IdeaBoardz vs. GoRetro: How to choose the perfect retrospective platform [2023]
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! 😊
IdeaBoardz is a retrospective tool that puts simplicity in the center. Their design aims to give teams an effective retrospective meeting. 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. IdeaBoardz 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.
IdeaBoardz vs. GoRetro: The high-level comparison
When the time comes to getting 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 IdeaBoardz offer similar basic functionalities and pricing packages, but GoRetro shines when it comes to data integration, reports, happiness tracking, action items, and so on. GoRetro was built specifically for Scrum Masters and is used by more than 40,000 organizations across diverse industries and sizes, so this should not come as a surprise. As for IdeaBoardz, it has some really nice UX and we loved its vast templates library for different games and whiteboard activities.
Continue reading below and see how GoRetro and IdeaBoardz compare for all your organization’s needs.
More Top Retrospective Tools
In addition to GoRetro and IdeaBoardz, 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 IdeaBoardz?
IdeaBoardz is a team collaboration tool. It allows teams to collectively brainstorm, gather inputs, reflect and have fun retrospectives. It is especially useful for teams that are distributed geographically, and is also handy for collecting team input over days and then meeting to discuss them.
Image source: IdeaBoardz
Features comparison
❗The most important piece of information 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 IdeaBoardz.
Both GoRetro and IdeaBoardz 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, GoRetro gives 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 privacy and collaboration
When it comes to the privacy of your board, IdeaBoardz does not really offer any. Your board can be accessed and edited by anyone who has the link to it. IdeaBoardz also lets your board be easily shared around your team by simply sending the URL to them.
GoRetro, on the other hand, allows you to make your board public or private with certain teammates. You can create an unlimited number of boards with any team that you create, whether it’s developers, managers, the project’s team leaders, or everyone involved. Each team can be created through the platform: invites are sent directly via email, and the boards can be shared via email or access link.
Retrospective templates
Both IdeaBoardz and GoRetro have retrospective templates to help you quickly create a board. Both platforms also allow you to create your own custom board from scratch to meet all your team’s needs.
GoRetro has a variety of Sprint retrospective formats, including Three Little Pigs, 4 Ls, Lean Coffee, the start stop continue retrospective, and many more. The custom templates can have three to five columns. All boards have the feature of voting and assigning a number of votes per user. You can choose to hide cards, disable votes, hide vote count, and show the card’s author.
IdeaBoardz also has templates you can choose from, including the starfish retrospective, six thinking hats, pros and cons, and retrospective. When it comes to custom boards, you can create boards with 1 to 10 sections, but are limited to merely a description and the name of the board.
Exporting your retrospective
Being able to export a board is important, especially if you have a meeting in which you need to discuss project details or just to keep it as backup. Both platforms provide exporting features, and are completely free.
If using IdeaBoardz, you can export any board you have access to, as PDF or Excel files. GoRetro allows you to export any board to PDF, Excel, and Clipboard.
Retrospectives for teams
GoRetro has the capability to assign user roles to team members. For instance, the account administrator can view and manage all subscriptions as well as create and manage teams and boards. The team admin can view and manage the teams and the retrospective boards. The team member can only view, create, and manage boards within the team they are a part of. IdeaBoardz, on the other hand, doesn’t offer that feature.
Retro dashboard and layout
Depending on how big or small your team is, the layout of the platform can play a key role in staying organized. While you might need to put in some extra effort to stay organized when using IdeaBoardz, you won’t have to do any extra work when using GoRetro.
When you log into your GoRetro account, you are immediately directed to a dashboard with all the boards and teams you are a part of. You can include comments on the boards to specific teams, Or filter and sort all your boards by date, vote count, text, and more.
Choosing the right platform for you and your team depends on your team’s wants and needs. If you only need a simple board perhaps IdeaBoardz would be a good option for you. If you have bigger projects or more teams, GoRetro might be the way to go.
Sprint Planning
GoRetro provides a space for you to plan every aspect of your sprint, from beginning to end. Capacity Planning for each team member is now clearer and easier than ever with the GoRetro Capacity Planning Dashboard. GoRetro also supports different estimation techniques and various score summarization methods from syncing your backlog management tool with GoRetro. This, combined with GoRetro's deep Jira integration that allows teams to see their velocity, carryover, buffers, and planned-versus-actual trends makes GoRetro's Sprint Planning tools everything your team needs.
What GoRetro and IdeaBoardz users have to say
IdeaBoardz is not included in G2, but GoRetro is ranked as the top performer for spring 2022. It has plenty of strong reviews and testimonials which mention its data-driven insights, simplicity, time saving and boost in participation as core benefits.
What makes GoRetro unique?
Sure, you can always use a spreadsheet to run your retrospective meetings. But will a spreadsheet consume data from your ticket system, run AI models to identify bottlenecks, and help you focus on the big picture?
As far as we’re concerned, GoRetro is the secret sauce, the way to get superpowers and transform your work. And yes, it has ease of use, seamless collaboration, and flexibility. The user interface is dead-simple, so you can get going quickly. But it has much, MUCH, more to offer: It can analyze your burndown, show you feedback on both macro and micro levels, and even boost your team's energy. Why is GoRetro different from other tools? Well, it allows you to have engaging, focused, productive, valuable, in-context and honest retros, using your own data, unlike any other tool out there.
GoRetro pricing
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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