I would appreciate your feedback on my SaaS Roadmap

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#1

Hi everyone,

I would be thankful if you could have a look at my startup, it’s trying to fix the pains related to product management, planning, roadmap, user feedback.

Product: Roadmap - https://roadmap.space

Why I built it: I quit my position as CTO of previous startup (I have a blog post describing how being overwhelmed made me build Roadmap). Having a product roadmap, making sure all teams have the same vision for the product future and making sure the focus is set on the right things was suddenly a must have for my next startup, so I decided to build a tool for that.

Stage: It was still private beta until yesterday. I’m trying to get as much feedback as I can. For me, based on what I felt at previous companies, having key indicators to help decide what should be the next focus is the primary problem I would like Roadmap to solve.

In any case, I would be happy to get your feedback on the website, pricing. If you have time and are interested in having a product roadmap for your product or just want to check it out, please do not hesitate and let me know your feedback (good and bad).

I’m planning for a public launch soon, once I have more detail regarding which direction to go etc.

Thanks for your time, highly appreciate.

#2

Looks really solid product!

I’ve received a lot of customer’s emails asking for an ETA for specific functionality, etc. Also, have all the customer feedback in one place is key to integrate it in the roadmap!

My comments:

  • I’ve seen companies doing the ‘Public Roadmaps’ thing, and it’s really interesting! And most of them are using Trello boards, because it’s a good way to see clearly in which stage the functionality is (researching, doing, beta testing, etc). Did you think on something like that?

  • Pricing: with 4 pricing plans, I need to think a lot before deciding which one I need. You can put the free plan below (because all the plans have a free trial anyway) and reduce the noise. BTW, this is more personal opinion based on my experience with your website.

And loved your post and the story behind Roadmap!

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#3

Thank you for the kind words.

Pricing: Yes, the 4 columns was something I was not liking, I will put some thoughts into this for sure, agree that the free plan should be more “hidden” after pricing table.

Public Roadmap: Yes, in fact that will soon be the core aspect of the product (waiting for designer to get back from vacation). Hopefully, the external facing roadmap will need to produce a “wow” effect/moment. Still lots of work to do.

#4

Screenshots made my eyes hurt immediately. They are unreadable. It is better to have a portion of the UI with large font.

I do not like the violet background, but that might be a personal thing. Dark colours IMHO are fitting for roadmaps that ended up in a death and desolation.

The idea is an interesting one. Do I understand correctly the UI should be integrated into a customer site to be a part of their content?

I wouldn’t give the free layer the custom CSS option. Push business users to use their branded CSS - and pay for that.

I would also moved free layer down.

#5

Thank you for the feedback.

Re: Screenshots, yep agreed, for violet, well are you talking about the widget or the general theme of Roadmap’s color? The violet for the widget is the default, there’s a blue theme as well already available.

The widget is optional, but is recommended as this is what gives the quantitative data like MRR when your users are voting or suggesting idea.

Good point for custom CSS on free plan. I’m still trying to decide what features and price tag go where.

#6

Hi Dominic,

Hmm… I am an old developer and looking at the site I just don’t get it… I thing it looks great, but I just don’t get the benefit… I think that you should do some form of evangelizing… more by example maybe?

Or maybe I am just not your audience …

#7

Thanks for the comment. Engineers / Developers won’t probably see much value in Roadmap at first, because they immediately compare with a project management tool or issue tracker and similar.

Data-driven customer feedback is important to add data point to take decisions on what a product should accept to implement. A product roadmap is a quick and easy way for execs, Product Managers, Product Owners, Customer Success, Stakeholders to see what’s going on now and in future and making sure the company’s objectives are respected.

It’s a way to manage the evolution of the product thinking about problems the product is solving and not in terms of tasks (like project management tool do).

One problem at the moment is that our own roadmap is not very verbose, once we have a full roadmap it might start to help seeing the value.