Top 12 Product Operations Tools That Product Teams Need in 2024

By
Lauren Funaro
March 22, 2023
16
min read
Updated
January 22, 2024
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Introduction

No single product management app exists that can meet every demand. Although product management software is useful for creating a product roadmap and making educated decisions, you will require a great deal of other technological assistance.

In order to produce high-quality results, the entire team must put in extra effort during the product management process. The quality of your product and its timely delivery are both at risk if even a single error or miscommunication occurs.

You may avoid these dangers to the project and you'll be able to manage many elements of product administration and carry out each stage with the help of this program.

But first, let’s find out what product operation is.

TLDR; Top product operations software of 2024

  1. Airfocus
  2. Jira Software
  3. Pendo
  4. Scribe
  5. Hotjar
  6. Qualtrics XM
  7. Mixpanel
  8. Maze
  9. Optimizely
  10. Notion
  11. Delighted
  12. Figma

What are product operations tools?

What are product operations?

The term "product operations" (or "product ops") refers to the practice of improving the effectiveness of cross-functional product teams in their collaboration, communication and overall value delivery.

This word can refer to both the field of product operations and a specific function performed by a team within the context of product development teams.  Product operations often center on the following four areas, while the particulars may vary based on factors such as company size and industry:

  • Enhancing internal processes.
  • Advocating for excellent practices.
  • Facilitating analytics and data.
  • Controlling the tech stack for the product team.

A more systematic method of creating new products is beneficial for any business. Making consistent progress may be challenging if you have to deal with meetings that lack direction, a backlog of client demands, and tools that don't work together or are old. Product operations managers deal with several of these challenges.

Your efforts to streamline internal processes will allow more of the product team's time to be allocated to planning and developing the product.

What is product development software?

Product development software is a category of tools meant to help product teams manage every phase of the product development process, beginning with the generation of new ideas and continuing well beyond the product's first release.

This program is used by product managers, designers, engineers and a variety of other professionals to construct and develop new goods and services, create internal products, and upgrade existing offers.

📌 ‎Related resource: The Ultimate Product Development Checklist

Types of product operations software

Following are the 12 primary categories of tools for both product operations and management:

  • Product portfolio management (PPM) and road mapping.
  • Agile development.
  • Usage analytics.
  • Product experience.
  • Data analysis and visualization.
  • Heat mapping.
  • User testing.
  • A/B testing.
  • Collaboration.
  • Knowledge management.
  • Collecting feedback.
  • Prototyping/wireframing.

The realm of product development software is vast. Creating a marketable product from scratch is a lengthy and intricate process that starts with an idea and ends with satisfied consumers.

The task is quite complex for a single tool. As a result, most product development teams rely on a suite of tools or a suite of powerful software to facilitate the entire process.

1.‎ Airfocus — Roadmapping

G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars

Capterra rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Airforce Pricing:

Airfocus has four pricing editions. A free trial of airfocus is also available. $19/user/month for Essential. $69/user/month for Advanced Pro: contact airfocus for a custom Pro plan. Enterprise: contact airfocus for a custom Enterprise plan.

Airfocus Overview

Airfocus is the first product on our list of ProdOps tools.

airfocus's roadmapping views and templates are quite potent. Product teams and team managers may assign tasks or items with as much or as little information as desired, and the development lifecycle for these things can be mapped out as needed.

It's a powerful tool for managing and prioritizing product development, and it supports several types of team collaboration (virtual, hybrid and in-person). 

Benefits

  • Airfocus is incredibly adaptable. It's wonderful for product teams, but marketers, developers, and even HR may benefit from it just as much.
  • Some well-known tools, including several on this list, can be integrated with airfocus.
  • In order to save time and keep everyone informed, you may automate a number of processes with airfocus and send notifications.

2.‎ Jira Software — Agile development tool

G2 rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars.

Capterra rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars.

Jira Pricing:

Jira Software offers flexible pricing. Small teams: $0 per user/month for up to 10 users. Growing teams: $7 per user/month for 11 to 10,000 users.

Jira Overview

Of the many useful tools that may be used together, Jira and Airfocus are particularly well-integrated. Jira is a tool for agile development, which means it facilitates the application of the agile methodology by product development teams.

A Kanban board, scrum, bug tracking, and process automation are all a part of it. All of these functions could be accomplished using a whiteboard and some notecards instead of Jira. Jira, on the other hand, simplifies teamwork and communication. 

Jira Benefits

  • Incorporate the widely used agile approach of development into your company in a methodical and cooperative way.
  • By using Jira to keep track of your progress and tasks, you can plan, release, and track your product on schedule.
  • Get your team members on the same page with ease.

3.‎ Pendo — Usage analytics

G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars

Capterra rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Pendo Pricing:

Pendo has three pricing editions. A free trial of Pendo is also available. For Growth and Portfolio plans, you need to contact Pendo. 

Product teams can benefit greatly from using metrics provided by product operations technologies. As a result, they may hone focus on the product's best features, fortify its weaker ones, or even eliminate them altogether.

Pendo Overview

Pendo is a top-notch tool for analyzing user behavior. Customer information, comments, and mobile onboarding for digital products are all gathered and delivered in this process. This facilitates your digital product's onboarding process while gathering insightful information from potential customers. 

Pendo Benefits

  • With Pendo's pre-built templates and tools, create and launch in-app instructions.
  • Get direct customer feedback to gain first-hand knowledge of the pros and cons of your product.
  • Streamline the app experience for both online and mobile applications.

4.‎ Scribe — Training & knowledge-share

Capterra Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Scribe Pricing:

Scribe has a free Basic plan, Pro plan for $23/user/month and customizable Enterprise plans.

Scribe Overview

With Scribe, you can build process documentation at the press of a button. Just turn on the extension or desktop app as you go through a job. Scribe will automatically develop a step-by-step guide for you, complete with written instructions and screenshots.

You may easily edit to create additional instructions, add context, annotate photos, or create a Scribe Page to link many Scribes together along with video and images.

When you can't be there to help your team members out in person, use Scribe to show them step-by-step how to get the job done. Get insights from busy subject matter specialists in a hurry and produce onboarding and training manuals that are really of some value. 

‎Scribe Benefits

  • Provide a single source of truth for the procedures that teams must follow.
  • Provide thorough criticism without needing a significant time commitment.
  • Eliminate the need for team members to respond to the same questions repeatedly.
  • Use other of your preferred tools to produce better documentation.

5.‎ Qualtrics — Product experience

‎G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars.

Capterra rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Qualtrics XM Pricing:

It has a free plan and a free version. Pricing starts from $1500 per year. 

Qualtrics XM Overview

Product experience, like usage analytics, includes product operations software that gives your team a glimpse into the app's experience from the user's point of view. You're not so much interested in how they were used (as in use analytics) but in what kind of feedback they provided, what kind of insights they offered, what kind of suggestions they made, and so on.

Qualtrics XM is great software with this sort of functionality. Qualtrics XM has several different products that may be used to enhance the customer's interaction with the product. These applications may be used to identify weak spots, prioritize areas for improvement, and encourage a "take action" mentality. 

Qualtrics Benefits

  • Allows you to "plug in" and hear what employees and consumers say about your product through integration with a wide range of applications.
  • Use a single app to compile all of your consumers' experiences, which will provide you exceptional exposure. 

6.‎ Mixpanel — Data analysis & visualization

G2 rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Capterra rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Mixpanel Pricing:

Free trial and a free version. The Free plan offers 100K monthly tracked users and the essential features to find product-market fit. The Growth plan starts at $25/month, and you can pick your monthly tracked users and buy online. The Enterprise plan has Custom plans and pricing to empower teams in large organizations.

Mixpanel Overview

Data analysis and visualization tools are also useful for ProdOps teams. These applications gather information from various sources and provide it in an easily digestible format.

Some of the most well-known names in the IT industry, such as Uber, Yelp, and GoDaddy, all use Mixpanel. A few examples of this kind of information are use and experience data, information on when and why users abandon the service and insights into how to keep them as customers effectively. 

Mixpanel Benefits

  • It requires little to no SDKs and integrates seamlessly with your existing data lake. Just connect it, then begin seeing the data you are already gathering.
  • Draw important conclusions from your data, such as what attracts new users, how to best retain existing ones, and which features are doing poorly. 

7.‎ Hotjar — Heat mapping

G2 rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars.

Capterra rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Hotjar Pricing:

There are 12 price tiers for Hotjar. Hotjar also offers a risk-free trial. Choose the Hotjar Observe, Ask, and Engage product plans to build your bundle.

With the use of Heatmaps and Recordings, Observe enables you to visualize user activity and see what your users view. Using Ask, you can conduct surveys to get feedback from your users and learn how they feel.

Your user interviews are effortlessly hosted, recorded, and transcribed by Engage. Hotjar.com/pricing has the ideal set of options for you to choose from.

Hotjar Overview

Heat mapping software is among the most visually appealing options for enhancing product management. Heat maps, for those unfamiliar with the technique, reveal where visitors tap or click on a website or app. This gives you insight into the most used features, the areas where users are experiencing the greatest difficulty, and whether or not your design language is getting over.

A popular heat mapping service is Hotjar, although there are many more to choose from. There are no upfront costs, and there are features beyond heat mapping to use right now. 

Hotjar Benefits

  • While using the Basic plan, Hotjar is totally free to use when you first sign up.
  • Several forms of data, such as user recordings, surveys, and comments, can be gathered with Hotjar.
  • Integrates with a variety of well-known applications, including Microsoft Teams, Trello, Excel, and Slack.
  • On Hotjar's websites, you may discover resources and tips to help you better grasp your heatmaps. 
  • Collaborative features mean that Hotjar is just as useful for a lone project manager as it is for a team. 

8.‎ Maze — User testing

G2 rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Capterra rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars.

Maze Pricing:

Maze has three pricing editions. A free trial of Maze is also available. $25/month per seat if billed annually. Custom pricing from 10+ seats.

Maze Overview

Of course, you shouldn't wait until after your product goes live to collect data. Before releasing your product to the public, you should undergo many rounds of testing to identify and fix any major problems. This is where testing with actual users may help. It's a great way to get feedback from customers before committing to a full launch.

Maze is a fantastic software for doing usability tests. Maze is used by major corporations like Uber, Overstock, and GE, much like the other applications on our list. 

Maze Benefits

  • The speed of Maze's results is one of its main advantages. User testing may provide valuable information in just a few hours.
  • Use Maze to evaluate your product ideas and prototypes or just to gauge user happiness.
  • Since Maze interfaces with so many other top-notch applications, you can easily apply your findings to other use cases. 

9.‎ Optimizely — A/B testing

G2 rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars.

Capterra rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars. 

Pricing:

Contact Optimizely for pricing. 

Optimizely Overview

A/B testing is a subfield of user testing in which two variants of the same software, website, or other product are created and compared. Then, you split your sample population in two, giving one group a taste of one product variant while the other gets to try out the other. You may compare their respective performances and conclude which is more effective.

Product operations software, such as Optimizely, can be a huge assistance when it comes to maintaining an organized and efficient A/B testing process. 

Optimizely Benefits

  • Regardless of the size, an enterprise-grade solution can meet the demands of your company.
  • Your A/B testing may be personalized and targeted to particular user demographics, giving you more in-depth information.
  • Use cutting-edge features like exclusion groups.
  • Thanks to its collaborative features, you can use Optimizely for testing, program reporting, and brainstorming.
  • Because Optimizely is made to make A/B testing quick and simple, you can deploy it in a matter of minutes and start gathering data without hindering your users' experience. 

10‎. Notion — Wiki knowledge management 

G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars.

Capterra rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Notion Pricing:

A free trial and a free version of Notion are also available. Notion is offered across four pricing plans and scales with the number of features outlined below: Free; Plus: $10/user/month (billed monthly) or $8/user/month (billed annually); Business: $18/user/month (billed monthly) or $15/user/month (billed annually); Enterprise: Please contact Notion directly for pricing information.

Notion Overview

Knowledge management is a difficult topic for teams to work together on. It may seem easy at first, but as your project progresses, it will become increasingly challenging to ensure that everyone is on the same page and has access to the same information. In fact, this is especially true for groups of people working together.

The good news is that there are knowledge management technologies for product operations. To that end, we'd like to highlight Notion as a tool that fits the bill. It's like having a shared digital notebook for your group to use and keep in order. 

Notion Benefits

  • Notion is a collaboration app, just like many of the top product operations software on our list so far. Everyone may improve it, organize it, and gain knowledge from it.
  • Notion is an excellent hub for your work because it can hold a range of notes and data.
  • Notion makes organizing a roadmap, establishing a process, and keeping track of meeting notes simple. 

11‎. Delighted — Collecting feedback

G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Capeterra rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars.

Delighted Pricing:

A 7-day free trial is available.

BILLED MONTHLY: Free = $0 per month Premium = $249 per month Premium Plus = $499 per month Enterprise = Contact for pricing

BILLED YEARLY: Free = $0 per month Premium = $224 per month Premium Plus = $449 per month Enterprise = Contact for pricing

Although many product operations software is useful, not all of it is relevant to the pre-launch phase of product development. Your product will eventually go live; when it does, you'll want to gather comments from customers in a natural, flowing fashion.

Delighted Overview

Delighted and other similar platforms are designed specifically for the purpose of gathering customer feedback. You may use this feature to offer several survey options to your visitors. Customers may be surveyed either through an embedded survey on your website or through an email sent to them after they have made a purchase. 

Delighted Benefits

  • Delighted provides eight distinct survey styles, from straightforward thumbs-up/down polls to in-depth customer satisfaction polls.
  • To find out if someone enjoys a product, liked browsing your website, or finds a certain resource beneficial, you may use Delighted. 

12‎. Figma Prototyping / Wireframing

G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars. 

Capterra rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars.

Figma Pricing:

Figma is available across three pricing tiers. Pricing details are outlined below: Starter Team: Free for up to 2 editors and 3 projects. Professional: $12 per editor/month (annual billing) and $15 per editor/month (monthly billing). Organization: $45 per editor/month (annual billing)

Figma Overview

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we find prototyping and wireframing. This is the groundwork you lay early in the product development process, and it might be the most laborious. Developers have built product operations tools that streamline the prototype process, which helps move things along more quickly.

Figma is one such program. Figma makes it simple to transform your app or website ideas into a working prototype by providing premade templates for things like page layouts and navigation. 

Benefits

  • Anybody on your team, not just your graphic designers, can start using Figma because of its simplicity.
  • Figma has everything pre-built, allowing you to create a prototype in a matter of hours as opposed to days or weeks.
  • Using Figma eliminates the need to create any code, which saves a lot of time.

Why you need product operations software

When it comes to trial, purchase, onboarding, expansion, and recommendation, the product is always front and center for product-led businesses, and product operations are crucial for improving the customer experience at each step of the way. The product team may benefit from an operational complement like the sales operations, marketing ops, and DevOps teams do.

Professionals in product operations are generally tasked with providing useful use statistics to product management in order to aid the latter in making better-informed decisions. It is common knowledge that product data is among the "cleanest" data available to decision-makers because it is collected automatically (no manual entry, like with a CRM, for example).

The primary goal of developing product ops is to free product managers from tedious operational responsibilities, so they can concentrate on creating products that truly satisfy their consumers. Product ops serve as a central hub for sharing product knowledge between departments, leading to better collaboration and coordination.

Choose the right product operations software

No two businesses have the same requirements, and the features that work best for one business may differ from those that work best for another business because of how they approach product management. This list is a good place to start with your hunt for the right mix of product operations software.

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