productboard

What is Productboard

Productboard is a product management platform designed to help teams understand what customers need, decide what to build next, and align everyone on the roadmap. The main purpose of the tool is to provide a central system for product managers to gather feedback, prioritize features, and communicate their strategy. It helps connect the feedback from customers directly to the features being developed. The company was founded in 2014 by Hubert Palan and Daniel Hejl. Productboard has its headquarters in San Francisco, California, with offices in other locations like Prague and Vancouver. It serves as a single source of truth for product teams, from small startups to large enterprises.

Productboard Features

Productboard offers a set of tools to manage the entire product lifecycle. Here are its main features:

• Insights Hub: This feature allows you to centralize all customer feedback from different sources like emails, support tickets (Zendesk, Intercom), sales calls (Salesforce), and surveys. You can highlight important parts of the feedback and link them directly to feature ideas.
• Dynamic Roadmaps: Create and share visual roadmaps that are tailored for different audiences. You can make high-level roadmaps for executives, detailed release plans for engineers, and feature launch plans for marketing teams. These roadmaps update in real-time.
• Prioritization Frameworks: Productboard helps you make data-driven decisions. You can use built-in frameworks like Value vs. Effort or RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) to score and rank features. This helps you focus on what will bring the most value.
• Customer Portal: A dedicated portal where you can share your ideas with customers, validate them, and collect new ideas. Customers can vote and comment, giving you direct input on what is important to them.
• Productboard AI: This uses artificial intelligence to analyze large amounts of customer feedback. It can identify trends, summarize notes, and help you work faster by automating manual tasks.
• Integrations: It connects with many popular tools used by development, sales, and support teams. This ensures a smooth workflow across different departments.

Productboard Pricing Plans

Productboard offers several pricing plans designed for different team sizes and needs. Specific prices are not listed here, but the plans are structured as follows:

• Essentials Plan: This plan is for individuals or small teams just starting with product management. It includes basic features for collecting feedback and creating simple roadmaps.
• Pro Plan: Aimed at growing companies, this plan offers more advanced features. It includes more robust prioritization frameworks, more integrations, and better collaboration tools for the entire team.
• Enterprise Plan: This is for large organizations that need advanced security, scalability, and support. It includes features like single sign-on (SSO), custom roles and permissions, and dedicated customer success support.

Productboard Free Plan

Productboard does not offer a permanent free plan. However, it provides a 15-day free trial for its paid plans. During the trial period, you can access all the features of the selected plan. This allows you to test the platform thoroughly, connect your data sources, create roadmaps, and see if it fits your team's workflow before making a purchase.

How to use Productboard

Getting started with Productboard involves a few simple steps to organize your product management process.

1. Set up your workspace: First, sign up for a trial and create your product workspace. You can define your product hierarchy, which includes different products, components, and features.
2. Gather feedback: Connect Productboard to your feedback channels. Integrate it with tools like Zendesk, Intercom, Slack, or set up a dedicated email address to forward feedback to your Insights Hub.
3. Process and link insights: As feedback comes in, process it by highlighting key user needs and linking them to new or existing feature ideas. This builds a repository of evidence for why a feature is important.
4. Prioritize your features: Go to the Features board and use prioritization scores (like User Impact Score or RICE) to rank your feature ideas based on the collected insights and strategic goals.
5. Build your roadmap: Once features are prioritized, add them to a roadmap. Customize the roadmap view for different stakeholders (e.g., a timeline view for leadership, a release-based view for engineering).
6. Push to development: Integrate Productboard with Jira or Azure DevOps. Push prioritized features from your roadmap directly into your development team's backlog for implementation.

Pros and Cons of Productboard

Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using Productboard.

Pros:

• Centralized Feedback: Excellent at collecting all customer feedback in one place, making it easy to find and analyze.
• Powerful Roadmapping: The roadmapping tools are flexible and visually appealing, great for communicating plans to different teams.
• Strong Integrations: Seamlessly connects with key tools like Jira, Slack, and Zendesk, which improves workflow efficiency.
• User-Centric Approach: Keeps the focus on customer needs by directly linking feedback to feature development.

Cons:

• Pricing: Can be expensive, especially for small businesses or startups with limited budgets.
• Learning Curve: Some of the more advanced features can take time to learn and master fully.
• Performance: The application can sometimes feel slow when loaded with a large amount of data and features.

Productboard integrations

Productboard integrates with a wide range of tools to streamline workflows across different teams.

• Jira, Azure DevOps, GitHub: For pushing prioritized features to development teams and tracking progress.
• Slack & Microsoft Teams: For sharing updates, roadmaps, and feedback within your communication channels.
• Zendesk & Intercom: For capturing customer feedback directly from support and communication platforms.
• Salesforce: For linking feedback from sales conversations and customer accounts to product ideas.
• Zapier: For connecting Productboard with thousands of other apps to automate custom workflows.

To set up an integration, you typically go to the 'Integrations' section in your workspace settings, select the app, and follow the authentication and configuration steps.

Productboard Alternatives

If Productboard is not the right fit, here are some other popular product management tools:

• Aha!: A very comprehensive tool that covers not just roadmapping but also strategy and marketing. It is powerful but can be more complex than Productboard.
• Jira Product Discovery: A good alternative for teams that are heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem. It offers tight integration with Jira Software.
• Canny: Focuses strongly on collecting and managing user feedback through public boards. It is simpler and more focused on the feedback loop.
• Roadmunk: Known for its excellent and easy-to-use roadmapping features. It is a great choice if your primary need is creating beautiful, flexible roadmaps.
• Craft.io: An all-in-one product management tool that provides a complete system for strategy, feedback, roadmapping, and prioritization.

Productboard API

Yes, Productboard provides a public API that allows developers to build custom integrations and automate workflows. The API lets you programmatically access and manage data such as features, components, and feedback.

To get an API key, you need to be an admin in your Productboard workspace. You can generate a token in the Workspace Settings under the Integrations or API section. This token is used to authenticate your API requests.

Here is a simple example of how to use the API with curl to fetch a list of features:

curl -X GET "https://api.productboard.com/features" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json"

Replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with the token you generated. For more details, you can visit the Productboard developer portal on their website.

Productboard Affiliate program

Productboard does not have a traditional affiliate program where you earn a commission for referrals. Instead, they offer a Partner Program for solution partners, consultants, and technology partners who help customers implement or integrate with Productboard. This program is designed for businesses that provide services related to product management. If you are interested in becoming a partner, you should visit the 'Partners' page on the Productboard website and contact their partnership team directly to discuss opportunities.