10 Best Backlog Management Tools Worth Trying

Development teams need to constantly manage their backlogs effectively to remain at the top of their game. And that’s where product backlog management tools come in. These tools can help prioritize items, track progress, create roadmaps, and improve communication with stakeholders. 

In this guide, we will introduce and review the 10 best FREE and PAID backlog management tools. Whether you manage a small team or a large enterprise, you’ll know the exact tools to opt for after reading. 

10 Best Product Backlog Management Tools

5 Best Free Backlog Management Tools

If you’re looking for a free backlog management tool, there are a few options available. 

Monday.com

Monday.com is a popular backlog management tool and a great choice for teams that want to be able to manage their backlogs efficiently and effectively.

Main features:

1) Task management: Monday.com makes it easy to manage tasks and keep track of progress. With its flexible task management features, teams can easily create and assign tasks, set due dates, and track progress.

2) Collaboration: Monday.com’s powerful collaboration features make it easy for teams to work together on any project. With its threaded comments, file sharing, and real-time updates, teams can easily stay up to date on the latest developments.

3) Customization: Monday.com is highly customizable, making it easy to tailor the platform to any team’s specific needs. With its wide range of customization options and ready-made templates, teams can easily create custom workflows, processes, and reports.

4)Integrations: With its robust API, Monday.com integrates with a wide range of popular applications and services like Zapier, Google Drive, etc, making it easy to connect all of your tools and workflows.

What Customers Like Most:

• Support for automation across workflow boards.
• Tracks open projects easily and effectively.
• It’s easy to use and has a user-friendly interface.
• It has amazing workload and time tracking features.
• Has good integration capabilities with third-party tools.

What Customers Do Not Like:

• It’s a bit too complex for an average user.
• Free plan supports not more than 2 users.
• Third-party integrations are limited.
• Transferring tasks from one board to another requires improvements.

ClickUp 

ClickUp is another free product backlog tool that can be used to manage product backlog, track progress, and release dates. Read on to learn about its main features, pros, and cons.

Main features:

1. To-do list and integration: Helps you keep track of your tasks and ensure that you complete them in a timely manner. It also enables easy and seamless collaboration and can help you separate finished tasks from the rest in the backlog.

2. Calendar: Keeps track of important dates and events so that you can stay on top of your schedule and update your backlog on time, when necessary.

3. Task manager: Helps you manage and prioritize your tasks so that you can get the most important work done first.

4. Note-taking: ClickUp makes it easy to take notes and store them in one place so that you can refer back to them later.

5. Reporting: Keep track of your productivity so that you can see how well you are doing and where you need to improve.

6. Gantt chart: Ensures you have a bird-eye view of every project and task you need to carry out. ClickUp also adds coloring options that make tasks easy to visualize.

What Customers Like Most:

• Excellent customer support.
• Calendar integrations are phenomenal.
• Boards and roadmap visualization work seamlessly.
• It has many features that aid productivity.
• It can help create and manage a product backlog.
• Great community support.

What Customers Do Not Like:

• Beginners may feel exhausted at first because of the multiple features.
• User interface is sometimes slow and buggy.
• Adding new tasks to existing ones can be difficult.

Asana

Asana is a great tool for managing your backlog and keeping track of your to-do list. It’s simple to use and you can easily update and share your lists with others. Also, Asana helps you identify and prioritize the user story at the top of your backlog list. That way, your team can focus on it per time.

Main features:

Task management: Asana helps you keep track of your work by allowing you to create tasks and subtasks, set deadlines, assign team members, and add notes and attachments.

Project backlog management: Asana also allows you to manage project backlogs by creating project boards with tasks and due dates. You can also invite team members to collaborate on projects.

Team collaboration: Asana makes it easy for teams to communicate and collaborate on work. With the platform, you can create team conversations, @mention team members, and add comments and attachments.

File sharing: Asana allows you to share files with team members. You can upload files from your computer or connect to Dropbox, Google Drive, or Box.

Integrations: Asana integrates with a number of popular applications, such as Slack, Trello, and Zapier. This allows you to manage your work in one place and get more done.

What Customers Like Most:

• It aids task management and collaboration.
• Asana allows you to export boards and tasks into excel.
• It allows you to track the same sets of data across various different views (List, Board, Timeline, Calendar, etc.).
• It allows you to create a to-do list that helps you view your tasks separate from project views.
• Scheduling feature helps in completing smaller operational tasks that otherwise would have been forgotten.

What customers do not like:

• It has limited customizations and support for data building.
• Onboarding process can be long and challenging.
• Note-taking feature needs improvement.

Reading: 6 Best Free And Paid Asana Competitors You Can Choose

Airtable

Airtable can be used as a powerful tool for backlog management. By creating an Airtable base, you can easily track and manage your backlog items in one place. You can also use Airtable’s Kanban view to visualize your backlog items and prioritize them accordingly. Furthermore, Airtable’s collaboration features allow you to easily share your backlog with your team and work together to get things done.

Main features:

Flexible design: Airtable’s flexible design allows you to easily customize your data structure to fit your specific needs.

Customizable fields: Airtable’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to add, edit, view your data, and customize them as you like.

Powerful features: Airtable’s powerful features include sorting, filtering, and collaboration tools that make managing your data a breeze.

Integrated apps: Airtable integrates with popular apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Evernote, making it easy to access and manage your data from one place.

Data Synchronization: Airtable offers a free trial, with data synchronization features, that help to create a unified place for your projects, ideas, and content. This also aids effective collaboration in a scrum environment.

What customers like most:

• It’s easily customizable.
• It helps in managing tasks, and digital assets and aids collaboration.
• Its free version supports growing teams.
• It is easy to use and intuitive.
• Team members can be tagged and informed of a recent update in the backlog.
• Visual database.
• Multiple views like – board, kanban, etc.
• Premade templates that help in getting started for almost any industry.
• Great community support and resources to get started with Airtable.

What customers do not like:

• Organizational capabilities are limited in the free version.
• The mobile app is sometimes difficult to navigate.
• Mathematical functions need improvement.

Reading: Top 8 Airtable Alternatives: More Powerful in Team Collaboration

Hygger

Hygger is another useful backlog tool for product and project managers who want to bring their team’s work process to a new level and work towards more successful scrum deliveries. 

Main Features: 

1. Task management: Hyger helps you create tasks and subtasks, set priorities and deadlines, and track progress.

2. Project management: With this software, you can create projects, add team members, prioritize backlogs, and track project progress.

3. Time tracking: Through Hygger, you can easily see how much time is being spent on each task and project.

4. Kanban board: Hygger helps you visualize your work process with the help of a Kanban board.

5. Reporting: With Hygger, you can get detailed reports on your work progress.

What Customers Like Most:

• Simple GUI and a lot of drag ‘n’ drop features, make the software easy to use.
• Effective customer support.
• Can create different boards and be used to assign tasks.
• Supports collaboration.
• Provides web-based access to replace/manage usual cmd work.
• Has customizable tools that have good prior’s features and are easy to use in scrum environments.
• can build a backlog and a product roadmap to communicate with stakeholders and clients.

What Customers Do Not Like:

• Mobile app needs improvement.
• It has some visualization issues, especially with Gantt.
• User interface can be improved.

5 Paid Backlog Management Tools

There are a variety of tools that help manage backlogs and build effective scrum environments. Earlier, we went through free tools like Monday.com, ClickUp, Asana, Airtable, and Hygger, giving unbiased reviews on each. In this next section, we’ll be reviewing a list of paid backlog management tools that can help improve workflow and plan product roadmaps. 

NTask

Ntask is a simple, yet powerful backlog management tool. It provides an easy way to keep track of your to-dos, deadlines, and progress. Ntask also makes it easy to share task lists with others, visualize roadmaps, prioritize and update backlogs, and to collaborate on assigned projects.

Key Features:

Ntask Kanban board: Backlog management with this Ntask tool is very efficient. The board allows you to add, edit and reorder tasks very easily. You can also add subtasks, which is very helpful when dealing with complex tasks. Moving tasks to “done” syscronizes well between backlog and Kanban boards.

Task management: is the process of organizing and coordinating work to achieve specific goals. A task is a unit of work that is typically assigned to an individual or group of individuals. Ntask helps you manage tasks better.

Gantt chart: Ntask offers a variety of Gantt chart templates that can be customized to fit the needs of any project. The templates are easy to use and can be exported to a variety of formats, including PDF and Excel.

Customizable: Ntask is highly customizable, so users can tailor the tool to fit their specific needs. You can also use it to automate many of the tedious and time-consuming tasks that come with managing work, such as sending reminders, creating reports, and consolidating data from multiple sources.

What customers like most:

• Easily add new tasks and subtasks.
• Keep track of your progress on each task.
• Set due dates and reminders for each task.
• Assign tasks to team members.
• Track the status of each task.
• Generate reports to see the big picture.
• It’s affordable.

What customers do not like:

• Tracking tasks with an actual timer feature needs improvement.
• Gantt chart view is limited and not so versatile.
• Can be a bit confusing to add projects, especially when multiple projects are involved.
• Can sometimes be difficult to navigate.

ProofHub

The problem with most backlogs is that they’re not well-managed. This can lead to projects falling behind schedule, or even being canceled entirely.

ProofHub is a cloud-based project management tool that helps you easily manage your backlog. With ProofHub, you can create a custom workflow for your team, and track the progress of each task.

Main Features:

Task Management:

With ProofHub, you can easily create and assign tasks to team members. You can also set deadlines and track progress to ensure that tasks are completed on time.

Communication:

ProofHub provides a variety of communication tools that make it easy to communicate with team members. You can use the chat feature to send instant messages, or you can use the comment feature to leave comments on tasks and projects.

Gantt charts:

Gantt charts are a valuable tool for project management, and ProofHub offers powerful Gantt chart features. They provide a clear overview of the project timeline and the dependencies between tasks. They can be used to track the progress of a project, and to identify potential bottlenecks.

 With ProofHub, you can easily create and manage Gantt charts to track project progress.

Customizable workspace:

ProofHub offers a customizable workspace that allows you to add or remove features as needed. You can also customize the layout of the workspace to suit your preferences.

File-Sharing:

ProofHub makes it easy to share files with team members. You can upload files directly to the software, or you can use the integrations to connect to third-party storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive.

What Customers Like Most:

• Easily manage your backlog.
• custom workflow for your team.
• Track the progress of each task.
• Great customer support.
• Boosts productivity with time tracking and online proofing features.

What Customers Do Not Like:

• Can be expensive for large teams.
• Not as widely known as some other project management tools.
• Has limited third-party integrations.
• Managing notifications can be difficult.

Microsoft Planner

Microsoft Planner is a tool that can help you manage your project backlogs and track progress on your projects. It provides a visual way to see what work is coming up, track progress on specific tasks, and get alerted when things are due. The planner can be used for both Agile and Waterfall planning.

Main Features:

Group and filter tasks feature: When you have a lot of tasks to complete, it can be hard to keep track of them all. The Group and Filter feature in Microsoft Planner let you create groups for your tasks so you can easily see what needs to be done and who is working on what.

Schedule view:  This feature helps you see all of your tasks in a calendar view so you can better plan your work and stay on track.

Reminders: Microsoft Planner can send you reminders about upcoming deadlines and tasks that need to be completed. This helps you stay on top of your work and avoid forgetting anything important.

Integration with other Microsoft products: Microsoft Planner integrates with other Microsoft products like Office 365 and SharePoint, making it easy to use with the rest of your workflow.

Overall, Microsoft Planner is a great tool for small businesses and teams who need a simple way to collaborate and work effectively on backlogs. 

What customers liked most:

• It is a great tool for managing project backlogs.
• Has a friendly and intuitive interface
• Helps you break down tasks easily
• It is fully integrated into the Office365 suite
• It provides a visual way to track progress on tasks.
• It triggers reminder emails

What Customers Do Not Like:

• Some users have found Microsoft Planner to be buggy and unstable.
• It can be difficult to get started with Microsoft Planner if you’re not familiar with the interface.
• There is no free version of Microsoft Planner.

Reading: Microsoft Planner VS Trello: In-Depth Reviews

Productboard

Productboard is a backlog management tool that enables you to prioritize and track your product development efforts. It provides you with a clear view of your product roadmap and progress, so you can make informed decisions about where to focus your time and resources. Productboard also makes it easy to share your product roadmap with stakeholders.

Kanban board:

Productboard enables you to visualize your product development process with a kanban board. This makes it easy to see what’s being worked on, who is working on it, and the status of each task.

The kanban board can be customized to fit your specific workflow. You can add new columns, change the order of columns, and add new swimlanes. Productboard also has a “Work in Progress” limit, which helps you to prioritize and focus on the most important tasks.

Progress tracking:

Productboard enables you to track the progress of your product development with ease. You can see how much work has been completed, and how much is left to do. Productboard also allows you to set milestones and track progress against them. This helps you to see if you’re on track to meet your deadlines.

Content management and Data-driven decision making:

Productboard enables you to make data-driven decisions about your product and manage content all from one place.

Product roadmap:

Productboard makes it easy to collaborate with your team on the product roadmap. You can add new features, prioritize them, and assign them to specific team members. 

Bug tracking:

Productboard integrates with popular bug tracking tools, such as Jira and GitHub. This makes it easy to track bugs and fix them quickly. Productboard also has a built-in bug tracker, which is helpful if you don’t use a separate tool for this purpose.

What Customers Like Most:

• Clear view of product roadmap and progress
• Easy to share product roadmap with stakeholders
• Keeps stakeholders up-to-date on product development efforts
• Customizable and has features that aid effective planning
• It gives a clear way to collaborate on product roadmaps
• User-friendly and intuitive
• Effective for discovery and agile projects

What Customers Do Not Like:

• Some users have reported glitches and bugs.
• Cost per user is a bit high
• User research module can be improved

Smartsheet 

The Smartsheet backlog management tool is a great way to keep track of your project’s progress and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. By keeping all of your project’s tasks and subtasks in one place, you can easily see what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. Plus, thanks to Smartsheet’s real-time updates, you can be sure that everyone is always on the same page.

Main Features

Task automation:

Smartsheet can automate many of the tedious and time-consuming tasks that come with managing work, such as sending reminders, creating reports, and consolidating data from multiple sources.

Customization:

Smartsheet is highly customizable, so users can tailor the tool to fit their specific needs.

Content management:

Smartsheet can help users manage their content more effectively by providing features such as version control, comments, and file sharing.

Promotes team collaboration:

Smartsheet makes it easy for users to collaborate with others on work projects by providing features such as comments, @mentions, and file sharing.

Enables real-time visibility:

Smartsheet provides users with real-time visibility into all aspects of their work, so they can easily see what’s been done, what’s currently being worked on, and what still needs to be done.

What Customers Like Most:

• Easy to customize sheets.
• Easy and straightforward to assign and create tasks.
• Great project budgeting and planning capabilities.
• Blends well with third-party integrations.
• Supports workflow automation.
• Great community and customer support.
• Supports backlog management.

What Customers Do Not Like:

• Can’t send reminders and automatic emails based on the task. management/workflow.
• May be difficult to use for larger projects with many team members.
• Can be expensive for some users.
• Can lag when spreadsheets are large.
• Can be too pricey for small teams.

Choose The Desired Product Backlog Tool

There are a number of factors to consider when choosing the right backlog management tools, some of which include ease of use, features, and integrations. The most important, however, is whether the tool will help you achieve your specific project goals and create a conducive scrum environment. 

We’ve reviewed the 10 best of them to help you make the right choice for your team here. You can pick up the one you need after checking all.