Choosing the Best Product Discovery Tool: Top 5 Picks

If you're feeling stuck with your product discovery process, we have good news – the information you need to create selling solutions is already out there. In fact, more than 90% of enterprise leaders agree that they’re using timely, accurate customer data to achieve business success. 

That is precisely where a product discovery tool comes in. It is the perfect method to find product ideas based on consumer insights.

‍

Unlike physical products, there is never an endpoint for digital products. Modern technology is constantly in flux. Facebook and Netflix are examples of successful large-scale products continually evolving.

As such, a product discovery tool is crucial for your company to make your solutions relevant and responsive to changing needs.

Keep reading to find the best software for more insightful and powerful product management that will drive you toward your business objectives.

What is a product discovery tool?

A product discovery tool is a software or platform that helps companies and product teams identify, prioritize and validate new product ideas or features.

Such software is designed to make the product discovery process much easier. It's also an invaluable tool for customer insights that helps to understand customer needs, market trends, and competitive landscapes. 89% of director-level and above leaders say that customer analytics significantly helps to improve product alignment to user needs.

All that to make your product development decisions data-driven and successful.

If your team is currently struggling with product discovery or improvement, keep reading. We've analyzed the market to find the best tools to deliver customer and business value.

Finding the best product discovery tool: Selection criteria

Rosie Mangiarotti, Founder and CEO of Perkies, says that comprehensive research is necessary to be sure that a business is actually solving an existing pain point. However, this kind of extensive product discovery can be challenging. Let's see what you should focus on to overcome product research hurdles swiftly.

‍

Features

In this article, we will evaluate some of the most popular product discovery tools on the market based on these key features:

1. Data analytics
2. User feedback collection
3. Idea management and prioritization

On top of that, we'll give you an insight into some unique functionalities of each of the tools.

Integrations

It's vital to be able to integrate the product discovery framework with other software used in your company. Integrations allow seamless data exchange and consolidation. It's also much easier to efficiently scale and automate your business processes.

Pricing

While cost is an important factor, you should also consider the value provided for the price. Compare different tools in terms of their capabilities and what they bring to your product discovery process.

Examine the pricing details thoroughly to avoid any hidden or unexpected costs. Some product discovery tools charge extra for specific features or usage limits.

Make sure there is a trial period available for convenient testing. A free demo allows you to validate whether the solution is effective and suitable for your needs.

Choosing the best product discovery tool: Top picks

Zeda.io

Zeda.io aims to make creating great products easier. We constantly strive to improve by talking to industry leaders and analyzing user insights.

The AI-powered tool helps find growth opportunities and deliver data-driven solutions that real users will love. The process is made simple with a centralized platform and streamlined product development.

Features

• Customer insights – the feedback dashboard provides an organized view with categorizing options. It collects opinions and reviews from various sources. These actionable insights help you prioritize and focus on what your users demand.
• AI data analysis – helps to identify and connect similar feedback and generates tags based on your workflow.
• Strategy and OKRs – product strategy maps help to visualize, automate and manage actions without losing context. Product managers can link initiatives to OKRs to easily measure the outcomes of products you create.
• Product roadmap – visual strategy maps promote transparency and locate possible roadblocks, which lets you generate clear strategic plans and understand dependencies and project sequences.

Integrations

Zeda.io lets you integrate with all your favorite tools, so you don't have to switch between applications constantly.

Save time by integrating with:

• Slack
• Teams
• Intercom
• Email
• Zendesk
• Amplitude
• Mixpanel
• HubSpot
• Jira

Additionally, there are over 5000 workflow and business apps to choose from when you connect Zeda.io with Zapier.

Pricing

Zeda.io comes with a simple pricing plan. The Pro option is $99/creator/month, with an unlimited number of collaborators. There's also a yearly payment plan – $999/creator/year with two months for free.

For those with particular needs, there's also the Custom option. It covers all the Pro features + dedicated support, onboarding and migration help, priority support and enterprise-level solutions. The price is established individually.

Get started with the Zeda.io free 15-day trial to see if it meets your needs.

Maze

Maze lets you test different product ideas and offers continuous usability testing and concept evaluation capabilities. You can analyze products throughout the development process, even post-launch.

This tool facilitates product discovery techniques, such as usability, live website, and prototype testing. Its code-free nature allows anyone to use it, regardless of their technical background. With its intuitive drag-and-drop functionality and ready-made templates, you can generate valuable insights within hours.

‍

Features

• Quantitative metrics – collected data is transformed into detailed, actionable reports for clear, visual and shareable insights.
• Testing options – implement wireframe, concept and prototype testing to help you get the best out of your product opportunities.
• User-friendly interface – with code-free drag-and-drop functionalities and premade templates.
• Customer data collection – capturing user interactions and behaviors, such as clicks, navigation paths, heatmaps and user feedback.

Integrations

You can integrate Maze with programs such as:

• Adobe XD
• Figma
• InVision
• Sketch
• Slack
• Notion
• Figjam
• Miro

Pricing

Maze offers three pricing plans to fit organizations of all sizes:

1. Free plan (best for individuals and small teams with one active project)
2. Professional plan – $75/month billed annually or $99 billed monthly (best for pros looking to dig deeper with more research power)
3. Organization plan – custom pricing (for large and experienced research teams who need to search for product plans rigorously and often)

ProductBoard

ProductBoard assists product development teams by gathering and prioritizing customer feedback and aligning it with the product roadmap.

As a Voice of the Customer (VoC) tool, it's tailored for managers seeking efficient customer insight collection and centralized data management. Its prioritization framework will help your team create product ideas to boost your average sales numbers.

‍

Features

• Roadmaps with custom fields – plan product goals with dates, timelines and specific users.
• Feature prioritization – teams can rank ideas based on user impact, business value and development effort.
• Centralized feedback – capture, curate and route user interviews and reviews from different platforms with a centralized system to keep them all in one place.
• Idea validation – share what's planned, launched or under consideration with your team and customers. Find out what resonates the most.

Before investing in this particular solution, keep in mind that it comes with a steep and potentially time-consuming learning curve. It's also difficult to analyze the different perspectives of customers without the possibility to filter and sort their insights.

Integrations

This product discovery tool has several integration options:

• Customer insights and collaboration software, for example, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Email, Zendesk, Zapier
• Delivery tools like Jira, Trello, Shortcut, GitHub
• Notes, Features and GDPR APIs

Pricing

There are three pricing options to choose from:

1. Essentials – $20 per maker/month billed yearly or $25 month-to-month
2. Pro – $80 per maker/month billed annually or $90 month-to-month
3. Enterprise – custom, scalable plan

Aha!

This product management and roadmapping software is designed to help leaders and teams working on product development stay on the same page. It facilitates aligning strategies and ideas, prioritizing initiatives and creating visual action plans.

Unfortunately, if you want to use all the solutions Aha! has to offer, you'll have to pay individually for each of their tools. However, if you are willing to spend extra money, this can be a good solution to support cross-functional team collaboration success.

Features

• Interactive roadmaps for crafting and executing product ideas
• Segmenting customer personas and competitors
• Prioritizing the highest-value ideas
• Crowdsourcing client feedback
• Product management reports with over 75 templates and real-time KPI progress tracking

Integrations

Aha! can integrate with about 30 tools your product research team is already using, like:

• Jira
• Azure
• Slack
• Salesforce
• Zendesk

Pricing

You can evaluate this product discovery software with a 30-day free trial.

After this period, you'll have to pay for each Aha! product individually:

• Aha! Roadmaps for product management – from $59/user/month
• Aha! Ideas for idea management – from $39/user/month
• Aha! Notebooks for creating documents, whiteboards and real-time collaboration – from $9/user/month
• Aha! Develop that connects technical work to product roadmaps – from $9/user/month

Jira Product Discovery

Powered by Atlassian, Jira Product Discovery is a relatively new addition to the Jira toolbox – a versatile project management and issue-tracking solution. The program was designed with software development teams in mind.

Despite this tool's functionality, it can be unintuitive and challenging to use, at least at the beginning. There's also no option for an overview of which subtasks are linked with each other.

Features

• Scrum and Kanban boards for organizing and tracking tasks
• Bug-tracking feature
• Reporting that includes sprint reports, velocity charts and cumulative flow diagrams

Integrations

Quickly create a streamlined, well-organized workflow with over 3000 integrations options, for example:

• Slack
• Microsoft
• Figma
• GitHub
• Confluence

Pricing

Jira Product Discovery pricing depends on the number of users.

For teams of up to three creators, the tool is free.

With the Standard option for larger organizations, the prices fluctuate as follows:

• $10 monthly per user for 25 creators
• $9 per user for 225 creators
• $8 per user for 750 creators
• $7 per user for all creators past 1000

The best product discovery tools: A Quick Analysis

Zeda.io‍

• AI machine learning data analysis
• Linking initiatives to OKRs
• Manageable strategy plans
• Complex customer insight collection
• Transparent roadmaps

Best for: AI-powered discovery and strategizing

Pricing: from $99

Maze

• Sharable quantitative metrics
• Complex testing options
• Code-free functionalities and templates
• User interactions data collection

Best for: Continuous discovery

Pricing: from $0

ProductBoard

• Customizable roadmaps
• Centralized feedback
• Idea validation
• Prioritization options

Best for: Customer voice and insights

Pricing: from $20

Aha!

• Interactive roadmaps
• Customer persona segmentation
• Idea prioritization
• Product management and client feedback reports

Best for: Roadmapping and prioritizing

Pricing: from $59

Jira Product Discovery

• Bug-tracking
• Complex reporting
• Scrum and Kanban boards for idea organization

Best for: Project management

Pricing: from $0

Conclusion

Stop making the same mistake as businesses that continuously can't get past their average sales. Focus on user research and brainstorming valuable ideas in a product discovery tool to make your product decisions actually deliver results.

Zeda.io is an easy-to-use and effective option. You'll start using it in no time, driving your product development team to success step by step. With this powerful research tool, you can be sure that your ideas actually sell.

Find out what it's like working on actionable data and the specific needs of your users rather than abstract assumptions and random ideas. Sign up for a free trial here.