What is PLM software?

PLM software is a platform that lets you manage information and business processes at every stage of the product lifecycle, from ideation and development to delivery. It streamlines the product development processes and keeps team members on the same page.

Product lifecycle management solutions offer various features, from in-app onboarding and quality management to product analytics. They even let you collect feedback from users and segment them based on shared behavior or characteristics, making them crucial for customer lifecycle management.

Ultimately, product lifecycle management software helps you develop top-notch products that exceed customer expectations and align product goals with business objectives.

5 best product lifecycle management software

So, what’s the best platform for managing your product development processes and customer lifecycle? Let’s take a look at our top picks.

1. Userpilot: Best for product-led growth

Userpilot is an all-in-one product growth platform that lets you create personalized in-app experiences to delight users. From onboarding checklists and tooltips to in-app surveys, it offers several tools to engage users and implement a product-led growth strategy.

Among the best product growth tools out there, Userpilot offers robust product analytics capabilities to help you monitor in-app user activity and behavior. You can use this data to improve product quality and experience.

The platform comes in handy for multiple teams, from product ops and customer support to marketing.

Userpilot dashboard.

Key features

• In-app guidance – You can use UI patterns like hotspots, modals, and tooltips to provide users with contextual guidance. For a great onboarding experience, create checklists and interactive product tours or delight users with a self-serve in-app resource center.
• User segmentation – Our customer segmentation tool lets you divide users into different groups based on their behavior or in-app survey responses. Then, you can trigger personalized in-app experiences for each segment to boost engagement and satisfaction.
• Product analytics – You can track how users perform custom events, which paths they take, how they move through the funnel, and how well you retain them over time. All these insights help you identify patterns and friction points so you can improve your product KPIs.
• In-app surveys – With Userpilot, you can launch various types of in-app surveys to collect user feedback. Our customer feedback tool offers pre-built survey templates, localization options, and the possibility to personalize the sequence of questions using branching logic.
• Auto-capture – It helps you capture every interaction a user has within your product automatically. This makes Userpilot one of the only two all-in-one platforms in the market to offer this feature—say goodbye to manual tagging.
• Integrations – Userpilot supports integration with several widely used CRM platforms, product analytics and engagement tools, and more. It’ll seamlessly blend into your existing tech stack.

Pricing

Userpilot offers a 14-day free trial. Userpilot pricing plans include:

• Starter – Pricing starts at $249 per month (billed annually); suitable for small teams and startups that need basic user engagement and analytics features.
• Growth (Most popular) – Pricing starts at $749 per month (billed annually); suitable for mid-size businesses, particularly product growth teams.
• Enterprise – Pricing is available on request; suitable for large-scale enterprises with robust security needs.

2. Pendo: Best for product experience optimization

Pendo is an AI-powered digital adoption platform that lets you design flawless in-app experiences to onboard new users and delight existing ones.

It offers several features to dive deeper into the user journey, improve the user experience, and maximize product adoption. You can also use this PLM software to collect user feedback through in-app surveys and monitor in-app user behavior.

Besides product teams, Pendo comes in handy for customer success, marketing, and UX design teams.

Key features

• Pendo Analytics – You can monitor in-app user behavior and engagement. You even get insights into the exact paths users take within your product and track product data retroactively. However, it provides only one way to visualize a report.
• Pendo Engage – You can create and deploy in-app experiences like tooltips and resource centers to improve onboarding and product adoption. But if you’re looking for spotlights or standalone checklists, check out Pendo alternatives because the tool lacks these features.
• Pendo Feedback – Pendo lets you collect feedback from users through in-app surveys. The platform’s AI capabilities let you extract actionable insights from the collected feedback. However, it only offers a basic NPS survey.
• Product discovery – You can test your product ideas by asking for user opinions and analyzing the results based on votes, impact, effort, etc.
• Roadmaps – With this Pendo feature, you can visualize the impact of every initiative and align cross-functional teams. You can even modify the roadmap as you gather user feedback and validate new ideas.
• Integrations – Pendo supports a wide array of third-party integrations, from HubSpot and Jira to Intercom and Slack.

Pricing

Pendo offers a free plan for up to 500 monthly active users (MAU). Additionally, it offers four user-based paid plans. Pricing is calculated based on MAU and is available on request.

3. Trello: Best for project management and team collaboration

Trello is a widely used Kanban-style product tool for project management. This PLM software lets cross-functional teams collaborate on different projects and helps project managers monitor progress. Finally, it’s easy to set up and suitable for teams of all sizes.

Key features

• Product roadmap – You can create a Kanban-style board on Trello to track each step of the product development process and enable seamless collaboration among team members.
• Agile sprint – You can organize code, plans, and specs on Trello and easily share them with product managers, scrum masters, and other team members. It also allows you to monitor progress and share up-to-date information.
• Feature requests – You can use Trello to organize user feedback in a single dashboard. It allows customer support, sales, and product teams to identify areas for improvement and work on them.
• Different views – Besides Kanban-style boards, Trello also lets you visualize projects in the form of timelines, tables, maps, and calendars.
• Integrations – Trello integrates with numerous third-party tools, including Slack, Miro, Everhour, and Dropbox.

Pricing

Trello offers a free-forever plan that gives you a taste of its capabilities. Additionally, the platform offers three paid plans:

• Standard – $5/user per month (billed annually); suitable for small teams that need basic collaboration and project management tools.
• Premium – $10/user per month (billed annually); suitable for teams looking to manage multiple projects.
• Enterprise – $17.50/user per month (billed annually) for 50 users; pricing per user decreases for more users; suitable for cross-functional teams in large organizations that need more security and access controls.

4. Productboard: Best for customer-centric product development

If you’re looking for a no-code product management platform that helps you dive deep into customer needs and expectations, Productboard is the way to go.

Product teams can use Productboard as a centralized dashboard to collect user feedback and prioritize what to build next in the product development lifecycle.

Key features

• Collaborative roadmapping – You can create and share real-time customer-facing roadmaps to align everyone around a common goal, strategy, and vision.
• Customer insights – Productboard offers a centralized platform to integrate user feedback from different sources. You can also use AI to generate meaningful insights from the feedback to inform your customer experience roadmap.
• Data-driven prioritization – You can rank ideas for new features and products based on user feedback, impact, effort, and revenue.
• Strategic product planning – With this PLM software, you can set product goals and share them with team members. It helps teams focus on the right tasks and efficiently use available resources.
• Cross-team collaboration – You can create shared workspaces to bring cross-functional teams together.
• Go-to-market alignment – Create dynamic roadmaps to provide go-to-market teams with the latest information on feature releases and timelines. Also, you can use the centralized dashboard to create a product GTM checklist and monitor progress.
• Integrations – Productboard is compatible with several third-party tools, including Slack, Salesforce, Zapier, Gainsight, and Mixpanel.

Pricing

Productboard offers a free-forever plan with basic features. Paid plans include:

• Essentials – Pricing starts at $19/user per month (billed annually); suitable for small teams looking to understand user needs better and improve their product offerings.
• Pro – Pricing starts at $59/user per month (billed annually); suitable for mid-sized teams looking to improve collaboration and coordination.
• Enterprise – Pricing is available on request; suitable for large organizations looking to level up entire product management processes.

All paid plans come with a 14-day free trial.

5. Airfocus: Best for prioritization and roadmapping

Airfocus is a modular product management platform that lets product teams create strategic roadmaps and prioritize tasks based on user needs. It offers a central dashboard to set objectives, track progress, and align team members around a roadmap.

Key features

• OKRs – Airfocus offers built-in OKRs that can easily connect to your product roadmap and workflows. Plus, team members can submit regular check-ins that allow product managers to monitor progress in real time.
• Roadmaps – Airfocus comes with built-in tools that let you create lean and strategic product UX roadmaps and share them with different teams.
• Prioritization – You get various feature prioritization tools, including OKRs, scoring frameworks, Priority Poker, and user insights, to make informed decisions when setting priorities.
• Customer feedback – You can capture user feedback from various channels, including email and chat, and organize it in a centralized inbox.
• Public portal – With Airfocus, you can create a branded self-service portal to share product roadmaps and plans with your target audience. It’s an excellent way to validate new ideas and collect feedback.
• Integrations – With its robust suite of third-party integrations, from Trello and Zapier to Slack and Salesforce, Airfocus can easily fit into your existing tech stack.

Pricing

With Airfocus, you get a 14-day free trial and three paid plans:

• Core – Pricing starts at $59/user per month (billed annually); suitable for small and medium businesses that need basic tools for roadmapping and prioritization.
• Scale – Pricing is available on request; suitable for teams that manage a portfolio of products.
• Enterprise – Pricing is available on request; suitable for large enterprises that need robust security and support.

Conclusion

Whether you’re building a new product or brainstorming ways to improve an existing one, using product lifecycle management (PLM) software is non-negotiable. The key is to identify the right PLM system that’ll fit your team’s needs and goals.

Userpilot is a 3-in-1 product growth platform that offers powerful in-app engagement, feedback, and analytics features. Book a demo to see how Userpilot can help you manage your product lifecycle.

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