Retrospectives· Poland

RetroTool

Anonymous online retrospectives, no login required

Overall score

3.2

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Appears dormant — adopt with caution

Re-checked 5 October 2026: the product works and is genuinely in use. The homepage retro counter read 1,011,713 on 5 October, up from 1,001,462 on 1 September (about 10,000 new retros in five weeks), and the Individual/Company plans are still sold at $10 and $20/team/mo through live Stripe prices. But development has stopped. Every marketing-site build asset still carries a Last-Modified date of 28 May 2024; the retro app still runs Meteor 2.9.0, a December 2022 release, and its client bundle is byte-identical to the one served on 1 October, when the backend's system settings were all expired 2023 entries and an 'enterprise_plan' feature flag was switched off. The blog at blog.retrotool.io ends at 25 March 2022, and the privacy policy and terms of use both read 'Last update: 30th August 2020'. This is maintained hosting by parent agency u2i (about 60 people), not an abandoned project.

Overview

RetroTool is a low-friction online retrospective board built by u2i, a ~60-person NY/Kraków software agency, as an internal tool it later opened up. Free anonymous retros run from a unique URL with no signup; paid tiers add private boards, team management, configurable retention and zero-knowledge encryption. The product works and is still used daily, but nothing has shipped visibly since 2024.

Best for: Small or ad-hoc teams who want a free, no-signup retro board with private drafting, secret voting and a dozen standard templates — provided you're comfortable running on a tool whose last visible build is dated May 2024.

RetroTool retrospective board shown on desktop and mobile

How RetroTool describes itself

RetroTool sells friction removal to remote and hybrid teams: a retro board you can start without an account. The homepage counter read 1,010,907 retros on 1 October 2026.

"You're always no more than 3 clicks away from having your retro ready."

Three templates plus a blank board are free, and anonymous use is pitched as free forever. Individual ($10/team/mo, up to 3 teams) and Company ($20/team/mo, unlimited teams) both carry a 90-day no-card trial and 15%+ off annually, and aim at scrum masters who want private invite-only retros, team action-point carryover and zero-knowledge encryption. The voice is engineer-plain: "no login or pesky 'go premium' popups".

Our take

RetroTool nails the ten-minute retro: per-column Private Sections so people draft unbiased, drag-to-group, secret-ballot dot voting with limits set per retro, column or card, a timer, and action points with an owner and a due date. Reading the shipped app turned up two things the marketing doesn't sell — a room-wide Single Column View the facilitator pushes to everyone (the code calls it presentation mode), and twelve live templates where the plan table still promises eleven.

Against what a program needs, the gaps are wide: no health checks, no recurring cadence, no async mode, no cross-team rollups, no AI, and no integration with Jira, Slack or Teams. Export is Markdown — plain or Confluence-flavoured — copied to the clipboard or saved as a file. Google sign-in is the only identity option; there is no SAML, SCIM, audit log or SOC 2.

A stable utility, not an evolving tool — and priced like one.

Score breakdown

Ease of Use7.5

Retro Toolkit4.0

Value9.0

Fun Factor3.0

AI & Insights0.0

Integrations0.0

Open Platform1.0

Enterprise-grade1.0

Pros

+ Genuinely free anonymous retros with no account required
+ Three-click setup — unique URL, share, run
+ Per-column Private Sections keep drafting unbiased until people publish
+ Zero-knowledge encryption with custom passwords on the Company plan
+ Per-team flat pricing ($10 or $20/team/mo, 15%+ off annually) with unlimited members per team, not per-seat

Cons

− Dormant: the marketing build is dated 28 May 2024, the app still runs Meteor 2.9, the blog stopped in March 2022 and the legal pages are unchanged since August 2020
− No integrations with Jira, Slack, Teams or any other agile-stack tool, no AI of any kind, and no health checks, recurring retros, async mode or cross-team reporting
− Export is Markdown only (plain or Confluence wiki markup), copied to the clipboard or saved as a file
− Most templates, image cards, named participants, private invite-only boards and zero-knowledge encryption sit behind paid tiers
− Not SOC 2; Google sign-in only, with no SAML SSO, SCIM or audit logs

Features

Retrospectives

Templates· 3 basic templates free (Mad/Sad/Glad, Liked/Learned/Lacked, Start/Stop/Continue); 9 more on paid plans (DAKI, SWOT, Three Little Pigs, Heroes' journey, Superpowers/Kryptonite, 4Fs and others) — 12 live in the app, though the plan table still advertises 8 advancedCustom templates· Blank custom boards and re-use a past retro as a template; no template builderAnonymous input· Anonymous retros need no login, card authors can be shown or hidden, and Secret voting hides colleagues' votes until it is switched off — all on the free planPrivate brainstorm (hide until reveal)· Per-column Private Sections: each participant drafts cards only they can see, then publishes them one by one or with 'Publish all'; there is no facilitator-controlled revealPrivate/public retros· Private invite-only retros on paid plans

Facilitation

Meeting timerAction itemsPresentation mode· Single Column View — a moderator can force a one-column-at-a-time view on every participant (the app calls it presentation mode)Drag-and-drop groupingCarry over open actions· Team action points visible across a team's retrospectives on paid plans

Voting

Independent dot votingCustom vote count· Configurable vote limit per retro, column or cardVote at any time

Engagement

Mobile friendlyGIFs· Image and GIF cards — paste or upload — on paid plansCustom backgrounds· Column backgrounds from a custom image, a colour or the Unsplash gallery, with blur/translucency filters, on paid plans

Reporting

Action tracker dashboard· Per-retro action points panel (owner + due date) on free; team-wide action points across retros on paid plansExport formats· Markdown, Confluence

Enterprise

GDPR compliant· Policy cites Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and names Google Belgium NV servers, but also states data is processed outside the EU because controller u2i Worldwide LLC is US-based; unchanged since 30 Aug 2020Facilitator-only role· 'Disable moderation for others' plus a read-only room lock, on paid plansGuest / observer rolesMeeting history· Up to 12 months on free; indefinite or 1–12 months configurable on paid