The 8 Best—and Free—Feature Request Tracking Apps

Tracking feature requests is vital for prioritizing development efforts based on customer feedback. It helps in understanding customer needs, improving product quality, and enhancing user satisfaction.

Feature request software automates and simplifies the tracking process, providing organized, centralized platforms for feedback collection, prioritization, and follow-up. Benefits include improved efficiency, better decision-making, and enhanced customer engagement.

Customer feedback drives growth, helps you focus on important things, reduces research time, and allows you to delight customers by following up and closing the feedback loop.

**So how do you build a **robust customer feedback system?

You can use spreadsheets to hold your product feature requests. But that’s super manual, tedious, and time-consuming. Worst, it’s leaky: you can forget to include customer feedback. And when you want to use your list to prioritize, spreadsheets are clunky. They don’t let you easily segment and organize.

It’s much easier to use a purpose-built feature request app designed for software development. A well-made tool makes it faster to centralize your feature requests and allows your customer-facing teams—Sales, Customer Success, Customer Support, and even your Product team—to track customer feedback without leaving their tool.

The problem with purpose-built tools? They can be expensive. Salesforce’s native customer feedback management tool costs $144,000 a year. Another option, UserVoice, costs a minimum of $9,588 a year. Many startups and young SaaS companies just can’t justify that kind of budget for a feature request tracking tool.

So in this article, we’re bringing you the free options.

Here are the best purpose-built feature request and customer feedback tracking apps that you can use without paying a cent (and without needing a credit card). All of the below options are apps you can use for free indefinitely—they’re not just free trials.

• Astuto (the truly free option)

Free plan options:

• 1. Canny
• 2. Hellonext
• 3. Frill
• 4. Trello
• 5. Ducalis
• 6. UserReport
• 7. Jira
• 8. Productboard

Let’s dive in.

Note:* Our feature request tracking app is Savio. We built it based on what we would have liked to have as product managers and leaders. It’s helped hundreds of customers become more customer-centric and identify the best features to build next. You can get the main features starting at $39 per month. Try it for free.*

An example feature requests lists in Savio. Notice the level of customization for, cumulative MRR, opportunity revenue, priority, and the number of customer requests for that feature.

The 1 Truly Free Feature Request Software Tool

There’s really just one tool that we’re aware of that’s properly free: Astuto.

Astuto

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Astuto is the only feedback management tool that is totally free. It’s open source, and was designed based on Canny (see below)—indeed, “astuto” means “canny” in Italian.

Astuto is free, but it is very basic. It works well for collecting, managing, and prioritizing customer feedback on a voting board. But if you need any fancy functionality, you’ll have to build it yourself.

Astuto’s main features

• Organize feature requests on a public voting board
• Users can upvote features that they like
• Users can leave comments on features
• Users can create bug reports
• Share your product plan on a public roadmap

Disadvantages:

• You can’t easily centralize feedback from all the places you get it.
• You can’t prioritize feedback data by customer or company attributes
• You can’t configure voting boards to minimize bias
• You can’t easily close the loop

If you need more functions than Astuto can give you, you would need to code your own features or switch tools.

7 Feature Request Tracking Tools with Free Plans

Besides Astuto, there are Freemium feature request tracking apps available. These have the basic features you might need and may allow you to track product feedback as long as your team stays small. But for more functions, you might have to upgrade to a paid plan.

1. Canny

Canny is a popular customer feedback collection and product roadmap tool. Its most complete (and most expensive) version has a comprehensive platform, allowing you to collect customer feedback, analyze it, prioritize features, and even publish them to a roadmap. On top of all this, it also has a changelog.

Read more: Canny vs. Savio

Canny’s free plan features

Canny’s free version lets you have three owners/managers, unlimited contributors, and and two feedback boards. It offers the following features:

• Organize requested features on a public voting board
• Users can upvote features that they like
• Share your product plan on a single public roadmap
• Announce new changes in a changelog
• 1 integration

Disadvantages:

Canny has several restrictions on their Free plan:

• You can’t easily centralize feedback from all the places you get it—just one
• You can’t segment feedback data by customer or company attributes
• You can’t configure voting boards to minimize bias
• You can’t have private boards

If you want to be able to segment users, allow users to leave comments, or connect to more than one integration, you’ll need the Growth plan at $400 per month or $4,800 per year.

Note: Savio helps you centralize, organize, and prioritize product feedback from your GTM team, by integrating with Slack, HubSpot, Intercom, Zendesk, SFDC, Help Scout, and more. Learn more about Savio here.

Read more:

Check out these 13 Canny Alternatives

Canny vs. ProductPlan

2. Hellonext

Hellonext is a feedback management tool that was developed especially for SaaS companies. It offers several comprehensive modules: a voting board tool, a public road mapping tool, a changelog, and a knowledge base tool.

Hellonext’s free plan features

Recently, Hellonext began to offer a free plan. Here’s what it includes:

• 2 Feedback Boards
• 2 Admins
• Unlimited customers & members
• Roadmap
• Changelog
• Internal Comments
• 1 Integration

Disadvantages:

• You can’t easily centralize feedback from all the places you get it—just one
• You can’t submit feedback via email
• You can’t prioritize feedback data by customer or company attributes
• You can’t configure voting boards to minimize bias
• You can’t easily close the loop
• Can’t segment your feedback data

If you want more than 2 boards, more than 2 admins, more than 1 integration, or to submit via email, you can upgrade to the Fly High plan at $99 per month or $1,188 per year.

If you want to be able to centralize feedback from all the places you get it, configure the board to minimize bias, or easily close the feedback loop, you would need a different tool.

3. Frill

Frill is a feature request management tool that is comprised of a voting board and an in-app widget. It’s designed to be easy to use, so while it doesn’t have the most features, it does have a sleek design. Frill has a free plan that you can sign up for without a credit card.

Frill’s free plan features

• Unlimited users, team members, and integrations
• 20 active ideas in your product ideas portal
• Roadmap portal
• Announcements portal
• Webhooks
• Custom domain

Disadvantages:

• You only get 20 ideas
• You can’t easily collect feedback in a single centralized place
• You can’t submit feedback via email
• You can’t prioritize feedback data by customer or company attributes
• You can’t configure voting boards to minimize bias
• You can’t easily close the loop

If you want to have unlimited ideas, private boards, or Whitelabel, you would need to upgrade. The next plan starts at $25 per month or $300 per month.

If you want to be able to centralize feedback from all your sources, slice and dice by customer attribute, configure the board to minimize bias, or easily close the feedback loop, you would need a different tool.

4. Trello

Trello is a tool developed for project management. Its Kanban-style boards have a simple, user-friendly, and sleek design that also allow powerful automation. Trello is not ideal for collecting product feedback but you can use it for this purpose in a pinch.

Trello has a free plan that might be appropriate for your team.

Trello’s free plan features

• Up to 10 boards per Workspace
• Unlimited cards
• Unlimited Power-Ups per board
• Unlimited storage (10MB/file)
• Assignee and due dates
• iOS and Android mobile apps
• 2-factor authentication

Disadvantages:

• You only get 10 boards
• Bringing in feedback from other sources is highly manual
• You can’t submit feedback via email
• You can’t segment feedback data by customer or company attributes
• You can’t configure voting boards to minimize bias
• You can’t easily close the loop

If you want to be able to have private boards or have observers, you would have to upgrade to the Premium plan at $10 per user per month, or $360 per year for a team of three.

If you want to be able to centralize feedback from all your sources, slice and dice by customer attribute, configure the board to minimize bias, or easily close the feedback loop, you would need a different feature request software tool.

5. Ducalis

Ducal is a relatively new feature voting tool. It aims to help teams prioritize the most important features. The platform has a portal to collect ideas, voting boards, and a changelog. It’s also built to support a number of different prioritization frameworks like RICE, AARRR, Eisenhower matrix, and more.

Ducalis offers a free plan that gives you the essentials for starting to prioritize your backlog and collecting user feedback.

Ducalis’ free plan features

• Unlimited admins, voters, boards, and public ideas on voting boards
• Changelog widget
• Any prioritization framework
• Unlimited issues
• Prioritization Frameworks

Disadvantages:

• Can’t make boards private
• Cannot manage user roles
• No custom domain
• Bringing in feedback from other sources is highly manual
• You can’t submit feedback via email
• You can’t segment feedback data by customer or company attributes
• You can’t configure voting boards to minimize bias
• You can’t easily close the loop

If you want private boards, voting on behalf of users, white labelling, or other integrations, you’ll need to upgrade to a higher level plan—they start at $5 per user per month or $180 per year for a team of three.

If you want to be able to centralize feedback from all your sources, slice and dice by customer attribute, configure the board to minimize bias, or easily close the feedback loop, you would need a different tool.

6. UserReport

UserReport is a feedback toolkit designed to tell you who your users are and what they want to achieve. It has two main features: a survey widget and a feedback widget that you can embed inside your application or website. UserReport is really designed for media companies to understand their audience, but it can also be used by SaaS companies.

UserReport’s survey and feedback widgets are free.

Main Features

• Obtain survey results through a survey widget
• Solicit customer feedback through a feedback widget
• Easy integration with websites to collect customer feedback
• You can ask about demographics and customer satisfaction

Disadvantages:

• You can’t solicit feedback from a voting board
• No integrations with customer support or communication tools, so you can’t centralize feedback
• You can’t submit feedback via email
• You can’t configure voting boards to minimize bias
• You can’t easily close the loop
• Audience segmentation is designed to sell advertisements, not to understand what features your customers want

If you want to build audience segments, you would need to upgrade to the premium version (pricing not publicly available).

If you want to be able to centralize feedback from all your sources, slice and dice by customer attribute, configure the board to minimize bias, or easily close the feedback loop, you would need a different tool.

7. Jira

Jira is really a product development tool, not a customer feedback management tool. And really, you probably don’t want to track feature requests with Jira.

Still, you can build a product feature request tracking workflow if you need to. And it’s free for less than 10 users.

Jira’s free plan features

• 1 site
• Scrum and Kanban boards
• Backlog
• Agile reporting
• Apps and integrations
• Single project
• Basic roadmaps

Disadvantages:

• You can’t easily centralize feedback from your feedback sources
• You can’t prioritize feedback data by customer or company attributes
• You can’t solicit feedback through a voting board or feedback form
• You can’t easily close the loop
• You can’t segment your feedback data

If you want to be able to centralize feedback from all your sources, slice and dice by customer attribute, configure the board to minimize bias, or easily close the feedback loop, you would need a different tool.

8. Productboard

Productboard is one of the leading customer feedback management tools. The full tool has a pretty complete solution for product management: gathering customer feedback, prioritizing it, producing visual product roadmaps, and closing the loop.

Recently, they also added a free “Starter” plan. It’s not really enough to properly use as a product management tool for most teams, but it might be enough to start on before upgrading to something a bit more functional.

Productboard’s free plan features

• 1 roadmap
• Collect feedback
• Share your roadmap
• Google Single Sign on
• Access to the Product Makers Community

Disadvantages:

• You can’t easily centralize feedback from your feedback sources
• You can’t prioritize feedback data by customer or company attributes
• You can’t solicit feedback through a voting board or feedback form
• You can’t easily close the loop
• You can’t segment your feedback data

If you want to be able to centralize feedback from all your sources, slice and dice by customer attribute, configure the board to minimize bias, or easily close the feedback loop, you would need a different tool. (Check out some alternatives to Productboard here).

FAQs

What is a feature request tracker?

A feature request tracker is a tool that helps manage and organize customer feedback and feature requests, ensuring that development teams can prioritize and act on user needs effectively.

Why is feature request software important?

Feature request software streamlines the feedback collection process, centralizes data, and provides tools for prioritization and communication, leading to better product development and customer satisfaction.

How do I choose the best feature request tracking tool?

Consider factors like centralization, prioritization capabilities, integrations, customization options, and ease of closing the feedback loop. Evaluate free plans and advanced features based on your team's needs.

Can I use project management tools for feature request tracking?

Yes, tools like Trello and Jira can be adapted for feature request tracking, though they may lack specialized features found in dedicated feedback management software.

Are free feature request tools sufficient for large teams?

Free tools are generally suited for small teams or startups. Larger teams with complex needs might require paid plans to access advanced features and integrations.

How does feedback management improve product development?

Effective feedback management helps prioritize development efforts based on customer needs, leading to higher quality products, increased customer satisfaction, and better business outcomes.

Finding the best value feature request tracking app

Free plans can work for small SaaS companies and startups. If you really don’t have the resources to invest in a feedback tool, the above can be good options.

But they really are limited:

• Most of the above apps don’t really let you centralize feedback that comes in from your customer support tool, your CRM, through email, the phone, etc.
• Very few of the above apps let you properly segment your feedback data to prioritize it properly—and none of them do on the free plan.
• None of them let you reduce bias from voting boards.
• None of them let you easily close the loop with customers once you build what they asked for.

Savio offers powerful request features for a relatively small investment:

• It centralizes feedback from everywhere you get it
• It slices and dices your feedback so you can see which customers want what
• It lets you customize your voting board to reduce feedback
• It lets you close the loop in just a few clicks.

Savio is powerful and offers great value. If you find that the free options are holding you back from making the best product decisions, take Savio for a spin.

Note: Savio helps you centralize, organize, and prioritize product feedback from your GTM team, by integrating with Slack, HubSpot, Intercom, Zendesk, SFDC, Help Scout, and more. Learn more about Savio here.

Last Updated: 27-04-2023

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