IdeaBoardz
2.9Free shared brainstorming boards
IdeaBoardz is a long-standing free brainstorming and retrospective board: pick 1-10 sections, name them yourself, share the URL, add ideas anonymously, upvote, and export to PDF or Excel. The app still works and is still in daily use, but development stopped years ago — the public source repository's last feature commits date to April 2020 and the Terms have not been revised since.
Full review →
Retrium
4.7Guided retrospectives and Team Radars for scrum and agile teams
Retrium is a long-running, retrospectives-only tool that emphasises guided five-phase facilitation, anonymous brainstorming, voting, a persistent action plan, and Team Radar health checks for distributed teams.
Full review →Summary
IdeaBoardz scores 2.9 overall and is best for throwaway retros and quick distributed brainstorms when nobody wants to sign up. It offers a free tier.
Retrium scores 4.7 overall and is best for scrum masters and agile coaches who want a focused, retro-only tool with strong facilitation guardrails and a built-in Team Radar. It offers paid plans from $39/mo.
IdeaBoardz leads on value and open platform. Retrium leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, integrations and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Retrium edges ahead with an overall score of 4.7. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | Retrium |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Mid-market |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | No free plan — 30-day trial of column-based techniques and Team Radar |
| Starting price | Free | $39/mo |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | $117/mo |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2010 | 2014 |
| HQ | Pune, India | Washington, D.C., USA |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | CSV · Jira |
| Features | 9 | 26 |
| Integrations | 0 | 2 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | Retrium |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| AI Summaries | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | — |
| AI action items | — | — |
| Action tracking | — | ✓ |
| Team Insights | — | — |
| Polling | — | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓note |
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓ |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Agile Estimations | — | — |
| Health Checks | — | ✓ |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | — | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | — | ✓note |
| Linear | — | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | ✓note |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | ✓ |
| GDPR | — | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | ✓note |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓note | — |
| Webhooks | — | — |
| MCP server | — | — |
IdeaBoardz — pros
- + Genuinely free — no paywall, no paid tier, no trial clock
- + No signup required to participate — just share the URL
- + 1-10 free-text sections build Start/Stop/Continue, 4Ls or Six Thinking Hats by hand
- + Drag one sticky onto another to merge them; the votes are added together
- + PDF and Excel export on every board, plus a working phone view
IdeaBoardz — cons
- − No templates at all — the only format choice is how many sections you want
- − No timer, no phases, no action items, no grouping beyond merging two stickies into one
- − Unlimited anonymous upvotes with no per-person vote budget
- − Zero integrations, no SSO, no SOC 2 and no published privacy policy — the URL is the only access control
- − No product work since April 2020; support is a Gmail address and a Twitter handle
Retrium — pros
- + Battle-tested five-phase guided facilitation flow
- + Anonymous brainstorming and grouping by design
- + Persistent team-room action plan that carries forward between retros
- + Team Radar health check — up to seven customisable spokes, anonymous 1–5 scoring
- + Per-team-room pricing with unlimited users on every plan
Retrium — cons
- − No free plan — 30-day trial only, and the Fishbone technique stays paid-only during it
- − Integrations stop at Jira Cloud and a <em>still-beta</em> Slack app — no Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Linear or Confluence
- − <strong>No AI features at all</strong> — no summary, clustering, action-item extraction or sentiment
- − The only API is an Enterprise-gated SCIM 2.0 user-provisioning endpoint; no webhooks, and export stops at CSV and TXT
- − No published product updates since <strong>August 2024</strong> — the help centre's yearly updates series ends at 2024
Keep comparing
Other IdeaBoardz comparisons
Other Retrium comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.