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.
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RetroFlow
3.4Your team's favourite way to retro
RetroFlow is a free, no-signup retrospective board built by solo developer Prashant Meena, with colourful boards, real-time collaboration, 11 ready-made templates, anonymous feedback, dot voting, action items and PDF/Excel export. Participants join a shared link in one click with no account; the whole product is free with no paid tiers or locked features.
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.
RetroFlow scores 3.4 overall and is best for small or ad-hoc teams who want a genuinely free, zero-friction retro board they can share with one link — no signup, no payment and no setup, accepting that there is no timer, no integrations, no AI and no enterprise controls. It offers a free tier.
IdeaBoardz leads on open platform. RetroFlow leads on ease of use, retro toolkit and fun factor.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, RetroFlow edges ahead with an overall score of 3.4. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | RetroFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | Everything is free — all 11 templates, custom boards, saved layouts, real-time collaboration, anonymous feedback, dot voting, action items and PDF/Excel export, with no account required to join a board |
| Starting price | Free | Free |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | Free (no paid tier) |
| Enterprise | No | No |
| Founded | 2010 | — |
| HQ | Pune, India | — |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | PDF · Excel |
| Features | 9 | 7 |
| Integrations | 0 | 0 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | RetroFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| AI Summaries | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | — |
| AI action items | — | — |
| Action tracking | — | ✓note |
| Team Insights | — | — |
| Polling | — | — |
| Action dashboard | — | — |
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓note |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓note |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | — |
| Health Checks | — | — |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | — | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | — | — |
| Linear | — | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | — |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | — |
| GDPR | — | — |
| SSO / SAML | — | — |
| 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
- + 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
RetroFlow — pros
- + Genuinely free with no paid tiers, no paywalled features and no account required to join a board
- + Anonymous feedback — participants contribute with no signup, email or PII collected
- + Three-step setup — pick a template, share the link, run the retro; participants join in one click and notes sync live
- + Eleven ready-made formats, up from seven — Sailboat, DAKI, Plus/Delta and Three Little Pigs are all new since the last review
- + <strong>PDF and Excel export</strong> of the finished board — new this quarter, and the only route to getting your data out
- + Light personalisation — custom column names, 2-6 columns, colour palettes and per-note emoji, with reusable saved layouts
RetroFlow — cons
- − No timer or phase controls — three separate timer requests sit unshipped on the vendor's own public roadmap, and there is no countdown anywhere in the app
- − No grouping of similar cards and no carry-over of previous action items — both still <em>Planned</em> on the roadmap
- − No integrations at all — nothing pushes to Jira, Linear, Slack or Teams, and there is no public API, webhooks or AI
- − No health checks, recurring retros, mood tracking or cross-team reporting
- − No enterprise security or compliance — no SOC 2, SSO, SCIM or audit logs, no GDPR statement in the privacy policy, and boards are private only by unguessable URL since there are no accounts
- − Built and run by a solo developer (Prashant Meena) with no support team or SLA — support routes to a personal WhatsApp number and LinkedIn DMs, and the free-tier backend still shows a ~10s cold start plus first-load errors
Keep comparing
Other IdeaBoardz comparisons
Other RetroFlow comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.