The 7 Top ProductPlan Alternatives for Product Managers

ProductPlan is a software platform that lets you build a product roadmap. You add new features, prioritize them, and then organize them to create a visual roadmap. Then, share it with your stakeholders to align your team and communicate with your customers what you’ll build next.

Some of the features ProductPlan includes are:

• Roadmaps. It’s easy to build and share visual roadmaps with your teams and customers.
• Prioritization. Assign scores to features to help you decide what to build next.
• Table layout: See your feature list in a table view
• Integrations: Integrates with Jira, GitHub and Slack for more efficient work
• Team collaboration: Flexible permissions so your team can work together

Roadmap software applications like ProductPlan are useful to product management teams. Still, it’s relatively incomplete when compared to other product management tools. Depending on the needs of your company, it will be money wasted, because it will not deliver what you need. Because of this, it is important to think about alternatives that might be more worthwhile for you.

Note:* Savio helps B2B SaaS Customer Success, Product, and Sales teams organize and prioritize product feedback and feature requests. *Learn more about Savio here.

Why find a ProductPlan alternative?

ProductPlan has some critical weaknesses when it comes to planning your software.

1. It doesn’t connect your product plan to your customer feedback

One of the most important factors to consider when building your product is the voice of the customer. Most companies collect customer feedback. But to truly be customer-centric, you actually have to use that feedback to inform your product or services.

ProductPlan doesn’t connect your potential new features or your product strategy with customer feedback or feature requests. It doesn’t gather feedback, and it doesn’t let you use feedback to help you prioritize your product planning.

2. You can’t easily prioritize

Prioritization is one of the most difficult tasks of product managers. ProductPlan’s solution for prioritization is a system where you score potential features based on benefits and costs (which you can customize). It’s basically a version of the value vs. complexity priority matrix.

The downside is that the product manager does the scoring. It’s not tied to what your customers think or their data.

For example, you have no idea:

• How many customers have asked for the feature
• How important the feedback or feature is to the customers who asked for it
• The kinds of customers who asked for it—free plan, enterprise plan, etc.
• The revenue tied to the feature

ProductPlan doesn’t tell you any of that. Your prioritization is based on only what your team scores as important. Sure, you can use a framework, but you input all the data required for that framework yourself. (And it turns out that people are staggeringly bad at estimating the value or effort of initiatives.)

3. You can’t close the loop with customers

Part of building a product is communicating with your customers. Closing the loop means following up with a customer when you act on the feedback they gave you or built the feature they asked for.

ProductPlan lets you share roadmaps for different audiences, including your users. But it’s passive. If your customers aren’t looking for your roadmap, they won’t know what’s going on. There’s no changelog feature, there aren’t automated emails, and there’s no way to send personalized close-the-loop emails that say, “Hey, you asked for this feature, we built it.”

4. Poor value for money

ProductPlan helps you build attractive visual roadmaps—but not much else. For having such limited features, it’s quite expensive. At the time of writing, the ProductPlan pricing was:

• $39/editor/month for the “Basic” plan
• $69/editor/month for the “Professional” plan

ProductPlan’s pricing as listed on its website.

So what would it cost you?

• A team of 5 product managers that just need to create simple roadmaps could use the Basic plan. It would cost $2,340 per year.
• A team of 15 PMs would cost $7,020 per year.

It’s not super expensive—it’s about the same as most other product management tools. But it has many fewer features.

For comparison, Savio has similar roadmapping features, but it also:

• Lets you centralize customer feedback from any channel
• Slice and dice your data by customer segment
• Easily prioritize features based on impact
• Close the loop to improve retention

And Savio costs much less:

• A team of 5 PMs $1,572 per year ($768 less than ProductPlan)
• A team of 15 PMs $4,332 per year ($2,420 less than ProductPlan)

For less money, you get more features if you switch from ProductPlan.

(Note: Our pricing may have changed since this article was written. See current Savio pricing here.)

5. Not great for building software

At the end of the day, ProductPlan isn’t really set up for building software, at least in a way that’s customer-centric. Maybe that’s why on their website, they advertise that their customers are mostly from other industries like food services, health insurance, travel, and electronics.

Not many of ProductPlan’s customers are B2B SaaS companies.

ProductPlan isn’t set up with the features that those of us building software need most.

Top 7 alternatives to ProductPlan for SaaS companies

The limitations of ProductPlan listed above may mean that it’s not the ideal tool for your team. If that’s you, here’s a list of some alternative tools that you can consider instead.

1. Savio

Savio is my own tool. I’ve been building it with my co-founder, the one and only Ryan Stocker, since 2019. I know that we’re biased, but it really is the best tool out there if what you care about is using customer feedback to help you build better software.

Here’s why it’s so great at what it does.

Get a steady flow of structured feedback from customer-facing teams

Savio gathers feedback from any channel you get it—your CRM, support tool, Slack, email, or even through a voting board. Use a web app we don’t have a native integration for? That’s cool—you can use the Chrome extension. Or connect through Zapier. And if that's still not enough, there’s an API.

We know your customer-facing teams need to send feedback quickly and without switching tools. We built Savio to be the most flexible product out there.

Savio collects and centralizes feedback from anywhere you get it.

Feedback centralized, organized, and enriched

Your customer feedback is only valuable if you can use it to drive product decisions. Savio helps you structure your feedback, connecting it with data from your CRM and support tool, so you know which customers are asking for what.

That’s huge. It means you can slice and dice your feedback to find out things like:

• What features are most popular
• What features are most popular among your enterprise customers
• What features have the most revenue tied up in them
• What features your churned customers were asking for
• What features your prospects are looking for

And many more. Because Savio enriches your feedback with customer data, it’s much easier to find the highest-impact features—and then prioritize them.

Note: Savio helps you centralize, organize, and prioritize product feedback from your GTM team, by integrating with Slack, HubSpot, Intercom, Zendesk, SFDC, Help Scout, and more. Learn more about Savio.

Here, we’ve filtered Savio to find feature requests with a cumulative MRR over $1,500 and then sorted them from greatest to least.

Unite your team around your customers

It takes a village to raise a software product. But that village doesn’t always agree on how the software should be raised.

Savio won’t make your execs easier to deal with. But it will give you the data you need to confidently make a case for your roadmap and explain your rationale. You still might get over-ruled… but at least the conversation can centre customer needs. You can also use the roadmap feature to communicate a visual roadmap to stakeholders.

Use feedback data from Savio to justify your product decisions.

Build customer loyalty and reduce churn by closing the loop

Closing the feedback loop is probably the easiest way to dramatically increase customer loyalty. When you tell customers that you not only listened to their feedback but used it to build a feature, they absolutely love it.

Savio lets you quickly send close-the-loop emails in just a few clicks. You can also personalize the messages to be more effective—for example, you can close the loop with churned customers and try to win them back. Or, close the loop with prospects to show them to have a better chance at winning their business.

Savio lets you send close-the-loop emails in just a few clicks.

A public voting board

Savio lets you quickly publish a public voting board where your users can submit feedback directly from your site. They can also vote on features that other users submit.

While voting boards have drawbacks, ours is designed to help you minimize them:

• Privacy is built in. You can make any feature request or piece of feedback private. You can even make the whole board private if you want.
• Hidden vote counts. People tend to vote for features that are popular (herd behaviour). Savio lets you hide vote counts so they don’t influence or bias your feedback.
• Randomized order. Most voting boards have order effects—people tend to read from the top and scroll. They end up voting more for features at the top of your list. Savio lets you randomize the order of features so you don’t get order effects.

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

Advantages of Savio:

• Integration with the main tools on the market to gather feedback
• Customer segmentation that lets you quickly find high-impact resources
• Better visibility into customer needs to help prioritize the product roadmap
• Unbiased voting frame
• Closing the feedback loop in a simple and powerful way
• Kanban Views
• Visual roadmap tools that display context (like number of requests and cumulative MRR)
• Great value—lots of features for the cost

Disadvantages:

• No support for multiple languages
• Not as pretty

Pricing:

Savio starts at $39/month. For a team of 5 PMs to get a roadmap (as well as feedback management features), you would pay $131/month or $1,542 per year.

That’s about $800 less than ProductPlan.

2. Aha!

Aha! has a suite of tools to help you build software, including a Roadmaps module that is a direct competitor to ProductPlan. The module lets you create and share visual product roadmaps. It also integrates easily with other Aha! modules that can capture and manage customer ideas in a backlog, let you collaborate with your team, and organize your software development team’s workflow.

Read more:

• Aha! vs. Savio
• Aha! vs. ProductPlan

Main features

Aha! has 4 modules. You can purchase and use each separately.

• Aha! Roadmaps creates visual product roadmaps (this is the closest alternative to ProductPlan)
• Aha! Ideas—a feature voting board tool that collects product ideas and feature requests
• Aha! Create—a digital notebook and set of collaboration tools aimed at Product teams
• Aha! Develop—a product development organizing tool (an alternative to Jira)

Advantages:

• The suite of modules gives you the flexibility to choose the tools that are appropriate for your needs
• You can gather customer feedback and build it into your product development process
• You can share visual product roadmaps with your team members and other stakeholders
• Several different roadmap templates

Disadvantages:

• You can’t centralize your feedback from any channel, just your ideas portal
• The idea portal that powers roadmaps can’t be configured to minimize bias (hide vote counts or randomize feature order)
• You can’t prioritize features to your roadmap using customer data, only your own scores on value and effort
• You can’t easily close the loop with customers

Read more: Aha! alternatives for product managers

Pricing:

Aha! pricing for roadmaps starts at $59/user/month, but to get unlimited viewers like ProductPlan offers, you would need Aha!’s pro plan, which is $99/user/month. For a team of 5 PMs, you would pay $5,940 per year.

That’s $3,600 more than ProductPlan.

Note: that that price comes with the Ideas module included, so you could collect customer feedback.

3. ProdPad

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Prodpad is a set of product management tools that includes visual roadmaps. It gives you the ability to collect feedback in an idea backlog, prioritize features based on impact and effort, and then create a visual roadmap to communicate your product strategy.

Main features

• Lean “Now, Next, Later” roadmaps
• AI assistance helps surface product ideas
• Ideas backlog portal with impact and effort scoring
• Integrations with Slack, Salesforce, Jira, and Intercom

Advantages:

• Centralize customer feedback from several channels
• Ties your product roadmap to customer feedback and product ideas
• Collaboration tools for your team
• Integrates with several development tools

Disadvantages:

• You can only make very simple “Now/Next/Later” product roadmaps
• Prioritization is very basic, based only on your own scoring of impact and effort
• You can’t slice and dice your feedback based on customer data
• The ideas portal can’t be configured to minimize bias
• No easy way to close the loop with customers when you build what they ask for

Read more: Top 12 ProdPad Alternatives to Create Better Software

Pricing:

ProdPad pricing starts at $24 per editor, which gives you broadly the same features as ProductPlan. For a team of 5 PMs, it would be $1,440 per year.

That’s $900 less than ProductPlan.

Note: For feedback collection and the ideas portal, you’d have to add additional modules, which would cost more.

4. Productboard

Productboard is a product management software tool focused on helping product teams understand their customers' needs. It’s got roadmaps, and also lets you collect feedback and prioritize features.

Main features

• Roadmaps
• Drag-and-drop feature prioritization
• Feedback ideas boards and feedback portals
• Integrates with Microsoft Teams, Confluence, GitHub, and more

Advantages:

• Customizable roadmap templates
• Integrates with Jira, GitHub, and Shortcut
• Ability to centralize feedback from several apps
• Automated emails tell customers when there are new features

Disadvantages:

• Feature prioritization based on your own scoring, not impact on customers
• You can’t bring in customer data to find high-impact features
• The public feedback portal can’t be customized to reduce bias
• You can’t send personalized close-the-loop emails when you build a feature a customer asked for

Read More: Save $6,000 Annually with These Productboard Alternatives

Pricing:

Productboard pricing starts at $20 per user per month, which gets you the same features as ProductPlan’s roadmaps.  For a team of 5 PMs, it would cost $1,200 per year.

That’s $1,140 less than ProductPlan

Note: If you want the customer portal, it would be $80/user/month. And if you want to segment your feedback by market size or industry, you would need the Scale plan with a custom price.

Read more: ProductPlan vs Productboard

5. Upvoty

Upvoty is primarily a feature voting board tool, but it also has a roadmapping tool and a changelog. The roadmaps are much simpler than ProductPlan, and it’s much less flexible. But it’s better if you care about capturing customer feedback. And the changelog might be a nice touch.

Main features:

• Simple kanban-style roadmaps
• Change log
• Capture feedback with a voting board and in-app widgets
• Changelog to publish product updates
• Integrates with Intercom, Jira, Slack, Zapier, and more

Advantages:

• Roadmaps have customizable statuses
• Lots of ways to centralize feedback from other channels
• Voting moderation
• Anonymous voting

Disadvantages:

• Roadmaps are very simple, and only come with kanban style
• You can’t configure voting boards to minimize bias
• You can’t segment your customer feedback by customer data
• Difficult to close the feedback loop

Read more: 9 Best Upvoty Alternatives

Pricing:

There are some less expensive plans for $15 and $39 per month, but to get the same features as ProductPlan, you would need to pay $75 per month or $900 per year.

That’s $1,440 less than ProductPlan

6. Trello

Trello is a popular kanban-inspired collaboration and project management software tool. Trello isn't designed specifically for product management or roadmaps, but its adaptable format can help you implement a roadmap—at least a kanban-style one—without too much trouble. And it excels at other kinds of project planning.

Main features:

• Kanban boards with lists and cards
• Powerups can add voting to cards
• Make dashboards private or public

Advantages:

• It's easy to use
• Depending on who you want to share it with, this could be a free option

Disadvantages:

• It's highly manual
• You can’t set up Gantt chart-style roadmaps, use swimlanes, etc.
• You can’t link to customer feedback
• There’s no easy prioritization framework
• You can’t easily close the loop with customers

Price:

Trello can be free for the most basic functions. If you want to share your roadmap outside your team you probably want to enable observers, which would cost you $10/user/month. For a team of 5 PMs, that would be $600 annually.

That’s $1,740 less than ProductPlan.

7. UserVoice

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UserVoice is the OG feedback collection tool. For a long time, all it did was collect feedback in a portal, so it wouldn’t have been a clear competitor with ProductPlan. However, in the last few years, UserVoice launched a roadmaps tool, which means that you could use it instead of ProductPlan if you wanted to.

Read more: UserVoice vs. Savio

Main features:

• Feedback portal and widgets
• Connect your customer data to segment your customer feedback
• Prioritize features
• Create and share roadmaps

Advantages:

• You can segment your features by customer data to find the highest-impact features
• You can centralize your data from several different channels
• The widget allows you to collect in-app feedback

Disadvantages:

• You can’t configure voting boards to minimize bias
• It's not easy to close the loop with customers
• It’s very expensive for the features it offers

Read more*:* 13 UserVoice competitors that will save you $11,000 a year

Pricing:

UserVoice pricing starts at $799 per month for the "Essentials" package, but that wouldn’t get you the roadmaps feature. You’d have to pay $1,499 per month for that feature, or $17,988 each year.

That’s $15,600 more than ProductPlan

The best ProductPlan alternative

Savio is the best ProductPlan alternative on the list. Here’s why:

• The roadmaps are just as good
• You can attach your roadmaps to customer feedback
• You can bring customer feedback in from anywhere
• Savio has the most powerful prioritization and segmentation engine
• Savio has the best voting board settings, avoiding bias
• Savio and the easiest to close the loop
• Savio has the best value for money—the most features for the lowest price

Each of these features helps you use customer feedback to make better products.

Thinking of making ProductPlan your product management tool?

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

**Sign up for a **free trial.

Last Updated: 28-04-2023

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