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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TeleRetro
5.8Agile retros you'll love
TeleRetro is a remote-first retrospective tool built around team engagement — animated GIF reactions, emoji reactions on notes, icebreaker games, background music and a clean facilitation flow. Participants join by link with no account. It pairs retros with a Pulse Survey module for tracking team health between sessions, and prices per team rather than per user, aimed at small to mid-size agile teams who want retros that feel lively rather than mechanical.
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.
TeleRetro scores 5.8 overall and is best for remote and hybrid agile teams who prioritise engagement and fun alongside a solid retrospective facilitation workflow. It offers a free tier.
IdeaBoardz leads on value. TeleRetro leads on ease of use, retro toolkit, fun factor, AI & insights, integrations, open platform and enterprise-grade.
Across our eight scoring dimensions, TeleRetro edges ahead with an overall score of 5.8. That said, the right pick depends on your team — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown below.
Scores compared
| Detail | IdeaBoardz | TeleRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Retrospectives | Retrospectives |
| Team size | Small | Small |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Free limit | Fully free, no paid tier | 1 team, 3 retros total (deleted retros still count), 14-day retro access, 1 pulse survey, limited AI Retro Bot access |
| Starting price | Free | £26/mo (Team plan, 1 team, unlimited members; £21/mo billed annually) |
| Est. 3 teams × 8 people | Free (no paid tier) | £72/mo (~$97/mo) on the Business plan — 3 teams, unlimited members; £58/mo billed annually |
| Enterprise | No | Yes |
| Founded | 2010 | 2020 |
| HQ | Pune, India | UK |
| Data residency | — | — |
| Languages | English only | 14 (English, German, Spanish, …) |
| Export formats | PDF · Excel | Email · Image · JSON |
| Features | 10 | 36 |
| Integrations | 0 | 10 |
Feature & integration comparison
Side-by-side checklist across features, integrations and security. Hover a note for details.
| Capability | IdeaBoardz | TeleRetro |
|---|---|---|
| Features | ||
| Custom templates | ✓note | ✓ |
| Anonymous input | ✓ | ✓ |
| Health Checks | — | ✓note |
| Action tracking | — | ✓note |
| Async mode | ✓ | ✓note |
| 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 | — | ✓ |
| Integrations | ||
| Asana | — | ✓note |
| Azure DevOps | — | ✓note |
| Basecamp | — | — |
| ClickUp | — | — |
| Confluence | — | ✓note |
| GitHub | — | ✓note |
| GitLab | — | — |
| Jira | — | ✓note |
| Linear | — | — |
| Microsoft Teams | — | ✓note |
| Monday.com | — | ✓note |
| Notion | — | ✓note |
| Shortcut | — | — |
| Slack | — | ✓ |
| Trello | — | ✓note |
| Security & Privacy | ||
| SOC 2 | — | — |
| GDPR | — | ✓ |
| SSO / SAML | — | ✓note |
| SCIM provisioning | — | — |
| ISO 27001 | — | — |
| On-premises | — | — |
| Public API | ✓note | ✓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
TeleRetro — pros
- + The deepest <strong>retro-native engagement set</strong> of any tool here — GIF and emoji reactions on notes, background music during brainstorming, an AI icebreaker bot, and 50+ themed formats with their own backgrounds
- + Participants join by link with <em>no account required</em> — the fastest path from invite to first note
- + Clean facilitation flow: brainstorming mode, drag-and-drop grouping, Spotlight to focus the room on one note, facilitator-gated voting with a configurable vote count, and mood polls at both ends of the session
- + Pulse Surveys track team health between retros — 16 fully anonymous templates, custom models, and a cross-team dashboard on the Business plan
- + Flat per-team pricing with <em>no per-user charge</em> — £72/mo covers 3 teams, unlimited members and unlimited retros
TeleRetro — cons
- − Slack is the only native integration; the in-app integrations panel offers Slack and Zapier and nothing else, despite Jira appearing on the vendor's comparison pages
- − No way to schedule a future retro or set one to recur, and actions carry owners but <em>no due dates</em> — nothing links an action back to the idea that prompted it either
- − AI never touches the board — Retro Bot generates formats and icebreakers, but there is no clustering, summary, sentiment or action extraction
- − Export is thin: an emailed summary, a PNG of the summary screen, and an org-metrics JSON dump. No CSV, PDF or Excel
- − No SOC 2 or ISO 27001 of its own (the certs cited are AWS's), no SCIM, no audit logs, and SSO is Enterprise-plan only
Keep comparing
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Not sure which to pick? Read our guide on how to choose a retrospective tool.