The 7 Top Aha! Alternatives for Product Managers

Aha! is a software company that provides a suite of product management software tools. The suite is made up of four pillar products:

• Aha! Ideas—a feature voting board tool that collects product ideas and feature requests
• Aha! Roadmaps—a tool that creates visual product roadmaps
• Aha! Create—a digital notebook and set of collaboration tools aimed at Product teams
• Aha! Develop—a product development organizing tool (think Jira).

Aha! Is used by product managers, product marketers, and other product development professionals to create and share visual product roadmaps, manage features and ideas, track progress and metrics, and collaborate with their team. It also allows users to create and share customer feedback and collaborate with stakeholders across the organization.

Aha! can help you understand what your customers want and implement it to build a better product.

It’s useful. So why might you want an alternative?

Why find an Aha! alternative?

There are a few reasons.

1. Limited integrations make it hard to centralize feedback

Aha! doesn’t always play well with other tools in your stack. Limited integration capabilities with other tools and systems can make it difficult to connect Aha! data with other tools your teams use.

It is especially limited when it comes to centralizing feedback from the channels you get it. Aha! can handle bringing customer feedback in from Zendesk and Salesforce… but that’s about it. Your customer-facing teams—Sales, Customer Success, Customer Support, etc.—need a tool that they can use without switching tools. Otherwise, your feedback may fall through the cracks.

2. Steep learning curve for teams

Some users report that there’s a steep learning curve for new users. That can make it difficult for team members to quickly become proficient in using the software. Ideally, you’ll have a solution that’s lightweight, straightforward, and does what it promises.

3. Segmentation is surface level

The key to understanding your customer feedback data is analysis. That data can tell you a lot, but only if you can slice and dice it by customer segment.

Aha! is limited in that respect. Sure, you can get some information on how valuable an idea is to customers, and you can see how many votes it has. But it’s not easy to do more elaborate segmentation. And that means you’re limited in how effectively you can prioritize features.

4. The portal may bias feedback

Aha!’s idea portal is really just a feature voting board tool. Voting boards can be useful, but they also have some significant drawbacks. Aha!’s board is structured in a way that can contribute to distorted results.

For example, people vote for what’s already popular, so showing vote counts can bias feedback in favour of features that are already popular. Also, people typically start from the top and scroll down, biasing feedback in favour of features earlier on the list.

Aha!’s board can’t be configured to remove vote counts or randomize the list order.

5. Some features are expensive

Aha! isn’t the most expensive customer feedback management tool (the award in that category goes to Salesforce Feedback Management 🥇).

But it’s not cheap either.

For example, to use basic segmentation of data, you’re looking at the Advanced Plan for feedback tracking. And that doesn’t include product roadmaps—to add that on, you’re looking at a minimum of $79 per month per user. That price is already a bit more than some competitors, but in the same ballpark.

What makes Aha! so much more expensive is that they charge contributors as user seats. Most other tools (including Savio) only charge for editors, managers, or workspace owners.

Here’s what that means: instead of just needing seats for your product management team, you now also need to buy seats for your customer success managers, your salespeople, your helpdesk, any marketers that receive feedback on social media… etc. You end up paying for many more seats than you might expect.

Together, its high price and other limitations may make Aha! just not worth the money for you.

This public review was posted on Capterra.

The above review on Capterra asserts: “[Aha! is] expensive and creates yet another layer to Jira. I’d rather just use Jira as the single source of truth.

I don’t necessarily agree—there are lots of reasons that Jira doesn’t work well to track feature requests and customer feedback. But still, you, like this reviewer, may not feel like Aha! provides the value you’d like.

If that’s you, here are some of the best Aha! alternatives to use instead.

Top 7 alternatives to Aha! for product managers

Ready to check out alternatives to Aha!? Here are some of their main competitors.

1. Savio

Did we put our own tool at the top of the list? Yes. I know—bold marketing move.

But as partial as we are, Savio really is one of the best Aha! Alternatives around. Here’s why.

Savio centralizes feedback from any channel

Aha! pulls feedback in from only two outside channels—Salesforce and Zendesk. In addition to those two integrations, Savio has a ton of others, including Intercom, HelpScout, Slack, HubSpot, and many others. These let you bring feedback into Savio by just adding a simple tag.

Check out the full list of integrations here (be prepared—it’s long).

Here, we’re searching for all the feature requests with “integration” in the title.

In addition, Savio can connect with thousands of other apps through Zapier. Or, use the Chrome extension to collect feedback from any web-based app. And if that doesn’t work, you can send feedback to Savio programmatically with the API. You can even email feedback directly into your Savio vault.

Savio is much more flexible than Aha! for collecting feedback.

Savio helps you organize your feedback and feature requests

Segmentation is key. Savio brings in your customer data from your CRM or support tool. That way, you can segment your feedback and feature requests to find out who wants what. For example, it’s easy to filter and sort features to find:

• Which features have the highest cumulative MRR
• Which features your Enterprise plan customers ask for most often
• Which features are most popular among your churned customers
• Which features are holding you back from closing the most deals

Here, we’ve filtered and sorted to find features with the highest cumulative MRR.

Savio empowers you to segment your data to find the highest-impact features—and prioritize them.

Savio unites your team around your customers

Once you’ve nailed down your roadmap, you have to build. Like Aha!, Savio lets you quickly share feedback with other team members and stakeholders, so everyone has access to Voice of the Customer data. That way, you can easily advocate for, or justify, product decisions.

Share feedback with your team to explain product or strategy decisions.

You can also push new customer feedback updates to a dedicated Slack channel, so everyone can keep up with new developments.

Savio helps you close the loop

Finally, one key to customer retention isn’t just building features that customers ask for, it’s telling them that you built them. In the biz, we call that “closing the feedback loop”.

Closing the loop is a bit like magic—it’s simple, but it makes a huge difference for customer loyalty and retention.

Savio sends close-the-loop emails for you in just a few clicks.

Aha! lets you post updates to subscribers of a feature, but that’s not really closing the loop.

Closing the loop means sending a personalized message—something like, “Hey Leanne, I know you asked for dark mode. We listened, and we built it! Here’s how you use it. Thanks for sharing! Please send more feedback if any occurs to you 😊”

In Savio, you can close the loop in literally a few clicks.

Savio makes sure your voting boards aren’t biased

Remember earlier how I was grumbling that most voting boards can actually mess up your feedback data?

Well, that’s why we designed a “contrarian” voting board—one that minimizes bias. Here’s why it's different than others:

• Our voting boards are optional. You can use them, but you don’t have to.
• You can randomize the order of ideas and feature requests. That way, you eliminate order effects.
• You can hide upvote counts. That way, customers aren’t influenced by what other people voted for.

Notice that vote counts are hidden on this voting board and that the features are randomized.

Advantages of Savio:

• Tons of integrations make it easy to bring in feedback from any tool
• Powerful customer segmentation lets you quickly find high-impact features
• Visibility into customer needs makes it easy to prioritize your product roadmap
• Well-designed voting board minimizes bias
• Close the feedback loop with customers in just a few clicks
• Kanban roadmaps and faeture request views
• Customizable roadmaps that display feature request contextual data

Disadvantages:

• No support for multiple languages

Pricing:

Savio starts at $39/m. For a team of 5 PMs with the same features as Aha!, you would need the Professional plan. It would cost $2,820 per year. The same team using Aha! would cost $4,740 per year, and that’s without buying seats for contributors.

Using Savio instead of Aha! would save a team of 5 at least $1,900 every year

Ideal use case: Savio is for B2B SaaS companies, from startups to enterprises, who are serious about collecting product feedback and tracking feature requests. Our customers are looking for powerful ways to understand and prioritize their feedback.

2. Productboard

Productboard is a product feedback software tool that provides teams with the functionality they need to develop and launch software. It helps businesses to align their product vision, strategy, and customer feedback with roadmaps.

Main features

There are 4 main things that Productboard does:

• A roadmapping tool lets you make visual roadmap strategy documents
• Scoring tools help you prioritize potential features
• An ideas portal allows you to centralize feedback from the channels you get it
• A voting board where you can solicit customer feedback directly

Advantages:

• Productboard is way more flexible than Aha! for collecting feedback and has many more integrations
• The voting board is separate from the ideas portal
• You can prioritize based on impact and effort
• You can align your teams with a customized roadmap

Disadvantages:

• Productboard is also quite expensive for the value it provides
• You can’t segment your feedback by customer attributes
• You can’t easily send personalized close-the-loop messages
• Voting boards can’t be configured to reduce bias
• No support for multiple languages

Read more: Aha! vs Productboard

And more: Savio vs. Productboard

Pricing:

Productboard pricing is a bit complicated with several plans, levels, and discounts. But basically, to get the same features as Aha! you’d need the “Pro” plan, which is $80/month/maker. A team of 5 PMs would cost $4,800 per year. The same team using Aha! would pay $4,740—it’s virtually the same price.

But here’s the kicker: a “Maker” in Productboard doesn’t include contributors. So while each seat is a tiny bit more expensive in Productboard, you’d usually buy many fewer seats. In Aha!, you would need to buy seats for your CS team, Sales, and Support… but in Productboard all those people would be able to submit feedback for free.

So even though they appear to be about the same price, most teams would spend much less using Productboard.

Read more: Save $6,000 Every Year with These 14 Productboard Alternatives

3. Monday.com

Monday.com is a project management platform that provides teams with a centralized platform to collaborate, organize, and track their work. It’s a big platform that can fit all kinds of use cases. Where it overlaps with Aha! is in the suite of tools it has for software development. The “monday dev” suite has functionality for feature request tracking, roadmaps, and collaboration.

Main features

• Private feedback boards
• Agile reporting and methodologies
• Customizable forms to solicit feedback
• Cross-team roadmaps

Advantages:

• Syncs with a number of other dev management tools
• Convenient if you already use Monday in your organization
• There is a wide range of customizable templates available
• Includes team collaboration tools like real-time chat, team calendars, and task management

Disadvantages:

• Centralization—while Monday has a lot of integrations in general, there are very few for centralizing feedback from other tools
• Segmentation—you can’t slice and dice your customer feedback to find high-impact features
• There’s no customer voting board
• You can’t easily close the loop with customers
• Currently, the Monday dev suite is in Beta, so it may not be completely polished

Pricing:

To collect and manage feedback, you’d need the Pro dev plan for $20/seat/month. For a team of 5, that’s $1,200 per year. The same team using Aha! would pay $4,740, so using Monday.com would save a team of 5 at least $3,500 every year.

But note, that would just be for your PM team. You would also probably purchase Monday seats for your Devs, so your total spend would likely be more. On the other hand, you would probably also be buying Aha! Develop seats for your devs, too. So Monday still would likely be cheaper.

Ideal use case: Monday is best suited for teams that already use the platform for their other teams, like the marketing platform, the CRM, or the project management teams.

4. ProductPlan

ProductPlan is a roadmapping tool—it specializes in making visual project plans using milestones and Gantt charts. It helps teams visually plan, communicate, and align product strategy and initiatives. It provides a centralized platform for teams to collaborate and share ideas, feedback, and progress in real-time. ProductPlan can be used for building software, but it can also be used for a bunch of other areas: marketing, project management, HR, and more.

Main features

• Public roadmaps
• A prioritization framework
• Table layout
• Messages
• Integrations with Microsoft Teams, Slack, Jira, and GitHub

Advantages:

• Visible product strategy
• An API to build ProductPlan into your existing tool stack
• Templates for several different use cases

Disadvantages:

• You can’t use it to collect feedback from customers
• You can’t prioritize based on customer attributes like MRR
• You can’t easily close the loop with customers when you build something they ask for
• Your customer feedback is completely separate from your product strategy
• No support for multiple languages

Pricing:

ProductPlan pricing plans start at $39/editor/month for the basic roadmapping features. For a team of five, it would cost you $2,340 each year. The same team using Aha! would pay $4,740, so using ProductPlan would save a team of 5 about $2,400 every year.

Ideal use case: Companies that just want visual strategy roadmaps or project management software and aren’t interested in collecting product feedback.

Read more:

• The 7 Top ProductPlan Alternatives for Product Managers
• Aha! vs. ProductPlan

Note: Savio’s powerful feedback engine is the perfect complement to ProductPlan’s roadmaps. Try Savio for free and reach out to us to see how we can help you layer customer feedback onto your ProductPlan roadmaps.

5. ProdPad

ProdPad is a product management solution that helps teams create, prioritize, and collaborate on product ideas. It provides tools such as idea management, customer feedback, and visual public roadmaps to help teams manage the product development process.

Main features

• Public product roadmaps
• A prioritization chart
• Customer feedback forms and portal
• An “AI Helper” helps with automation
• Feedback workflow integrations with Intercom, Zendesk, and Salesforce

Advantages:

• Visible product strategy facilitates collaboration
• You can keep track of customers’ ideas and be more customer-centric
• Segmentation allows you to see which customers want what
• Flexible feedback centralization from many integrations and a Chrome extension

Disadvantages:

• You can’t configure the voting board to minimize bias
• The segmentation and prioritization features are limited
• You can’t easily send personalized close-the-loop messages to customers when you build something they ask for

Pricing:

ProdPad pricing plans vary by the modules that you choose. To get the same features as Aha!, you would need the Roadmaps Essentials plan ($24/editor/month), the Ideas Advanced plan ($36/editor/month) and the Feedback Advanced plan ($36/editor/month), for a total of $96/month/editor.

A team of five editors would cost you $5,760 each year—about $1,000 more than Aha! would cost you.

Ideal use case: Enterprise SaaS companies that are willing to pay more for sophisticated AI tools to automate workflows.

Read more: ProdPad alternatives for Building Better Software

6. UserVoice

UserVoice is the OG of customer feedback—it pioneered feature request tracking software and was critical to making software more customer-centric. But while they were one of the first products, they’ve also lagged behind significantly (at least until recently) in terms of features.

UserVoice is essentially just a customer voting board (although they also now have pretty powerful segmentation, which is great—we’d love to see more of that in the existing feature request apps!).

Read more: UserVoice vs. Savio

Main features

• A feedback portal
• In-app feedback widgets
• Customer analytics and segmentation
• Feedback workflow integrations with Teams, Zendesk, and Salesforce

Advantages:

• You can keep track of customers’ ideas and be more customer-centric
• Segmentation allows you to see which customers want what
• A voting portal lets your customers vote for other ideas

Disadvantages:

• You can’t configure the voting board to minimize bias
• You can’t easily send personalized close-the-loop messages to customers when you build something they ask for
• UserVoice is very pricey, especially for the value it provides

Pricing:

UserVoice pricing plans start at $799 per month, but to get the same features as Aha!, you would need the Premium plan for $1,499 per month. Your team of five editors would cost you $17,988 each year—about $13,200 more than Aha! would cost.

Ideal use case: Large enterprise companies that are willing to pay much more for software without needing much more functionality.

Read more: UserVoice Alternatives for Building Better Software

7. Roadmunk

Roadmunk is another product management software tool that focuses on product roadmaps, but also has a feedback voting board tool for capturing product ideas. It’s well-designed and offers both a feedback portal and a chrome extension to gather feedback. It also lets you prioritize potential new features using the value vs. effort and the RICE frameworks.

Main features

• Visual product strategy roadmaps
• Prioritization frameworks
• Customer feedback portal
• Close the loop

Advantages:

• You can keep track of customers' ideas and be more customer-centric
• A voting portal lets your customers vote for other ideas
• Roadmaps help align your team
• Several different roadmap templates help you get started

Disadvantages:

• Poor centralization—there aren’t any native integrations with customer support tools or CRMs, making it difficult to bring feedback in from other tools
• Segmentation—you can’t slice and dice your feedback to understand customer segments
• You can’t configure the voting board to minimize bias

Pricing:

Roadmunk starts at $19 per month for a single roadmapper. A team of five editors would need the Business Plan, which is $49/editor/month or $2,940 each year.

Using Roadmunk instead of Aha! would save you $1,800 per year.

Ideal use case: For small teams looking for a roadmapping tool with basic feedback and prioritization features.

The best Aha! alternative

Savio is the best alternative to Aha! on the list. It:

• Has the most integrations with other tools and is the most flexible. That means you can actually bring in your feedback from anywhere. (Really though.)
• Has the most powerful segmentation. Most of the above tools can’t easily tell you which features are going to have the highest impact. Savio can.
• Best voting board configurations. Most voting boards are going to distort your data. Ours is designed so you can create a voting board where you get unbiased feedback.
• Easiest closing the loop. You can send close-the-loop messages to your customer in literally just a few clicks.
• Best value. Savio’s got big features, but with the lowest price on the list. It solves your problem without taking a big bite out of your budget.

Thinking about switching from Aha!?

Take Savio for a spin as part of your due diligence.

Sign up for a free trial.

Last Updated: 27-04-2023

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