Productboard Reviews

The following are Productboard reviews from reputable sites:

Caterra Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
G2 Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
Software Advice Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The Product Roadmap

Everyone in a company will be affected by the product roadmap, but for clarity and consistency, it must have a single owner. In most organizations, this falls under the purview of the Chief Product Officer, Vice President of Product, Product Manager, or equivalent de facto product job.

But that doesn’t mean you should manage your product strategy in isolation. Collaboration is key to the process’s success. This may involve soliciting advice from upper management first and then reaching out to lower-level business leaders for ongoing feedback and input.

To ensure that goals, features, and dates may be adjusted as needed, it is the roadmap owner’s responsibility to not just be open to feedback but also to filter it. The next step is to announce the roadmap at the right moment so that nobody is caught off guard about the status of a given release.

Also Read: TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP: Definition, Examples & How to Build

Steps to Start Building Your Own Product Roadmap

With an understanding of the purpose of product roadmaps in general, we can move on to the four phases necessary to create one.

Step 1: Harmonize the product’s mission, strategy, and goals

Think about the ultimate goal and benefit you want to provide to your users in the long run when you create your product’s vision and strategy. Product managers and executives work together in this phase to formulate a plan for the future of the product.

Step 2: Determine which goals are most important before deciding what to include in your plan

After the product team has come together around a shared product vision, strategy, and goals, it is time to choose which products and/or features will be prioritized for inclusion on the roadmap. The following data are excellent starting points:

Feedback from possible clients, coworkers, and end-users
Which specific markets does your product target?
Conferences, industrial events, and marketing campaigns are all examples of date-based landmarks.
What is the team’s capacity, and how can it best be utilized?
The sheer volume of data you’re processing and the conflicting demands of internal and external stakeholders can make this stage seem daunting.

Step 3: Create a road map that encapsulates your strategy

It’s time to start drafting your roadmap, which will explain what you’re working on when you’ll be working on it, when it will be launched, and why it’s a priority compared to the other possibilities you evaluated. If you want your roadmap to be useful and straightforward for your target audience, consider incorporating the following details:

Timeline: Even in the agile era, teams need to know when to expect what features in the near, intermediate, and far futures. No concrete times or dates are being discussed. Display a more generic time indicator, like the month, instead.

Solutions: Share your plans for releasing new features within the aforementioned timeframe. Explain the rationale behind including each element, whether you want to do so at a high or low degree of detail.

Situational strategy: Share the roadmap with your teams and explain why you’re prioritizing these features. Only around half of product teams are currently comfortable saying that their roadmaps accurately represent the strategic context of the products they are developing. Some stakeholders may find it difficult to accept certain decisions along the roadmap; nevertheless, providing them with strategic context can help them accept the necessity of certain trade-offs even if they do not agree with them.

The last thing to do is to get everyone on board with the roadmap and give them the tools they need to learn more. You can keep the team apprised of changes to the product roadmap by, say, setting up a regular meeting cadence or sending out emails. Productboard has a weekly product call that the whole company can join. During this call, they look at a roadmap for a big audience.

Make sure everyone from development to marketing has access to the product roadmap. Using a product roadmapping solution like Productboard makes it simple for stakeholders to observe and track changes at any time, from a centralized location.

Each stakeholder’s version of the roadmap may be customized to their specific needs thanks to Productboard’s role- and permission-based access controls. Once stakeholders have access, they can click on features and releases to gain insight into the bigger picture, such as the problem you’re attempting to solve and the goals you’re pursuing. They can also view the consumer reviews that inspired each new update or product.

What Is Productboard Used For?

The San Francisco-based business Productboard created a product management system called Productboard to assist product managers in gathering customer feedback, setting priorities, and uniting the team behind a common vision for the product’s future.

What Is the Difference Between UserVoice And Productboard?

The Product Roadmap is the foundation upon which Productboard bases its iterative feedback loop. UserVoice’s roadmapping and collaborative features are based on input from users.

The product-lifecycle-management market is where Productboard shines, with a 0.69 percent share. Productboard is one of 63 other products in the product-lifecycle-management space.

What Industry Is Productboard?

When it comes to helping teams bring the right products to market at the right time, Productboard is unrivaled as the top customer-centric product management platform.

Who Owns Productboard?

With the goal of assisting businesses in developing “products that matter,” Hubert Palan and Daniel Hejl launched Productboard in 2014. Since then, they’ve expanded from a small team to a sizable organization with the help of some of Silicon Valley’s best-known venture capital companies.

What Are the Core Values of Productboard?

Productboard is committed to the success of its clients and bases its decisions on an in-depth knowledge of their wants and needs. Productboard also places a premium on honest and forthright exchanges between staff members and clients.

Final Thoughts

Productboard is a customer-centric product management tool designed to aid in identifying and responding to consumer needs, setting priorities for future development, and uniting teams behind a common strategy for success. Built on an open platform, this software is both comprehensive and adaptable, making it ideal for the needs of modern product companies. We do hope this article was helpful. Let’s hear from you in the comment section below!