IdeaBoardz
3.1Free shared brainstorming boards
IdeaBoardz is a long-standing free brainstorming and retrospective board: pick one of five presets (Retrospective, Star Fish, Six Thinking Hats, Pros and Cons, Todos) or name your own 1-10 sections, 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.
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Neatro
5.5Structured retros built around psychological safety
Neatro runs retrospectives through a guided four-step framework with optional per-comment anonymity, AI grouping suggestions, an automatic ROTI survey, and Team Radar health checks aimed at distributed agile teams.
Full review →Summary
IdeaBoardz scores 3.1 overall and is best for throwaway retros and quick distributed brainstorms when nobody wants to sign up. It offers a free tier.
Neatro scores 5.5 overall and is best for scrum Masters who want a guided, safety-first facilitation flow with built-in team health tracking. It offers a free tier.
IdeaBoardz leads on value and open platform. Neatro leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, Neatro edges ahead with an overall score of 5.5. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | Neatro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Mid-market |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | Free forever for 1 team of up to 10 members: unlimited retrospectives and Team Radars, all 70 ready-to-use templates, 1 custom template, 40 Neatroverse community templates, basic facilitation tools, 30-day data history — no exports and no integrations |
| Starting price | Free | $23.20/team/mo billed annually ($29/team/mo billed monthly), USD |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | $69.60/mo billed annually (3 teams x Premium at $23.20; members per team are unlimited) — $87/mo if billed monthly |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2010 | 2020 |
| HQ | Pune, India | Quebec, Canada |
| Data residency | — | Canada |
| Languages | English only | 2 (English, French) |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | PDF · CSV · Jira |
| Features | 10 | 30 |
| Integrations | 0 | 5 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | Neatro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓ |
| Health Checks | — | ✓ |
| Action tracking | — | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | ✓note |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Polling | — | — |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | — |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | ✓note |
| AI action items | — | — |
| AI Summaries | — | — |
| Team Insights | — | — |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓ |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | ✓note |
| Azure DevOps | — | ✓note |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | — | ✓note |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | — | ✓note |
| Linear | — | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | — |
| Monday.com | — | ✓note |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | — |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | — |
| GDPR | — | — |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | — |
| 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
- + Five one-click presets (Retrospective, Star Fish, Six Thinking Hats, Pros and Cons, Todos), or type your own 1-10 section titles
- + 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
- − The presets only pre-fill column titles — there is no timer, no phases and no facilitator flow behind them
- − No action-item tracking, no owners, no due dates, no carry-over between boards
- − 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
Neatro — pros
- + Guided four-step framework with optional anonymous commenting and a timer on every step
- + Team Radar is a proper recurring health check with up to 10 custom dimensions, not a repurposed template
- + AI grouping suggestions at Step 2 that the facilitator accepts or rejects one at a time — assistive, not automatic
- + Action Kanban board, an automatic ROTI survey and a prompt about last retro's open actions keep follow-through visible
- + Cheap per head — <strong>$23.20/team/mo covers unlimited members</strong>, and the free tier runs 10 members forever
Neatro — cons
- − No native Slack or Microsoft Teams integration — reminders and summaries land wherever you paste the link
- − AI stops at grouping suggestions; no summaries, sentiment analysis, or AI-extracted action items
- − Free tier has <em>no exports and no integrations</em> — both start at Premium
- − Per-team pricing gets awkward past a handful of squads — volume discounts only start at 20+ teams
- − No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 of its own (the security FAQ points at Azure's), no GDPR statement, and hosting is Quebec-only
- − No cross-team rollups, org health dashboard, SCIM, audit logs, public API or webhooks
Keep comparing
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Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.