Best Product Planning Software Shortlist
Here’s the shortlist of the best product planning software systems that I’ll cover in this article, with detailed summaries below:
Product planning is the backbone of any successful product launch. Product planning software can help you prepare for the development of a new product by allowing you to build roadmaps, launch checklists, objectively score new opportunities, and prioritize what needs to happen next.
I've compiled and evaluated a list of the 10 best product planning software in this article. Whether you're a seasoned product manager or just starting out, these tools will help streamline your process and bring your product from concept to launch.
What is product planning software?
Product planning software is a program with features that support product development activities such as ideation, prioritization, roadmap creation, collaboration, and tracking. It also helps product managers and their teams develop and organize product plans.
Overview of the 10 Best Product Planning Software
Here’s a brief description of each product planning software that showcases its best use case and standout features. Feel free to check out how I picked the software on this list at any moment.
Craft.io
Best product planning software with a user-friendly interface
Craft.io helps product teams prioritize features, plan releases, and track progress. Designed for product managers and teams of all sizes, Craft.io's intuitive interface makes creating and managing user stories, epics, and tasks a walk in the park.
Why I Picked Craft.io: Craft.io offers a unique visual approach to product planning with excellent user experience. One of the standout features of this tool is its ability to create a virtual product canvas that allows users to easily capture, prioritize, and share ideas.
Craft.io is best suited for product teams that need a user-friendly and collaborative platform for product planning, management, and road mapping. Craft.io features an intuitive interface and real-time collaboration for teams to quickly create and refine product ideas. Additionally, Craft.io helps set goals and timelines and track progress throughout the product development cycle.
Craft.io Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a visual roadmap, intuitive interface, customizable workflows, flexible data visualization, a 4-level data model, product metrics, portfolio management, a prioritization & scoring system, feedback aggregation, and more.
Integrations include 10+ tools, like Adobe XD, Confluence, Figma, Gitlab, Google Workspace, Jira, Miro, Okta, and others.
Pros
- Excellent customer support
- Great for teams collaborating on product planning
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- No mobile app at the moment
- Limited customization options in the lower-priced plans
Trello
Best product planning software for a classical board/card view
Trello is a popular task management and collaboration tool for individuals, teams, and businesses of all sizes. Trello is renowned for a simple card-based system that allows PMs to quickly brainstorm and track ideas.
Why I picked Trello: Trello is a great web-based tool for visualizing tasks and collaborating with team members. They offer a unique, yet simple, card-based system that’s easy to use and provides a clear overview of tasks and progress. The drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to move tasks between boards and lists, and the tool offers a range of customization options to fit individual and team needs.
The main use case for Trello is task management and collaboration. It is suitable for a variety of industries and uses cases, including software development, marketing, project management solutions, and more. Its intuitive interface allows users to quickly create and organize tasks, set deadlines, assign team members, and track progress across the product lifecycle.
Trello's Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a card-based task system, collaborative boards, sprint management, task automation, and more.
Integrations include 10+ tools like Dropbox, Evernote, GitHub, Google Drive, Jira, Salesforce, Slack, Toggl, Zapier, and more.
Pros
- Intuitive drag-and-drop interface
- Customizable task cards
- Proactive notifications on board updates
Cons
- Limitations on privacy settings
- Limited task hierarchy
ProductPlan
Best product planning software for capturing critical product attributes
ProductPlan is a product management software vendor specializing in intuitive and visually-appealing product roadmaps. The tool is ideal for product managers, product owners, and product teams seeking to collaborate on product planning and prioritize features. What drew me towards ProductPlan is their all-in-one product management platform that gives an aggregate view of the various aspects of product planning and strategy.
Why I picked ProductPlan: ProductPlan helps you to create, share, and communicate your product roadmap effectively. The tool focuses on collaboration, visualization, and ease of use. ProductPlan can help you stay on top of your product strategy and ensure that everyone on your team is aligned and working towards the same goals.
ProductPlan offers a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate. The drag-and-drop functionality makes it simple for teams to create and modify product roadmaps quickly and easily. With ProductPlan, users can create custom fields to capture important product data, such as market research, user feedback, and customer data. This feature enables teams to tailor product plans to their specific needs.
ProductPlan Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customizable templates, flexible layouts, custom filters, a prioritization board, roadmap highlights, a drag-and-drop interface, team collaboration features, analytics, and reporting tools.
Integrations include 10+ tools like Asana, Atlassian, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Trello, Zapier, and others.
Pros
- Roadmap highlights depict how original plans changed overtime
- Great collaboration and team communication features
- Intuitive and easy drag-and-drop interface
Cons
- Occasional date glitches on the roadmapping tool
- Limited customization options for templates
Asana
Best product planning software for infusing a project management flavor
Asana is a well-established project management vendor, helping companies streamline workflows and improve productivity. Asana offers flexibility and customization options that allow teams to adapt the tool to their specific needs.
Why I picked Asana: Asana's ability to automate and streamline project workflows stands out. With custom templates, dependencies, and automation, Asana allows teams to simplify their processes and focus on delivering high-quality results.
Asana helps manage projects and tasks collaboratively across teams. For product managers looking for a tool packed with project management firepower, Asana doesn’t disappoint. Asana’s product roadmapping comes with backlog management and a unique project conversation feature that allows you to convey important project updates.
Asana Standout Features and Integrations
Features include custom templates and workflows for project planning, multiple views (list, board, calendar) for flexibility, dependencies, automation rules to streamline workflows, and others.
Integrations include 10+ tools like Adobe Creative Cloud, Aureum, Figma, Looker, Okta, Salesforce, Splunk, Tableau, Vimeo, and others.
Pros
- Generous free plan
- Efficient task management
- Collaboration focused
Cons
- Limited assignment features
- Slightly steep learning curve
Productboard
Best product planning software to centralize customer feedback
Productboard’s expertise lies in creating software for customer-driven product development. It is a great tool for businesses seeking to align their product roadmap with customer feedback. Their unique interface brings customer feedback and product development together, allowing teams to prioritize features and build customer-driven products.
Why I picked Productboard: Productboard helps collect and organize customer feedback from multiple channels and collate these data points into one common place. This feature ensures that teams build products that address customer needs.
Productboard is ideal for product managers, product owners, and development teams seeking to prioritize and align their product development efforts with customer feedback.
Productboard Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a centralized customer feedback portal, feature prioritization, roadmap creation, feature idea validation, and others.
Integrations include 10+ tools, like Amplitude, Fable, Grain, InSided, Intercom, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zapier, and others.
Pros
- Nifty progress tracking feature
- Great for customer-driven product development
- Easy-to-use interface
Cons
- No native integrations with project management software
- Purely web-based tool with no desktop application
Wrike
Best product planning software with pre-built product management templates
Wrike is an ideal tool for companies and startups with remote teams. With features like time tracking and reporting, Wrike helps teams stay on top of their tasks and collaborate more efficiently. Moreover, with Wrike, you can accelerate your product launches by identifying time-consuming bottlenecks.
Why I picked Wrike: Wrike's customizable dashboard stands out as a unique feature, allowing users to customize views based on their preferences and tasks. The ability to create custom fields and workflows also makes Wrike a versatile tool.
Wrike is a template heaven, with the tool offering a plethora of ready-to-use templates like software product requirements, product backlog, user story mapping, competitor benchmarking, and lots more.
Wrike Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a customizable dashboard and workflows, wireframing, time tracking, and reporting features, collaboration and communication tools (including @mentions and activity streams), a mobile app for iOS and Android, and more.
Integrations include 10+ tools like Dropbox, Github, Hubspot, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Okta, Slack, Tableau, Tenovos, and others.
Pros
- Nifty follow-up reminder feature
- Automated assignee and status changes
- Customizable dashboard and workflows
Cons
- Restricted export options
- Steep learning curve
Aha
Best product planning software to create visually stunning roadmaps
Aha! is an absolute delight for product managers seeking a comprehensive platform that covers product strategy, road mapping, and analytics. One distinct feature of Aha! is its intuitive interface that allows users to map out product strategy and features with ease, and track progress through roadmaps, timelines, and Gantt charts.
Why I Picked Aha!: Aha! lets you create and manage your product strategy and vision, which helps product managers to align product development with company goals. The tool also allows you to define initiatives, features, and releases while keeping stakeholders in the loop with automated notifications and progress updates.
Another noteworthy feature is the tool's powerful product analytics that gives product managers deep insights into their products and performance. With 50+ product management templates at your disposal, Aha! will definitely help you rock your upcoming product ideation meeting. Aha! also provides a robust idea management system that enables teams to collect, evaluate, and prioritize product ideas. As a result, the most promising ideas receive the attention they deserve.
Aha! Standout Features and Integrations
Features include product strategy, vision mapping, customizable roadmaps, timelines, Gantt charts, automated notifications, progress updates, customizable reports & analytics, idea & feedback management, and others.
Integrations include 10+ tools, like FlowDock, GitLab, Jira, Salesforce, Slack, Teams, Trello, ZenDesk, and others.
Pros
- Excellent customer support
- Offers prototyping, product strategy, road mapping, and analytics
- Intuitive and visually-rich interface
Cons
- Some bugs with the Jira integration
- No OKR (Objectives & Key Results) support
Portfoleon
Best product planning software for portfolio management
Portfoleon is a real blessing for agile teams and project managers looking to manage and prioritize a portfolio of projects. Portfoleon’s customizable project hierarchy allows users to manage portfolios and sub-portfolios of various sizes. The software also offers drag-and-drop prioritization, customizable workflows, and team collaboration tools.
Why I picked Portfoleon: Portfoleon's flexible project hierarchy and intuitive interface are amazing. Its customizable project management approach and integrated agile tools make it an all-in-one solution for managing complex portfolios.
The primary target audience for Portfoleon is organizations managing multiple projects or portfolios, particularly those using agile methodologies. Additionally, Portfoleon offers a range of customizable reports and visualizations to help users track progress and make data-driven decisions.
Portfoleon Standout Features and Integrations
Features include a customizable project hierarchy, drag-and-drop prioritization, agile project management tools, customizable workflows, resource management, team collaboration tools, customizable reports, visualizations, and others.
Integrations are available with Jira and Zapier.
Pros
- Offers a range of reports and visualizations
- Intuitive UI and drag-and-drop features
- Customizable project hierarchy
Cons
- Limited integrations
- Slightly steep learning curve
Roadmunk
Best product planning software with boardroom-ready roadmaps
Roadmunk is a cloud-based product management tool that helps companies create and manage their roadmaps and portfolios. Roadmunk has made several inroads in powerful visualization and collaboration features with their boardroom-ready roadmap, removing the hassle of research for business presentations. The tool also boasts 35+ roadmap templates exportable in various formats, including PNG and HTML.
Why I picked Roadmunk: Roadmunk offers easy-to-use roadmap customization options, an interactive drag-and-drop interface, and collaboration features. With this tool, product managers can easily create, visualize, and share product roadmaps with teams and stakeholders, making it a great choice for agile teams and organizations.
The tool allows users to add multiple timelines, milestones, and custom data points. With Roadmunk, product managers can customize and share roadmaps, and generate invaluable reports & analytics to support product development and performance.
Roadmunk Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customizable roadmaps, visualization of linked items between roadmap initiatives, collaboration with teams and stakeholders, customer feedback management, and others.
Integrations include 5+ tools, such as Asana, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Jira, Trello, and others.
Pros
- Customizable roadmaps with multiple timelines and data points
- Collaborative workspace for team members and stakeholders
- Easy drag-and-drop interface
Cons
- Dull color choices
- Copy-pasting workflow is a little complicated
monday.com Dev
Best product planning software for sprint management
monday.com Dev is a project management tool designed specifically for product managers in the tech space. The tool offers a wide range of features and integrations that make it easy for tech PMs (Product Managers) to manage their projects and collaborate with team members.
Why I picked monday.com Dev: monday.com Dev stands out for its customizable platform allowing PMs and developers to build and manage projects using a visual interface. Moreover, the backlog and bug tracking features of monday.com Dev bridge the gap between PMs and technical folks, like developers and engineers.
monday.com Dev Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customizable templates such as Scrum and Kanban, time tracking and reporting features, sprint management tools, a sprint burndown chart, docs for knowledge management, and more.
Integrations include 10+ tools like Google Drive, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Outlook, Slack, Zapier, Zoom, and others.
Pros
- Great scope for workflow automation
- User-friendly interface
- Customizable templates for agile development methodologies
Cons
- No Gantt chart feature
- Limited features on the mobile app
The Best Product Planning Software Comparison Chart
This comparison chart summarizes basic details about each of the top product planning software we just covered in the overviews.
Tool | Free Option | Price | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Craft.io Best product planning software with a user-friendly interface | 14-day free trial | From $39/month/user, billed annually | Visit Website |
2 | Trello Best product planning software for a classical board/card view | Free trial + freemium plan available | From $6/user/month | Visit Website |
3 | ProductPlan Best product planning software for capturing critical product attributes | 14-day free trial | From $49/user/month | Visit Website |
4 | Asana Best product planning software for infusing a project management flavor | Free plan available | From $10.99/user/month | Visit Website |
5 | Productboard Best product planning software to centralize customer feedback | 15-day free trial | From $20/user/month | Visit Website |
6 | Wrike Best product planning software with pre-built product management templates | Free plan available | From $9.80/user/month | Visit Website |
7 | Aha Best product planning software to create visually stunning roadmaps | 30-day free trial | From $59/user/month | Visit Website |
8 | Portfoleon Best product planning software for portfolio management | 14-day free trial + free plan available | From $24/user/month | Visit Website |
9 | Roadmunk Best product planning software with boardroom-ready roadmaps | 14-day free trial | From $19/month (3 users) | Visit Website |
10 | monday.com Dev Best product planning software for sprint management | Free plan available | From $8/user/month | Visit Website |
Other Options
Here are a few more worthwhile options that didn’t make the best product planning software list:
- airfocus
Best product planning software with an advanced prioritization and scoring system
- Confluence
Best product planning software for team collaboration
- Toggl Plan
Best product planning software for tracking product feature delivery timelines
- ProdPad
Best product planning software for building product strategy
- ClickUp
Best product planning software for charting dependencies and forecasting risks
- Roadmap Planner
Best product planning software for advanced progress reporting
- dragonboat
Best product planning software for connecting initiatives and OKRs
- Microsoft Planner
Best project planning software for leveraging Microsoft 365 features
- YouTrack
Best product planning software for agile release planning
- Productific
Best product planning software for gathering roadmap feedback from real users
How I Picked The Best Product Planning Software
Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best product planning software for this list. To build this top 10 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of product planning software systems with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further refined my list by using the selection criteria below to evaluate how each tool weighed up against the other. I also drew on my years of product management experience to highlight unique features that help add value to your product management journey.
When selecting the best product planning software for this list, I used the selection criteria below to further evaluate each tool.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best product planning software for this article:
Product planning features
Product planning requires concrete frameworks for attaining success. I evaluated each platform’s ability to support product planning tasks, such as idea management, road mapping, backlog management, and team collaboration.
Usability
Product planning software must help you save time by strategizing and forecasting - not by eating away your free time by demanding several hours to learn a tool. The best product planning software tools are user-friendly and allow PMs to get off the blocks quickly. As a result, onboarding becomes easy and you can swiftly begin defining product roadmaps.
Customization
There is no one size that fits all. As a result, I prioritized tools with advanced customization features and capabilities, such as custom fields, workflows, and reporting.
Software integrations
Product planning software that offers integrations can help elevate your company’s overall efficiency. For instance, if a product planning software integrates with a project management tool like Jira, you can save lots of time that would otherwise be wasted by copy-pasting the same information onto a different platform.
Pricing
Finally, pricing is a significant factor before you decide on product planning software. It’s crucial to pick the right tool with the best return on investment. I’ve also indicated if the tools offer a free trial for you to go out there and test the waters.
Product Planning Software: Frequently Asked Questions
If you’re new to product planning software, you might have some questions about what it is, what it does, and how it differs from other types of software used in product development. Here are some frequently asked questions and brief answers to help you get started:
What key features are included in product planning software?
What are the main phases of product development?
What’s the difference between product planning, product management, and product road mapping software?
What Next?
Now that you have read about product planning, you can deepen your understanding of a product strategy to build better products and what makes it different from a product vision. You can further read about the components of a product development strategy and discover the four biggest myths around them.
As product managers, you’re always only one awesome idea away from disrupting your industry.
Related tool lists:
Sign up for our Product Manager newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest insights from top thinkers in this niche. Also, check out our related articles or software comparisons on our site to explore similar tools.