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.
Full review →
RetroTool
3.2Anonymous online retrospectives, no login required
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.
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.
RetroTool scores 3.2 overall and is 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. It offers a free tier.
IdeaBoardz leads on open platform. RetroTool leads on ease of use, retro toolkit and fun factor.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, RetroTool edges ahead with an overall score of 3.2. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | RetroTool |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | Anonymous boards; unlimited cards, columns, action points and participants; 3 basic templates; private sections, secret voting, dot-vote limits, timer, grouping, action points with owner and due date; Markdown export; 12-month retention. A free registered 'Participant' account (not advertised on the plans page) adds access to private retros and cross-device drafts |
| Starting price | Free | $10/team/mo ($100/team/yr billed annually) |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | $30/mo (Individual — 3 teams x $10/team/mo, unlimited members per team; $300/yr = $25/mo billed annually) |
| Enterprise | No | No |
| Founded | 2010 | — |
| HQ | Pune, India | Poland |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | English only |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | Markdown · Confluence |
| Features | 10 | 19 |
| Integrations | 0 | 0 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | RetroTool |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓note |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓note |
| Health Checks | — | — |
| Action tracking | — | ✓ |
| Async mode | ✓ | — |
| Whiteboard | — | — |
| Independent voting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Polling | — | — |
| Icebreaker games | — | — |
| Agile Estimations | — | — |
| Team Kudos | — | — |
| AI grouping/clustering | — | — |
| AI action items | — | — |
| AI Summaries | — | — |
| Team Insights | — | — |
| In-meeting AI assistant | — | — |
| Action dashboard | — | ✓note |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | — | — |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | — |
| GitHub | — | — |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | — | — |
| Linear | — | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | — |
| Monday.com | — | — |
| Notion | — | — |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | — |
| Trello | — | — |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | — |
| GDPR | — | ✓note |
| 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
- + 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
RetroTool — 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 <em>unlimited members per team</em>, not per-seat
RetroTool — cons
- − <strong>Dormant</strong>: 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 native integrations with Jira, Slack, Teams or any agile-stack tool
- − No AI features (clustering, summary, action extraction, sentiment)
- − No health checks, recurring retros, async mode, or cross-team reporting
- − Export is Markdown only (plain or Confluence-flavoured), copied to the clipboard
- − 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
Keep comparing
Other IdeaBoardz comparisons
Other RetroTool comparisons
Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.