15 Best Product Management Tools of 2023
It’s not easy to build an excellent product. Product managers will need specific tools in each step of the process, from prototyping to mapping out your strategy.
In this article, we’ve compiled the 15 best product management tools of 2022.
Monday.com
ClickUp
Wrike
Jira
Asana
By product management tools, we’re referring to the conventional handful of daily tools that most product managers use.
The role of a product manager entails much more than gathering product insight, and because skills and requirements vary widely, the appropriate tool to utilize depends on the job at hand.
In this post, we've compiled the top product management tools to enable you to flourish in your role as a product manager.
Best Product Management Tools
Here are the 15 best product management tools:
- Monday.com
- ClickUp
- Wrike
- Jira
- Asana
- ProdPad
- Productboard
- ProductPlan
- Aha!
- Roadmunk
- Shortcut
- Airfocus
- Backlog
- Trello
- Confluence
1. Monday.com
Best All-in-one Product Management Tool For Small Businesses.
- Dashboard is modern, intuitive, and visually appealing
- Easy to customize
- Offers over 200+ templates for automations
- It can be a bit cumbersome to relearn new features, considering how frequently they’re released.
- Lacks robust communication tools
Monday.com makes it to the top of this list because it features a user-friendly and visually appealing design with self-explanatory labels for various features. It is ideal for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Monday.com helps teams manage products using a visual, collaborative method. It syncs all data on a single, accessible dashboard and eliminates manual entry errors as a cloud-based platform.
This allows team members to collaborate on crucial choices, stay on top of details, and complete projects on schedule.
Like many other popular project management tools, Monday.com gives you all you need to manage products and the projects that bring those products to life.
Best Features
Communication
Monday.com does not have any chat facilities, but it has other standard communication tools, such as task comments and message boards. These features include file upload buttons, GIFs, and “@” mentions like most other collaborative platforms.
Sharing files
Monday.com's file storage and sharing tools are integrated into each job. As a result, all appropriate users will have access to all project resources and receive notifications about new files added to each task as long as you are tagged in a project board.
Dashboards for teams
Monday.com allows you to create dashboards for each project or user, with various widgets such as task progress, project calendar, project timeline, and custom number columns (budgets, resource numbers, etc.).
App for mobile devices
Monday.com has a mobile app for iOS and Android that makes it easy to stay in contact with your team and organize project assignments while on the go.
Streamline Workflows
Increase efficiency and transparency by incorporating building components such as boards, integrations, dashboards, automation, and apps.
Pricing
- 3 Work Boards
- 2 Team Members
- Unlimited Docs
- 500 MB Storage
- 200+ Project Templates
- Unlimited Boards
- Unlimited Team Members
- Unlimited Viewers
- 5 GB Storage
- 1-Week Activity Log
- Calendar, Timeline, Map Views
- 250 Actions for Automations
- 250 Actions for Integrations
- 20 GB Storage
- 6-Month Activity Log
- Unlimited Guest Access
- 25000 Actions for Automations
- 25000 Actions for Integrations
- 100 GB Storage
- 1-Year Activity Log
- Dedicated Customer Agent
- 250000 Automations
- 250000 Actions for Integrations
- Enterprise Analytics
Learn more about Monday pricing or Monday review
Monday.com's price is ultimately determined by the number of seats required and the plan selected. The free plan provides all the tools most teams would need for up to two users.
2. ClickUp
Best All-In-One Productivity Solution Designed For All Types Of Teams In Any Business.
- User-friendly layout
- Desktop, mobile (Android and iOS apps), voice, and web platforms are all supported.
- The UI is simple and easy to use
- Too many confusing features
- The mobile app lacks a table format view for product development
We love ClickUp because it is designed for teams of various sizes and sectors, and it makes it easy for teams to manage everything from design to development in one location. We love the platform because it allows for flexibility through ClickApps, which allows for extensive customization for any team.
ClickUp is a free product management software that includes communication and collaboration features, task assignments and statuses, alarms, and a task toolbar.
Best Features
Management of Projects
Project teams can use ClickUp's tools to visualize their plans in numerous views. Use the list view, calendar view, or Gantt view to monitor timelines and track progress to manage priorities.
Remote Work
Teams can use ClickUp to assign and collaborate on projects, exchange documents for developing transparent workflows, set reminders, and see how tasks are moving from anywhere.
Multiple Views
For product development, you can choose from a range of task perspectives from any aspect while utilizing any technique. For managing tasks on a kanban board, use the board view. Use the chart view for project planning, task scheduling, and dependency management. In spreadsheet format, use the table view to manage tasks.
Workflow Automation
Create easy-to-manage and explicit dependencies to streamline your workflow. Also, by allocating resources more efficiently, you can reduce the amount of routine work.
Effective Team Communication
Leave comments, tag teammates, and communicate directly with everyone involved in specific tasks or projects. You can communicate through private and public channels and the ClickUp chat app.
Pricing
- 24/7 Support
- 100 Automations/Month
- Built-in Time Tracking
- Kanban & Calendar View
- 100 MB Storage
- Live Chat Support
- 1000 Automations/Month
- Guest Access Control
- Unlimited Map & Gantt Views
- Unlimited Storage
- Unlimited Dashboards
- 10000 Advanced Automations/Month
- Unlimited Teams
- Timesheets Integration
- Unlimited Timeline Uses
- Priority Customer Service
- 25000 Pro Automations/Mo
- Unlimited Subtasks in Multiple Lists
- API calls: 1000/Minute
- Custom Capacity for Workload
Learn more about ClickUp pricing or ClickUp review
ClickUp offers a Forever Free Plan with many functionalities, and paid plans start at $9 per user per month for enhanced features.
3. Wrike
Reliable Product Management Tool Best For Offering Several Work Views.
- Great customer support
- Provides in-built time tracking
- Strong security protection
- Steep learning curve
- Choosing the right plan without customer assistance is difficult.
Wrike is our top pick for the best project management system for digital workflow as it has widespread seamless integration options and practical communication tools that make multitasking a breeze.
Wrike is one of the best product management tools for large corporations and small businesses. It allows diverse teams to operate remotely.
Gantt charts, calendars, a workload view for resource management, and real-time updates are all included in Wrike's interface.
Best Features
Effective Progress Display
Wrike displays a complete visual of your team's progress, so you don't have to sift through emails. This tool allows you to see a team member's current workload, making it seamless to allocate tasks accordingly.
Collaboration
This tool provides real-time updates to keep your product management team on the same page. Wrike uses social media-style comment and mention tools to communicate project information.
Visibility of the project
The dashboard on Wrike gives you a clear picture of your project and the steps outlined to complete the project. You can also track the progress of team members.
Easy-to-use Templates
Wrike includes several pre-made templates spanning from marketing campaigns to product development that can help you get up and running quickly.
Robust Security
Wrike provides two-factor authentication. You can use this functionality to set up additional identification verification.
Permissions for Advanced Accounts
Protect your assets by granting granular permission limits to only the relevant users.
Pricing
- Unlimited Users
- AI-Powered Processes
- Custom Work Views
- Different Project Templates
- Available in 8 Languages
- 2-25 Users*
- 2 GB Storage/User
- Custom Fields & Workflows
- Project Dashboards
- Calendar and Gantt Chart Views
- 5-200 Users*
- 5 GB Storage/User
- 200 Automations/User
- Enhanced Collaboration
- Resource Management Features
Learn more about Wrike pricing
Wrike has five subscription plans and a free-forever plan. Each service plan is priced monthly and includes varying features and user limits.
4. Jira
Reliable Product Management Tool Best For Technical Minded Teams.
- Easy to customize workflows
- Suitable for all users
- Makes it easy to track task progress
- Complicated user interface
- No in-built timeline to keep track of a project's development.
- Lacks collaboration tools for team communication.
- Mainly designed for software development and engineering teams
Jira Software provides a good perspective of a single project. But it does not provide easy visibility of the progress of interdependent tasks or the teams accountable for them across several projects.
Jira is a business process management and product management tool that agile teams use to plan, track, and release software. Jira Software supports Scrum, Kanban, a hybrid approach, or any unique process.
Jira allows product managers to construct project roadmaps that outline all ongoing projects. A drag-and-drop interface on the project board allows teams to control any project element.
Best Features
Portfolio
Jira Portfolio is a dedicated plugin that allows you to manage and share project roadmaps with your stakeholders.
Roadmaps
Jira provides a roadmap that allows product managers to build, manage, and visualize their team's progress. It allows you to see what needs to be done and when bugs are expected to be fixed.
Exceptionally Adaptable
Jira can be adjusted to match any requirement, whether it's for issue tracking or task management. Workflows, reports, Scrum boards, and other product management features can all be customized.
Log of Events
All events, changes, and work logged against your issues are tracked by Jira software. The activity log keeps track of every issue and its modifications, as well as people's assignments and comments from the development team.
Jira Project Management
This project management software keeps track of ongoing projects at any level. Jira's proprietary query language, JQL, lets you filter or sort issues based on various parameters.
Pricing
Jira is free for teams of up to ten users, albeit with limited features; you'll need to upgrade if you want advanced rights, project roles, or audit logs.
5. Asana
An Intuitive And User-friendly Project Management Tool.
- Simple user interface
- Supports multi-task management
- Does not have a desktop app version
- Lacks invoice billing
Asana is our go-to product management tool for the product management process. With Asana, your team can release products faster, centralize and standardize your work request process, and prioritize and allocate work all in one spot.
Asana is one of the best free product management tools out there. It is a roadmap software that a product manager uses to monitor and manage their projects. It's also a cloud-based task management tool that helps companies manage, collaborate, communicate, and organize their projects and tasks.
As a bonus, Asana gives users access to more than 50 task-management templates. It also has over 100+ third-party integration options, including Slack, Zoom, and Salesforce.
Best Features
Roadmap
Asana's product road mapping feature is straightforward, allowing you to prioritize tasks, create a backlog, and provide stakeholders with a high-level picture of progress.
Multiple Templates
Asana has several pre-made templates ranging from marketing projects to product development that will allow you to get straight into action with little to no preparation.
Automations
Automate repetitive procedures to save time for more active and challenging jobs.
Mobile Support
Asana's mobile app is available for iOS and Android users, allowing you to stay in touch with your team and manage project activities while on the go.
Report Dashboard
Asana now has report dashboards that include useful project information, like task completion over time and budget estimates.
Pricing
- Unlimited Projects & Tasks
- Unlimited Storage & Logs
- 100+ Free Integrations
- Status Updates
- Calendar View
- Unlimited Dashboards
- Workflow Builder
- Task Dependencies
- Task Templates
- Timeline & Milestones
- Workload Management
- Advanced Reports
- Built-in Time Tracking
- Create Custom Rules
- Premium Integrations
Learn more about Asana pricing
Asana is entirely free for teams of up to 15 individuals, and a large team might consider upgrading to a paid plan to access product management features like custom and timelines views.
6. ProdPad
Best Product Management Tool For Creating Visual Product Roadmaps.
ProdPad is one of the best product lifecycle management tools, offering guidance to business users through the whole product lifecycle. It is an innovative, dynamic toolset that integrates with product development processes at every level and promotes cooperation across the organization.
Best Features
Simple Roadmapping
Any project manager can use ProdPad to create a short product roadmap and product strategies based on goals. Its simple drag-and-drop interface enables teams to respond quickly to input as the roadmap is tested and confirmed. Product teams might rethink what is critical to the business to bring the best product with the right product specs to market.
Customer Feedback
ProdPad enables organizations to discover what is genuinely essential to their customers. It prioritizes user feedback in the team's product decisions. ProdPad gathers feedback from customers across the organization to help build the case for new product ideas.
Creation of New Ideas
Product teams can use ProdPad as a data management solution to gather data from various platforms to develop support and evidence for ideas in their product backlog.
Efficient Team Collaboration
Prodpad is primarily a collaborative system where all team members can express their thoughts on a particular product. It allows you to gather all your team members' unique suggestions in one space.
Timeline View
Prodpad offers a timeline view layout that presents the most recent events for a specific product. Everyone on your team can see the timeline, ensuring that no one misses an essential update.
Pros
- Accessible collection and organization of feedback from customers
- Integrates seamlessly with third-party software
- Mobile version is available
Cons
- Steep learning curve
- Poor customer support
Pricing
ProdPad provides three pricing levels that can be billed monthly or annually, depending on your needs.
7. Productboard
Amazing Product Management Tool With Excellent Customer-Driven Functionality.
Productboard is a cloud-based product management and roadmap tool that enables a product manager to better understand consumer demands, market priority, progress, and enhancements.
It enables agile product managers to use data and insights to develop and launch customer-oriented product roadmaps.
Best Features
Insights
Collect and organize all of your consumer comments in one place. Consolidate product ideas, requests, user research, and feedback from various sources using the Insights tab. Identify patterns and trends that will help you prioritize what to develop next and how to build it correctly.
Prioritization
Using data-driven, consistent feature prioritization, decide which features to implement next.
Roadmaps
Product teams can easily create and communicate on roadmaps with Productboard. Productboard also provides a graphic, interactive roadmap that is far more successful in communicating product strategies bringing your team together around your goal. To align teams and reflect customer input, create real-time, personalized roadmaps.
Robust Integrations
Share your plans, validate ideas, and celebrate launches. With best-in-class integrations and APIs, you can create efficient workflows.
Security
Built to industry-leading security and administrative requirements.
Pros
- Can define different views with ease
- Excellent user interface
- Compatible with leading project management applications for more customized workflows
Cons
- Exporting features are lacking.
- Inability to design scoring equations with enough flexibility
Pricing
The price of each plan is determined by the number of Makers—users that have full access to edit, update, add, create and prioritize feature ideas, insights, and roadmaps—on your team.
8. ProductPlan
Easy-To-Use Product Management Tool Best For High-Performing Teams.
ProductPlan is an easy-to-use roadmap software that assists teams in better planning, visualizing, and sharing product strategy. In minutes, you can create stunning, collaborative roadmaps.
Maintain team alignment with a customizable roadmap that is easily accessible throughout the enterprise. Atlassian Jira, Trello, Slack, and Pivotal Tracker are a few tools that ProductPlan connects with.
Best Features
Unlimited Roadmaps
ProductPlan gives you an unlimited number of what they call ‘roadmaps.' That means there are no restrictions on the number of projects you can track or the number of individuals you can share them with.
Simple To Use
You'll also like how straightforward ProductPlan is. Everything can be dragged and dropped wherever and however, you choose. You won't have to be concerned about how your team will figure things out or whether your clients will be able to check in whenever they want.
Multiple Style View
ProductPlan includes a timetable, lists, tables, and portfolio style. That way, you may select whatever works best for your team and allows you to keep track of all you need to do for your clients.
Prioritization Board
The Prioritization Board in ProductPlan allows teams to prioritize their objectives. The system provides a wide range of methods for prioritizing prospective roadmap items and a variety of frameworks to choose from, including OKRs, MoSCow, and the RICE Scoring Model.
Effective Collaboration
ProductPlan allows the entire team to align on product strategy. A product manager can share the right roadmaps with the right audience thanks to the system's various permission choices. To ensure involvement, ProductPlan also includes comments and @ mentions functionalities.
Pros
- Great customer service
- Interface is straightforward
- Provides great collaborative capability
Cons
- Confusing filter options
- Some of the editing functionality can be finicky for users.
- No rollback feature for correcting mistakes
Pricing
ProductPlan has three pricing plans, with unlimited roadmaps and a free viewer license.
9. Aha!
Intuitive Product Management Tool For Handling Full Project Management Cycle.
Aha! is a product roadmap software that helps product leaders and marketing teams define the importance of a product before they are created.
It's a platform that allows users to construct a product plan, collect ideas in one place, add details, update status, create user stories with templates, and share roadmaps with customers and co-workers.
Best Features
Product Management
Users can use it to plan their strategy, collect actionable feedback from customers, and prioritize features. The software enables teams to define their goal to establish a product vision. They can quickly establish strategic goals and initiatives to clarify their objectives and describe important work.
Robust Integrations
Aha! integrates with over 30+ tools for development, collaboration, sales, and support. Google Analytics, Jira, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Zendesk, popular calendar software, Azure DevOps, and more applications are among them.
Customized Workflows
Use Aha! Integrations with popular tools to tailor workflows to a team's approach and enable data exchange between teams.
Pros
- Excellent customer support
- Keeps track of all product-related tasks on one platform.
- Offers a great technique for prioritizing tasks based on their importance and requirements.
Cons
- Relatively expensive
- Complex to use
- It can get overwhelming If you don't use it often.
Pricing
Customers can try Aha! for free for 30 days to get a feel for the software before paying anything.
10. Roadmunk
Exceptional End-to-End Roadmapping Software Best For Creating Customer-driven Roadmaps.
Roadmunk is a cloud-based project management tool for enterprises of all sizes and sectors. Roadmunk has tools for visualizing schedules, project templates, and team collaboration.
Users can either construct their project templates—known as roadmaps—or select a pre-designed template and customize it to fit their needs.
Best Features
Unlimited Customization Options
Users have a lot of custom settings and powerful filters. This can enable them to design their strategies as intended while being flexible and completing tasks quickly.
Multiple View Presentation
Roadmunk recognizes the importance of product display. The program allows users to see the same information from different perspectives. Different teams can see the same information in different ways. End-users can simply comprehend relevant details of the supplied data by using templates.
Intuitive Collaboration
With Roadmunk, you can communicate plans with your clients or teams. They can also leave comments or communicate with you about their ideas. Users also have the option of mentioning any team member.
Permission Access
Users can assign permissions to each team member. There are three permission settings to ensure that both files and documents are appropriately secured and accessible only by appropriate people.
Gather Feedback
Product management teams can use Roadmunk to manage all user requests in one place with the feedback inbox. The Roadmunk Chrome plugin allows sales and support staff to collect and provide feedback to the product team. Feedback can go straight to the product team via Salesforce, email, chat boxes, and other browser-based technologies without disrupting workflows.
Pros
- Simple to set up
- Easy to navigate
- Easy to make collaborative adjustments
Cons
- No direct connection to backend data.
- Does not work well with multiple projects
- Does not provide copy and paste functionality
Pricing
Beyond the 14-day free trial, Roadmunk features four different pricing packages, ranging from $19 to $99.
11. Shortcut
Best Task Navigation Solution for Managing Product Releases.
Shortcut is a project management platform that provides a combination of simplicity and structure so product teams are less stressed and can easily collaborate with anyone within their organization to focus on working together to build products that customers love.
Its goal is to be one of the most intuitive and enjoyable project management applications, providing all the product lifecycle management tools you’ll need in one place.
Best Features
Stories
Whatever you do on Shortcut starts with Stories which used to tackle any feature, task, or bug. You can then continue to update things through your Kanban board workflow, within your Iteration/Sprint, or from the command line via pull request. Shortcut helps you easily input stories into the workflow.
Reports
Shortcut provides multiple means to help you track and visualize progress from different angles. It offers a rich set of views from Velocity and Burndown Charts to Cumulative Flow Diagrams that structure your process and ensure you stay focused and organized. Its in-built reports provide better visibility into your priorities and plans.
Iteration
Shortcut's iteration feature helps you prioritize and keep track of the work your team focuses on within a short period. It is excellent for setting internal delivery estimates centered around demos — that show your team's progress toward larger company goals.
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Straightforward search function
- Great for agile teams
Cons
- Dashboard can’t be customized
- Lacks in-built time tracking features
- No Gantt chart
Pricing
Shortcut provides a free plan and three paid plans, one of which is customized.
12. Airfocus
Excellent Tool for Understanding User Needs, Prioritizing, and Aligning Your Teams Around Clear Roadmaps.
Airfocus is an online tool that helps individuals, product teams, and organizations with the product management process. It is an easy-to-use solution that lets users build and prioritize product features, roadmaps, collaborate on strategy, and manage multiple products and advanced workflows in a secured environment.
Best Features
Robust Prioritization
Airfocus has a customizable scoring board that helps you objectively prioritize opportunities based on your organization's defined values and cost. You can use equal or custom weightings or formulas for more accurate scoring. It builds an interactive feature prioritization chart based on your input where you can gain insight into which ideas, strategies, and projects offer the best results. The Priority Poker tool helps you get ideas and perspectives from your team and stakeholders during discussions. Everyone participates in the process by voting on selected items, and you get a collective idea on which to prioritize.
Effective Roadmapping
Airfocus provides a road mapping tool that aids you in creating effective roadmaps that communicate your product strategy. Its Kanban board helps you plan and share with all stakeholders. With a simple drag-and-drop, you can move cards or items between swimlanes and across the board. A product roadmap helps you create alignment around items, goals, and milestones. Move items to change timelines or add dependencies quickly on the interactive Gantt chart. Share your roadmaps in real-time in one click.
Seamless Collaborations
Airfocus allows you to build better products faster as you collaborate with multiple users and contributors. Stakeholders can easily view and give feedback with the unlimited viewers included in this collaboration platform, while you control what to share and to whom.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Great Gantt chart feature
- Provides multiple views
Cons
- Poor time planning features
- Customization options are pretty limited
- The iPhone app is not as good as other platforms
Pricing
Airfocus provides a 14-day free trial as well as four paid plans.
13. Backlog
Outstanding Product Management Tool That Simplifies Code Management.
Backlog is an all-in-one product management application for development teams that provides tools for visual project tracking, user tracking, issue tracking and version controls, Kanban boards, and other tools that will cover the needs of a developer.
It also offers in-built collaboration tools so development teams can collaborate with other teams within their organization and stay connected with clients, all in one collaboration tool.
Best Features
Task Management
Backlog provides a single workspace where you can view, prioritize, and discuss all project tasks. This tool lets you know what’s due, what will require your attention, and what tasks fall behind. Its task tracking features include managing start and due dates, subtasks, notifications, etc.
Project Tracking
You can track your project progress through the multiple views Backlog provides—Gantt charts make visualizing and prioritizing your workflow a breeze with a quick overview. You can also visualize your workflow with its Kanban-style boards.
Bug Tracking
Using Backlog, your team can collaborate to fix bugs by logging them as issues. These issues are your central hub for working on, discussing, and resolving each bug. They display essential information about all changes made to your code and track who is working on it and when they are working on it. Moreover, Backlog makes it easy for your entire team to get a high-level view of where every bug is at in your workflow. Additionally, with its living archive, every team member today and in the future can understand your product history, including bugs and fixes.
Pros
- Modern looking user interface
- Provides adequate customer support
- Integrates with various popular applications
- Lets you personalize icons
Cons
- It lags sometimes
- Versioning tool is a bit confusing
Pricing
Backlog provides a free trial for all its plans except its free version.
14. Trello
One of the Best Product Management Tools for Kanban Boards.
Trello is a project management solution that is most popular for its unique board & card system: separate projects are marked with boards, within which there is a card for every task.
It unites a plethora of features for collaborating and managing projects and ensures employees have a private channel to communicate, follow updates, and discuss projects in real time.
Best Features
Kanban Boards
Trello functions based on the Kanban method that comes with boards, lists, and cards that make visualizing and tackling projects a lot easier. It helps split tasks into different columns that bear the to-do, doing, and done labels. Trello uses a drag-and-drop functionality so cards can easily be moved around when needed.
Collaboration
Another feature of Trello is the numerous team features available in the system. You can use it to enable your entire team to participate in meaningful discussions. Its features support group meetings and one-on-one chat sessions, sending diatribes and notes, sharing different types of files, and commenting on individual tasks and assignments. The system also helps you upload files directly from your Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive account.
Reasonable Timeframes
You can use Trello’s Power-Up calendar to organize product-specific tasks, prioritize with shorter deadlines, assign operations last-minute, and display them depending on their status. However, the system doesn’t oblige you to use this function – you can trigger the iCal feed from your current calendar app and import tasks that have already been assigned.
Pros
- Mobile friendly
- Provides instant notifications
- Simple pricing structure
Cons
- Having many cards is quite hectic
- Has limited storage
- Not suitable for larger projects
Pricing
Trello provides multiple plans that cater to development teams of various sizes.
15. Confluence
Excellent Product Management System for Cutting-Edge Collaboration.
Confluence is a simple workspace tool that helps software designers create and manage their products. It is an open and collaborative solution that helps your team and your company do their best work together.
Best Features
Content Management
Confluence helps you create dynamic content by inputting images with customizable sizes. You get to create countless amounts of pages with history and versioning. This history helps you understand the number of changes done by team members within a particular period. Moreover, you can also create a centralized content repository when you hyperlink pages.
Space Management
One of the best things about Confluence is its unlimited virtual space for its users. You can decide how you would like to distribute this space to different departments in your organization. In this cloud-based space, you get to store all kinds of information that your team can access from anywhere.
Project Management
You can keep track of your project process on Confluence, and if its features for managing projects don’t suffice, you can Jira tickets for a clearer understanding of the process.
Synchronization
Another remarkable feature of Confluence is that you can work anytime from anywhere with perfect synchronization between its mobile and pc variants.
Pros
- Easy reporting
- Intuitive user interface
- Provides automatic updates to content
Cons
- The search feature is difficult to use
- Depend on plug-ins a lot
- Only suitable for simple product management functions
Pricing
Confluence provides a free version and three other plans with prices starting at $5.50/user/month.
Other Types of Tools for Product Managers
1. Prototyping Tools
Prototyping tools are useful tools to have in any product manager’s arsenal. They are creativity and experimentation tools that help product designers quickly develop screens, reports, and forms to give end-users the “look and feel” of an information system. By presenting a prototype to the end-users early, the developer can gain valuable feedback and additional support for the project.
- InVision which is a popular prototyping tool that organizes design components as status workflows
- Adobe Experience Design is an excellent tool that provides integration with Photoshop and After Effects.
- Origami Studio is designed for freelancers and startup organizations.
2. Wireframing Tools
Wireframing tools allow designers to quickly and effectively mock up an outline of a design as quickly as possible. Designers can drag-and-drop placeholders for images, headers, and content and easily move them around to create a first draft that can be iterated on later.
- Sketch is an excellent tool for vector editing.
- Microsoft Visio is the most suitable for building flowcharts, org charts, and other engineering designs within the Office 365 system.
- Miro is a great visual collaboration for design teams.
3. OKR Software & Tools
OKRs stands for “Objectives and Key Results.” It is a collaborative goal-setting methodology used by teams and individuals to set challenging, ambitious goals with measurable results. OKRs are how you track progress, create alignment, and encourage engagement around measurable goals.
- Monday.com provides some of the best-customized visualization tools.
- Huminos is a great OKR tool for small businesses and freelancers.
- Gtmhub is great for implementing OKRs on a larger scale.
4. Customer Feedback Tools
A customer feedback tool can be part of a software solution designed to help businesses capture customer feedback, as well as measure and analyze it. It helps you carry out adequate customer research and quantifies feedback from customers and satisfaction.
- Usersnap is an all-in-one customer research and bug reporting tool.
- Qualtrics is an experience management tool that collects customer feedback at every stage of their journey.
- Shipright is the best software solution for user journey mapping.
5. Flowchart Tools
A flowchart is a picture of the numerous steps of a process in chronological order. It is a comprehensive tool used for various purposes and can describe manufacturing, administrative or service processes or a project plan.
- Miro is a free flow chart tool that seamlessly integrates Jira and Confluence.
- Gliffy is great for building diagrams.
- Cacoo is an excellent web-based flowchart tool for team collaboration.
6. Backlog Tools
Backlog tools help software development teams better understand the processes they should be prioritizing. They help stakeholders read essential information about a product from the same page through a central repository.
- Yodiz is a great backlog tool for getting ideas and insight from data.
- Backlog is excellent for teams that depend on a high level of collaboration.
- Teamwork is a simple-to-use backlog tool for teams of all sizes.
7. Roadmap Tools
A roadmap is a blueprint that captures and communicates the basic plan and goals. Product design teams use roadmapping software to provide a detailed overview of the software development process. Roadmapping software visualizes the short and long-term initiatives and solutions needed to stay ahead of the industry.
- Roadmunk is a road mapping software that offers complete customization.
- Wrike is a product roadmap tool that is also great for managing tasks and projects.
- Trello is great for simple product planning and process mapping.
8. Agile Product Management Tools
Agile product management methodology is more than traditional methods of product management. Agile product management tools help development teams to manage products from inception to execution quickly without hindering the quality of the product.
- Harvestr is an excellent tool for multi-channel feedback.
- MeisterTask used Kanban boards for task automation.
- Delibr is great for simplified issue tracking.
9. Analytics Tools
Analytics Tools are solutions that provide software engineers with insights into customers' interactions with their products. It provides the product manager with data management solutions to collect user data and helps analyze user behavior. They are excellent idea management tools that capture ideas from the user experience and help design teams build better products.
- Dragonboat is an excellent tool for managing the portfolio of your project.
- Zoho Analytics is the best analytics platform for integrating extensive data.
- Quantum Metric can identify customer experience issues automatically.
10. Product Portfolio Tools
Product portfolio tools make it easier for development teams to glance across all their products or services quickly to ensure better management, organization, and analysis. Product portfolio management solutions may track product growth prospects and operational risk.
- Craft.io is an all-in-one product portfolio software that is best for feedback capturing.
- Planview is great for agile workflows.
- Planisware is for easy scaling for thousands of users.
FAQ
Software developers use product management applications as a central place to develop and manage their products. These product management tools generally include product analytics software, development tracking tools, and road mapping software.
Contrary to what many people believe, product management and project management tools perform different tasks even though numerous solutions offer features that fall under both categories.
Project management tools focus more on ensuring that an organization can manage its workflow effectively hence why it provides tools for reporting, task management, scheduling, resource management, and more.
Product management tools, on the other hand, are used by product development teams to manage their products throughout their product lifecycle. It provides functions for product boards, road mapping, and product diagrams.
The effectiveness of a good product management tool is not dependent on its cost. While product management software might be expensive, it does not mean it will be good, and another could be cheap but more effective.
That said, these tools can range in price from as low as $12 per user per month to as high as $80 to $200 per month.
What is the Best Product Management Software?
Now that we’ve evaluated and listed the best product management software on the market today, you are left with deciding the list based on your needs.
Here are our top recommendations for you:
Monday.com
ClickUp
Wrike
Jira
Asana
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Martin Luenendonk
Martin loves entrepreneurship and has helped dozens of entrepreneurs by validating the business idea, finding scalable customer acquisition channels, and building a data-driven organization. During his time working in investment banking, tech startups, and industry-leading companies he gained extensive knowledge in using different software tools to optimize business processes.
This insights and his love for researching SaaS products enables him to provide in-depth, fact-based software reviews to enable software buyers make better decisions.