Without a clear process, even the most promising concepts can slip through the cracks. Idea management software are platforms that help organizations collect, evaluate, and turn ideas into actionable innovations.
By centralizing feedback, streamlining ideation workflows, and applying data-driven prioritization, these tools ensure that the brightest ideas rise to the top and stakeholders stay informed every step of the way.
We evaluated dozens of solutions against criteria such as core features, ease of use, integration options, pricing flexibility, and target audience. First on our list is Koala Feedback—a turnkey platform for capturing user ideas, organizing priorities, and sharing transparent product roadmaps.
Here’s a look at the top 10 idea management platforms poised to streamline your innovation process.
Capturing ideas from every corner of your organization—and from customers—can feel like herding cats. Koala Feedback brings them all into one place, making it simple to organize requests, track engagement, and share a transparent roadmap with stakeholders. Whether you’re a scrappy startup or an established product team, this SaaS platform offers the tools to prioritize the ideas that matter most.
Koala Feedback is a cloud-based solution for collecting, categorizing, and prioritizing user ideas and feature requests. You get a fully branded feedback portal (complete with your own domain and logo) where customers and teammates can submit suggestions. Behind the scenes, the system automatically deduplicates similar requests, so nothing slips through the cracks. Finally, you can publish a public product roadmap with custom statuses—think “Under review,” “Planned,” or “Shipped”—to keep everyone in the loop.
Internal link: https://koalafeedback.com
Koala Feedback offers a free tier to get started, plus two paid plans:
| Plan | Price (per month) | Users | Boards | Custom Domain | Analytics & API |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 | 1 | No | Basic |
| Starter | $29 | 5 | 5 | Yes | Standard |
| Professional | $99 | 20 | 20 | Yes | Advanced |
Actionable tip: Compare features side by side in the table above to match your team’s needs.
Pros
Cons
Acme Inc. struggled with scattered feature requests across email, Slack, and spreadsheets. After adopting Koala Feedback, they consolidated all input into a single portal. By tagging and voting on top requests, the product team cut decision-making time by 50%—and customers loved checking the roadmap to see progress on their ideas.
When innovation becomes a company-wide mandate, you need a platform that scales with thousands of participants and complex workflows. Brightidea Innovation Cloud delivers a modular, enterprise-focused solution for orchestrating ideation campaigns, challenges, and stage-gate processes—complete with analytics that tie your innovation efforts back to business impact.
Brightidea Innovation Cloud is built to support global organizations looking to crowdsource and refine ideas at scale. Its modular architecture lets you spin up targeted campaigns or continuous challenge programs, while innovation analytics provide real-time visibility into participation, idea quality, and program ROI. Backed by strategic consulting services, Brightidea helps align ideation with broader business objectives.
Brightidea follows an enterprise-only pricing model—contact their sales team for a tailored quote. Deployment options include cloud-hosted SaaS for rapid launch, or on-premises installations to meet strict compliance or data residency requirements.
Pros
Cons
A multinational CPG company leveraged Brightidea to run a six-month “Sustainability Challenge” involving 8,000 employees across three continents. By automating stage-gate evaluations and analyzing success metrics in real time, the team identified 120 viable ideas and accelerated three into pilot production—achieving a projected $2.5 million in cost savings within the first year.
IdeaScale takes a community-driven approach to idea management, tapping into collective intelligence to surface the best ideas from employees, customers, or external stakeholders. Recognized as a Gartner Customers’ Choice, IdeaScale makes it simple to launch targeted innovation programs—whether you’re crowdsourcing product features, process improvements, or social impact initiatives.
With IdeaScale, contributors can submit ideas, vote on their favorites, and dive into threaded discussions that keep the momentum rolling. Built-in dashboards help organizers spot trends and evaluate which concepts deserve more attention. Plus, AI-powered scoring & trendspotting surfaces high-potential ideas based on engagement metrics and semantic analysis, so you’re not relying on gut feeling alone.
IdeaScale offers tiered plans to fit different scales and budgets:
Pros
Cons
If you’re evaluating IdeaScale, take advantage of the trial period to map out a multi-stage pipeline—capture submissions, vet top ideas, and pilot test concepts. A visual flowchart of your idea pipeline will help stakeholders understand each step at a glance.
Ideanote delivers a clean, cloud-based environment for teams to gather and refine ideas without the overhead of complex setup. With real-time collaboration, flexible workflows, and out-of-the-box integrations, ideation becomes part of everyone’s daily routine—whether you’re running a sprint workshop or a company-wide challenge.
Ideanote is built for speed and simplicity. Contributors can submit new ideas via customizable templates—everything from open-ended brainstorming prompts to structured innovation cards. Once an idea lands, you define a workflow: set review stages, assign owners, and automate notifications so every concept follows a clear path toward evaluation.
Ideanote’s free plan includes unlimited users, core templates, and basic integrations—perfect for small teams or early pilots. Paid tiers unlock additional capabilities:
Both paid plans offer a 14-day trial so you can test every feature before upgrading.
Pros
Cons
A marketing team at RetailPro used Ideanote to run a “Spring Promotion” campaign across 200 employees. Within two weeks, they collected 350 submissions via a tailored brainstorming template. Automated reminders nudged reviewers at each stage, and dashboard analytics showcased the top five ideas—one of which drove a 20% lift in email engagement.
Catching frontline insights often means juggling different tools and slipping ideas through the cracks. Sideways 6 embeds directly in the apps your teams already use—from Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage to web apps—so you can capture, prioritize, and act on employee suggestions without disrupting their workflow. ISO 27001 certification underscores its security credentials, making it a solid choice for industries where data protection is non-negotiable.
Sideways 6 is purpose-built for organizations that want to harness the creativity and operational insights of their workforce—especially those on the shop floor or in customer-facing roles. It transforms everyday collaboration channels into innovation engines, allowing employees to submit ideas on process improvements, new product features, or cost-saving measures directly from tools they use daily. A mobile-friendly web app ensures that even teams without a desktop station can contribute ideas in real time.
Sideways 6 uses a flexible pricing approach—typically per user per month—or tiered packages depending on the scale of your program. Many teams kick things off with a low-cost pilot to validate ROI before rolling out enterprise-wide. Exact rates vary based on user counts and feature modules; reach out to sales for a custom quote tailored to your industry and deployment size.
Pros
Cons
Run a 30-day pilot focusing on one business unit—measure participation, track implementation times, and calculate the cost savings from just a handful of ideas. Those initial wins will build momentum and justify a broader rollout.
Innovating doesn’t have to mean wrestling with complicated workflows. Viima offers a straightforward platform that covers the full idea lifecycle—from click-of-a-button submissions to data-driven implementation. It’s designed to scale with growing teams, keeping everyone engaged without overwhelming administrators.
With Viima, you get a transparent process where contributors see exactly how their suggestions progress. No more “dead-end” ideas: every submission moves through a clear pipeline, and key metrics are always at your fingertips.
Viima is a cloud-based solution built for teams that want to collect, refine, and act on ideas with minimal setup. Contributors pitch suggestions via themed boards and campaigns, while project owners guide concepts through prioritization, development, and rollout. The result is a unified environment that boosts engagement and accountability across departments.
Viima’s pricing scales with your needs:
| Plan | Price (per month) | Users | Boards & Campaigns | Analytics & Integrations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Unlimited | 1 board | Basic |
| Growth | $29 | Unlimited | 10 boards | Standard |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited | Unlimited | Advanced + SSO, SLA |
Pros
Cons
Viima’s analytics view showcases submission volume over time, top-voted ideas, and participation heatmaps. Embedding these widgets into stakeholder presentations eliminates manual chart creation, making it easy to demonstrate the impact of your ideation efforts.
When ideation must tie directly into strategic planning and resource allocation, having your idea management tool embedded in your portfolio management suite can save weeks of manual handoffs. Planview IdeaPlace does exactly that—collapsing idea capture, evaluation, and portfolio balancing into one connected environment. As part of the broader Planview ecosystem, it ensures that promising concepts flow seamlessly from initial submission to funded projects.
Planview IdeaPlace lives within the Planview platform, giving you an end-to-end view of how new ideas map to your strategic objectives and existing project pipeline. Contributors can submit ideas through a simple portal, while product managers and portfolio leaders use familiar PPM dashboards to assess and prioritize those ideas against capacity, budget, and risk criteria.
Planview IdeaPlace is sold as part of Planview’s enterprise portfolio management solutions. Pricing is customized based on the number of users, modules, and deployment model:
Pros
Cons
To make the most of IdeaPlace, map your existing idea funnel to the stage-gate steps in Planview PPM. This alignment will speed up approvals and ensure every concept gets evaluated against the same strategic criteria.
When you need both cutting-edge trend scouting and robust idea pipelines, ITONICS Innovation OS delivers a unified platform that spans from technology scouting to portfolio planning. Built on a systematic innovation framework, this SaaS solution uses AI to surface emerging trends and guide concepts through your custom evaluation stages. Whether you’re in pharmaceuticals or heavy manufacturing, ITONICS offers the analytics and foresight to keep your R&D engine firing on all cylinders.
ITONICS Innovation OS combines trend and technology scouting with classic idea management in one interface. As soon as market signals or research inputs indicate a new opportunity, automated workflows kick in to evaluate viability, assign owners, and track progress. You get an end-to-end view that spans environmental scanning, idea capture, and roadmap alignment—avoiding the usual handoffs between separate tools.
ITONICS Innovation OS is offered through tiered enterprise plans; pricing is available on request. The platform is delivered as a cloud-hosted SaaS solution, with region-specific hosting options to meet data residency and compliance requirements. For highly regulated industries, an on-premises deployment can be arranged to satisfy strict security policies.
Pros
Cons
When you want to inject fresh thinking into every corner of your organization—or even tap into outside expertise—Wazoku’s Challenge Driven Innovation approach brings structure and muscle to ideation. Instead of letting ideas trickle in haphazardly, you design targeted challenges that guide participants to solve specific problems. From there, you build a vibrant community—internal or external—that collaborates, votes, and refines concepts into actionable projects.
Wazoku centers around its signature Challenge Driven Innovation methodology. You set up themed campaigns—think “Reduce customer onboarding time” or “New product ideas for sustainability.” Contributors, whether they’re your own employees or an external crowd, submit solutions directly into the platform. A mix of automated scoring and expert reviews then helps you sift through the best proposals, turning raw insight into concrete initiatives.
Wazoku offers subscription-based plans with volume discounts for larger deployments. Pricing tiers typically vary by number of users, active campaigns, and access to advanced analytics. For teams looking to test drive the platform, Wazoku also provides pilot or proof-of-concept packages—ideal for validating the approach before committing to a full roll-out. Contact their sales team for a customized proposal based on your scope and audience size.
Pros
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Start small with a 30-day internal challenge—define a narrow problem, recruit a cross-functional team, and track engagement KPIs. Those early wins will build confidence and set the stage for broader, external-facing campaigns.
Navigating innovation at scale often means juggling disparate tools, data silos, and complex approval processes. Qmarkets brings all those moving parts into one secure, modular platform that guides ideas from submission to impact. Whether you’re sourcing suggestions from the C-suite or frontline staff, Qmarkets adapts to your organization’s unique structure, integrations, and compliance needs—making it a solid choice for enterprises that demand both flexibility and governance.
Qmarkets is an end-to-end SaaS solution designed to manage every step of your innovation lifecycle. Since its launch in 2007, Qmarkets has focused on delivering a configurable ecosystem where you can capture ideas, configure multi-stage workflows, and track measurable outcomes—all within a single interface.
Qmarkets is offered through annual subscription packages tailored to your scale and feature requirements. Licensing is typically based on user count and selected modules—so you pay only for what you need. For exact pricing, reach out to their sales team and ask about bundling modules to optimize your total cost of ownership.
Pros
Cons
Before deployment, map your current innovation maturity framework to Qmarkets’ module structure. Aligning each module—idea capture, evaluation, implementation—with your internal stages ensures a smoother rollout and faster buy-in from stakeholders.
Choosing the right idea management software boils down to matching your team’s goals, budget, and desired level of sophistication. Whether you need a lightweight platform to kick off your first ideation campaign or an enterprise-grade ecosystem that integrates with legacy systems, the tools above offer diverse paths to capture and act on ideas more effectively.
As you narrow down your options, consider evaluating each solution side by side using criteria such as:
Once you’ve pinpointed your top contenders, it’s time to get hands-on. Many platforms offer free trials or pilot programs—take advantage of those to run a small-scale experiment, gather early feedback, and measure engagement before rolling out more broadly.
Ready to make user feedback your competitive advantage? With Koala Feedback’s free tier, you can launch a fully branded portal in minutes, centralize customer ideas, and share a transparent roadmap—all without spending a dime. Start your free feedback portal on Koala Feedback today and turn every suggestion into actionable innovation.
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