One of your responsibilities as a product manager is creating, justifying, maintaining, and communicating your product roadmap. It outlines what your team will do, key milestones, when new updates will launch, how you’ll track success, and the why behind different projects. It’s the blueprint for what the organization will work on as far as product updates and iterations.
A good roadmap empowers a team to work efficiently and ultimately benefit both users and the organization. However, hiccups related to the roadmap can genuinely set a company back. For example, a Gartner survey revealed that around 45% of product launches are delayed by at least one month, and surely lack of alignment and other roadmapping issues are a big part of the problem.
However, the success of your product roadmapping isn’t about luck – it’s about the proper roadmap tool and the right processes. In this guide, we will go through different product roadmap tool options in detail so you can choose the right tool for your organizational needs. Once you have the right tool, you’re on your way to creating a product roadmap that helps your company reach its goals and delights your users.
What are the best tools for managing product roadmaps?
What Is Product Roadmap Software?
Product roadmap software is the cornerstone of the product management tech stack. It’s a product management tool that helps teams create and align on the timeline and process of product iterations in a given period of time.
The tool itself lists key milestones, due dates, important contextual info, tasks to be done, and task owners so that all stakeholders have visibility into where something stands and what’s expected of them in a given time period.
One of the main aspects of product roadmap software is that it’s a visual plan. Anyone on the team can open the software and even before they read, understand where things stand, what’s done and what’s not, and how the team is progressing toward its current milestones.
Overall, product roadmap software is a key planning tool, allowing stakeholders to understand what’s happening, what’s expected of them, and what the important milestones are.
What are the benefits of product roadmap software?
At the beginning of a company’s journey, teams often plan features and product iterations using simple tools like documents. Quickly, as the team and the product grow, it becomes too difficult to plan this haphazardly. This is usually where product roadmap software comes in.
The primary benefits of utilizing product roadmap software are:
- Visual representation of roadmap items and their status
- Motivating views of progress toward team goals
- Ability to communicate and collaborate with team members right on the roadmap itself in an organized way
- The ability to integrate your roadmap with your organization’s other key tools
- The flexibility for different teams to view the roadmap in the way that suits them best
Once your team graduates to the stage where they’ve integrated product roadmap software, you’ll quickly reap the benefits of a more organized, visual, and collaborative approach to product management.
Who uses product roadmap software?
One of the most central attributes of product roadmap software is its ability to meet the needs of several different teams and roles within your organization, fostering alignment and collaboration. Here are some of the typical primary users of roadmapping software:
- Product Teams: Product teams usually create the initial version of the roadmap based on customer needs and market knowledge, then assign roles and tasks to other teams via the software.
- Development Teams: Tech teams are also key users of roadmap software since they will be able to make sure that technical tasks are aligned with the timelines and other parameters defined by the product team.
- C-Suite and Executive Team: Leadership is generally on top of what’s happening when it comes to roadmapping, ensuring that the product plan is aligned with overall company goals and priorities.
- Customers: Many roadmapping tools integrate customer feedback, helping teams use this input to prioritize tasks based on what their customers need most.
Product roadmap software is a dynamic tool with key functions for many of the teams in your organization.
Features of Product Roadmap Planning Software
Product roadmap planning software is, first and foremost, a tool for fostering alignment and clear communication among various stakeholders in your organization. For that reason, clarity, simplicity, and integration with your existing tools are its key attributes.
Here are some specific features and attributes that may be important for you when choosing which product roadmap software works best for your team:
- Product roadmap creation: allows you to create and customize product roadmaps, providing a visual representation of your product strategy and timeline
- Visual overview of the roadmap milestones and stakeholder ownership: provides your team with visual templates so that you can see and follow your progress
- Flexibility of different roadmap views for different teams: enables the team to switch between views of the roadmap since, for example, your developers may need different information than your marketing or leadership teams
- Communication and collaboration functionality: allows you to add comments and share roadmap views to work effectively with your teammates
- Simple functionality to update, prioritize, and add dependencies to roadmap items: gives the option to easily change dates, track dependencies, and shift team priorities in real-time – manually or with automations
- Software integrations: offers quality integrations with your other product and project management software, such as Asana, Slack, Jira, or GitHub
- Filtering and search functions: allows you to filter or search by attributes like dates, labels, or teams, which becomes necessary as your roadmap grows
- Reporting and analytics: provides insights into the progress and performance of your product initiatives, including the ability to track milestones and completion rates in the context of your timeline goals
17 Best Product Roadmap Software
These 17 product roadmap tools offer the best feature sets for creating, planning, and managing a product roadmap. We explore each road mapping tool’s core features, offer pricing insights, and note each product’s review rating from G2 and Capterra.
1. Productboard
- Price: ranges from Free to $59 a month, plus option for customer enterprise plans
- G2 Review Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Productboard integrates customer feedback with product roadmaps. Productboard gives the entire team a look into customer feedback so they can continually align product development with user needs. It also offers a robust selection of software integrations that help you create a solid roadmap for your team.
2. Aha!
- Price: Between $9 and $59 per month, and each plan includes a free trial
- G2 Review Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Aha! is a template-based option for teams looking for additional flexibility with their roadmaps. The platform offers an array of product roadmap templates your team can use to visually organize your features and backlog ahead of new releases. You can also customize and color-code your view to get a quick view of your progress. Aha! also features the Aha! Score option, which lets you assign a number value based on each feature’s importance and priority, helping you align your team on what matters most.
3. Roadmunk
- Price: Between $19 and $99 per month, plus custom enterprise plans
- G2 Review Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Roadmunk is a roadmapping tool that channels your customers’ feedback directly to your product team so you can prioritize features based on the voice of the customer. This is a somewhat unique, customer-centric approach to roadmapping. The platform includes tools to assign weighted priority scores to different features so you can plan your next steps strategically and align as a team.
With Roadmunk, you can easily export your roadmap to fit different formats for presentations tailored to specific audiences. It supports various integrations and has its own API for custom syncs.
4. ProdPad
- Price: Between $24 and $44 monthly, but using different parts of the platform requires additional fees. Their pricing page has a calculator. All plans include a free trial.
- G2 Review Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
ProdPad is a product management tool that simplifies your processes through a lean product roadmap and organized backlog. The platform also integrates customer feedback, which helps prioritize tasks. It’s a particularly collaborative platform, encouraging internal discussions and idea submissions from your team. The tool integrates with over 1,000 apps, includes an API for custom link-ups, and offers AI-powered auto analysis for extra insights.
5. ProductPlan
- Price: Ranges from free to $49 a month, with custom plans available
- G2 Review Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
ProductPlan is roadmapping software that’s easy to use — and creates roadmaps that are easy to share. ProductPlan’s easy-to-navigate interface makes it simple for everyone on your team to use and collaborate. Its drag-and-drop style lets you easily shift priorities, and you can customize your roadmap layout based on different templates.
The platform also provides unlimited viewer accounts and allows you to publish your roadmap using a private link, making it simple to share your progress. It includes an API for custom integrations and works well with other software.
6. Zeda.io
- Pricing: $499 a month and up, with a 14-day free trial
- G2 Review Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Zeda.io is an AI-powered product management tool that helps your team incorporate the voice of the customer into revenue-generating products. It captures feedback from various communication channels like Slack, Intercom, and Zendesk, centralizes it, and generates insights to make sense of customer signals.
Moreover, it tracks revenue opportunities and lost deals, helping you build products that boost revenue. It goes beyond simple, surface-level feedback and analyzes your users’ emotions and pain points for an improved user experience.
7. Airfocus
- Price: $59 a month, or custom enterprise plans. Free 14-day trial is included.
- G2 Review Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Airfocus is a product management tool that allows your team to visualize data, organize your workspace, and prioritize feature development in whatever way works best for you. Airfocus includes a drag-and-drop interface for its roadmap builder and makes it easy to customize how you view the roadmap.
If you’re developing multiple products at once, you can consolidate several roadmaps into a single overview for a quick glance at what various internal teams are working on. Airfocus also includes interactive collaboration options for prioritization, including a live session feature that lets group members weigh in on which features they want to tackle first and why.
8. Craft.io
- Price: Between $19 and $79 per month, with customer enterprise options. Free trial included.
- G2 Review Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Craft.io is a product management tool that links each part of the roadmap process to the final deliverables. The platform is an all-in-one tool designed to connect your company objectives and strategies directly to your roadmap. It also includes easy-to-read status updates to get a quick view of progress and blockers. It’s generally collaborative and supports custom views for different stakeholders.
9. monday.com
- Price: Ranges from Free to $19 per seat per month, depending on your plan, and also offers custom enterprise plans along with free trials
- G2 Review Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
monday.com is an all-inclusive project management tool with functionality that supports product roadmapping. monday.com is an affordable option offering a wide range of integrations and automation functionality. Flexible visualization options let you look at data on a timeline, map, calendar, Kanban board, Gantt chart, and more.
10. Trello
- Price: Ranges from Free to $17.50 monthly, depending on your plan and the number of seats needed. Some plans include a free trial.
- G2 Review Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Trello is well-known for its Kanban board-style cards, but this project management tool also features timeline, calendar, and spreadsheet views. Trello is an affordable and easy-to-use option for product roadmapping. It includes product roadmap templates and supports integrations and automation options. There’s a good chance your team members are already familiar with Trello, but if not, it provides many helpful webinars to get started.
11. ClickUp
- Price: Ranges from Free to $12 per member per month, plus custom enterprise options. All plans include a free trial.
- G2 Review Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
ClickUp is a robust project management tool with specialized roadmap functionality. Overall, it’s a one-stop-shop for productivity that replaces the untold number of apps your team uses to stay on track. If you’re not ready to replace your existing apps, ClickUp supports more than 100 integrations and includes automation options so you can roadmap while maintaining your existing tools.
12. Wrike
- Price: Ranges from Free to $24.80 per month, per user and custom enterprise plans. All plans include a free trial.
- G2 Review Rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
Wrike is a customizable project management tool that supports agile product development sprints and provides key insights into your team’s capacity at any given moment. It offers a customizable, collaborative workspace that shows your team’s progress at a glance. The platform emphasizes team transparency, making the approval status of different tasks visible. It supports key integrations and offers an API.
13. Optimal AI
- Price: Ranges from $25 to $35 per month, per user and offers custom enterprise options.
- G2 Review Rating: 3.9 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Optimal AI (formerly known as Tara) is an AI-powered product update tool designed to help you ship new features fast. Its built-in automations, integrations, and collaboration capabilities are designed to help facilitate quick sprints and product updates. It includes tools to help you see where your team’s efforts are being directed so you can re-prioritize as needed. Optimal AI also runs a Discord community where you can chat with its team and other customers when you need help or inspiration.
14. SharpCloud
- Price: Plans range from free to $500 a month, plus custom enterprise plans. Beyond the free plan, you need to contact sales to get a tailored package and price.
- G2 Review Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
SharpCloud is a data visualization software designed to help your team make decisions easily by mapping out interdependencies and encouraging collaboration. SharpCloud connects interdependent projects, tasks, and ideas together in a visual map so your team will know if one of your key milestones is waiting on deliverables from another task or project. It’s intended for agile teams that need to keep track of product sprints, scrums, and product iterations.
SharpCloud also includes a unique voting system so your team members can weigh in on which features to develop next. It’s customizable and lets you sort data into different formats, including an easy-to-scan backlog view.
15. Teamwork
- Pricing: Contact for pricing details
- G2 Review Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Teamwork is a project management platform built to help manage a client’s entire lifecycle, from quote to cash. Its wide range of features also makes it a fantastic choice for product teams to build and manage their roadmap, from new features to bug fixes, based on client needs.
Teamwork offers a range of vital tools for client service teams, including time tracking, financial management, robust reporting, and free client access that ensures every project is delivered on time and under budget.
16. Visor
- Pricing: Ranges from free to $500 monthly, per user. All plans include a free trial.
- G2 Review Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Visor is a product and task management tool focusing on intuitive and beautiful design. Your entire team can see what’s overdue, what’s coming up, and all other roadmap details with easy-to-read, colorful charts. The platform has all the expected collaboration features and key integrations with tools like Jira, Asana, and Salesforce.
17. Nifty
- Pricing: Ranges from free to $16 monthly, per user, and has custom enterprise options. All plans include a free trial.
- G2 Review Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
- Capterra Review Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Nifty is a project management tool with impressive roadmapping features, including various views for different purposes. One of the more unique and potentially useful views available is a glance at your roadmap status from the perspective of internal dependencies, helping your team understand quickly and easily who or what is blocking progress. Nifty also includes an impressive array of integrations with the most commonly used tools on tech and product teams.
How to Choose a Product Roadmap Tool
By now, you know that there are a lot of quality roadmapping tools out there, and you might be wondering: how do we choose the one that’s right for us?
While there’s no exact formula and finding the right tool sometimes takes some trial and error, here are some questions that your team will want to discuss when you begin the process of choosing a tool:
- Who exactly will use the tool, and what’s most important for them to see?
- Will we collaborate on the roadmapping tool itself, or keep team collaboration on other platforms?
- Is it important for us to have customer feedback on our roadmapping tool?
- What tools do we currently use that must be integrated with our product roadmap tool?
- What is our budget for the tool? How many seats will we need overall?
Once your team has begun to sort out the answers to these questions, we recommend the following:
- Choose a point person on the product team to own the process of choosing the tool
- Create a chart that features each tool you’re considering, along with the attributes you defined as important
- Based on your chart, rule out the tools that don’t offer the primary things that your team needs and/or don’t fit into your budget
- Schedule demos or block off time to create accounts and try out each of the tools left on your list
Eventually, you’ll be able to narrow it down. Keep in mind that although you’ll make the choice intelligently and thoughtfully, it does happen that you sometimes need to revisit your choice based on unforeseen limitations or team adoption issues. If that happens, remember that it’s all a normal part of the process.
Product Roadmapping Clicks Better With Whatfix
When you’re embarking on the journey of choosing your first or next product roadmapping tool, choosing the right digital adoption platform (DAP) in tandem to help increase users’ adoption of your roadmap items is a great move.
With a dynamic DAP like Whatfix, you can support your roadmapping efforts and ensure your updates are seen, utilized, and optimized for your user base.
Here are a few key ways that the Whatfix DAP can supercharge your product iterations:
- Increase feature adoption by creating awareness of new features with in-app pop-ups and product walkthroughs
- Make sure that users know how to use new features with Self Help, an easy-to-update, self-serve knowledge base that users can access whenever they’d like
- Communicate with users at exactly the right moment: use tools like product walkthroughs and in-app messages not only to create awareness, but also to provide helpful instructions for the usage of new features at exactly the right moment in the flow
- Collect user feedback using Surveys so that you can continue to iterate on each product update and adjust your product roadmap accordingly
- Analyze the adoption of new features and product updates, so you can continue to iterate on them and change your product roadmap when you need to
The Whatfix DAP is also a no-code solution, meaning that you can do all of this without the help of a developer. This frees up your tech team’s time to tackle those key roadmap tasks.
Learn more about getting more impact from your product roadmap with Whatfix’s digital adoption platform now!
Product Roadmap Software FAQs
What Is a product roadmap?
A product roadmap is both a timeline and a detailed plan that outlines how a product will evolve over time. It includes new functionality, features, general updates, and release dates.
What are the different types of product roadmap tools?
Product roadmap tools can be as simple as spreadsheets, Gantt charts, Kanban boards, calendars, or documents. However, most modern roadmaps are built on dedicated product roadmap software platforms like those featured in this guide.
What are the benefits of using a product roadmap tool?
Product teams that use roadmap software can better align projects, work more collaboratively with other stakeholders, schedule and prioritize new features, and create a more comprehensive and transparent product strategy.
Who maintains the product roadmap?
The product team will own the roadmaps. The main owner of a roadmap’s creation and management will be a product manager or the product leadership.
Who should have access to your product roadmap tool?
While your product team will obviously find value in a road mapping tool, sharing your roadmap with other teams across your organization will be beneficial. Your sales and marketing teams will need to know what is coming in future releases to build a better sales pitch and promote the new capabilities. Customer success will need to be informed to showcase new features to current customers. Really, any customer or product-centric team stands to gain from using a great product roadmapping tool.
