This document describes how to choose a feature voting tool and compares Excel, Trello and Asana to Productific.

General purpose tools like Excel, Trello or Asana are great. They provide a function for just about anything. Just about everything can be done with these tools. But does this mean they are the perfect choice for managing your product's roadmap?

Feature Voting
Customers use your product in their business. They know what works well and where to improve, they can help you choosing the next feature to build. Feature voting gives you the ability to see which improvements are needed most by your customers. By voting for new features customers can shape a product roadmap according to their business needs [ref]. With the right tools they can be engaged to help your product grow.

Productific
Upvoting ideas and feature requests can be done in various ways. Productific fulfills exactly that purpose: running feature voting for your roadmap. In this article we compare Productific to using Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, Trello and Asana for roadmap voting.

Intro

We compare tools based on the following criteria:

• Time to get started:
  Easy testing and getting started quickly is important.
  
  
• Feedback data privacy:
  Your product is used in a certain industry and your customers may be competing. They won't openly share business details when their competitors can gain insight.
  
  
• Easy feedback:
  Do feedback users need to install/join any tools?
  
  
• Open/private user groups:
  Sometimes you want to address open user groups with full web exposure, e.g. for your iPhone app. In other cases you manage a private & confidential user group, e.g. for a highly specialized business software.
  
  
• Custom look & feel are of advantage to seamlessly embed feature voting into your website.
  
  
• Feature requests:
  When voting for new features your uses may want to throw in their own, new ideas to improve the product. Handling this right inside the feature voting tool drives engagement upwards. 
  
  
• Cost
  The $ spend needed. While you may have budget available, for testing and evaluating a free trial option is of advantage.

The Tools

Google Sheets is a web based general purpose tool to organize data in sheets. 

Microsoft Excel is a general purpose software to organize data in sheets, needs to be installed on your computer. A web based version is available. 

Trello is a general-purpose collaboration tool that organizes projects into boards. For example, organizing tasks into open-progress-done. Trello can used for voting by enabling the "voting" power-up (one power-up included in the free plan). To use Trello for feature voting you do the following:

• Create a public Trello board to manage ideas for your product's roadmap.
• Add features requested by your customers to the list "ideas" in this board.
• Enable the "voting" power-up such that the voting button is visible.
• Users can now upvote ideas using the "Action" side bar.

Users need to have a Trello account and find the voting button which is a bit hidden at the right hand side of the board.

Also see the detailed description of Productific as an alternative to Trello.  

Asana is a general purpose project management tool. A web based version and mobile apps are available. Asana actively promote using the tool for managing roadmap projects and provide an easy to find how-to document.

• Feature voting can be organized via "list" or via "board" in Asana.
• Both options model feature voting as project tasks and apply general purpose project management functions like assigning features to owners, setting dates and attaching labels. Custom fields are available.
• To collect feedback, you need to add members individually to the project. In particular, you may need to add a large number of customers.
• Feature voting can not be done directly, you need to read and evaluate "project conversations".
• Shipping a feature is modeled via "completing" a task.
  

Users need to join Asana (free) and understand the general purpose functions, like "add task" to submit a feature request.

Productific is a SaaS tool made for exactly this purpose: feature voting. It's tailored to the needs of indie makers and product managers and provides functions to submit and process feature requests and managing feedback data. Besides feature voting it automates outbound communication via roadmap and changelog.

Comparing the tools

	Google Sheets	Microsoft Excel	Trello	Asana	Productific
Time	everyone has a Google account and logging into Sheets is quick	need to install on laptop or join online	easy to join and set up	easy to join and set up	just login
Privacy	all votes visible and editable	privacy only when each customer works on a separate file copy	everyone can see feedback	everyone can see feedback	feedback is private, can show/hide ranking results
Easy feedback	web access, everyone has a Google ID	separate file copy for each customer	join Trello, difficult to find voting button	join Asana, need to use conversations	made for easy voting
Open/private	access can be restricted	via fileshare or sharepoint	public board	only invited users	only public, private groups planned on roadmap
Custom	not possible	not possible	limited	limited	pro feature (paid plan)
Feature requests	manual handling in sheet	manual handling in sheet	must be added manually	need to add new task, no review capability	feature request management included
Cost	free plan available	buy	free plan  available	free plan available	free plan  available
Σ pro	4	1	2	2	6
Σ con	3	6	5	5	1

Summary

General purpose tools can be used for feature voting. Trello, Asana and Sheets are great tools. They come with disadvantages and they are not optimized for roadmap feature voting. For product roadmaps there are alternatives. A tool made especially for feature voting is the better way to go.

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