Skip to main content

Every great product starts with a great idea, right? Well, unless you are Steve Jobs, great ideas don’t come that easily. Idea collection is your best bet to build an innovation process where you can gather what is on everyone’s minds, categorize them, decide how that translates into user-friendly products, and iterate as many times as you need.

However, this repository of ideas should live in an ecosystem that is accessible to all stakeholders. That’s where web-based idea management software comes in.

What is idea management software?

Idea management software is an online platform that gives you and your team the capacity to brainstorm ideas, score them, and expand on those worth pursuing.

Therefore, idea management tools are full of features that help you exchange notes with others, collaborate, and collect feedback regardless of their geographical location.

Overviews Of The 10 Best Idea Management Software Solutions

Here’s a brief description of each idea management solution to showcase each tool’s best use case and some noteworthy features.

1

FigJam by Figma

Best idea management tool for brainstorming and voting as a team

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.7
989 reviews

Free plan available

From $3/user/month

FigJam is a digital whiteboard tool designed to facilitate collaborative brainstorming and idea generation. As a product of the popular design tool company Figma, FigJam is all about making it easy for teams to get their ideas out there, organize them, and make sense of them.

What sets FigJam apart from other idea management tools is its focus on collaboration and interactivity. It's not just about capturing ideas; it's about exploring them together as a team. And with its intuitive interface and fun features, it makes the whole process feel less like work and more like play.

One of the standout features of FigJam is its sticky notes. I know, I know, sticky notes are nothing new. But FigJam does them really well. You can color-code them, resize them, and easily move them around. It's like having an infinite, digital sticky note wall.

Another cool feature is their idea voting system. It's a simple, yet powerful way to get a sense of what ideas are resonating with the rest of your team.

Lastly, their cursor chat feature is also pretty interesting. It lets you have real-time, in-context conversations about the ideas on the board, making it easy to collaborate with your team members and keep those creative juices flowing.

FigJam also integrates seamlessly with Figma, which is a big plus if you're already using Figma for your design work. Other integrations include Asana, Dropbox, Figma, Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Notion, Slack, Trello, and numerous tools for prototyping, user testing, and developer handoff.

2

Miro

Best idea management whiteboard software with templates

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.8
3414 reviews

Free plan available

From $10/user/month

Miro is a digital collaboration and idea management platform that can be used to plan and document creative processes. It's a virtual whiteboard with story maps, flowcharts, sticky notes, and wireframes that teams can use to visualize their ideas, brainstorm, and collaborate from anywhere in real time. Voting, clustering, and timers help facilitate better ideation sessions and prioritization.

The software is highly adaptable and can be used for various types of idea management, including product ideas. Once ideas have been generated and sorted, teams can use the platform to map out their plans for how they'll build or improve their products. A large library of templates is included and divided into various business functions and industries. You can also use the software to track how many ideas your teams generate, how many are implemented, and how many are abandoned.

Several integrations are available to connect the system to your other product and project management systems. The software integrates with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Workspace, Asana, monday.com, Jira, Dropbox, OneDrive, Notion, Airtable, ClickUp, and Unito, among others. A free plan is available and paid plans start from $10 per user per month.

3

Brightidea

Best idea management software with a native whiteboard feature

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.3
159 reviews

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

Brightidea is an idea management software to collect, screen, evaluate, and develop ideas in product development. It has an idea box feature where employees can submit new ideas anytime.

Brightidea has a labs feature for facilitating design research for new products without installing a separate PLM software. This idea management tool also has an external innovation feature to help you explore ideas from outside sources like universities and startups.

Brainstorming is one of the best ways to gather ideas for new products and Brightidea has a native whiteboard feature to help you make brainstorming more productive. It has stickies you can use to take note of suggestions for new products.

Brightidea’s whiteboard has markers and pens that team members can use to illustrate ideas to make them easier to understand. It also allows participants to upload images to show other participants pictures of prototypes or features they want to add.

Brightidea offers customized pricing and a free demo upon request.

4

Ideawake

Best idea management software with customizable submission forms

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
4.5
9 reviews

14-day free trial + free demo available

Pricing upon request

Ideawake is an innovation management software to collect, evaluate, and implement ideas for new products. You can use it to allow team members to vote on ideas to gain the group’s consensus.

This innovation management software has custom scorecards you can use to ensure uniformity in judging new ideas. Ideawake also allows you to assign ideas for the review of subject matter experts to ensure that they get judged by qualified reviewers.

Ideawake is the best idea management software because it has customizable submission forms if you want to make idea submission more organized. With the help of Ideawake’s submission forms, you can ensure that submissions contain the same information to make assessing ideas more consistent.

The fields in Ideawake’s submission forms can help you filter submissions to make categorizing them easier.Ideawake integrates with other idea management tools like Microsoft 365, Slack, Trello, Dropbox, and Zoom.

Ideawake provides pricing information and a free demo upon customer request.

5

Reveall

Best idea management software with built-in product discovery features

This is an aggregated rating for this tool including ratings from Crozdesk users and ratings from other sites.
3.5
1 review

14-day free trial

From $24/month

Reveall is an idea management software that helps organizations capture, curate, and develop the best ideas across their teams. It provides an easy-to-use platform for collecting, organizing, and refining product ideas to turn them into successful products.

Users can quickly prioritize and review product ideas using its intuitive interface. The platform reduces the time required to get new product ideas ready for launch while improving organizational innovation. By streamlining the idea management process, the software enables teams to efficiently manage large projects without getting overwhelmed.

The voting tools allow teams to easily rank their favorite product concepts so they can focus on developing the most promising ones first. Its robust analytics capabilities provide valuable insights into which concepts have the most potential and which need additional refinement before launch.

The software's journey visualization feature can loop in customer insights to provide users with a visual overview of the progress of their ideas, enabling users to prioritize the best ideas for further exploration. Businesses can use this feature to compare different versions of an idea, which can be helpful when making decisions about which version should move forward. Additionally, users can view both current and past versions side-by-side to better understand how far an idea has come since its conception.

6

Planbox

Best idea management software with an idea portal + campaign management

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

Planbox is an idea management system for identifying insights, trends, and emerging technologies you can use in developing new products. It has a corporate venturing feature to help you target the right partnerships and investment opportunities.

Planbox has a continuous improvement platform to help you comment and vote on ideas. An innovative idea can come from anywhere, and Planbox is the best idea management software if you want to gather good ideas from outside sources like startups, academe, government, and the online community.

You can use Planbox to host co-creation activities like hackathons, shark tanks, and idea challenges to quickly discover new ideas for products. It has embedded and customizable evaluation methods to help you consistently assess new ideas.

Planbox integrates with other idea management tools, including Microsoft Teams, G Suite, Sharepoint, and Slack. You can also connect PLanbox to a paid Zapier account if you want access to other premium apps.

Planbox provides pricing information and a free demo upon request.

7

Google Workspace

Best idea management software with video conferencing with collaborators

14-day free trial

From $6/user/month

Google Workspace is a collection of productivity and collaboration tools that allows team members to contribute ideas in text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, or IRL by video or chat.

Google Workspace is cloud-based to give team members access to documents and other crucial files wherever they are. This makes it a great option for remote or hybrid teams. Because it’s free, you might want to combine it with other (paid) software for a more complete approach to idea management. Video conferences have become the norm as more companies turn to telecommuting and Google Workspace is the best idea management software if you want one to help you conduct video conferences with team members.

What’s great about Google Workspace is that it allows up to 100 participants to join a video meeting to gather as many team members as you want to collect all the ideas you need.

Google Workspace allows you to record meetings and store them in Google Drive so you can replay meetings and note ideas you might have missed.

Google Workspace is free to use.

8

Coda

Best idea management software for triaging ideas

Free Plan Available

From $12/month/user

Coda is a cloud-based document editor to help team members collaborate on brainstorming and product development. You can use it to facilitate meetings, create an agenda, and take meeting notes. It has a workflow automation feature to automate simple tasks and give you more time to attend to critical projects.

Coda has a document sharing feature to ensure that team members have access to information needed in planning new products. Coda has an idea triage feature to help you evaluate ideas to isolate that one great idea for a new product.

Coda lets you categorize ideas to assign them to reviewers for further evaluations. It also has graphs to help product managers visually assess the status of ideas and understand the percentage of useful ideas submitted.

Coda has an idea submission template, so you know the date of submission of ideas and the reviewer’s name to create follow-ups on ideas that lack status updates.

You can connect Coda to a paid Zapier account to give you access to premium apps that can help you develop new products.

Coda has a free plan with limited features, while the pricing for paid plans starts at $12/month/user.

9

Canny

Best idea management software with a feature request system

14-day free trial + free version available

From $400/month (unlimited users)

Canny is an idea management software to help you collect, manage, and evaluate product feedback. It has a product roadmap feature with an idea ranking functionality to score projects and feature requests and help you prioritize projects. You can use Canny to monitor the status of projects to help you focus on product development stages experiencing bottlenecks.

Canny is the best idea management software for a feature request system. This request system provides you with a centralized location for feature requests from customers, stakeholders, and employees. It also gives you a means of reaching out to customers who made similar requests for further discussions. You can use Canny to check the profiles of request submitters to understand the target demographic of a new product.

Canny integrates with other product development and project management tools, including HubSpot, Salesforce, G Suite, Jira, and Zendesk.

Canny has a free forever plan with limited features, while the pricing of its paid plans starts at $400/month/up to 5 administrators and an unlimited number of contributors.

10

Idea Drop

Best idea management software with a gamification feature

Free demo available

Pricing upon request

Idea Drop is an idea management software that helps you discover, evaluate, and execute innovative ideas for your product. It has a pattern recognition feature to detect similar ideas and encourage employees with the same ideas to collaborate. Idea Drop has a cloaking feature to make idea submission confidential by protecting the identities of those who submitted them.Competitions motivate employees to bring in new ideas, and Idea Drop has a gamification feature to help you take advantage of this.

Idea Drop allows you to build in rewards and challenges to encourage participants in bringing new ideas to the table. The software allows you to assign real-time innovation/idea scores, assign deadlines to team challenges, and track progress via a kanban-style workflow board.

Idea Drop provides pricing details and a free demo upon request.

Need expert help selecting the right Ideas Management Software?

We’ve joined up with Crozdesk.com to give all our readers (yes, you!) access to Crozdesk’s software advisors. Just use the form below to share your needs, and they will contact you at no cost or commitment. You will then be matched and connected to a shortlist of vendors that best fit your company, and you can access exclusive software discounts!

The Best Idea Management Software Solutions Comparison Chart

Here is a table where you can compare all the tools we just covered in the overviews. If you want to expand your research, we have more options below.

Tool Trial Info Price
1
FigJam by Figma

Best idea management tool for brainstorming and voting as a team

Free plan available

From $3/user/month Website
2
Miro

Best idea management whiteboard software with templates

Free plan available

From $10/user/month Website
3
Brightidea

Best idea management software with a native whiteboard feature

Free demo available

Pricing upon request Website
4
Ideawake

Best idea management software with customizable submission forms

14-day free trial + free demo available

Pricing upon request Website
5
Reveall

Best idea management software with built-in product discovery features

14-day free trial

From $24/month Website
6
Planbox

Best idea management software with an idea portal + campaign management

Free demo available

Pricing upon request Website
7
Google Workspace

Best idea management software with video conferencing with collaborators

14-day free trial

From $6/user/month Website
8
Coda

Best idea management software for triaging ideas

Free Plan Available

From $12/month/user Website
9
Canny

Best idea management software with a feature request system

14-day free trial + free version available

From $400/month (unlimited users) Website
10
Idea Drop

Best idea management software with a gamification feature

Free demo available

Pricing upon request Website

Other Idea Management Software Options

Here are a few more that didn’t make the top list, but worth considering if you would like to expand your research.

  1. Mural

    Best idea management software with a digital whiteboard & collaboration features

  2. monday.com

    Idea management software with a digital whiteboard & collaboration features

  3. ClickUp

    Best idea management software for team collaboration and communication

  4. Wrike

    Best idea management with to-do lists, timelines, & collaboration features

  5. Ignition

    Best idea management with idea submission & voting

  6. Walling

    Idea management management software for workspace visualization

  7. Confluence

    Work management platform for sharing and storing ideas

  8. Ideanote

    Innovation software for gathering, organizing, prioritizing, and developing ideas

  9. IdeaScale

    Innovation management solution for linking organizations to outside sources of ideas

  10. Asana

    Work management software for organizing teams and managing projects.

  11. Smartsheet

    SaaS for work management and collaboration

  12. Lucidspark

    Virtual whiteboard for sharing and capturing ideas with digital sticky notes, comments, and user mentions

  13. Craft.io

    Best idea management software with a strategic roadmap feature

  14. Viima

    Innovation management software for collecting and developing ideas

How I Picked The Best Idea Management Software

First, I researched and selected all the popular idea management software according to user reviews and ratings. Then, I narrowed down the list by weighing factors that make software a good option for managing ideas. Finally, using my experience in product ideation, I came up with criteria I would use for my evaluation, such as:

User Interface (UI)

Developing new products requires time, so I look for idea management software with a clean interface so I don’t waste time looking for the features I need. A good user interface directly impacts the user experience and will also reflect in how views and dashboards are presented within the tool.

Key Features

  • Idea submission: Allows the submission of ideas from internal and external sources.
  • Gamification: Makes idea submission more competitive through rewards and recognitions. 
  • Whiteboard: Digital whiteboard allows team members to brainstorm, share, and assess ideas in real-time.
  • Communication tools: Allows real-time collaboration on ideas using in-app chat, comments, and mentions.
  • Workspaces: Enables product development teams to share ideas, documents, and files in a secure environment.

Usability

Great ideas come from a wide range of sources, so I look for software that anyone can easily use to share their ideas. 

Integrations

Companies use a wide range of software and tools, so I am looking for idea management software that will work well with other software. This can include roadmap tools like Aha!, mind mapping software like Mindmeister, and all sorts of product-related tools. 

Pricing

Companies subscribe to many other software products, so I look for an idea management software with great features but reasonable pricing. 

Idea Management Software FAQs

Find answers to common questions other people ask about this topic.

What's Next?

Now that you know a bit more about how to use idea management tools to develop new ideas for products, I suggest you read about the idea management process to get more details related to that last FAQ. The article will explain the four steps you need to follow, plus five tips on how to get started.

Related tool lists:

If you want to learn about the latest software and tools to help your company excel, subscribe to The Product Manager today. 

By Ben Aston

Ben Aston is an online media entrepreneur and founder of Black & White Zebra, an indie media company on a mission to help people and organizations succeed.

Ben applies his expertise in design and strategy to enable businesses to deliver innovative products and services that delight customers. Ben is passionate about understanding customer needs through design research, identifying opportunities based on those insights, and empowering designers and technologists to create solutions. He is driven to develop and uncover new opportunities for clients, establishing strong connections with their customers through product solutions that create lasting value.