Productboard vs UserVoice: Which Product Management Tool is the Best Choice for Me?

Productboard and UserVoice are both super handy product management tools. They can help you collect customer product feedback, prioritize your features, and develop a unified product strategy.

But while both are potentially useful, they’re very different from each other. One might fit like a glove, while the other may not be worth what you pay for it.

In this article, we do a full comparison of the two tools with the aim of helping you find the right tool for your company and particular needs. At a high level, the differences are:

• Productboard is primarily a product roadmapping tool, with product feedback tacked on. It’s better for building beautiful product roadmaps. It’s also better for smaller companies or enterprises without massive PM tool budgets.

• UserVoice is primarily a product feedback tool. Its primary purpose is to collect feedback to drive product strategy, although it also has product roadmapping features. UserVoice is also expensive—it’s best for very large companies with large budgets.

But, there’s more to it than that. Read on for a full description of the differences between Productboard and UserVoice.

Note: Savio is another product management tool that helps B2B SaaS companies use customer feedback to build better software. Our tool is an alternative to both ProductPlan and Productboard, but we promise not to let that bias our evaluation in this article 😉.

Feature comparison: Productboard vs. UserVoice

What features does each tool provide? Here’s a comparison, line by line. (We’ve also thrown Savio in there to help you understand how Productboard and UserVoice are different from our own tool.)

Disclaimer: We wrote this based on the product’s website. We also took Productboard for a test drive, but couldn’t get a free trial of UserVoice without a Sales call. We were careful to ensure that everything was accurate at the time of writing, but features change over time—let us know if you notice an error and we’ll happily update the article.

	Productboard	UserVoice	Savio
Centralize feedback
Public feedback board	✅	✅	✅
Feedback board is optional	✅	✅	✅
Make feedback board private	✅	✅	✅
Hide feature vote counts	❌	❌	✅
Randomize feature order	❌	❌	✅
Collect feedback from Intercom	✅	❌	✅
Collect feedback from Zendesk	✅	✅	✅
Collect feedback from Salesforce	✅ +Added cost, and it’s not automatic	✅	✅
Collect feedback from HubSpot CRM	❌	❌	✅
Collect feedback from Help Scout	❌	❌	✅
Collect feedback from Slack	✅	✅	✅
Collect feedback from Microsoft Teams	✅	✅	❌
Collect feedback from Gong	✅	❌	❌
Collect feedback from Gainsight	❌	✅ +Added cost	❌
Integrate with FullStory	❌	✅ +Added cost	❌
Collect feedback from Chrome extension	✅	✅ (Contributor Sidebar)	✅
Forward feedback via email	✅	❌	✅
Zapier connection	✅	❌	✅
API	✅	✅	✅
Analyze and prioritize
Link feedback with account data	❌	✅ (Only from Salesforce, through Fivetran or Stitch, or the API)	✅
Feedback segmentation	✅ (Only by market size, industry, or geography)	✅	✅
Sort by MRR impact	❌	✅	✅
Prioritize features	✅	✅	✅
Integrate with Segment	❌	❌	✅
Roadmaps and development
Build visual internal roadmaps	✅	✅	✅
Build visual public roadmap	✅	❌	✅
Integrate with Jira	✅	✅	✅
Integrate with Shortcut	✅	❌	✅
Integrate with GitHub	✅	❌	❌
Communicate with customers
Send updates to customers	✅	✅	✅
Personalized close-the-loop message	❌	❌	✅
Send microsurveys	❌	✅ +Added cost	❌
Pricing
Free trial	✅	✅ (You have to talk to Sales first)	✅
Price range	$20/m/editor to $80/m/editor	$799/m to $1,499/m	$23/m/editor to $79/m/editor
Annual cost for 5 PMs	$4,800	$17,988	$2,820
Annual cost for 15 PMs	$14,400	$17,988	$7,500

Those are the features, but let’s dive into what those mean for what you need to do.

UserVoice vs. Productboard—what are the differences?

Both Productboard and UserVoice were built to help PMs decide what to build next. They also both recognize that building good software requires a customer feedback system.

But they come at it from different angles. Productboard starts with the product roadmap, and then builds feedback onto that. UserVoice starts with user feedback and then builds on roadmapping and collaboration tools from there.

Either can work. At Savio, we know a solid customer feedback tracking system has to have the following components:

1. Centralization: You can collect feedback and new feature ideas from all your channels

2. Prioritization: You can analyze feedback to easily decide what to build next

3. Communication: You can communicate your strategy to stakeholders and customers

4. Coordination: You can coordinate the development process with your dev team

5. Close the loop: You can follow up with customers when you build a feature they request

6. Value: The ideal tool will have more features for fewer dollars (or pounds or euros)

Here’s how UserVoice and Productboard stack up for each of those components.

1. Centralization

Customer feedback starts its journey in any number of communication channels: your support tool, email, your CRM, a phone call, a customer interview, etc. A further complication is that it passes through the hands of your frontline teams—Customer Success, Customer Support, Sales, your help desk, Marketing, or whoever else is chatting face-to-face with your users.

You need to get it from those teams (and their tools) to a single centralized place.

Voting boards: Both Productboards and UserVoice have feedback boards. Both are set up in such a way that they can lead to bias in your feedback (here’s why). Productboard’s is a little better, IMHO, because you don’t need to use it; your feedback vault is separate from the voting board this is how Savio does it, too). With UserVoice, your voting board is your feedback inbox.

Integrations: Both these two tools are pretty flexible with centralizing feedback—they are among the best feature request apps on this dimension. Productboard wins out slightly—it has 6 native integrations compared to UserVoice’s 5 (Savio has 6, too). Productboard and Savio also let you connect through Zapier, whereas UserVoice doesn’t.

Other channels: Both Productboard and UserVoice (and Savio) have a Chrome Extension (UserVoice calls theirs a “sidebar”) and an API.

Productboard (and Savio) let you forward emails into your feedback vault; UserVoice doesn’t. But UserVoice has an in-app widget, whereas Productboard and Savio don’t.

Overall: Productboard is a bit better here in general, but it really depends on what channels you use. If you need to get feedback from Intercom, Gong, or email, Productboard is probably more useful to you. If you get feedback from Gainsight or you want an in-app feedback widget, UserVoice would be a better choice.

Savio is the best of the three because it has the most flexibility and can fit with essentially any tool you use.

2. Prioritization

You need to be able to sort through your idea backlog and feature request list to decide what to build next.

Productboard: Productboard pushes you to assign an “impact score” from 0 to +3 for each piece of feedback. Those scores are added up for each feature, and then that is used as a kind of total priority score.

Productboard’s user impact score.

You can technically segment your feedback and feature requests, but only by things like geography or industry—not more useful customer data like MRR. Productboard doesn’t let you connect account data (like plan, MRR, type of customer, etc.) with your feedback—that’s one of the big drawbacks.

UserVoice: UserVoice is much better here because it lets you see both what features are popular (have the most votes) as well as other important factors like how much cumulative revenue is tied to each feature. There are also indications of importance that you can use to prioritize.

UserVoice’s prioritization framework includes revenue and importance variables.

UserVoice, like Savio, also lets you slice and dice your customer feedback by customer attributes to fine-tune your analysis based on your particular business goals.

Note: You need to be on higher plans to do this. The first plan, Essentials, doesn’t even let you collect your feedback into features—you need the Pro plan for that. If you want to attach feedback to account data, you need the Premium plan. Also, it only really works if you use Salesforce; otherwise, you need to use a complicated connector through Fivetran, or Stitch, or build one with their API.

(Savio can pull in your account data from anywhere you keep it—Salesforce, HubSpot, Intercom, HelpScout, or Zendesk).

Overall: UserVoice has much better functionality here because you can slice and dice your feedback data to prioritize more effectively (Savio is even better).

3. Communication and team alignment

Now you need to communicate your product strategy to all your stakeholders—both internal and external.

Roadmaps: Productboard shines here. They have a ton of roadmap templates to ensure all your internal stakeholders are aligned on a unified strategy. They also have public roadmaps that help your users understand what’s being built and what’s coming up next.

Productboard’s public roadmap. They also have a number of internal roadmaps that have timeline and Kanban-style options.

UserVoice has only very basic roadmaps, and they're meant only for internal teams.

Guide: Product Roadmap Design Elements and How to Use Them

Savio’s roadmaps are super flexible—you can fully customize them, including as many or as few features as you need to suit your audience. They also are unique in that they display evidence to justify your product decisions.

For example, you can quickly see the number of requests for a feature or each feature’s cumulative MRR. That helps reduce disagreement (or conflict) about roadmapping decisions.

Savio roadmaps display feedback data so you can help others understand why you made your product decisions (and minimize roadmap disagreements).

Other communication tools: Both Productboard and UserVoice let you post updates to Microsoft teams. UserVoice (and Savio) also lets you post feedback updates to Slack.

Overall: Productboard is better here—their roadmaps are just much more elegant and functional.

4. Coordination with development

You’ve sent this sprint’s features off to Dev—make sure your tool integrates with theirs.

Productboard integrates with Jira, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Pivotal tracker, Trello, and Shortcut (on any plan)

UserVoice integrates with Jira and Azure DevOps (but you need the Premium plan to use them).

Savio integrates with Jira and Shortcut (on any plan).

Overall: Productboard is the best here. Savio and Uservoice are about the same.

5. Close the feedback loop

Closing the loop is a simple way to drive loyalty and retention. It just means sending a personalized message that lets a customer know when you build something they ask for.

Productboard: Productboard lets you send updates to everyone that voted on a feature. You can also talk to individual customers to clarify feedback. You can’t send personalized emails to customers without sending them one at a time.

UserVoice: UserVoice is the same—you can send automatic updates to anyone that asked for a feature. You can also engage with customers 1:1, but you can’t send a batch of personalized close-the-loop messages.

Overall: They’re the same here. Savio is better because you can quickly send a batch of personalized close-the-loop emails in just a few clicks.

6. Value

You want more bling with less “cha-ching”. Here’s how they stack up on price for features.

Productboard pricing: The lowest plan is appropriate for virtually no one since you can’t sort features or even collect feedback at that level. Unless you just want to make roadmaps, you need the Pro plan. That will cost you $80/month/maker:

• A team of 5 PMs would cost $4,800 annually

• A team of 15 PMs would cost $14,400 annually

Note: You may even want the next plan up—Scale—if you want to be truly customer-centric. You would need it for the Jira and Salesforce integrations, customer segmentation, and unlimited feedback portals.

Productboard pricing.

UserVoice pricing: As we said above, you pretty much need the Premium plan here to do much of anything.

The Essentials plan ($699/month) gets you just the ability to collect feedback. You don’t get the widget, you can’t aggregate feedback into features, you can’t build a roadmap and you can’t message your customers. And you only get 200 end users providing feedback Honestly, there are lots of free feature request tracking apps that give you more features than this plan does.

The Pro plan is maybe doable for some companies. You get the web portal, the in-app widget, and you can roll feedback up into features. But you still can’t segment feedback by account data, connect to Salesforce, Jira, or Azure DevOps, or even make a roadmap.

To get the same features as Productboard, you need the Premium plan for $1,349 per month.

• A team of 5 PMs would cost $16,188 annually

• A team of 15 PMs would cost $16,188 annually

UserVoice pricing.

That still only gets you 5,000 feedback submitters… if you need more, you need to go to the Enterprise plan). And just a heads up, if you want a free trial, you have to talk to Sales—you can’t just go in and kick the tires.

For contrast, Savio is much better value. To get the same features as Productboard and UserVoice:

• A team of 5 PMs would cost you $2,820 annually

• A team of 15 PMs would cost you $7,500 annually

Savio pricing.

Overall: Productboard is less expensive than UserVoice, especially for smaller teams. Savio has the best value of the three.

The takeaway: Productboard is better for product roadmaps, UserVoice is better for feature prioritization and segmentation

Productboard and UserVoice are both potentially powerful tools that your product team can use to nail down their roadmap using customer feedback and insights. But they have different strengths.

1. Centralization: Productboard is a bit better in general, but it depends on what tools you use. (Savio is the best at centralization.)

2. Prioritization: UserVoice wins because it lets you segment your feedback by attributes like MRR to easily find high-impact features. (So does Savio).

3. Communicating product strategy: Productboard wins. It has much better roadmapping functionality.

4. Coordination: Productboard wins. It connects to more product development tools and would fit better in more workflows. (UserVoice and Savio are tied for second).

5. Close the loop: It’s a tie. Both let you send generic notifications to customers that asked for a feature when you launch it, but you can’t personalize those messages. (Savio is better because you can send personalized close-the-loop emails.)

6. Value: Productboard is cheaper for mostly the same features, especially with smaller teams. (Savio is the best value).

	Productboard	UserVoice	Savio
Centralization	🥈	🥉	🥇
Prioritization	🥈	🥇	🥇
Communication	🥇	🥈	🥈
Coordination	🥇	🥈	🥈
Close the loop	🥈	🥈	🥇
Value	🥈	🥉	🥇

The best tool for you really depends on which aspects of the product management tools matter the most to you.

But no matter how you slice it, Savio has quite a few advantages over the other options—a more powerful segmentation engine, more flexible centralization and better close-the-loop capability. It’s also much better value than the other two options, saving you thousands of dollars a year (car rally anyone?).

Take Savio for a spin to see how it can help you make better product decisions and boost customer satisfaction.

Sign up for a free trial.

Want to read up on it a little more first? Learn more here.

More resources and feedback management tool comparisons

Still not sure what tool is best for you? Here are some resources to help find project management tools and evaluate them against their competitors:

Product management software tools

• Complete Guide to Product Management Software Tools

• 12+ Powerful Feature Request Apps for Software Development

• 10+ Best In-App Customer Feedback Tools for SaaS Companies

• 12+ Powerful Feature Request Apps for Software Development

• 11+ Feature Voting Board Tools

Learn more about Productboard

• 14+ Alternatives to Productboard

• Productboard Plan Cost

• Productboard vs. Savio

• Productboard vs. Canny

• Productboard vs. Aha!

• Productboard vs. ProdPad

• Productboard vs. ProductPlan

Learn more about UserVoice

• 13+ UserVoice Competitors that Will Save Your SaaS Startup $17,000 a Year

• UserVoice Plan Cost

• UserVoice vs. Savio

• UserVoice vs. Canny

• UserVoice vs. ProdPad

Last Updated: 28-04-2023

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