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.
We compare tools based on the following criteria:
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:
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.
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.
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 |
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.