Developing quality products for your customers can be hard.
After all, there’s no magic recipe to cook products out of thin air, right?
However, it can be equally challenging to decide which one of the many product management tools to use while managing the entire process.
Should you go for a suite of different product manager tools?
Or should you opt for a project management tool that can handle everything in one place?
(Yes! Such a tool exists) 
Don’t worry.
In this article, we’ll highlight the eleven best product management tools to help you identify the right one for you.
Let’s dive right in!
What Are Product Management Tools?
Product management tools help teams take care of particular phases in the product life cycle. This can include activities like:
- Product launch planning
- Software development planning
- Product analytics
- Prototyping
- Or even product marketing
For example, a product roadmap tool helps you map out your product vision, describing the features you’ll tackle along the way.
However, some product manager software tools, like a comprehensive project management tool, provide a central platform for everything involved in developing and managing products.
This is important for a remote product team, as it makes sense to use a single virtual product management system that offers the right features.
What should you look for in product management tools?
Here are some essential features to look for in a product management tool:
- Brainstorming Capabilities: creating a new product requires out-of-the-box thinking. And no matter how crazy your idea is, the management tool should help you make sense of it
- Task management: whether it’s a kanban board or built-in task prioritization, the app should have comprehensive task management features
- Templates: your management tool should come with customizable templates to help you get started instantly
- Integrations: unfortunately, there are very few product manager tools that can meet all of your needs. That’s why your management tool must integrate with popular workplace software for maximum functionality
However, those aren’t the only things you need to look at.
If you have to go through countless tabs just to see if things are moving according to your product strategy, you’ll go bonkers in no time. 
That’s why excellent usability is also an important factor when choosing the right product management software. Not to mention that it shouldn’t be a tool that breaks the bank!
Bonus: Check out our Product Management Glossary! 
Top 11 Product Management Tools
Here are the ten best product management software tools available today:
1. ClickUp
Best overall product management tool
ClickUp is one of the world’s best product management software, perfect for product teams, and an excellent collaboration tool preferred by several teams in small and large companies.
From product planning to team collaboration, this free product management software (SaaS) has got you covered!
ClickUp key features
Here’s a quick look at how ClickUp can be one of the product management tools to make your life easier:
A. Sketch out your product vision with Mind Maps
ClickUp’s Mind Maps feature is the perfect place to share that mind-blowing product vision with your team.
Whether it’s connecting user stories or delegating tasks to the dev team, ClickUp lets you ideate to your heart’s (or your brain’s) content!
B. Identify product planning urgencies with ClickUp Task Priorities
Label tasks with priority flags to ensure everyone learns prioritization and knows what needs immediate attention.
C. Use Lists to breakdown the product backlog
Split up product backlog items into smaller checklist items. And then just check them off when done. Sorta like your to-do list, but much better!
Want to learn how to manage a productbacklog?
Check out our product backlog guide.
D. Lay out your plans with Milestones
Have a major feature release in your roadmap?
Use ClickUp’s Milestones to mark it as important and track progress with ease.
ClickUp pros
- Sleek and user-friendly interface
- Send and receive emails right from ClickUp to take quick actions with the Email ClickApp
- Automate 50+ processes to save time
- Keep stakeholders and clients in the loop with Public Sharing
- Store all project and company-related files with Docs
- Customize Task Statuses to create your own product management workflow
- Track the time your tasks take, right from ClickUp
- Monitor your team’s daily activity levels with Pulse
- Save time with team templates
- Available for desktop, mobile (Android and iOS app), voice, and browser platforms
ClickUp limitations
- No table view on the mobile app (yet)
We also take each customer feedback and feature request very seriously to make ClickUp a product management software free of bugs and full of product-changing features.
Check out our roadmap to see how!
ClickUp pricing
ClickUp offers a Forever Free Plan that comes with a wide variety of awesome features.
For more functionality, paid plans start as low as $5/user per month.
ClickUp customer ratings
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (2,200+ reviews)
- G2: 4.7/5 (2,850+ reviews)
ClickUp reviews
“Clickup has so many great tools to grow our team and I’m always finding better and faster ways to do things. We have seen tremendous productivity growth in our team since using Clickup.” – G2Crowd
“ClickUp has completely changed how I work. I cannot imagine not using it. It has almost gotten to the point where if it isn’t on ClickUp, I won’t be doing it. It takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it it becomes exponentially useful.” — G2Crowd
2. Pivotal Tracker
Best for agile software development
Pivotal Tracker is an agile project management software with some handy features for defining user stories and analyzing agile team performance.
It’s another one of the many free product management tools you may want to consider to help your software product management team.
But is it actually pivotal for your product management activities?
Let’s find out.
Pivotal Tracker key features
- Product backlog management
- Labels to organize and monitor user stories
- Story blockers help identify potential roadblocks in advance
- Multi-project workspaces to view several projects side-by-side
Pivotal Tracker pricing
This product data management software has a free plan that supports up to five projects and users. Paid plans start at $10/month.
Pivotal Tracker customer ratings
- Capterra: 4.3/5 (110+ reviews)
- G2: 4.1/5 (90+ reviews)
Pivotal Tracker reviews
“Our team is able to stay on track with work in a sprint and spend less time chatting on Slack about story progress, and do all the communication within PivotalTracker. Overall, this has kept our team organized and accountable.” — Capterra Verified Review
“For smaller teams and projects, the point estimate feature and much of the in-depth analytics hasn’t been that helpful for us in terms of making actionable decisions. With that said, for the right project and for large teams with many collaborators, I can see how these tools could be useful.” — Capterra Verified Review
Compare Pivotal Tracker and ClickUp
3. airfocus
Best for modular product roadmapping
airfocus offers a modern and modular product management platform. It provides a complete solution for product teams to manage and communicate their strategy, prioritize their work, build roadmaps and connect feedback to solve the right problems. Designed with flexibility in mind, airfocus allows you to quickly customize the platform to fit your needs without disrupting the way your team works.
airfocus key features
- Roadmapping: Align your team and set a clear direction
- Prioritization: Prioritize with confidence
- Insights: Listen to your customers and solve the right problems
- Modularity: The modular product platform that adapts to you
airfocus pricing
This product management tool offers paid plans starting at $15/editor per month and offers many integrations with dev tools or feedback tools.
airfocus user ratings
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (95+ reviews)
- G2: 4.4/5 (95+ reviews)
airfocus reviews
“Airfocus is helping our team organize our project activities into Sprints in the Kanban board as well as giving us a high-level overview in the Gantt Roadmap. The Priority Chart is a cool feature which is allowing us to evaluate projects based on voting/ranking. Overall our experience with Airfocus was been very positive.” — Capterra Verified Review
“Airfocus is magic, because it allowed my growth team to not work on the latest, shiniest idea. It allowed me to get my team to think more objectively about what projects will actually make the most impact.” — Capterra Verified Review
4. ProductPlan
Best for product roadmapping
ProductPlan is a great product roadmap tool that helps you communicate your product plan and strategy through beautiful roadmaps.
Hit your brakes right there!
Besides roadmapping and limited task management features, ProductPlan doesn’t offer much.
This begs the question: “Do you really have to pay $39/user per month for a basic roadmapping tool?”
ProductPlan key features
- Timeline view to build roadmaps based on dates
- See your entire product portfolio at a glance with the portfolio view
- Prioritize product backlog items in the planning board
- Kanban-style roadmap creation
ProductPlan pricing
This product management tool offers paid plans starting at $39/user per month and offers features like Microsoft Teams integration.
ProductPlan user ratings
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (50+ reviews)
- G2: 4.5/5 (70+ reviews)
ProductPlan reviews
“We have used product plan to track projects with milestones and timelines involving multiple teams. It’s very easy to extend or adjust each taskbar which makes it very easy to use and also to update stakeholders on the project progress.” — Capterra Verified Review
“Product Plan is has helped our team take our work to the next level by giving us a professional and easy-to-read layout. Hyperlinks are easy to share with updates and explanations from inception to implementation.” — Capterra Verified Review
5. Trello
Best for collaboration
Trello is a kanban-style project management tool that helps a product management team with collaboration and organization.
But is it the right tool for you?
If you don’t mind using Power-Ups or integrations for the most basic things like a Gantt chart or time tracker. 
Trello key features
- Kanban boards and checklists for easy task management
- Automate workflows with Trello’s butler bot
- Mobile app available for Android and iOS devices
- Offers templates for product management, productivity, team management, etc.
Trello pricing
This management software has a free plan with ten boards. Paid plans start at $10/user per month with unlimited boards.
Trello customer ratings
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (10,000 reviews)
- G2: 4.4/5 (11,500+ reviews)
Check out these Trello alternatives!
Trello reviews
“Very easy to use, friendly and intuitive interface and lots of features to collaborate and personalize your boards. Good price for the money and decent support team.” — Capterra Verified Review
“Overall I found Trello to be a great board of tasks for the team to manage the workload, project management and follow up on tasks. It gives the freedom to manage tasks and team on the same page and timely sync.” — Capterra Verified Review
6. Jira
Best for software development
Suitable for agile and scrum software development teams, Jira is an excellent project management tool with issue and bug tracking capabilities.
However, when it comes to efficient management, Jira doesn’t go the extra mile.
If you want to drown in tasks and customers’ feature tickets, this Atlassian product could be the right fit.
Need more information on Jira?
Read our in-depth Jira review and learn how to use Jira for project management.
Jira key features
- Scrum and kanban boards for agile teams
- Create a roadmap to communicate product strategy clearly
- Detailed analytics on team performance
- Built-in workflow automation
Jira pricing
Jira’s free plan supports just ten users. Paid plans start at $7/user per month.
Jira customer ratings
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (10000 reviews)
- G2: 4.2/5 (3,800+ reviews)
Jira reviews
“Its learning curve is pretty steep when you compare it to other tools. But as soon as you get used to it you bother no more as it’s an industry standard so most of the companies use it. It can also be heavy in execution time but it depends whether you host it on your own server or use Atlassian cloud.” — Capterra Verified Review
“JIRA has been an integral part of our software development and project management journey and has just about all the tools you need to successfully manage your project or product offerings.” — Capterra Verified Review
7. Aha!
Best for roadmapping
Aha! is a web-based product strategy and roadmapping tool that can help you understand the why, when, and what of your products to make product management simple.
But before you say “Aha! Found the one,” you need to know two things:
One, it doesn’t have a mind map.
And two, it doesn’t support real-time time tracking.
Isn’t time money? 
Need more details? Check out our comprehensive Aha! product management review.
Aha! key features
- Product roadmap template options
- Idea portals for gathering feedbacks and manage ideas
- Sharable roadmap option for collaboration
- Integrates with Azure DevOps, Asana, Github, Google Analytics, Salesforce, etc.
Aha! Pricing
The plans start at $59/user month. They also have a special plan for startups with less than $1.5M in funding.
Aha! customer ratings
- Capterra: 4.8/5 (380+ reviews)
- G2: 4.3/5 (180+ reviews)
Aha! reviews
“This software is complex, IMO not very intuitive and has a steep learning curve. There are tutorials that are very helpful and walk you through most everything you can think of, but it takes time to watch them and/or read. Once you get past the initial phase of learning the software and features you need, you will love it.” — Capterra Verified Review
“We use Aha! for high level strategic planning and development roadmaps. Aha! is a core tool for keeping teams and projects manageable in a growing environment. The ability to have dashboards and reports for different audiences is essential to keep everyone aligned.” — Capterra Verified Review
8. Productboard
Best for customer roadmapping
Productboard is a customer-centric product management platform.
It can draw in all your product and customer feedback from different tools like Zendesk, Slack, Intercom, etc., into one place for better analytics, prioritization, and roadmapping.
The tool is definitely as customer-centric as it can get.
But what about employee management?
They skipped that when they decided not to include a workload chart.
Guess working overtime will always be on the table. Yikes!
Productboard key features
- Customizable roadmapping features
- Portals for customer feedback
- Prioritization for clear product strategies
- Unlimited roadmaps for stakeholders
Productboard pricing
This management tool has a 15-day free trial, and their paid plans range from $20/user month to custom prices.
Productboard customer ratings
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (110+ reviews)
- G2: 4.3/5 (140+ reviews)
Productboard reviews
“Productboard is a very intuitive tool for our Product Management that allows us to track the features from the insights we gather to the delivery. The shareable roadmap is essential for the communication to other services (R&D, sales, support) and the UI makes it easy to use and to understand.” — Capterra Verified Review
“This is helping us prioritize our features. A little help on our bandwidth and if we have the pipeline full. This helps us have a clean deliverable to stakeholders. Very easy portal feature to better engage company and clients. Helping us manage our large client feedback pool from multiple sources.” — Capterra Verified Review
9. Figma
Best for design
Figma is a web-based designing and prototyping tool.
Use it to co-design with your team members and create something beautiful.
But as soon as you push aside designing and prototyping, this tool isn’t much.
No task management. No app for Linux users.
You make the call!
Figma key features
- Supports several plug-ins, including stock imagery, flow diagrams, and charts
- Flexible styles with color, text, grid, or effect
- Editing and collaboration with version history
- Embed prototypes in your preferred tool
Figma pricing
This prototyping tool offers a free plan, and the paid plans start from $12/user per month.
Figma customer ratings
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (280+ reviews)
- G2: 4.6/5 (200+ reviews)
Figma reviews
“With Figma, we were able to create more collaborative design critiques, more productive developer meetings, and broader file organization.” — Capterra Verified Review
“While it’s easy to use, there’s still a learning curve. I was a Sketch user, and Sketch is still faster to design in. Also, if you want a really complex prototype, it can get tricky. And, having a local version of Figma is still cloud-based. So, working offline will give you limited capability.” — Capterra Verified Review
10. Balsamiq
Best for wireframing
Balsamiq is a wireframe tool that lets you live the experience of sketching on a notepad or whiteboard but a computer.
Their product is called Balsamiq Wireframes that you can use to sketch out your dream app or product user interface and collaborate with your team.
However, for a tool that supports creativity, it forgot to be creative. The interface looks so simple that it’s borderline boring. Its gloomy black, grey, and white choice of color scheme is no fun.
Balsamiq key features
- Allows collaboration for software designs teams
- Easy drag and drop functionality
- Mockup creation
- Plug-in for Jira, Confluence, and Google Drive
Balsamiq pricing
Balsamiq prices range from $9/month to $199/month.
Balsamiq customer ratings
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (320+ reviews)
- G2: 4.1/5 (440+ reviews)
Balsamiq reviews
“Balsamiq is the agency’s go to wireframing tool. The application allows the UX team to quickly convey their ideas to the creative designers without the expectation of deciding the visual branding of the site. Whilst the feature set is fairly limited and the tool hasn’t been upgraded recently it is still the most efficient method to draw up wireframes we have found.” — Capterra Verified Review
“Balsamiq’s UX is user-friendly, and its functionalities and features are suitable for beginners who aim to deliver quality prototype samples to their clients for all kinds of digital products before actually building the real thing.” — Capterra Verified Review
11. SurveyMonkey
Best for customer feedback
If you need an app to gather information about your products, SurveyMonkey should help. 
It’s a web-based survey tool with many types of questionnaire templates that let you put together a survey in minutes.
Then send the survey to your customers to easily track and analyze the results later.
Now, the tool’s name may be cute but are the features any good? Let’s find out.
SurveyMonkey key features
- Quick form, poll, and survey creation
- HR and marketing solutions
- Gather product or user feedback via email, mobile chat, social media, etc.
- NPS (Net Promoter Score) calculator
SurveyMonkey pricing
This survey management tool offers three plans for both personal and business needs. The business plans start at $25/user per month.
SurveyMonkey customer ratings
- Capterra: 4.6/5 (8,300+ reviews)
- G2: 4.4/5 (16,800+ reviews)
SurveyMonkey reviews
“We are using Survey Monkey to acquire customer data at various outside events in order to make overall decisions based on user trends.” — Capterra Verified Review
“When our team wanted to collect a lot of answers to review questions and that too anonymously, the first thing that came to our mind was to use this survey monkey as a tool.” — Capterra Verified Review
FAQs About Product Management
Sure, using product management software can help you create a mind-blowing product.
But the road doesn’t end there.
For starters, teams should understand what goes into product management. Moreover, project managers must be skilled enough to handle the whole process without turning into this:
Don’t worry. We’ll answer these questions to help you out:
1. What is product management?
Product management is the process of managing the entire product lifecycle to deliver a successful product to the customer. It involves performing several activities like user research, product planning, product marketing, and more.
Check out our detailed product managementguide.
2. What skills does a project manager need?
A brilliant product manager must be able to:
- Analyze and interpret a feature request or user feedback accurately
- Set and track important KPIs, like customer satisfaction
- Define the product vision with realistic and achievable goals
- Communicate stakeholders expectations to the product team clearly
- Think strategically with good forecasting skills
- Understand basic user experience design principles
- Manage time and resources efficiently
However, these are just some general skills an agile product manager needs.
Ultimately, it comes down to what the business or a specific project requires.
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