10 Best Feature Flag Software For Managing Feature Flags [2023]

Unleash is an open-source, enterprise-ready feature management solution built with privacy in mind. Companies use Unleash to decouple the release process from deployment to production.

The software operates as an API client, meaning it integrates with a codebase via APIs to be updated in real-time. The platform gives developers a centralized dashboard to quickly change feature flag configurations. Additionally, it tracks metrics and collects data on how users interact with any new feature. Its role-based access controls ensure that only authorized members can approve, test, and launch new features, providing a secure and streamlined release process.

The platform's toggling feature allows developers to switch features on or off without releasing new code. Businesses can offer early access to users, A/B test features, and change back-end connections on the fly. The software lets developers segment the user base at various levels, making it easy to control who gets what. Feature rollouts can help companies ease into new features before they’re fully ready.

Developers can release features gradually to a subset of users, and then work up to full releases. This way, users can monitor adoption before committing to an entire release. Moreover, context-based rollouts enable users to toggle features based on specific contexts, such as a user’s location or environment.

Pricing starts at $80 per month for 5 users, and a 14-day free trial is available.

Flagsmith is an open source feature flag software that simplifies the continuous deployment of new code. The software enables your team to handle remote configs, helping them switch time-sensitive features on/off.

The solution comes with segments, A/B testing, and integrations with popular analytics engines out of the box. Its SDKs are easy to work with, and it provides hosted API to make deployment easier during development cycles. One of the things that make Flagsmith stand out is its clean interface.

You can add tags and descriptions to your feature flags, so they’re easier to manage. Flagsmith costs from $45/3 users/month.

The solution offers a free version with limited functionalities for a single user.

Optimizely is feature management and A/B testing software that helps you with experimentation, server-side testing, and multivariate testing. The software has a small learning curve, but it can help your DevOps, Product, Marketing, and Design specialists if your team learns how to leverage most of its features.

This solution tends to be better suited for websites rather than apps, and it’s not ideal for those who want to use feature flags for backend rollouts. However, its mix of features makes it a good choice for companies that want to test out different customer pipelines in order to improve their CRO.

One of the things that make Optimizely shine is the fact that it allows you to add custom JS and CSS per test, so you can refine your tests with ease.

Optimizely offers custom pricing upon request.

Molasses is a feature management tool that helps you deploy code with fewer incidents. The software offers a good mix of feature flags and A/B testing tools, so you can test your code extensively without affecting your user base.

This solution supports SDKs for programming languages such as JavaScript, React, Go, Node, Python, and Ruby, and plans to add others in the future. You can create a detailed audit logging, so you can have a clear picture of who did what and why. You can also set up alerts and receive Slack notifications in real-time when someone changes the code.

Molasses is great if you want to speed up your development process with SDKs in different languages.

Molasses costs from $50/month. The software also offers a free version with limited capabilities.

Harness was founded by former engineers from companies like Apple, Yahoo, and Splunk, who were frustrated with the limitations of traditional CI/CD tools and wanted to build a more modern, cloud-native solution that would enable faster and safer software delivery.

Harness feature flag software allows development teams to release new features safely and efficiently by decoupling code deployment from feature release through controlled feature toggling.

Harness provides a comprehensive feature flagging solution that enables development teams to release new features in a controlled and safe manner. Harness feature flags offer a flexible and scalable approach to feature releases, allowing teams to decouple code deployment from feature releases and gradually roll out new functionality to targeted users. With Harness, teams can easily create and manage feature flags, track flag performance metrics, and quickly roll back changes if necessary.

Harness has a free, open source community editon. Paid plans start at $100/month.

GrowthBook is an open source feature management and experimentation platform that helps your engineering team adopt an experimentation culture. The software enables your engineers to use feature flags to deploy new code after interpreting user data and metrics.

The solution is modular. You can use it for feature flags, experiments, or both. Its modular build makes it ideal for SaaS startups that don’t have enough traffic to run full experiments but want the benefits of using feature flags.

The software impresses with its lightweight SDKs and allows you to evaluate everything you do locally, without network requests.

Growthbook costs from $20/user/month.

The software also offers a free version with limited capabilities.

Flagship is a feature flagging software that enables your engineers to ship code faster, reduce risk, and constantly improve your users’ experience. The solution supports most popular technology stacks, including Java, JS, Python, and more. You can choose the best implementation method for your team, via the tool’s agnostic API or the available SDKs.

Flagship helps your team decouple deployment from the release of a feature and experiment extensively before rolling something out to all your users. The experimentation platform focuses on outcomes, not outputs, and you can run A/B tests to track the impact of your releases.

Flagship costs from $175/month/15,000 monthly active users.

The platform offers a free 30-day trial.

Apptimize is a feature flag management tool that helps dev teams improve the user experiences they create across their digital channels. The solution focuses on mobile experiences, so it excels at helping you create better mobile apps. This software comes with easy-to-deploy software development kits (SDKs) and stands out thanks to its clean user interface and ease of use.

Apptimize simplifies your A/B tests, enabling you to schedule your feature rollouts or rollbacks based on test-driven product decisions. Thanks to its mobile-centric build and advanced testing capabilities, I chose Apptimize as the ideal tool for feature rollout on native mobile apps.

Apptimize offers customized pricing upon request. The tool offers a free version with limited capabilities.

CloudBees is another software delivery platform with out-of-the-box integrations and good feature flagging capabilities. The solution helps you manage release workflows and simplifies cross-team communication.

This solution has a nice-looking build that allows you to improve your continuous delivery process. Its tracking and predictive analytics features help you identify risks and opportunities in good time, and automatically collect data across your software development lifecycle.

CloudBees stands out thanks to its pipeline and environment management features. You can create custom pipelines, test your code and get real-time reports about the deployment success, failure, throughput, and runtime.

CloudBees offers customized pricing upon demand.

LaunchDarkly is feature management and A/B testing software that enables your dev team to wrap code with feature flags and deploy it safely, without impacting your users. The solution helps you segment your user base based on various attributes, and you can ship your feature rollouts to specific user subsets if you want to test them out.

LaunchDarkly stands out thanks to its straightforward UI, simple SDK integrations, and extensive documentation. Not only that, but the tool’s A/B tests are easy to set up, so your Product or Marketing specialists can run them.

The software’s insight graph does a great job of showing you which variants different user segments are currently receiving, so you can identify and remove ineffective flags.

LaunchDarkly costs from $10/user/month. The solution offers a free 14-day trial and a live demo.