Feedback board for indie hackers
When an inbox is still enough for a solo founder, and what $9 a month buys once it is not.
Read itFeedback board for early stage startups
Lite or Pro for two or three founders, and how to read a board where most requests have two votes.
Read itPublic roadmap for solo founders
Five columns, no dates, and when a Trello board or a Notion page is already enough.
Read itFeature voting inside an iOS app
A native board in an iPhone or iPad app through a Swift package. No Android SDK.
Read itFeedback board for open source projects
Where GitHub issues and reactions stop being enough for a maintainer.
Read itPlayer feedback board for game studios
When a board earns its place beside Discord, Steam discussions and reviews.
Read itAnonymous voting on a roadmap, and what it costs
Ten of the thirteen tools checked allow it, so it is not a differentiator.
Read itCustomer feedback portal, and what it replaces
An inbox holds one message. A form collects them. A portal is the one where the people asking can see each other.
Read itDigital suggestion box ideas that people use
A digital suggestion box only works if people can see what happened to their suggestion.
Read itFeature voting tool that weights votes by revenue
Every feature voting tool counts votes.
Read itProduct roadmap in Jira, and what customers never see
A tracker roadmap is a plan for the people building. It cannot be shown to the people waiting.
Read itFeature requests in Jira, and who can vote on them
An issue type, the vote button and three ways in from outside. Only the feedback form skips the login, and it takes no votes.
Read itRelease notes and changelogs on GitHub
The Generate release notes button, release.yml categories, the API, an Actions workflow and CHANGELOG.md.
Read itRelease notes from a Jira version
The generator in Cloud and Data Center, a Version released automation rule, and a draft page in Confluence.
Read itRelease notes and changelogs on GitLab
A release job with the glab image, the Changelog trailer and the API that writes CHANGELOG.md.
Read itRelease notes in Azure DevOps
Work items linked to a build, the Generate Release Notes task, and a page written to the wiki.
Read itA roadmap in Trello, made public, with votes on it
Lists, the Voting Power-Up and a public board. Voting needs a Trello account, and search engines never see it.
Read itA roadmap in Confluence, from the Roadmap Planner macro
The macro, an embedded Jira timeline or a template. A public link shows a locked copy, on paid plans only.
Read itA ClickUp roadmap, shared publicly, and the vote gap
Timeline or Gantt and a public link. A Form is the one way in without an account, and its votes all land as ClickBot.
Read itA roadmap in Miro, with dot voting
A visitor with the link can vote with no account, but only while a timed session runs.
Read itA monday.com roadmap, with the Vote column
The Vote column counts members only. A WorkForm takes a request from anyone, with no vote on it.
Read itAn Asana roadmap, built and shared
Timeline or Gantt on Starter, a read only link, and a Form as the one way in for a stranger.
Read itA product roadmap in Azure DevOps
Delivery Plans over epics and features, and what a free Stakeholder can see and change.
Read itPublic roadmap on GitHub, and what reacting still needs
Projects, issue forms and reactions build the roadmap. Every one of them needs a GitHub account.
Read itProduct roadmap in Linear, and the gap it leaves open
Initiatives and Customer Requests stay inside the workspace. Nobody outside it can see or vote on either.
Read itProduct roadmap in Notion, and what it leaves open
A visitor with no Notion account can read the roadmap. Voting on it needs a login, same as a comment.
Read itFree online suggestion box for employees
A free online suggestion box for staff can be built three ways, and only one of them stays free.
Read itFeature request tracker, and what has to be in one
Four parts, and a tracker missing any of them goes quiet within about two months.
Read itCustomer feedback for SaaS, and the one thing that changes
Your customers pay you different amounts and any of them can stop, which makes a plain count the wrong number.
Read itProduct feedback tool, and the part it actually covers
The phrase is sold by three different kinds of product, and they do not overlap much.
Read itThe feedback board use cases below are the ones people actually arrive looking for, and every one of them has a real cost on the other side of it. This page is one paragraph each, saying what the case is for and what running it asks of you.
None of them is a feature list. The thing that decides whether one of these works is almost never the software, and each page under this one leads with that.
Which cases collect from customers?
A feature voting tool. For a team that has already decided voting is the mechanism, rather than a survey or a support inbox. The trade is that a vote count is a headcount, and the people who pay you are almost never the most people, which is why that page is written around weighting.
A customer feedback portal. For a team whose feedback currently lives in an inbox and a form, where only they can see it. A portal is the version where the people asking can see each other, which is what turns a request into a count. The trade is that your backlog is now public and refusing something in front of everybody is a skill.
A roadmap beside the issue tracker. For a team whose planning already lives in a tracker and who keep being asked for something a customer can look at. The trade is that these are two documents rather than one, because a tracker roadmap is built from work already decided and sized, and the question a customer arrived with has nowhere to live on it. The same roadmap built in Linear, Notion, GitHub, Trello, Confluence, ClickUp, Miro, monday.com, Asana and Azure DevOps has a guide of its own, and so do collecting the requests in Jira and writing the release notes from GitHub, GitLab, Jira or Azure DevOps.
Anonymous voting on a roadmap. For a team that wants people to vote without signing up first. Ten of the thirteen tools checked allow it and three deliberately do not, so the question is not who has it. The trade is that you learn who nobody is, and the page is about what that costs.
Which cases collect from staff?
A digital suggestion box. For an office or a team where people need somewhere to put an idea without finding the right person to tell first. The hard part has never been the box, it is what happens after somebody drops something in, and the page is a list of the boxes that survive that.
A free online suggestion box for employees. For a team that does not want to pay for one. There are three ways to build it and only one of them stays free. The page names all three before it mentions the product it is published on, because two of them are probably the right answer.
Which cases fit one kind of team?
A feedback board for indie hackers. For a solo founder whose feedback still fits in an email inbox, until one day it does not. The trade is $9 a month for something the inbox did for nothing, and the page says when the inbox is still the right answer.
A feedback board for early stage startups. For two or three founders with their first paying customers. Lite is one login, Pro adds the team, and a real young board shows most requests sitting at two votes or fewer.
A public roadmap for solo founders. For one person who builds, ships and answers support alone. Five columns, no dates, a Denied column with reasons, and the point where a free Trello or Notion page stops being enough.
Feature voting inside an iOS app. For an iPhone or iPad app that wants the board on a screen of its own, native and signed in. The trade is that there is no Android SDK, so an app on both platforms gets the native board on one of them.
A feedback board for open source projects. For maintainers whose issue tracker has slowly become a wish list. Issues and reactions are enough for many projects, and the page says where they stop being enough and what a separate board costs.
A player feedback board for game studios. For a small studio whose players already talk on Discord, in Steam discussions and in reviews. The trade is one more place to send them, and the page says when a board earns that.
14 days, a card at signup, then $9 or $39 a month.
Which of these is the same case wearing a different word?
Two of the six, and it is worth knowing before you read them.
A suggestion box and a feedback board are the same object with different readers. One is aimed inward at staff and the other outward at customers, and the software underneath is identical.
What changes is who may post, what appears without approval, and whether a name is attached, which are three settings rather than three products.
The two that genuinely differ are the voting case and the anonymous case, because they pull in opposite directions. Weighting a vote needs to know who cast it, and an anonymous vote refuses to say. You can run both on one board and you cannot run both on one request.
What is on the other side of the trade?
Every case above asks for the same thing and the pages say so. Somebody has to answer. A board where requests arrive and nothing comes back is worse than no board, because it is a published record of being ignored.
The changelog and the public roadmap exist for that half, and the reason they are part of the same product is that the answering is the part that fails.