GroupMap vs. GoRetro: How to choose the perfect retrospective platform [2022]
GoRetro reviews is our latest blog series where we provide the facts about different retrospective tools – no BS and no hyperbole needed. Keep scrolling for our analysis and to learn more about all the retrospective tools out there. Enjoy! 😊
Both GoRetro and GroupMap are highly popular tools for modern Agile leaders, and for good reason. Their user-friendly designs and comprehensive features make them easy to use, even if you’ve never run a retrospective meeting before. We built GoRetro from the ground up during the Covid era in order to serve modern teams as they navigate this new world. The tool is designed specifically for retrospective meetings. GroupMap, on the other hand, is more of a digital whiteboard product that has a good retrospective template. The product's feature roadmap puts it in direct competition with other digital whiteboards like Mural and Miro.
GroupMap vs. GoRetro: The high-level comparison
When the time comes to get your organization’s processes in order, the first step is knowing you need a solution. But the next step, actually picking and onboarding a new platform, is where things can get tricky.
👉 Both GoRetro and GroupMap offer similar basic functionalities for running your next retrospective meeting, but GoRetro shines when it comes to deep data integration and top of the line security features right from the free tier (and not just for the enterprise tier).
Continue reading below and see how GoRetro and GroupMap compare for all your organization’s needs.
More Top Retrospective Tools
In addition to GoRetro and GroupMap, there are many other quality Agile retrospective tools. We researched and reviewed the leading retrospective tools and highlighted the essential information you need to know about each. Whether you're a Fortune 100 company or a smaller startup organizing a retrospective meeting, our review can help you narrow down your choices and decide which retrospective tool is right for your needs. See all of our top picks.
What is GoRetro?
GoRetro is a free SOC-2 certified, online sprint management tool that facilitates the entire sprint process; from planning to retrospective in a simple, collaborative and data-driven way. GoRetro is used by thousands of Agile teams across the globe, from garage startups to the biggest enterprises in the world (over 20% of S&P 500 companies use GoRetro), and constantly praised for its simplicity, ease of use, and flexibility.
What is GroupMap?
GroupMap is a collaborative web application created to help teams run productive, engaging and fun retrospectives. It is a mixture between a digital whiteboard and a retrospective platform where users join a shared board and add sticky notes to various categories. You can think about it as an online brainstorming and group decision-making tool that dramatically improves the output of team brainstorming activities.
It is a great tool particularly for brainstorming, evaluating ideas, and then moving from discussion to action. We particularly like how it can work both asynchronously and synchronously. GroupMap can work on maps individually between meetings, and then during meetings, interact with the maps via voting, ranking, commenting, etc.
Image source: GroupMap
Features comparison
❗The most important thing to know is that GoRetro is a SOC-2 and ISO 27001 certified, secured by design platform that gives the same level of security for all tiers, whether you pay or not. This is not applicable for GroupMap.
Both GoRetro and GroupMap have the same basic features, which will be covered in the next sections. The main difference comes on the integration level. GoRetro utilizes a deeper level of integration. With its advanced data driven features give you superpowers: You can say goodbye to juggling endless spreadsheets and tabs. Use your real-time Sprint data to run better retros and improve your team’s performance; get a sense of what is happening, identify gaps in planning, and see what your team actually spends their time on. GoRetro will allow you to analyze your Sprints to identify trends, track improvements and uncover stumbling blocks. On average, we managed to increase participation by 80%. Save time on technical preparation and focus on what's important: getting better.
The GoRetro security team spends days and nights to make sure your data is secured at the highest standards out there. We are SOC-2 and ISO 27001 certified, audited and evaluated by an independent auditor in all aspects of product, infrastructure, and policies. GoRetro has been certified as compliant with their stringent requirements.
Basic features comparison
Retro meeting privacy
GoRetro allows you to create private password-protected boards as well as public ones that can be shared via link. With GoRetro you can assign roles to team members, giving them different perks: The account admin can view and manage all boards as well as create and manage teams, the team admin can view and manage teams and boards that they are a part of, and the team member can only view and create boards in the team they are in.
GroupMap does not have a privacy option, but you can choose whether you want a team to be open, which allows everyone to see what people have shared. You can also have a partially anonymous team, where the facilitator can see who wrote what, but team members cannot. Lastly, you can have full anonymity. When it comes to roles, GroupMap has two main roles: the facilitator who can run boards and change settings, and participators, who can add information to boards they are a part of.
Sprint retrospective customization and collaboration
Both platforms have many Sprint retrospective templates so your team can easily create boards, and both allow you to create custom boards from scratch. GoRetro allows you to create color-coordinated cards to keep your board interactive and interesting. Both platforms let you vote on ideas or anything your team needs to decide on. Furthermore, GroupMap is a great platform for brainstorming ideas; it allows team members to add their input individually, without seeing what other team members are saying. The team can also work collaboratively, and they can’t edit out their opinion, so their response will always be sincere.
What GoRetro and GroupMap customers have to say
GroupMap and GoRetro both have comparison reports in G2, but GoRetro has 53 whereas GroupMap only has 10. Users unanimously agree that the tools meet their requirements (90% of the reviews in G2 for GroupMap and GoRetro), and favor their ease of use and online support. GoRetro is ranked as the best performer for spring 2022. Numerous reviews and testimonials refer to its data-driven insights, simplicity, time savings, and rise in participation as its key benefits.
Pricing
GroupMap has a free trial of 14 days, after which you can sign up for the basic plan, which is $20 per month. The basic plan includes one account that creates the maps, with ten people per map, and basic features for designing templates, admin control, and reporting. The professional plan is $60 per month and works well for meetings and workshops. This option allows you to create as many maps as you’d like and have one person as the admin, much like the basic plan. However, you can have 50 members of your team with access to a map, and you get all the advanced options for design, admin controls, and reporting. GroupMap also allows you to create custom plans, depending on the size of your event or company.
GoRetro free plan gives you the power to run meaningful retrospectives in a collaborative way. You get one team, unlimited users, unlimited private retrospectives, 5 public boards, and access to all our pre-built templates and advanced facilitation features, wrapped up with the highest level of security.
In the premium tier, users can benefit from advanced features such as integrations, data models, automatic sprint analysis, AI models, and so on.
The security team of GoRetro does not discriminate and offers the same level of security across all tiers. Plus, GoRetro is SOC2 & ISO 27001 certified, ensuring your data is protected by the latest security standards.
We know that the road to a new platform for your organization can seem like a long and complicated one, but by pairing the information we’ve reviewed with your unique insight about your team, it won’t be difficult to find the right retrospective tool to suit your needs. Our core product values are simplicity, ease of use and flexibility. We believe that retrospecting should not take you or your team out of focus or be an obstacle; it should be a fun experience. As such, we’ve made our user interface, features, and overall design seamless and intuitive. From the onboarding process to the meeting itself, GoRetro is your trusted partner.
👉 GoRetro is continuously releasing new features, so be sure to check out our changelog for updates.
👉 You can find useful articles at our Help Center and at our Blog. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to our support team.
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Thousands of scrum teams from Fortune 500 companies, banks, government agencies, and innovative startups use GoRetro to make their retrospectives fun, engaging and effective
Intuitive navigation between functions and menus, easy application but covers everything needed for a retrospective meeting. Great support team - quick response and frequent update of issue' status. I did 3 retro meetings with the GoRetro app and can't really find any difficulties or disadvantages of GoRetro. What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? The team easily communicates their opinion on the sprint; team feedback can be easily commented. Sorting by the number of votes facilitates team discussions in the area of topics for improvement.
Excellent tool that has come in handy on many projects. Don't know what I would do without it
GoRetro is the best retrospective tool I have ever
GoRetro is the best retrospective tool I have ever seen. It has everything we've ever wanted. It includes the ability to create unlimited retro boards, plenty of pre-built fully customizable templates, SOC-2 compliant, invite unlimited team members, comment, vote, drag/drop/merge, create action items, follow up trends in the analytics panel, export, and so on. There is nothing that stands out when it comes to disliking Attempt it! The team is pushing the envelope and putting the customer first (their SLA is out of this world). They also have all kinds of fun/mini tools that help us during meetings (ice breaker questions generator, for instance).Finally, the content on their website is incredible. What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? The main benefit is the boost in participation. GoRetro accomplishes this by allowing users to seamlessly collaborate without hassle. Moreover, I appreciate the different templates, ease of customization and ability to tailor the board to our needs.
The interface is clean and simple to use. The concepts
The interface is clean and simple to use. The concepts map perfectly well to normal retro processes with the ability to customize just enough to fit everyone's needs. The interface offers a column approach where people can vote, comment and transform items into actionable items. The board, when you have too many items to display can get tedious to manage with long columns. There is a timeboxing option but it is completely manual and not bound to individual items but it's not that bad. What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? My retros were done in all sorts of different tools, tried custom Jira boards, tried integrated tools like in VSTS, used an excel spreadsheet. Nothing ever feels complete. GoRetro offered a good balance of everything to fulfill my needs.
Easy to use, good templates and analytics. The sprint
Easy to use, good templates and analytics. The sprint summary looks very promising giving more insight than some Jira reports. Minor bugs as it's still in development. Good tool, give it a go if you are using Scrum What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? Running retrospectives remotely has always been a challenge but good tools are making our lives much easier.
Dashboard and teams. This is well-organised interface.
Dashboard and teams. This is well-organised interface. could not see anything yet that I don't like What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? this data-driven ai makes thing simple, easy to manage
it is easy to use and share with my team could have
it is easy to use and share with my team could have more design pizzazz, but that's just extra What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? this is allowing our company to do final project retrospectives
Easy to use and support core needs for my team retrospective
it is easy to use and share with my team could have
it is easy to use and share with my team could have more design pizzazz, but that's just extra What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? this is allowing our company to do final project retrospectives
- Easy to use- Support is available and answers very
- Easy to use- Support is available and answers very quickly- A lot of free features is available, it is very appreciable !! like unlimited boards per team, free to customize boards, board exportation...- Analytics section- Action Items section- Possibility to hide & merge cards in board- Happyness index in board- Team(s) creation + Boards per team Suggestions for improvments:In Board & in Action Items section:- Not possible to put several owner on action items- Not possible to remove the due date if put by mistake- Missing something distinguish visually the status (new, in progress, done) like a color for instance- Missing a status "Cancelled" for action itemIn Analytics section:- Not possible to see who had voted on happyness index- Missing a date when the retrospective was started (not only when the board has been created)- Missing a column about action items : how many action items were created in the board + how many action items are at status Done What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you? Before GoRetro :- With other retrospective tools, I didn't have unlimited boards- I had to write another document to summarize the retrospective and the action items to take for each retrospective of my teamBenefits :- GoRetro accelerates my work, especially with action items. It is easier to follow their progression.
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