15 Best Idea Management Tools For Small Businesses in 2024

If you're not using idea management software, you're missing out on a valuable opportunity to improve your business. This software makes it easy to collect and track ideas from employees, customers, and other stakeholders. It can help you identify new opportunities and solve problems more quickly.

Additionally, idea management software can help you build a better relationship with your customers by giving them a voice in your company. If you're looking for a way to improve your business, make sure to add idea management software to your list of priorities.

There are a number of software tools that help with managing ideas. These tools can help you capture, organize, and track your ideas. They can also help you collaborate with others and get feedback on your ideas. Some of the most popular software tools for managing customer ideas include FeedBear, Canny, Uservoice, and Aha!.

There are many different types of tools on the market, and it is important to do your research before selecting one. Each tool has different features, so it is important to find the one that is best suited for your needs. Make sure to read reviews and compare prices before making a purchase.

FeedBear is an ideas board with upvoting

FeedBear is a web app designed for idea management. With FeedBear, you can easily capture, organize, and share your ideas with others. You can also vote on ideas, and see the most popular ideas. FeedBear makes it easy to get your ideas out there and get feedback from others. They get a way to share their ideas and know if and when they are implemented.

It allows your customers to submit and vote on ideas, and then tracks the progress of each idea. This makes it easy for businesses to collect and track ideas from employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

FeedBear also includes features like email and Slack notifications, webhooks and a Zapier integration, so users and administrators can stay up-to-date on the latest ideas and comments and you can integrate the software with any other tools you might be using.

A popular use for FeedBear is to track feature requests. This allows users to submit ideas for new features or improvements to existing features, and then vote on the ones they would like to see implemented. This allows the developers of the software to get a sense of what the community wants, and prioritize their work based on that.

Feedbear is a great tool for this because it sends automatic email updates for any status changes. As a user, you can just relax and know that you will be notified if anything changes on a request you made.

The ability to quickly and easily submit feedback or ideas makes it easy for customers to provide input on the products and services they use. The feedback and idea management features also make it easy for customers to see the ideas that have been submitted by other customers. This allows customers to vote on and comment on ideas, making it easy for the best ideas to rise to the top.

With unlimited boards and unlimited users, you can manage all of your projects with ease. Great price, too, at just $49/month.

Canny for feedback and idea management

Canny is a great way to manage feedback and ideas from your customers and team.

It's easy to use and helps to keep everyone organized and on track. You can create projects and tasks, and then add feedback or ideas to those tasks. Like FeedBear, Canny also lets you comment on ideas, so everyone can see the discussion. This is a great way to get feedback and make decisions as a team.

The feedback or idea boards are great for gathering feedback and ideas from your team. The roadmap tool is great for planning out your project and seeing how your ideas fit into the bigger picture.

Their changelog feature helps customers keep track of the changes that have been made to your product. Product teams can easily communicate about new features and product changes.

As Canny is shifting its focus to the corporate market, its features and pricing are not suitable for small businesses and startups. It's easy to compare Canny with FeedBear and find the latter a no-brainer: just the right features, a modern, well-designed tool at a fraction of the cost (from $49/month to $99/month for larger teams).

Canny's pricing model is their main issue. Subscription fees are charged based on a per-user fee, which for larger teams can quickly add up.

Canny's cheapest plan starts at $50 per month for 100 users and a limited feature set. If you expect to have more people submitting feedback or ideas, get ready to pay hundreds per month, like most of their customers do.

Uservoice for an idea portal and customer support

Uservoice allows customers to provide feedback on their experiences with a company or product.

It also offers a feature called Idea Portal, which allows customers to submit ideas about features they would like to see in a company's product. Ideas can be voted on by other customers to show support, and the company can track the most popular ideas.

Uservoice is one of the oldest feedback tools on the market. It was founded in 2009 and has been helping businesses collect and manage customer feedback ever since.

Uservoice is a wonderful tool, but its pricing structure and corporate focus are its weak points.

The pricing is too expensive for small businesses and nonprofits, and the corporate focus means that the tool is not as user friendly as it could be. Additionally, the customer service is not always responsive, which can be frustrating.

It’s impossible to determine how much the service costs without a demo call. The pricing page on the website is incomplete and there is no way to get a quote without speaking to a representative. This can be frustrating for potential customers who are trying to make an informed decision about whether or not to use the service.

The main drawback with Uservoice is that it's not user friendly, there's way too many features available, meaning there's a learning curve.  If you're a business that's looking for a more sophisticated way to collect and manage customer feedback, then Uservoice is a great option. However, if you're looking for something simpler, there are other, better options available, like FeedBear.

Overall, Uservoice is a great tool for businesses to get customer feedback, but it can be difficult to determine how much the service costs without a demo call. The pricing page on the website is incomplete and there is no free trial. Back in 2015, pricing for Uservoice started at $500/month, with some sites reporting it's now starting at $15,000 a year.

Aha! Ideas for product teams

Aha! ideas is an idea portal solution where your customers or team members can submit new ideas and vote on existing ones. This is a great way to get feedback on new ideas and to see which ones are the most popular. It can also help to get new ideas from people who may not have thought of them before.

The app is geared towards product teams who need to come up with software solutions to complex problems. Aha! makes it easy to capture your ideas, organize them, and share them with others.

There are many benefits to using Aha!, but the biggest benefit is that it allows you to see your entire product strategy in one place. You can track your progress, manage your features, prioritize your work, and communicate your roadmap to stakeholders. Aha! also makes it easy to collaborate with your team by allowing them to share and comment on your ideas.

The biggest drawback of Aha! is that it can be difficult to keep track of all of your ideas and tasks in one place. Additionally, the interface can be a little overwhelming for first-time users.

Pricing for Aha! is not the cheapest, but it might be worth the investment. The software is packed with features that are helpful for product managers, and it is constantly updated with new features. The customer service is excellent, and the company is always looking for ways to improve its product.

Aha's Ideas pricing starts at $59 per month, but Aha! charges per seat, so this only allows one team member to access the tool. If you have a team of 10, you're already spending $590/month to collect ideas, which is a bit steep. Look at FeedBear for a simpler and cheaper alternative, starting at $49/month for up to 3 team members, or $99/month for up to unlimited team members.

Feature Upvote for software products

Feature Upvote board is a great way to get feedback from users about what they like and don't like about a product. It can also help to prioritize features for future development.

By allowing users to vote on features, you can get a sense of what is important to them and what they would like to see in the product. This can help to improve the user experience and make the product more successful.

Feature Upvote is a good tool, but it is very simple. It would be nice if it had more features. It's lacking a roadmap tool, or a widget and doesn't have anything to keep users informed of new product features or post updates to keep your team or stakeholders in the loop.

Feature Upvote's pricing starts at $99 per month for a single board. That's not cheap considering FeedBear provides all the features of Feature Upvote, and adds more, while starting at $49/month with unlimited boards.

MindNode is the best for mindmaps

I found that Mindnode can really help visualize ideas. It’s very helpful for brainstorming sessions and build up ideas or concepts. You can create different nodes for different topics and then easily connect them together. This makes it easy to see how your ideas are related to each other. You can easily export your mind map to a PDF or image file. This makes it easy to share with others.

There are a lot of mind mapping tools on the market, but I find Mindnode to be the best. It's easy to use and has a lot of features that make it perfect for creating mind maps. I like that I can add links between nodes, identify them by color, prioritize ideas and bring focus to a related group of ideas, keep track of my progress, and syncs my maps between devices. It also has a great search feature that makes it easy to find nodes or topics I am looking for. I have plenty of control to make branches visually distinctive.

Mindnode's pricing is in line with others. The app is available for purchase at $10.99 on the App Store, and a desktop version is available for $19.99.

Miro to brainstorm on a whiteboard

Miro is a great way to brainstorm ideas on a whiteboard. You can easily share your ideas with others and get their feedback. Miro also makes it easy to save your brainstorming sessions so you can come back to them later. And it has deep integrations with today’s most popular and trusted tools such as Dropbox, Box, Google Suite, JIRA, Slack, and Sketch.

Miro lets you save whiteboards as PDFs and presentations. This can be really helpful if you want to keep a record of a whiteboard session, or if you need to share a whiteboard with someone who doesn't have access to Miro. To save a whiteboard as a pdf, just open the whiteboard in Miro and select File > Export as PDF.

It’s a great asset for idea generation, wireframing, workshopping, innovation and rapid design, design thinking, and framework transfer. And if you are worried about security, you can add advanced security and compliance controls to your whiteboards.

In terms of pricing, Miro offers different plan options that go from 0$ (with fewer features) to 192$ annually (ideal for businesses).

MindMeister for mind mapping

Mindmeister is a great online tool for mind mapping. It's easy to use and has a lot of features that make it a great tool for brainstorming and organizing your thoughts. You can create maps with multiple branches, add attachments like notes and images, structure information and share your maps with others. You can also customize your mind mapping and receive inputs from your team regarding different ideas or concepts.

With MindMeister you can connect mind maps with project boards in MeisterTask, to turn ideas into actionable tasks, make mind maps public and embed them in a website or blog and turn them into engaging, dynamic slideshows to present them online or in person to others.

MindMeister has both an iOS app and an Android app that you can download for free from the App Store and Google Play Store. Also, you can access it directly through their site. The free option is limited, you can only work on 3 maps and add just a few items to other people’s maps. The paid options are very affordable, you can start the personal plan for 2.49$ per month, dedicated to individuals only. There’s also the Pro and Business plan for 4.19 and 6.29$ each.

Crowdicity as an innovation management solution

Crowdicity is the most intuitive innovation management solution. It offers a simple and efficient way for businesses to manage their innovation projects and connect with the right people to get them done. Crowdicity makes it easy for businesses to connect with their customers, partners, and employees to create and develop new ideas.

It offers a lot of features, like polls, filters, file uploads, live chat, and idea sharing. Features include, but are not limited to, the ability to create and manage projects, collaborate with others, and track progress. It’s a great tool for businesses because of its ability to harness the idea and creativity of their people to discover new perspectives, insights and opportunities.

Additionally, Crowdicity offers a variety of reporting and analytics tools to help users better understand their data. This allows companies and organizations to make more informed decisions and improve their productivity.

Crowdicity offers a free trial, but the company does not say how much their starting plans cost.

Brightidea to track innovation initiatives

Brightidea is a web-based application that helps organizations manage and track their innovation initiatives. It offers a variety of features, such as idea management, collaboration, voting, and reporting. Brightidea is often cited as one of the best options for innovation management, thanks to its user-friendly interface and wide range of features.

Basically, they provide you a canvas to create whatever is needed to engage the audience in the open innovation session such as allowing video/picture inserts, custom design, document inserts, etc). The interface permits others to comment and share their ideas and thoughts while also working in building other ideas. Brightidea is very well designed in terms of functionality and usability, it’s easy to access their tools under very technical and professional methods where step by step the idea is developed in a controlled way measuring its potentiality and capacity.

In terms of price details, Brightidea doesn’t disclose this information on its website. Users can contact them by requesting a demo and they will meet the requirements for getting a competitive price.

Ideanote for New Product Launches

Ideanote is a great way to manage new product launches. You can create a note for each product and include all of the important information. This software is created to collect, develop and prioritize ideas quickly and effectively.

The platform works as a central hub to store all your ideas and creates a streamlined process to bring out actions, leading to their achievement. You can scale your innovation process, starting from a particular team to the whole company with no ease.

You can use the interface to fully outline your ideas up to 2,000 words, along with the flexibility to attach supporting documents, pictures, and videos. It has other great features like idea ranking, polls, collaboration, engagement monitoring, discussion threads, and so on. Ideanote is also created to keep everyone on the same page in terms of tracking progress and following their own suggestions.

Ideanote offers three plans, the first one is Starter and the price is 249$ per month for one team, one admin, and up to 100 ideas. The second one is Business, for $649 per month you will have five teams, five admins, and up to 500 ideas. And the third one is Enterprise, for $2899 per month that 10 teams, 10 admins, and unlimited ideas.

Trello is ok to collect ideas

Trello does provide team collaboration and there are add-ons that allow you to add upvoting to a board.

Meaning users invited to a board can vote on ideas/cards. This encourages creativity and collaboration, as users can submit their ideas and vote on others.

The biggest benefit with Trello is that it's essentially free, unless you're a really heavy user and need team features.

The biggest downside is that it's not designed to be a public space, or for you to invite customers to contribute.

Trello's Gold plan, which allowed users to pay a monthly fee to get access to additional features, has been removed and replaced by a new premium plan.

The new premium plan, costs $5 a month and includes features such as: custom board backgrounds, stickers, and emoji, larger file attachments, and more.

Asana to track ideas as tasks

Asana is great for organizing projects and tasks. You can create different projects and tasks, and then add different people to each project. You can also add due dates, comments, and attachments. Asana is a great way to keep track of your projects and tasks, and to keep everyone on track.

I find that using Asana to track my ideas is helpful because it allows me to see what I have already come up with and what I still need to work on. It also helps me to be more organized and efficient with my time.

Asana is centered around teamwork. The platform is designed to help teams stay organized and in sync. Features like tasks, projects, and conversations are all built to help teams work better together. This makes Asana an ideal tool for businesses and organizations of all sizes.

Asana is a great way to track ideas, but it does not include features such as upvotes. This can be a disadvantage because it can be difficult to track the most popular ideas. However, Asana can be customized to include this feature, so it is not a major disadvantage.

On their website, you can find different pricing plans that you can select according to your situation. The free plan is dedicated to individuals or teams getting started with project management, you can collaborate with up 15 teammates.

For $13.49 monthly (per user) you can afford the Premium plan, ideal for teams that need to create project plans with confidence, with this option you will be able to collaborate with unlimited teammates and have unlimited dashboards among other features. Your third option is Business, created for larger companies that need to follow multiple projects, the cost is $24.99 per month per user and has integrations with Salesforce among others.

Best Practices for Making Idea Management Successful

Cultivate a Culture of Openness and Transparency

How can employees be expected to collaborate with others if company goals and challenges are kept hidden? There is no need to divulge every snippet of confidential information but keeping employees in the loop is essential to inspire loyalty and productivity.

Be open about the issues and challenges your organization is facing and present incentives for employees to offer solutions.

Accordingly, all staff can be kept in line with the strategic objectives of the company, meaning that everyone can work collectively towards the same business goals

Make Idea-Sharing a Judgment-Free Zone

One obstacle that often prevents employees from active participation and putting forward their ideas is the fear of judgment or rejection. Particularly prevalent in companies with a top-down organization structure, intimidation can be a frustrating barrier that gets in the way of the best ideas bubbling to the surface.

Overcome this impediment by establishing a creative and judgement-free workplace culture where new ideas and discussions are consistently welcome, whether they are small and strange or ambitious and dramatic.

Refrain from setting too many guidelines, as these can stifle creativity. Place an emphasis on creative freedom and valuable workplace collaborations will follow.

Offer Rewards

Ultimately, we are only human and even the most dedicated employees need an appropriate reward if they have achieved success.

Reward individuals where necessary but do not forget to reward team efforts too. This is crucial in encouraging future collaborations, as employees will realize the benefits of working together. Of course, not all ideas will be good ones but it is nevertheless important to be persistent in providing feedback, whilst remaining positive.

Offering constructive criticism is key to improvement but ensure you convey an appreciation of their effort. Responding to each idea can be time consuming so encourage peer-to-peer discussions of ideas to further increase collaborative efforts.

Benefits of Crowdsourcing Ideas

Crowdsourcing is an incredible way to put many minds to work in solving tough problems.

By turning to a large group of people for ideas and solutions, crowdsourcing can generate a lot of benefits over internal ideation processes. Not only can businesses get access to great ideas, but they can also drive marketing buzz and engage their customers.

The following are some of the biggest reasons to use crowdsourcing in your business:

• Unexpected solutions to tough problems
• Greater diversity of thinking
• Reduced burden on management
• More marketing buzz
• Faster problem solving
• Customer-centric data

A Simple Solution for Idea Management

FeedBear is probably the simplest idea management solution you'll find out there. You can easily collect ideas from your team, employees, customers and other stakeholders. Then assign statuses, add them to a roadmap and share updates to keep everyone in the loop.

Creating a FeedBear account only takes 60-seconds and with a free 14 days trial, there's no reason not to give it a try.

Once you’re signed up, you can fully customize your ideas portal to meet the needs of your business.